Trump’s shallowness runs deep - By George F. Will

[DonViejo]

In the 1870s, when Boss Tweed’s Tammany Hall controlled New York City, and in the 1950s and 1960s, when Chicago’s Democratic machine was especially rampant, there was a phenomenon that can be called immunity through profusion: Fresh scandals arrived with metronomic regularity, so there was no time to concentrate on any of them. The public, bewildered by blitzkriegs of bad behavior, was enervated.

What Winston Churchill said about an adversary — “He spoke without a note, and almost without a point” — can be said of Donald Trump, but this might be unfair to him. His speeches are, of course, syntactical train wrecks, but there might be method to his madness. He rarely finishes a sentence (“Believe me!” does not count), but perhaps he is not the scatterbrain he has so successfully contrived to appear. Maybe he actually is a sly rascal, cunningly in pursuit of immunity through profusion.

He seems to understand that if you produce a steady stream of sufficiently stupefying statements, there will be no time to dwell on any one of them, and the net effect on the public will be numbness and ennui. So, for example, while the nation has been considering his interesting decision to try to expand his appeal by attacking Gold Star parents, little attention has been paid to this: Vladimir Putin’s occupation of Crimea has escaped Trump’s notice.

It is, surely, somewhat noteworthy that someone aspiring to be this nation’s commander in chief has somehow not noticed the fact that for two years now a sovereign European nation has been being dismembered. But a thoroughly jaded American public, bemused by the depths of Trump’s shallowness, might have missed the following from Trump’s appearance Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

-snip-

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/trumps-shallowness-runs-deep/2016/08/03/f7311b20-58d3-11e6-831d-0324760ca856_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1

[underpants]

1. I'm enervated to see a George Will posting

Yes I had to look it up

[DonViejo]

2. As long as he continues to write columns attacking Trump; I'll post them on DU...

it never hurts Democrats to know what big name Repukes are saying about their party's presidential nominee; it's great ammunition in arguments with the Trumpeteers

[anamandujano]

6. That's the best part of the campaign for me, as you stated

"what big name Repukes are saying about their party's presidential nominee"

It makes me feel there is hope for the planet. I have started calling them Republicans instead of Repukes once they speak out. While most of these people have made me violently ill in the past, I am willing to forgive since this is monumentally important.

[question everything]

3. More

The nation, however, is not immune to the lasting damage that is being done to it by Trump’s success in normalizing post-factual politics. It is being poisoned by the injection into its bloodstream of the cynicism required of those Republicans who persist in pretending that although Trump lies constantly and knows nothing, these blemishes do not disqualify him from being president.

As when, last week, Mike Pence reproved Obama for deploring, obviously with Trump in mind, “homegrown demagogues.” Pence, doing his well-practiced imitation of a country vicar saddened by the discovery of sin in his parish, said with sorrowful solemnity: “I don’t think name-calling has any place in public life.” As in “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz and “Little Marco” Rubio and “Crooked Hillary” Clinton?

[Hortensis]

4. Will's probably right about Trump's technique of

burying gaffes under a blizzard of further statements. Trump can't know just which of his statements will blow up in his face, or why, but this has been going on for decades and he probably learned this reasonably effective way of dealing with it that still keeps the attention on him a long time ago.

Btw, here's another from the WaPo we've all been mostly too busy to note:

And then there’s my favorite story of the day, in which Trump goes to Loudoun County, Virginia, the richest county in America, tells the crowd, “you’re doing lousy over here, by the way, I hate to tell you,” then cites as evidence some factory closures that occurred hundreds of miles away (one of which was actually in North Carolina).

Loudoun is the richest county in America. That’s due in part to the enormous amount of money the federal government spent on the War on Terror in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The place is replete with defense contractors, engineers, and rocket scientists. And it’s recession-proof; while the rest of the country struggled through the Great Recession, Loudoun kept sprouting up neighborhoods of McMansions, seemingly with a swimming pool in every backyard.

Trump seemingly forgot to glance around him. Or maybe everyone's impoverished to him.

[LAS14]

5. I think that's exactly what's happening. Is there a remedy?