Octopus Overlords

Consider William Jennings Bryan, who captured the Democratic presidential nomination 120 years ago in 1896. He made a name for himself as a journalist (both before and after serving as a member of the House of Representatives) and importantly as an orator who toured the country to speak to populist groups and agitate for the abandonment of the gold standard and the adoption of a silver-based currency. In his appeal to lowbrow tastes, his ability to turn politics into popular entertainment and his willingness to play to prejudice against judgment, Bryan was closer to a modern-day reality TV star than Trump is to Hitler.


To secure the nomination, Bryan applied the same rhetorical style that he had honed in prairie schoolhouses and southern convention halls – a popular forum that had been all but ignored by party elites, but through which he generated a “silent majority” that struck the establishment by surprise in 1896. Trump has no "Mein Kampf" equivalent, no brooding period of party-building and street-fighting thuggery. But like Bryan, he does have a long history of drawing audiences in the private sphere, an ear for the common tongue and an ability to paint complex problems in blindingly simple terms. Like Bryan, Trump is happy to play to paranoid impulses and vague conspiracies.

Among the most popular tools of the Bryan campaign were a series of ill-informed and wildly popular pamphlets featuring a young boy who lectured bankers on the intricacies of global finance. Witty, anti-Semitic and grossly simplistic, they reassured voters that there were solutions to America’s economic woes – solutions so clear that a child could see them. Like Trump, Bryan appealed to what he deemed to be common sense and warned his listeners that anyone preaching moderation only intended to keep the common man in the dark. Bryan’s affinity for religious imagery appears to have been grounded in something deeper than Trump’s clumsy efforts. When he opposed the teaching of evolution in Tennessee schools (nearly 20 years after his first nomination), it was a sensational appeal to the masses but also a sincere application of Bryan’s faith. The differences between them are much more matters of substance than of style.

If the Republicans of 2016 go the direction Democrats went with Bryan in 1896, it could mean years of wandering in the wilderness. We might look toward such a proposition with hope that the polarized politics of the past fifteen years would at last be broken. But we should also be warned of a democratic deficit, in which the incentives to mobilize in support of Democratic politics would wither along with the possibility of real party competition.

Kraken wrote:I know I'm not the only one here who would welcome the return of a rational conservative party (although I may be the only liberal who feels that way).

Kraken wrote:I
The evangelicals and tea partiers and white-power can types wander in the wilderness forever; that's where they were before the Republicans embraced them, after all. I know I'm not the only one here who would welcome the return of a rational conservative party (although I may be the only liberal who feels that way).

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Rip wrote:Rational of course being more left.

A bunch of lefties want the right to be less to the right.

gbasden wrote:

Rip wrote:Rational of course being more left.

A bunch of lefties want the right to be less to the right.

Shit, I'd be happy if they could string together a coherent governing strategy besides "burn it all down".

Rip wrote:Rational of course being more left.

A bunch of lefties want the right to be less to the right.

Rip wrote:Rational of course being more left.

A bunch of lefties want the right to be less to the right.

Chaz wrote:Realizing that compromise is essential, and actually being willing to do it in the name of governing would be pretty nice too.

RunningMn9 wrote:

Chaz wrote:Realizing that compromise is essential, and actually being willing to do it in the name of governing would be pretty nice too.

I was listening to a Cruz speech in AZ over the weekend. I think you are going to be disappointed. This group isn't interested in compromise.

Rip wrote:Rational of course being more left.

A bunch of lefties want the right to be less to the right.

Rip wrote:I must have missed the burn it down part of the campaigns.

LordMortis wrote:Rational meaning if you want something for the common good then you have to pay for and/or regulate it.

Rip wrote:I must have missed the burn it down part of the campaigns.

RunningMn9 wrote:

LordMortis wrote:Rational meaning if you want something for the common good then you have to pay for and/or regulate it.

I would settle for an understanding that you actually have to govern the country.

LordMortis wrote:

Rip wrote:Rational of course being more left.

A bunch of lefties want the right to be less to the right.

'

Rational meaning if you want something for the common good then you have to pay for and/or regulate it. There can't be a disconnect between having social security and medicare and roads and the military and paying for them.

Why is it red states consistently take in more federal dollars than they contribute if they want no government spending while blue states living of the government tit consistently take in less money than they contribute?

https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-l ... ed-vs-blue

The only way "the right" has been rational since Obama has taken office is that they are winning at game theory. They are takers while they portray themselves as victims of the takers. And they've consistently won the pork and the welfare with this approach.

Rip wrote:I must have missed the burn it down part of the campaigns.

Remember how we got here? Make America Great Again. Reversing course? Burning it to the ground is the means to an end. Just stop paying for police. Just stop paying for public education. Just stop paying for roads and street lights and social security and the military and the fire department and the DMV and the DNR and the EPA and the FDA and stop regulating corporate enterprise. Stop passing budgets all together. Just quit paying for everything and it all gets better. And you see how that's irrational... because tax is theft.

Rip wrote:I must have missed the burn it down part of the campaigns.

...
Jeb Bush rallies were not like this. Covering a Jeb event meant freely mingling with 40 people sitting calmly on folding chairs. Covering a Trump event is like watching a 1970s Black Flag concert from inside a shark cage.
...
Where other candidates might have a dozen aides a journalist can develop as sources, along with donors and pollsters and ad-makers who’ll leak inside scoop, with Trump there’s none of that. Maybe you get some state-level operatives on the phone, but it doesn’t matter because they never know anything. “You don’t get sourced up like you normally would,” one reporter told me. “It all happens on the surface. You just try to interpret it.”

Asking policy questions is like throwing a rock down a bottomless well. “If I have a question about women’s issues, or Hispanic issues,” said one reporter, “it’s not like they point me to specific press liaisons who handle those. There aren’t any such people.” Most policy queries simply go unanswered. When a response does come back, it’s rarely sufficient. “There’s no point anyway,” said another reporter. “You might get a response to a question about immigration policy, but the next day on TV, Trump will contradict it.”
...
“We used to fact-check everything, every day,” another reporter told me, “but it gets hard to keep up.” For a writer filing on deadline an hour after a rally ends, there’s not enough time to thoroughly fact-check the dozens of fabrications that spilled from the stage. It’s also hard to know who the fact-checking is for. At this point, anyone who hates Trump has ample evidence he’s a liar. And anyone who loves Trump doesn’t care.

At this point, anyone who hates Trump has ample evidence he’s a liar. And anyone who loves Trump doesn’t care.

Papadopoulos, a 2009 graduate of DePaul University, directs an international energy center at the London Center of International Law Practice. He previously advised the presidential campaign of Ben Carson and worked as a research fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington. According to his LinkedIn profile, he has had meetings with the president of Cyprus and the prime minister of the United Arab Emirates. He obtained a masters’s degree from the University of London in 2010.

On his LinkedIn page, Papadopolous lists among his awards and honors that he was U.S. Representative at the 2012 Geneva International Model United Nations.

Holman wrote:Good piece on the surreal experience of covering Trump as part of the press.

...
Jeb Bush rallies were not like this. Covering a Jeb event meant freely mingling with 40 people sitting calmly on folding chairs. Covering a Trump event is like watching a 1970s Black Flag concert from inside a shark cage.
...
Where other candidates might have a dozen aides a journalist can develop as sources, along with donors and pollsters and ad-makers who’ll leak inside scoop, with Trump there’s none of that. Maybe you get some state-level operatives on the phone, but it doesn’t matter because they never know anything. “You don’t get sourced up like you normally would,” one reporter told me. “It all happens on the surface. You just try to interpret it.”

Asking policy questions is like throwing a rock down a bottomless well. “If I have a question about women’s issues, or Hispanic issues,” said one reporter, “it’s not like they point me to specific press liaisons who handle those. There aren’t any such people.” Most policy queries simply go unanswered. When a response does come back, it’s rarely sufficient. “There’s no point anyway,” said another reporter. “You might get a response to a question about immigration policy, but the next day on TV, Trump will contradict it.”
...
“We used to fact-check everything, every day,” another reporter told me, “but it gets hard to keep up.” For a writer filing on deadline an hour after a rally ends, there’s not enough time to thoroughly fact-check the dozens of fabrications that spilled from the stage. It’s also hard to know who the fact-checking is for. At this point, anyone who hates Trump has ample evidence he’s a liar. And anyone who loves Trump doesn’t care.

The whole thing is worth the read.

em2nought wrote:

Holman wrote:Good piece on the surreal experience of covering Trump as part of the press.

...
Jeb Bush rallies were not like this. Covering a Jeb event meant freely mingling with 40 people sitting calmly on folding chairs. Covering a Trump event is like watching a 1970s Black Flag concert from inside a shark cage.
...
Where other candidates might have a dozen aides a journalist can develop as sources, along with donors and pollsters and ad-makers who’ll leak inside scoop, with Trump there’s none of that. Maybe you get some state-level operatives on the phone, but it doesn’t matter because they never know anything. “You don’t get sourced up like you normally would,” one reporter told me. “It all happens on the surface. You just try to interpret it.”

Asking policy questions is like throwing a rock down a bottomless well. “If I have a question about women’s issues, or Hispanic issues,” said one reporter, “it’s not like they point me to specific press liaisons who handle those. There aren’t any such people.” Most policy queries simply go unanswered. When a response does come back, it’s rarely sufficient. “There’s no point anyway,” said another reporter. “You might get a response to a question about immigration policy, but the next day on TV, Trump will contradict it.”
...
“We used to fact-check everything, every day,” another reporter told me, “but it gets hard to keep up.” For a writer filing on deadline an hour after a rally ends, there’s not enough time to thoroughly fact-check the dozens of fabrications that spilled from the stage. It’s also hard to know who the fact-checking is for. At this point, anyone who hates Trump has ample evidence he’s a liar. And anyone who loves Trump doesn’t care.

The whole thing is worth the read.

Sounds like the only way to win with the media, kinda just ignore them and take it to the people. The media is just going to print whatever they want to print anyway so why not shut them out.

Speaking with the hosts of Today, Trump used the occasion to beat his usual horses, arguing mostly for stricter borders. “I’d be not allowing certain people into this country without absolute perfect documentation. We’re allowing thousands of people already, Matt, to come into our country.”

“Waterboarding—if it was up to me, and if we change the laws, or have the laws, waterboarding would be fine,” Trump said when asked what he would do to get information from Salah Abdeslam, the suspected Paris terrorist attacker who was captured in Belgium last week. “If they could expand the laws, I would do a lot more than waterboarding. You have to get the information from these people,” he added.

raydude wrote:

em2nought wrote:

Holman wrote:Good piece on the surreal experience of covering Trump as part of the press.

...
Jeb Bush rallies were not like this. Covering a Jeb event meant freely mingling with 40 people sitting calmly on folding chairs. Covering a Trump event is like watching a 1970s Black Flag concert from inside a shark cage.
...
Where other candidates might have a dozen aides a journalist can develop as sources, along with donors and pollsters and ad-makers who’ll leak inside scoop, with Trump there’s none of that. Maybe you get some state-level operatives on the phone, but it doesn’t matter because they never know anything. “You don’t get sourced up like you normally would,” one reporter told me. “It all happens on the surface. You just try to interpret it.”

Asking policy questions is like throwing a rock down a bottomless well. “If I have a question about women’s issues, or Hispanic issues,” said one reporter, “it’s not like they point me to specific press liaisons who handle those. There aren’t any such people.” Most policy queries simply go unanswered. When a response does come back, it’s rarely sufficient. “There’s no point anyway,” said another reporter. “You might get a response to a question about immigration policy, but the next day on TV, Trump will contradict it.”
...
“We used to fact-check everything, every day,” another reporter told me, “but it gets hard to keep up.” For a writer filing on deadline an hour after a rally ends, there’s not enough time to thoroughly fact-check the dozens of fabrications that spilled from the stage. It’s also hard to know who the fact-checking is for. At this point, anyone who hates Trump has ample evidence he’s a liar. And anyone who loves Trump doesn’t care.

The whole thing is worth the read.

Sounds like the only way to win with the media, kinda just ignore them and take it to the people. The media is just going to print whatever they want to print anyway so why not shut them out.

The people are also still waiting to hear specifics on policy for women's issues, immigration, and whether or not the Wall will come with its own Night's Watch and if so, do multi-ethnics get to join or is it only whites who get to take the black?

Skinypupy wrote:While other candidates were expressing solidarity and support to Belgium, Trump predictably used the terrorist attacks as an opportunity to advocate for closed borders and torture:

raydude wrote: The people are also still waiting to hear specifics on policy for women's issues, immigration, and whether or not the Wall will come with its own Night's Watch and if so, do multi-ethnics get to join or is it only whites who get to take the black?

Jaymann wrote: The illegals they nab trying to circumvent The Wall will be conscripted.

em2nought wrote:
Sounds like the only way to win with the media, kinda just ignore them and take it to the people. The media is just going to print whatever they want to print anyway so why not shut them out.

Jeff V wrote:

raydude wrote: The people are also still waiting to hear specifics on policy for women's issues, immigration, and whether or not the Wall will come with its own Night's Watch and if so, do multi-ethnics get to join or is it only whites who get to take the black?

There will be no multi-ethnics. Under the auspices of a government jobs program, non-whites will be dispatched to tuck point the Mexican side of the wall. When they attempt to return, the elevator bringing them back to the top of the wall will have been completely sealed off. Then the Night's Watch will dump pails of Trump's excrement on them until they disperse.