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Donald Trump, the road that might not lead to the White House!

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The ninth Republican debate, in Greenville, South Carolina, is classic Trump. He turns these things into WWE contests, and since he has actual WWE experience after starring in Wrestlemania in 2007, he knows how to play these moments like a master.

Interestingly, a lot of Trump's political act seems lifted from bully-wrestlers. A clear influence is "Ravishing" Rick Rude, an Eighties champ whose shtick was to insult the audience. He would tell ticket holders they were "fat, ugly sweat hogs," before taking off his robe to show them "what a real sexy man looks like."

In Greenville, Donald "The Front-Runner" Trump started off the debate by jumping on his favorite wrestling foil, Prince Dinkley McBirthright, a.k.a. Jeb Bush. Trump seems to genuinely despise Bush. He never missed a chance to rip him for being a "low-energy," "stiff" and "dumb as a rock" weenie who lets his Mexican wife push him around. But if you watch Trump long enough, it starts to seem gratuitous.
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I don't know if this has been posted up yet, but he's in court for fraud soon

With GOP nomination looming, Trump is slated to take witness stand in fraud trial

Here’s a part of the political calendar that nobody in the Republican Party seems to have noticed: This spring, just as the GOP nomination battle enters its final phase, frontrunner Donald Trump could be forced to take time out for some unwanted personal business: He’s due to take the witness stand in a federal courtroom in San Diego, where he is being accused of running a financial fraud.
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Well wouldn't be a turn up if both Hillary and The Donald are in court at the same time over their alleged wrongdoings, both having more or less secured the nomination.

Wouldn't it be interesting if they were both ruined as a result.

I mean, it's a pipe dream really. But hypothetically speaking, wtf would happen then? 2nd place gets the call? "Hey Cruz/Sanders, you're up."
 
Vintage Paw said:
Well wouldn't be a turn up if both Hillary and The Donald are in court at the same time over their alleged wrongdoings, both having more or less secured the nomination.

Wouldn't it be interesting if they were both ruined as a result.

I mean, it's a pipe dream really. But hypothetically speaking, wtf would happen then? 2nd place gets the call? "Hey Cruz/Sanders, you're up."
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Vermin Supreme by default!
 
Apologies if this has already been posted, and I know there aren't too many Zizek fans on these forums but these article he wrote about Berlusconi seems remarkably prescient in light of the rise of Trump.

LRB · Slavoj Žižek · Berlusconi in Tehran: The Rome-Tehran Axis

I've copied the most relevant passages, but it's worth reading the article in its entirety too.

It is democracy’s authentic potential that is losing ground with the rise of authoritarian capitalism, whose tentacles are coming closer and closer to the West. The change always takes place in accordance with a country’s values: Putin’s capitalism with ‘Russian values’ (the brutal display of power), Berlusconi’s capitalism with ‘Italian values’ (comical posturing). Both Putin and Berlusconi rule in democracies which are gradually being reduced to an empty shell, and, in spite of the rapidly worsening economic situation, they both enjoy popular support (more than two-thirds of the electorate). No wonder they are personal friends: each of them has a habit of ‘spontaneous’ outbursts (which, in Putin’s case, are prepared in advance in conformity with the Russian ‘national character’). From time to time, Putin likes to use a dirty word or utter an obscene threat. When, a couple of years ago, a Western journalist asked him an awkward question about Chechnya, Putin snapped back that, if the man wasn’t yet circumcised, he was cordially invited to Moscow, where they have excellent surgeons who would cut a little more radically than usual.

Berlusconi is a significant figure, and Italy an experimental laboratory where our future is being worked out. If our political choice is between permissive-liberal technocratism and fundamentalist populism, Berlusconi’s great achievement has been to reconcile the two, to embody both at the same time. It is arguably this combination which makes him unbeatable, at least in the near future: the remains of the Italian ‘left’ are now resigned to him as their fate. This is perhaps the saddest aspect of his reign: his democracy is a democracy of those who win by default, who rule through cynical demoralisation.

Berlusconi acts more and more shamelessly: not only ignoring or neutralising legal investigations into his private business interests, but behaving in such a way as to undermine his dignity as head of state. The dignity of classical politics stems from its elevation above the play of particular interests in civil society: politics is ‘alienated’ from civil society, it presents itself as the ideal sphere of the citoyen in contrast to the conflict of selfish interests that characterise the bourgeois. Berlusconi has effectively abolished this alienation: in today’s Italy, state power is directly exerted by the bourgeois, who openly exploits it as a means to protect his own economic interest, and who parades his personal life as if he were taking part in a reality TV show.

The last tragic US president was Richard Nixon: he was a crook, but a crook who fell victim to the gap between his ideals and ambitions on the one hand, and political realities on the other. With Ronald Reagan (and Carlos Menem in Argentina), a different figure entered the stage, a ‘Teflon’ president no longer expected to stick to his electoral programme, and therefore impervious to factual criticism (remember how Reagan’s popularity went up after every public appearance, as journalists enumerated his mistakes). This new presidential type mixes ‘spontaneous’ outbursts with ruthless manipulation.

The wager behind Berlusconi’s vulgarities is that the people will identify with him as embodying the mythic image of the average Italian: I am one of you, a little bit corrupt, in trouble with the law, in trouble with my wife because I’m attracted to other women. Even his grandiose enactment of the role of the noble politician, il cavaliere, is more like an operatic poor man’s dream of greatness. Yet we shouldn’t be fooled: behind the clownish mask there is a state power that functions with ruthless efficiency. Perhaps by laughing at Berlusconi we are already playing his game. A technocratic economic administration combined with a clownish façade does not suffice, however: something more is needed. That something is fear, and here Berlusconi’s two-headed dragon enters: immigrants and ‘communists’ (Berlusconi’s generic name for anyone who attacks him, including the Economist).

Kung Fu Panda, the 2008 cartoon hit, provides the basic co-ordinates for understanding the ideological situation I have been describing. The fat panda dreams of becoming a kung fu warrior. He is chosen by blind chance (beneath which lurks the hand of destiny, of course), to be the hero to save his city, and succeeds. But the film’s pseudo-Oriental spiritualism is constantly undermined by a cynical humour. The surprise is that this continuous making-fun-of-itself makes it no less spiritual: the film ultimately takes the butt of its endless jokes seriously. A well-known anecdote about Niels Bohr illustrates the same idea. Surprised at seeing a horseshoe above the door of Bohr’s country house, a visiting scientist said he didn’t believe that horseshoes kept evil spirits out of the house, to which Bohr answered: ‘Neither do I; I have it there because I was told that it works just as well if one doesn’t believe in it!’ This is how ideology functions today: nobody takes democracy or justice seriously, we are all aware that they are corrupt, but we practise them anyway because we assume they work even if we don’t believe in them. Berlusconi is our own Kung Fu Panda. As the Marx Brothers might have put it, ‘this man may look like a corrupt idiot and act like a corrupt idiot, but don’t let that deceive you – he is a corrupt idiot.’
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A very illuminating exchange, both because it shows that on some issues Trump is actually running as a sane Republican but also because Cruz thinks that there is a significant constituency of people who will be upset with Trump because he is not pro-allowing people to die on the streets. I suspect that constituency, while it may exist, is much smaller than Cruz imagines and that is one of many reasons why Trump is doing so well.

Liar! Liar! - Republican debate descends into battle of insults

Cruz insisted on answering the Obamacare question and used it to bludgeon Trump.

He said that Trump likes Planned Parenthood, while he would investigate it and prosecute any infractions. Cruz then accused Trump of “advocating socialized medicine.”

Then Cruz brought up a line from a couple debates ago, in which Trump said he would not let people “die on the sidewalk.”

Trump stood by his position: “I will not let people die on the streets if I’m president. Let me talk. We’re going to have private health care. I am not going to let people die on the streets or the sidewalks of this country, if I am president. You might be fine with it. I’m not fine with it."
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Rimbaud said:
Apologies if this has already been posted, and I know there aren't too many Zizek fans on these forums but these article he wrote about Berlusconi seems remarkably prescient in light of the rise of Trump.

LRB · Slavoj Žižek · Berlusconi in Tehran: The Rome-Tehran Axis

I've copied the most relevant passages, but it's worth reading the article in its entirety too.
Click to expand...

This bit seems very true of our own 'democracy':

his democracy is a democracy of those who win by default, who rule through cynical demoralisation.
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DrRingDing said:
Am I alone on these boards in hoping Trump becomes 'leader of the free world'.
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Probably. It's one thing to say he is better than Cruz and Rubio and that the most extreme of the liberal hysteria is wrong because he isn't literally Hitler but at the same time he *is* horrifying in his own right on so many levels. He *is* a racist demagogue who is redirecting the class anxiety of the US white working-class, he is a misogynist, he would undo a lot of the positive incremental change of the Obama Whitehouse on social issues and accelerate privatisation and attacks on workers' rights.
 
J Ed said:
Probably. It's one thing to say he is better than Cruz and Rubio and that the most extreme of the liberal hysteria is wrong because he isn't literally Hitler but at the same time he *is* horrifying in his own right on so many levels. He *is* a racist demagogue who is redirecting the class anxiety of the US white working-class, he is a misogynist, he would undo a lot of the positive incremental change of the Obama Whitehouse on social issues and accelerate privatisation and attacks on workers' rights.
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Yep, this. People probably thought Reagan was a bit of a joke and an idiot in 1979, but he did an enormous amount of damage in his 8 years. Clinton is vile, but she isn't going to set about undoing every minor advance Obama's got through.
 
and for all trumps big talk about how he'd never have started them wars I am willing to bet that in the brewing anger and rage of those first few weeks after 9/11 in america? He'd have been talked out of a nuking if we were lucky. Of course we'll never know. Easy to call it a disaster after it happened ennit
 
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