Gordon Howie’s cryptic and often incredible blog partner praises Donald Trump as a “miracle of modern life” providing quality news to which we should give our “very first allegiance.”
Ford’s essay reads like high satire, but the sad thing is that he and Gordon Howie mean it: they think Donald Trump is a model of quality speech and rhetoric.
O.K. Let’s take Ford at his word. Let’s take Donald Trump as an exemplar of informative civic discourse. Let me adopt Il Duce‘s Twitter style and apply it to commentary on South Dakota politics. I appropriate Trumpian Tweets below; the links and italicized items are my insertions.
While the reviews and reporting on my blog have been very good, there has nevertheless been much false reporting (surprise!) by the Fake and Corrupt SDGOP Establishment, such as Mike Rounds, Dusty Johnson, Kristi Noem, and Pat Powers. These “Fakers” are Bad News! [adapted from Trump, 2019.06.08]
South Dakota Republicans are incapable of doing a good and solid education Bill! [adapted from Trump, 2019.06.07]
Nervous Al Novstrup is a disgrace to himself and his family for having made such a disgusting statement…. There is no evidence for such a thing to have been said. Nervous Novstrup & SDGOP are getting Zero work done in #SDLeg… [adapted from Trump, 2019.06.07]
A big and beautiful day today! [straight from Trump, 2019.06.06]
Washed up psycho Al Novstrup…. A sick scammer! [adapted from Trump, 2019.06.04]
Al Novstrup, who by all accounts has done a terrible job as Senator of District 3, has been foolishly “nasty” to Aberdeen’s most prolific blogger, by far the most important source of news and commentary in South Dakota. He is a stone cold loser who should focus on health in South Dakota, not me…… [adapted from Trump, 2019.06.03]
….Norvstup reminds me very much of our very dumb and incompetent Mayor of Sioux Falls, TenHaken, who has also done a terrible job – only half his height. In any event, I look forward to being a great friend to Sioux Falls, and am looking very much forward to my visit. Landing now! [adapted from Trump, 2019.06.03]
Pat Powers, the simplistic writer for Earth Haters all, is stuck in the past glory of Reagan and has no idea what is happening with the Radical Right Republicans, or how vicious and desperate they are. Goodwin had to correct his ridiculous statement, Pat never understood it! [adapted from Trump, 2019.06.02]
The Greatness is too much for me.
Fix this one…. Trump plays victim: Pelosi should not have talked about me in private while ‘I was with foreign leaders overseas’
Honestly, all that matters to me is that he’s got a great pair of boobs and an onion that doesn’t quit.
Good stuff, Mr. H. I think a lot of the success of Messrs. Novstrup, the elder, and Trump is due to their unique coiffs and their ability with humor. This, despite the height differential, does really bind them both as successful elected officials.
Frankly grudznick thinks that Al would make a better president.
Cory writes:
As a traditional Bible Protestant and an extreme right-libertarian, I’ve never seen anything written by Brad Ford with which I’d want to be associated.
When I served in the Army in Germany, the big question was how could the Third Reich have possibly come into existence in the land of Goethe, Bach, Beethoven, etc. We are now having demonstrated before us with Trump how it happens in the land of Washington, Lincoln, the Greatest Generation, etc. There is a huge population out there that deplores the ideas of liberty, equality, and justice as developed in our history. They reject Lincoln’s vision of malice toward none with the fervent embrace of malice toward everyone they damned well please. And Trump is the exemplary vector of malice.
I heard my first accounts of Trump in the late 1980s when I was a house guest with a retired commercial banker from Chicago. I had been a business editor for a newspaper, and we got into a conversation about the most crooked business executives we had encountered. He had never had personal dealings with Trump, but he told about how his business associates reviled Trump and avoided him or anyone who had anything to do with him. Trump borrowed money for his failed real estate schemes which he never paid back, he did not pay contractors whom he hired to do work, he refused to pay employees, usually making the excuse that he was not satisfied with their work. In sum, he was a notorious grifter who was despised by honest businessmen.
There is a reason why Trump is not in jail. He has been involved in more than 3,500 legal actions with his bankruptcies, contract violations, defamation suits, sexual harassment suits, and the like. He has been the plaintiff in about 1,900 and the defendant in about 1,450. But these have all been in civil court where he has used the courts to extort some of his victims or been sued by people trying to recover money lost to him or collect damages. No one seems to have accepted their loss and simply filed criminal charges for fraud or theft. However, the list of federal and states laws he has violated is extensive.
There is a large proportion of people out there who consider him a hero for what he has gotten away with. They are the ones who watch “The Godfather” and “The Sopranos” and dream of leading such lives. Their measure of a successful life is how much money you can make, how many people you can exercise power over, and how many you can screw over.
The tendency is to regard the divide in America as a matter of partisan politics. But, in fact, the division is about much more fundamental moral and intellectual values. It is a division between those who believe in and practice those values which we allege our democracy represents and those who don’t.
David Newquist – do you have any reservations about Obama’s leave behind network and the fact that unelected bureaucrats have assumed power over the CIA, which, as the most well funded agency on the planet, has infiltrated nearly every other intelligence agency on the planet? You think this is TRUMP?! Maybe to the extent that he wants to try to use that network to destroy that network. Since mid 2015 I have seen unbelievably effective conditioning. The left went from “we hate the media and advertising” to the exact opposite. Conservatism is the new counterculture, and everybody’s got a hustle.
I do have reservations about absurd conspiracy theories. Especially those that can be easily, factually disproven.
And yet, David, you have not taken that step. Curious, do you think Thomas Sowell is a racist?
“It is usually futile to try to talk facts and analysis to people who are enjoying a sense of moral superiority in their ignorance.” — Thomas Sowell
Read the book: “Behold a Pale Horse” — sometimes conspiracy theories, like the JFK assassination, become Conspiracy laws.
Like Dr. Newquist and so many others I have followed Donald Trump since the early 80’s and wasn’t able to find any redeeming qualities about the man back then and even less today.
One of the qualities great leaders have is a sense of humor, Trump has none or the one that he does have is perverted.
The only times I have seen him laugh is when he is he encouraging a fan to beat up a protester.
Trump is the type of man that will throw a banana peel in front of the old folks home and laughs when grandma slips on it and falls down.
What relevance do these responses have to the issue of defective discourse raised in Cory’s post, other than to demonstrate that it exists and and practiced in some circles?
Cory, your post is brilliant. Such effective use of Wilted Weenie’s pitiful attempts at oratory clearly illustrates just how incoherently and irrationally he babbles. He is so delusional, a condition many of his minions seem to share with him.
Roger,
Trump’s lake of a sense of humor was also noted by a British writer who detailed quite a few more traits: https://jobsanger.blogspot.com/2019/02/british-writer-pens-best-description-of.html?fbclid=IwAR3KBSFYtFcAe3nPvNvRis7wsUcH_9d4Zgu1X_CdPD6VgFGClgWOPWPVjMg
Er, ah, his lack may seem like a vast lake. but I did mean lack.
I’ve read that Dr. Newquist. It’s very funny and true.
David
Nate White is my literary hero for the day.
The Twitter style of pro-liberty Michigan Republican Congressman Justin Amash is a model of informative civic discourse.
I’d recommend reading this entire 15-tweet thread:
https://mobile.twitter.com/justinamash/status/1137094407625302017
Good find, Dr Newquist. I wasn’t aware people were familiar with Jobs Anger blog. He certainly publishes enough charts and polls, etc.
John Dale, your persuasion is unknowable. You seem to be a Trumpist, but your arguments are impenetrable.
Newquist, there is no better writer/observer in SoDak right now (at least within my rather limited reading list).
Kurt, you’re as reliable a libertarian as you are historian.
Cory, this was a terrific post. It is hard to satirize the reality we face, but you do it as well as anyone could.
I meant to add the words “than you” to my praise of Newquist.
What CIRD said at 18:07 + “than you.”
Dr. Newquist’s great link has some terrific comments. For one, I did not know that trump is slang “In British slang a trump is an audible discharge of flatus from a person’s rectum, and it’s associated smell.” So, now we all know why there is a stench in America that will only be flushed when this turd goes down the impeached tube.
Bob Newland writes:
I’d say I’m a little less reliable in my efforts to preserve history than I am in my efforts to preserve liberty, Bob, but I try to be as reliable as I can in both.
Jerry, for your listening and viewing pleasure. Drumpf hard at work fpr one minute.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rM-5o3oHYk :))
mfi, thanks. That represents what trump is doing to America and all of its people who are not in on the scam called Wall Street. With only 75,000 new jobs, you just know there will be more flatulence stinkin up the place to try to cover that economic failure called the republican economy.
It is difficult to write a title post without inadvertently referring to other fields of Trump’s nefariousness!
“Trump Models…”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/former-trump-models-we-were-told-to-lie-about-immigration-status
The British sense of humor is a great tool to slice and dice Wilted Weenie. It’s a beautiful thing.
Speaking of Wilted Weenie modeling, well, anything, here’s a photo of donny the dork’s deformed duds from the undeserved and beautifully protested state dinner with the elegant Queen Elizabeth and appropriately dressed Melancholy.
“Ismet Dil, whose company has provided formal wear to presidents for over a century, says that he doesn’t recognize the suit that His Orangeness was wearing and has no idea where it came from. Dil said, ‘This is my profession. It’s not right.’ Saville Row tailors analyzed the suit for it’s legion of flaws:”
There is an illustration. 😆😆😆
http://bit.ly/2ZeyWA6
Thank you, CIRD. I agree that satire is difficult when the material we’re given is already ready patently absurd.
Let’s see how he models this:
“John Dean, a star witness during Watergate who helped bring down the Nixon presidency, testified Monday that special counsel Robert Mueller has provided Congress with a ‘road map’ for investigating President Donald Trump.” He’s doing very badly at it thus far.
Dean begins testifying today, the first in a series of witnesses on Wilted Weenie’s criminality. This AP article is paywalled in the Strib. http://strib.mn/2F27U7j
The term Lügenpresse has its origins in Germany during the First World War. Initially intended to counter allied propaganda campaigns (a good deal of which we now know to have actually been accurate) the Nazis used it to attack hostile media. And considering the central role of anti-Semitism in Hitler’s worldview, it was a particularly effective weapon. The idea of a Jewish-dominated press stretched back decades. By the 1920s it was all but an unspoken assumption within German anti-Semitic circles. So now, if the press was critical of the Nazis, the explanation was clear: the Jews. And since, according to Hitler, Jews were fundamental enemies of Germany, the press, too, was the enemy of the people.
Thx for the link Newquist.
Jooz was a term used today by a blog commenter, MATT RANKIN.
10000 documented Trump lies. Salon 6.09.19
He’s talked about George Soros financing the “caravans” coming to the United States in order to destroy it.
He frequently refers to nonexistent voter fraud, including the claim that between three million and five million people voted illegally in 2016, thus costing him the popular vote.
He confidently asserted that President Obama wiretapped his office in Trump Tower.
He said 3,000 people did not die in Puerto Rico as a result of the hurricanes that hit the island.
And regardless of how often and how definitively they’ve been revealed as lies, he continues to repeat them, over and over.
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