The gigantic, self-inflating gasbag that is The HindenTrump has been floating above the American political landscape, drawing attention away from the GOP Klown Kar.
While the Klown Kar races around the circus ring, parping its horn in a futile bid to be noticed, its occupants frantically and shamelessly try to match The HindenTrump for stupidity, ignorance and vulgarity.
All to no avail, alas.
And things just got worse for the earthbound GOP Bozos: The HindenTrump has taken the so-called 'Christians' on board.
Frank Bruni at The NYT casts a sardonic eye over this phenomenon in his latest column.
Says Bruni:
Let me get this straight. If I want the admiration and blessings of the most flamboyant, judgmental Christians in America, I should marry three times, do a queasy-making amount of sexual boasting, verbally degrade women, talk trash about pretty much everyone else while I’m at it, encourage gamblers to hemorrhage their savings in casinos bearing my name and crow incessantly about how much money I’ve amassed?
Seems to work for Donald Trump.
Polls show him to be the preferred candidate among not just all Republican voters but also the party’s vocal evangelical subset.
Of course, the rampant and shameless hypocrisy of so-called 'Christians' is hardly a new phenomenon, as Bruni acknowledges:
The holy rollers are smiling upon the high roller. And they’re proving, yet again, how selective and incoherent the religiosity of many in the party’s God squad is.
Usually the disconnect involves stern moralizing, especially on matters sexual, by showily devout public figures who are then exposed as adulterers or (gasp!) closet homosexuals. I’d list all the names, starting with Josh Duggar and working backward, but my column doesn’t sprawl over an entire page of the newspaper.
And the nakedly cynical Trump is playing to the 'Christian' gallery.
At yesterday's Iowa presser and the subsequent speech, Trump yacked about his 'love' of 'The Bible', 'the greatest book in the world', according to Trump, followed (as the bouffant-haired dolt inevitably reminded us) by his own magnum dopey The Art of The Deal.
Yep...2000 years of Western literary tradition, from Livy and Horace to Don DeLillo and Philip Roth, from Sappho and Aeschylus to Rimbaud and Arthur Miller, all take a back-seat to A Dummies Guide To Stiffing The Other Guy.
Bruni confesses himself baffled by The HindenTrump's appeal:
Maybe it’s Trump’s jingoism they adore. They venerated Ronald Reagan though he’d divorced, remarried and spent much of his career in the godless clutch of Hollywood.
Maybe their fealty to Trump is payback for his donations to conservative religious groups.
Or maybe his pompadour has mesmerized them. It could, in the right wind, be mistaken for a halo.
I’m grasping at straws, because there’s no sense in the fact that many of the people who most frequently espouse the Christian spirit then proceed to vilify immigrants, demonize minorities and line up behind a candidate who’s a one-man master class in such misanthropy.
I think I can help, Frank. Firstly, Trump's enthusiasts are...how shall I put this?...lacking in intellectual rigor? Decoded: they're
morons, Frank.
As one Trumpeter told Time magazine:
“We know his goal is to make America great again,” a woman said. “It’s on his hat."
It's. On. His. Hat. Any questions, Frank?
Furthermore, Trump appeals to the GOP base and the so-called 'Christians' for the same reason that Jimmy Carter appeals to the Democratic base and to thoughtful Christians: they both, in their own utterly different ways, exemplify that base.
Just as Jimmy Carter is a brave, thoughtful and decent man, Trump is a blustering, ignorant, spiteful, self-absorbed bully.
Trump and the rest of the GOP Klowns (desperately trying to either set The HindenTrump alight or to get on-board) are today's GOP--hate-filled, frightened, spiteful, ignorant, cruel and witless.
And by not subjecting the repellent gaggle of GOP candidates to proper scrutiny, by soft-pedaling questions and accepting waffle and meaningless soundbites as answers, The New York Times bears a share of the responsibility for the current, cringe-inducing state of affairs.
When you and your colleagues, Frank, start demanding actual answers and policies from these slippery chiselers, perhaps we'll see The HindenTrump crash and burn, taking the rest of the Klowns with it.
Until then, the least we can demand is that they add a soundtrack of canned-laughter every time one of these GOP buffoons speaks. These idiots don't sound right without it.