#PLUTOCRACY TRUMP TV#
He’s a reality TV star, and that is all he is.
Trump has spent his entire career, if you want to call it that, being a pure celebrity, in the sense of someone who is, in so-called intellectual Daniel Boorstin’s definition of the concept, famous for being famous.Įlecting Donald Trump president would be as insane as electing Kim Kardashian president, and for the same reasons. He doesn’t know even the Cliff Notes version of any policy issue.” (This is all in the context of Krikorian’s announcement that he plans to vote for Trump anyway).Īs for celebrity, people mocked Reagan for being an actor, but again, in comparison to Trump, the erstwhile star of "Bedtime For Bonzo" looks like Benjamin Disraeli.
#PLUTOCRACY TRUMP SERIAL#
Here’s an evaluation of that very question from Republican operative Mark Krikorian, who, after noting that Trump is a braggart, a liar, a serial adulterer, and generally unfit to be president, declares that Trump “wouldn’t recognize the Constitution if he tripped over it in the street. I haven’t plumbed the precise depths of Trump’s ignorance of every subject that might have relevance to running the executive branch of the American government, but I also don’t know precisely what’s at the bottom of the New York City sewer system, and have no particular desire to find out. Of course in comparison to Donald Trump, Bush the Lesser might as well be Ludwig Wittgenstein. The message is: vote for this guy not despite his ignorance, but because of it. Americans love the guy who ain't that guy. Republicans love the guy who ain't that guy. No, it's formidable and yet fleeting." When the fire comes they talk. And then when the fire comes they say, "I warned Joe about that furnace." And, "Does Joe have children?" And "I saw a fire once. Intellectuals start all the trouble in the world. He'll help direct the rig to the right house and count the kids coming out and say, "Where's Sally?" He's responsible. But if there's a fire on the block, he'll run out and help. He speaks the language of business and sports and politics. Bush is the triumph of the seemingly average American man. Bush in the midst of his 2004 campaign for re-election: A perfect example of this attitude is provided by former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan’s paean to George W. Under Reagan, movement conservatism became an aggressively stupid ideology: one which has celebrated the plain wisdom of the common people over the know-it-all arrogance of the elites, the intellectuals (always referred to invariably as “so-called intellectuals”), the ivory tower professors, and the scientists. The French revolution’s slogan was “liberty, equality, fraternity.” The Reagan revolution’s guiding principles have been “stupidity, celebrity, plutocracy” – and Trump is the ultimate example of all three. Ten months later, Trump is the presumptive nominee, and many of the same people who were certain there was no chance that could happen are now equally confident that he has no chance of becoming president.įor all the agonized cries of movement conservatives that Trump is not really one of them, he is in fact the natural culmination of the entire Reagan revolution, which over the past forty years has transformed both the Republican party and the nation as a whole. As is the idea that he can’t be elected president.
In a GOP presidential field that isn’t exactly stacked with political talent, the notion that Trump can’t win the nomination is at least premature. (4) Both spent most of their careers being dismissed as clownish lightweights. (3) Both spent a good part of their lives as at least putatively wishy-washy Democrats, before discovering that selling racial demagoguery to the contemporary Republican party base was about as hard as selling beer at a baseball game on a 90-degree day.
#PLUTOCRACY TRUMP HOW TO#
(2) Both manifested a fine understanding of how to make outrageous statements in a way that ingratiated them with their political bases, precisely because the national media reaction to those statements allowed them to pose as victims of supposed media and/or elite bias. (1) Both mastered the art of manipulating their contemporary media environments. Now obviously there are enormous differences between the backgrounds, the careers, and the personalities of the two men, but there are also some striking similarities: This makes me at least begin to wonder if something similar might not be happening with Donald Trump.
insiders, etc., until practically up to the moment he was on the edge of winning the GOP nomination in 1976. One of the most compelling points Rick Perlstein makes in his excellent The Invisible Bridge is that Ronald Reagan was consistently and radically underestimated as a potential political force by the national media, public intellectuals, D.C. Ten months ago, at a time when Donald Trump’s newly announced run for the Republican nomination was almost universally considered a bad joke, I had this to say about it:
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