My modern update of a famous quote: “Better to keep silent and be thought a fool than to tweet and remove all doubt.”
The fool in this case is petty, petulant, incompetent, inarticulate, ignorant, inappropriate, impulsive, bigoted, sexist, undisciplined, caustic, insensitive, self-centered, immature, watches cable news all day and plays golf almost every weekend…but he is “rich & famous” so everything he says or does is accepted by those that follow the cult of personality or dismissed as being straightforward and politically “incorrect”.
The fool’s tweets show a fundamentally flawed understanding of things like: our legal justice system, our government, separation of powers, the federal budget process, our alliance with NATO, intelligence/surveillance tactics, nuclear weapons, basic US history, race relations, culture, healthcare, military strategy (& arms), diplomacy, energy policy, journalism, border control, environment, science in general, macroeconomics, international trade and puts that ignorance on display on a daily basis.
Already a national embarrassment , the fool continues to escalate ignorance while spreading ethnic nationalism and plutocratic propaganda (under the guise of populism) on an unprecedented level. He has absorbed the last decade of GOP hate-fueled rhetoric of Fox News and right-wing extremist media…and accepted every bit of it as truth…with Steve Bannon as his Grima Wormtongue. The fool is taking to Twitter to defend himself by declaring any accusations against him are fake news by the fake FBI/DOJ.
The fool’s followers love him because he is them: a fantastical and ego-driven view of a black-and-white simplistic world in which American prosperity is for the chosen few…and under constant threat from the “others”.
We are way past the point of mere politics. Politics is about debating policy and advocating for the well-being of constituents. Both sides in a political debate may manipulate the media and invoke emotional arguments but at the end of the day there is an acceptance of the over-riding need to implement actual policy which requires (with some notable exceptions) an objective baseline of data. There can be no compromise with persons who violently reject any information that does not comport to their world view.
The party of fools gained political power with these exact tactics: overwhelming base rhetoric and destructive ignorance. Tea party candidates, once in office, were revealed as either cynical non-believers riding a wave of bigotry-fueled opposition to glory or as truly (and purposefully) misinformed radicals who have no interest in governance. A new religion was born, and all the evidence historians need is to examine the rise of the birther movement, the use of the debt limit as a political chip in the budget process (which pushed the US to economic disaster), and the propagation of an opinion-based, non-factual, anti-science mindset.
At the risk of sounding alarmist: these are the origins of fascism. This is how tyrants are born. Those who know world history can point to the obvious parallels (racial/religious scapegoating, delegitimizing free press and other institutions, angry rhetoric). Representatives from both major parties know this. It must stop. It has to stop. The fool must be stopped.