Day 224 – No-one missed anything

I haven’t written a blog post today, because I’ve been chasing about all over the place. Fortunately, there is an election thing happening somewhere overseas, and so I don’t think anybody noticed my absence.

On that note, might I point you in the direction of the video for DJ Shadow’s Nobody Speak as the perfect representation of the current chaotic state of play in the US?

I’m not going to put it on here, because it breaks a lot of my family-friendly rules as far as NSFW language goes, but here’s the link if you want to see what I’m on about. Mute it if you don’t want to hear the naughty words, although I actually quite like some of them.

The pig is (obviously) great and the flung stack papers against the falling white dove is actually really clever.

Don’t blame Donald

Some of the adjectives used to describe Donald Trump in the lead up (and now aftermath) of the US Election have been… “choice”, shall we say?

But what if there was a hidden side to President Elect Trump?
What if his seemingly angry, outward persona is merely as a result of deep, lasting trauma?

I’m certainly not saying that the manifestation of that persona is excusable, merely that it might be more understandable if we could pin it on some difficult experience he had suffered.

I’m talking about this photo, obviously.

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This is the side of Donald Trump that no-one has ever seen. This is the moment that has scarred him for life. See how he tries to pose for the cameras, tries to appear cool, attempting to grasp a probably-wriggling beagle.
See how it refuses to look anything but profoundly disappointed.
See how it has (almost certainly) chewed something important of his.

This isn’t behaviour specific to its proximity to Donald Trump.
We’ve all been there.

And these things can affect a man. I don’t profess to wanting to build a big wall or have individuals of a certain religion removed from my presence. And I’m certainly not defending those views. Not at all.

I’m merely suggesting that being near a beagle can change a person.
And not in a good way.

Those commentators concerned over Trump’s new democratically-given access to the “Big Red Button” controlling America’s significant nuclear arsenal (and the implications thereof) would do well to glance to the bottom right of the image above and the wide selection of baseball bats. None of which he has used on the beagle. This sort of evidence of extreme restraint will obviously come as some comfort to you hysterical individuals.

Like it or not (and I suspect I could likely gauge the majority public response from my readers) Donald Trump is the new POTUS.

But don’t ever be fooled: the beagles are still in charge.

How utterly terrible is Hillary Clinton?

I’m no fan of the indestructible Donald Trump. But honestly, how utterly terrible is Hillary Clinton?

I say this because virtually everywhere I look, I’m repeatedly informed what a wicked, despicable, loathsome, misogynistic, untruthful, predatory, distasteful, repugnant, narcissistic, dreadful human being  Trump is.

And yet, with little more than 24 hours to go to the 2016 Presidential Election, in this Bloomberg poll, Hillary leads Donald by 3%:

pollNote that small print: “Margin of error +/- 3.5 percentage points.”
And note that bottom bar “Don’t want to tell 4%”, too.
That against a 3% lead. Astounding.

It’s been an eye-opening campaign for me to observe as an outsider, with no axe to grind and no significant interest in the outcome. I’ve never seen such a huge outpouring of insults and incessant dragging down of one candidate in the majority of the media.
It’s become cool to insult Trump. And talking of insults, the NYT took a two page spread to publish a list of all the people Trump has insulted over the last year or so. And yes, as we’ve been told, the fact that he’s insulted so many individuals is a demonstration of what an appalling person he is, but what an unprecedented step for a newspaper to take.
Equally, there seems to be something of a general unspoken agreement to overlook any shortcomings from anything or anyone to do with the Democratic campaign. The recent vandalism of Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was near celebrated in the international media. And then there’s the media concentrating on the n lies Trump told in a TV debate while ignoring the n-10 (or whatever) untruths Clinton came out with. Yes, he’s awful, but how low do your standards have to be that you’re willing to completely overlook the deceit of someone who wants to be the President of your country simply because someone else was allegedly more deceitful on the same evening?

And yes, of course, there are news outlets working on completely the opposite agenda too, but they are hopelessly outnumbered. Still, this isn’t “rigging” the election, as Trump has contended. This is merely editors and media bosses exercising their right to freedom of opinion.
But it is overwhelming.

And so, let’s go back to the title of this post and ask again – with all that media support and with all those hugely-influential, loud-mouthed celebrities on her side – just how utterly terrible must Hillary Clinton be to only be “3% ahead” against “the most dangerous” and “the most orange” (sigh) man in the world?

I don’t know who’ll win – the corrupt autocrat or the corrupt socialist – but the fact that the latter might only just scrape past the former, despite the former being… well… being Donald Trump, should be ringing alarm bells – and not just in America.

Destroying Donald Trump

I’m no fan of Donald Trump.

Just putting that up there nice and clear before the hate mail starts coming in. “Don’t @ me”. Save your pixels; save your bandwidth.

I’m no fan of Hillary Clinton either, mind. I think she’s a dreadful woman and a terrible excuse for a politician; one who has just got very lucky in who she’s been put up against in this ridiculously binary race for (one of) the most powerful positions on the planet. Hobson’s choice. Take Trump out of the equation and compare HRC with anyone else out there, and you’ll see what I mean.

Except it seems that you can’t take Donald Trump out of the equation. He’s undestroyable. So many have tried – look:

Some yellow cartoon people:
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Evening TV show host “Jon” Oliver:
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Evening TV show host Stephen Colbert:
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Er… Evening TV show host Bill Maher:
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Evening TV show host Seth Myers:fullscreen-capture-2016-10-17-092350-am-bmp

Actual Evening TV show Last Week Tonight:
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A rapper:fullscreen-capture-2016-10-17-092450-am-bmp

An old actor:fullscreen-capture-2016-10-17-092618-am-bmp

A Scottish author of kids books:fullscreen-capture-2016-10-17-092638-am-bmp

Drone-bomber in chief and current President of the USA, AND “a Nicaraguan-born American Republican strategist and political commentator for various news outlets” – bilingually nogal!:fullscreen-capture-2016-10-17-092658-am-bmp

An American actress, author, poet, and film director:fullscreen-capture-2016-10-17-092812-am-bmp

Hillary’s husband, briefly:fullscreen-capture-2016-10-17-092829-am-bmp

Barack’s wife, emotionally:fullscreen-capture-2016-10-17-100311-am-bmpAn entire social media platform:fullscreen-capture-2016-10-17-100349-am-bmpAnother rapper:fullscreen-capture-2016-10-17-100415-am-bmpAnother evening TV show host (after analyzing and explaining):fullscreen-capture-2016-10-17-100433-am-bmpAuthor, philosopher, and neuroscientist Sam Harris:fullscreen-capture-2016-10-17-100451-am-bmpAnd a previous reality show “star”:fullscreen-capture-2016-10-17-100509-am-bmp

I could go on, but I think you get the idea. This outpouring of enthusiastic (yet apparently utterly futile) attempted destruction by showbiz stars and other public figures is interesting and – depending on your political and/or moral standpoint, I guess – very worthy, but perhaps tells us more about the hyperbole of modern media than anything else.

Because even though Donald Trump has been “destroyed” countless times (and not least by his own big mouth and seemingly unending stream of stupid comments), he’s still just three or four points behind Clinton at this point.

Let’s face it – look at his completely unprepared, slipshod campaign, lurching from one disaster to the next and you’ll see that there’s no-one more surprised than Donald Trump that he’s actually got this far.

And, as we’ve mentioned above, given that Clinton is an utterly horrendous proposition and the American public are a bit daft, you’d be wise not to write off Donald just yet. Because if he’s still going after this guy had a go:

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…then you know that he’s still got every chance of winning next month’s election.

[Deity] help us all.