Tag: Republican

It’s Such a Strange Time in America

W.J. Astore

I went to a political debate and a hockey game broke out

America is in deep trouble, yet this year’s election is a rerun of 2020, of Biden against Trump, a singularly uninspiring “choice” for the presidency.

With respect to Biden, his handlers are doing their best to isolate him, to control his campaign events, and to limit the questions he has to face. Consider this example:

A Biden campaign aide says the president will take a few questions, and other staffers immediately step in to put an end to the event. No unscripted questions allowed!

Then there’s Trump. His campaign appearances are more unhinged than unscripted as Trump rails against immigrants, stolen elections, and various nasty people he doesn’t like. Trump is a collection of petty grievances.

An aspect of Trump’s personality that intrigues me is his almost complete inability to laugh. Rarely if ever do you see him enjoying a good laugh, and never at his own expense. The most you’ll get from Trump is a Cheshire-cat-like grin. He may be a “very stable genius,” but he’s largely a humorless one. His idea of humor is making fun of or insulting other people, notably women, for being ugly or otherwise unattractive to his alpha male gaze.

Meanwhile, both major parties, Republican and Democrat, seem most concerned to attack and vilify the other as extremist, as fascist, as un-American, or otherwise beyond the pale. I went to a political rally and a hockey game broke out. Seriously, last night’s game between the New Jersey Devils and New York Rangers features a line brawl that started as soon as the puck dropped. That’s basically our political scene today.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/phGAeWcsSw8?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

Quick Words on Ron DeSantis

W.J. Astore

A Greg Stillson-like Candidate?

Yesterday, Ron DeSantis announced his candidacy for President on Twitter; it didn’t go well due to “technical difficulties.” Something about his butchered announcement is telling. Yet what creeps me out about him isn’t his botched announcement with Elon Musk or even his record in Florida, which is bad enough, but rather his record in the U.S. military.

As a JAG (military lawyer), he seems to have facilitated torture at Gitmo (the prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba) and assassinations by Special Forces teams in Iraq.  He was also fond of posing like a combat officer in desert camo holding an assault rifle.  I doubt DeSantis was ever truly in harm’s way (same with me, by the way, but I never posed like a commando), but he loves to strike a pose. He even made a campaign commercial based on Tom Cruise’s “Maverick” in which DeSantis, of course, is the “Top Gun” of Florida.

Ron DeSantis, lawyer, ready to rock ‘n’ roll in Iraq

Meanwhile, speaking of image-making, according to the New York Times his wife Casey is cultivating a Jackie Kennedy-like image with her fashion choices (as a former TV news anchor, she knows the power of positive visuals). If image is everything, as those old camera commercials claimed, Ron DeSantis is burnishing his as a warrior-dad, which, I suppose, is better than the reality of a Harvard-trained power-hungry lawyer with no scruples. 

There is something “off” about DeSantis, something inauthentic and dishonest, even more so than the typical politician. Call it a gut feeling.

But, moving past my “gut,” there’s the stunt DeSantis pulled in shipping immigrants seeking asylum in Texas to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. People are just pawns in his political power game. Again, not that unusual for an ambitious pol, but that doesn’t mean I want this charlatan to have his finger on the nuclear button.

I see him as a proto-Greg Stillson (from Stephen King’s “The Dead Zone”). A dangerous man. Strange as it may sound, Donald Trump strikes me as more authentic and less dangerous than DeSantis. Which, by the way, is no endorsement of Trump.