re: #8 Nerdy Fish

It beggars belief that some of the richest and most powerful people in this country are so desperate for this specific dipshit to inhabit the White House - not another one who would be similarly inclined to their interests, but with less criminal baggage; this specific one - that they are willing to literally make him immune to all criminal prosecutions for eternity after leaving office just to make it happen.

The Forgotten History of Hitler’s Establishment Enablers

How many of them think he’s pliable such that he can be steered, and how many admire him because he has a lack of shame and purity of impulse that they aspire to?

Switching to a different candidate requires compromises; sticking with Trump guarantees un-democratic outcomes that advance whatever they want. The genuine social engineers need license, and Trump will grant unlimited license because he’s at heart a cruel, controlling person; the thieves desire opportunity and pretext, and Trump will grant both because he’s a thief first.

For decades conservatives have eroded the power of the state that uplifts and empowers people in keeping with a universal dignity of human beings. At whatever level of government they control, they write their preferred hierarchical distinctions into the law. Within their own circles there are only arguments about which exact configuration of hierarchy is best…but what is consistent is that the coercive power of the state must be used to enfranchise only the superior. This has been so successful that a bunch of guaranteed rights are now larded with exceptions that diminish civil liberty, and now they’re working on laws that include subjective interpretations that assign more power to reactionary agents at the cost of autonomy for normal people.

All our rich people have some version of viewing themselves as better kind of person, whether that’s hyperindividual, racist, sexist, classist, and many hold more than one of these positions. The appeal of Donald Trump is that as long as he’s fed the correct attention he will rubber stamp all of their preferred social configurations.

re: #25 Mike Lamb

I’ve always found that crazy as well. You’re talking about someone with absolutely zero redeeming features. It was like gun nuts latching on to George Zimmerman. Pick a better avatar.

But the point isn’t to seem credible—they don’t care about what other people think. The point is to elevate a person that exemplifies as much license as possible for them exclusively.

George Zimmerman was their choice because he pushed the window of feasibility in the direction they wanted: towards stalking and summarily killing people who “feel” threatening and getting away with it.

In the same way, Donald Trump represents exactly what they want: to be personally grotesque and domineering and rewarded for it, and as a state actor to be openly vindictive and self-serving.

They don’t want a king because they genuinely like kings, they want a king because then they can be dukes. And Trump is plausibly the kind of mush-headed ruler that could be jerked around by a counselor.