On Tuesday I had semi-crippling depression related to Donald Trump.
How are people so stupid? His wife had just given her plagiarized speech, and apologists were saying things like it's not plagiarism because it's just a few lines, or that it was just similar themes and not the same words. I wanted to strangle the guy in this interview. A friend and I have talked about how what people say doesn't matter. We've always meant it to be about the precision of what people say, that the actual words do not matter. Not that we personally believe they do not or should not matter but that we see in places like advertising wording that makes things simply false being totally acceptable, this kind of thing.
A few weeks ago I mildly debated and mostly listened to a couple who had been strong Bernie Sanders supporters and were now arguing that Donald Trump was no worse than Hilary Clinton (they intend to vote for Jill Stein and at the time unrealistically thought Sanders might also go to a third party). They cited Hilary's record on war, foreign trade, and other issues that are terrible but at the same time typical of establishment politics, American imperialism, business as usual.
Donald Trump's faults go beyond the conservative, unimaginative, structurally-chained muck of party politics. What shocks me is the way his lies, prejudices, and ignorance are simply not veiled. They're not behind ideology and structures. His glittering generalities and abuses of the vague language of advertising are advertising what exactly? He represents truly the worst in us, and it's shocking that he has so many supporters. How are people capable of swallowing what he spews? What can be done to stop him?
I think Ken Burns actually had some worthwhile commentary recently. The early portion about technology sounds a bit like Paul Virilio.