{"id":8705,"date":"2016-08-04T09:28:08","date_gmt":"2016-08-04T13:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=8705"},"modified":"2016-08-04T18:41:13","modified_gmt":"2016-08-04T22:41:13","slug":"the-crazy-is-bottom-up-not-top-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=8705","title":{"rendered":"The crazy is bottom up, not top down"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"trump-straitjacket\"<\/a>
\nCharlotte Observer<\/em><\/p>\n

I have no idea what Fox-watchers and Limbaugh listeners are being told — probably the usual stuff about Benghazi and whatever it takes at the moment to keep Republicans angry, disinformed, and motivated to vote. But it’s pretty clear now that the mainstream media have fully realized that Donald Trump is a dangerous madman and that the possibility of his being elected president is an existential<\/em> threat to the United States (if not to the world, if Trump gets his hand on the button).<\/p>\n

All that is true. But there is one very important thing that the mainstream media and its pundits still are not acknowledging. That is that Donald Trump is not the source of the political insanity that has long been evident in this country, not just during this campaign. The political insanity is in the Republican Party itself and in the media that feed, inflame, and constantly deceive Republican voters. When you understand that this is bottom up, not top down, then it’s clear that only a crazy man like Trump could have gotten the Republican nomination in the first place. It’s also clear that the implosion of Trump’s campaign, though it will head off the present emergency, will not solve the problem that makes this country half insane and almost ungovernable.<\/p>\n

We might hope that the younger sons of Rupert Murdoch might have plans for Fox News that would bring an end to the 24\/7 paranoia and deception that has been fed to Republican voters for the past 18 years under Roger Ailes and which has made many, if not most, Republican voters delusional and driven by rage and paranoia. But we can’t count on it. Rush Limbaugh’s career will eventually end. But we have no idea when.<\/p>\n

With the Dumpster fire of Donald Trump’s campaign safely behind us, we might imagine that we’d be out of the woods. But we would not be out of the woods. Nothing but the destruction of the Republican Party as it is today, a total reform of its pundits, mass firings at right wing “think tanks,” and calling out the meanness of some churches and theologies would ensure that we’re really out of the woods.<\/p>\n

Below: Just one day’s worth of Trump headlines from the Washington Post.<\/p>\n

\"trump-headlines\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Also:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"nukes\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Update 6:30 p.m. Aug. 4:<\/strong><\/p>\n

For some graphic evidence that the crazy is bottom up, have a look at this New York Times video<\/a> from Trump rallies. If you’ve ever been verbally assaulted by a right-winger, you know that they get their words from the right-wing media, because they don’t have the knowledge or intellect to come up with their own. But the crazy, and the hatred, were already there before someone like Trump or Limbaugh put words in their mouths.<\/p>\n

\"trump-rally\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charlotte Observer I have no idea what Fox-watchers and Limbaugh listeners are being told — probably the usual stuff about Benghazi and whatever it takes at the moment to keep Republicans angry, disinformed, and motivated to vote. But it’s pretty clear now that the mainstream media have fully realized that Donald Trump is a dangerous … Continue reading “The crazy is bottom up, not top down”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8705"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8729,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8705\/revisions\/8729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}