This has been a blog with my opinions on politics, psychology, and pop culture using the Google Blogger platform with the address halbrown.org. As of Oct. 10, 2023 it has been renamed Hal Brown's Stressline and moved to the WordPress platform with the new address Stressline.org - Posts are sometimes serious and sometimes snarky.
I’ve added to this “pictoon” periodically, wondering why nothing, from bombshell or smaller explosive device, blew up the orange beast. Nothing stuck.
While the saying “the straw the breaks the camel’s back” and the shorter “the final straw” goes back in various forms to 1677 it was Dickens who popularized it in “Dombey and Sons” in the 1840’s.
It is relevant that Mr. Dombey was very rich and full of pride. He had one woe after another pile on him until a comparatively small sadness broke him:
`So I'm a going to, Sir. One of my little boys is a going to learn me, when he's old enough, and been to school himself.'
`Well,' said Mr. Dombey, after looking at him attentively, and with no great favour, as he stood gazing round the room (principally round the ceiling) and still drawing his hand across and across his mouth. `You heard what I said to your wife just now?'
`Polly heerd it,' said Toodle, jerking his hat over his shoulder in the direction of the door, with an air of perfect confidence in his better half. `It's all right.'
`As you appear to leave everything to her,' said Mr. Dombey, frustrated in his intention of impressing his views still more distinctly on the husband, as the stronger character, `I suppose it is of no use my saying anything to you.'
`Not a bit,' said Toodle. `Polly heerd it. She's awake, Sir.'
`I won't detain you any longer then,' returned Mr. Dombey disappointed. `Where have you worked all your life?'
`Mostly underground, Sir, 'till I got married. I come to the level then. I'm a going on one of these here railroads when they comes into full play.'
As the last straw breaks the laden camel's back, this piece of underground information crushed the sinking spirits of Mr. Dombey. He motioned his child's foster-father to the door, who departed by no means unwillingly: and then turning the key, paced up and down the room in solitary wretchedness. For all his starched, impenetrable dignity and composure, he wiped blinding tears from his eyes as he did so; and often said, with an emotion of which he would not, for the world, have had a witness, `Poor little fellow!'
It may have been characteristic of Mr. Dombey's pride, that he pitied himself through the child. Not poor me. Not poor widower, confiding by constraint in the wife of an ignorant Hind who has been working `mostly underground' all his life, and yet at whose door Death had never knocked, and at whose poor table four sons daily sit--but poor little fellow!
We’ve been counting the bombshells one after another and keep thinking one will finally break Trump and turn a significant number of his less hypnotized supporters away from him.
One might be tempted to say “he’s only human” when speculating that they has to be a cumulative effect on him. But he’s not a typical human like Mr. Dombey who had feelings.
As many have said, he and his core supporters live in an impermeable bubble. But despite that psychological phenomena of delusion combined with wishful thinking combined with the extreme narcissism of Trump himself something has to seep through the wall of defenses.
At some level he has to know that things have gone horrible wrong for him. I am sure he doesn’t dwell on this, and neither do his strong supporters.
So what could be the last straw?
Like with Mr. Dombey, it could be something comparatively insignificant.
It could be as simple as his disappointment after counting on a huge anti-Clinton scandal coming from Julian Assange, or some unanticipated minor affront.
A sympathetic utterance by Hillary has one line which out of context is being used against her:I woke up to this story and read the following on the website that broke the story. Talk about bias!
Asked Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” whether he agreed with the New York businessman, Sanders, who has endorsed Clinton, said she was “absolutely correct” in her assessment of his supporters.
“I think what she said ― and, by the way, during the campaign, we do have our differences, Secretary Clinton and I do disagree on issues,” he said. “But what she was saying there is absolutely correct. And that is, you’ve got millions of young people, many of whom took out loans in order to go to college, hoping to go out and get decent-paying, good jobs.”
Let’s get this right out: Bernie Sander has come out and said that he agrees with her assessment!
The email, which Mellul sent to Nick Merrill, Clinton’s traveling press secretary, contained an audio file of Clinton’s remarks to donors at a McLean, Virginia, fundraiser. In her remarks, she derisively wrote off Sanders (emphasis added) supporters and made other comments that would draw attention when the audio became public. From freebeacon.com/…
It seems to me that her remark was sympathetic, and while her unfortunate use of the generally insulting meme “living in their parent’s basement” it is true that many college graduates can’t afford to move out of their parents house because they are unable to get jobs that will enable them to live on their own. Many no doubt live with roommates and housemates while they’d rather have places of their own.
Here’s more — note the use of the word “roiled.” Look at all the revelations about Trump and this is what it takes to roil the race about Hillary!
The Sanders question prompted a response from Clinton that has roiled the presidential race since Republican candidate Donald Trump seized on it on Saturday in an attempt to drive a wedge between Clinton and the energetic coalition that supported Sanders’ candidacy.
“Some are new to politics completely. They’re children of the Great Recession and they are living in their parents’ basement. They feel they got their education, and the jobs that are available to them are not at all what they envisioned for themselves, and they don’t see much of a future,” Clinton said at the event.
Trump highlighted the comments in a Saturday speech. “Hillary Clinton thinks Bernie supporters are hopeless and ignorant basement dwellers,” he said. <( this was a link to the Trump website. I looked at it so you don’t have to give them a click to read his disgusting words. I put them at the bottom of this story.)
Let me play truth checker, emphasis on the word some (obvious not all or even the majority)
True “Some are new to politics completely.
Mostly True They’re children of the Great Recession
Partially true and they are living in their parents’ basement.
Partially true They feel they got their education, and the jobs that are available to them are
Partially true not at all what they envisioned for themselves,
Partially true and they don’t see much of a future,
Now, watching MSNBC, the story is being covered with a Clinton spokesperson about to come on to talk about the issue….
This is a hyped up scandal. I wonder if Trump and his minions will be able to make it stick in any significant way. I have been adding to my original “pictoon” about how nothing seems to break the back of the orange beast despite the fact that if anything nearly as horrendous as what’s come out about Trump came out about her it would be wall to wall media coverage for weeks.
Vote Hillary: A thinker not a stinker
++++++
The following is from the Trump website:
**Remarks As Prepared**
…
A new audio tape that has surfaced from another one of Hillary’s high-dollar fundraisers shows her demeaning and mocking Bernie Sanders supporters.
In the tape, Hillary attacks Sanders supporters as “living in their parents’ basements,” and trapped in dead-end careers. She describes many of them as ignorant, that they want the United States to be more like Scandinavia but that “half the people don’t know what that means.”
To sum up, Hillary Clinton thinks Bernie supporters are hopeless and ignorant basement dwellers.
Then, of course, she thinks people who vote for Trump are deplorable and irredeemable.
And let’s not forget, at the recent debate, Hillary Clinton all but said that most of the country is racist, including the men and women of law enforcement.
In short, if you are not a diehard Hillary Clinton supporter from Day One, Hillary Clinton thinks you are a defective human being.
How on earth can Hillary Clinton try to lead this country when she has nothing but contempt for the people who live in this country?
She slanders and attacks anyone who wants to put America First, whether they are Trump Voters or Bernie Voters.
Joel Benenson, a Clinton campaign senior advisor, waiting to be interviewed on MSNBC, while coverage cuts to Trump giving teleprompter remarks to military audience.
“The genius of Donald Trump is to make sure he follows the law ... and politically he has said he is going to change these laws,” Christie said. He added that Trump should only be “taking a bow for the fact that he has said, well before this story came out, that we need to change the tax laws because they are harming the American people every day.”Genius, apparently, was the main adjective that the Trump campaign was using in its talking points to handle the story.
Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani used the same descriptor when talking about the candidate.
“My response is, he’s a genius. ... Absolute genius,” Giuliani said. Huffington Post.
Whether they know it or not, advertisers are fueling a "blood sport" of public shaming both online and off, Monica Lewinsky told a packed crowd at the ad industry's top event. Rather than being put off by her hard-hitting message, though, the Cannes Lions audience on Thursday showed Lewinsky tremendous appreciation, giving her one of the festival's few standing ovations. In a session sponsored by Ogilvy & Mather, Lewinsky asked the world's creative and marketing leaders to help usher in a new era of compassion and empathy. The challenge? Breaking a cycle of invasive, abusive social behavior that may be driven by mean-spirited trolls but is subsidized by the advertisers who buy space in websites and other media that thrive on public embarrassment. from
This is a short think piece…. but consider, Monica Lewinsky is a 43 year old woman now who is an anti-cyber-bullying advocate. She’s mostly avoided the public eye, but she does speaking engagements about cyber-bullying, did a TedTalk, gave an interview to The Guardian, and wrote a candid and powerful Vanity Fair article.
Her interview with Time was the cover story, in the Mar. 15 1999 issue. Tt was the first interview she gave:
TIME: Are you going the celebrity route: Monica Inc.?
Lewinsky: No. I think that if I can use my name to do something that would help people and make a contribution, I’d love to work with kids. I love kids. I have more fun with kids sometimes than I do with adults. I’m only human. There are some things that I’m going to do because it’s fun. And people can criticize me. They criticize me anyway…I don’t consider [myself] a celebrity, because I think that the root of the word is celebrated: someone society should celebrate, and while I haven’t given autographs, people have asked, which is so bizarre to me. I don’t feel that I should be honored for what I’m known for. You need a Time subscription to read it here.
The irony was that everyone in the divorce action was represented by skillful criminal attorneys, and the one chosen by Donald had substantial mob clienteles, including Marla’s lawyer, Jerry Shargel, who was one of John Gotti’s attorneys ... It was a measure of the mud war both parties expected, and predictably, waged. From HuffPo article left
Trump, is a thrice married man who cheated on his wife:
In the summer of 1990, at the height of his bitter divorce from his first wife, Donald Trump was carrying on a very public extramarital affair with a former beauty queen, Marla Maples.
As part of the couple’s divorce proceedings, Ivana Trump’s lawyers asked him under oath about his dealings with other women and whether he had been faithful to his wife.
Instead of answering, Donald Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. Over the course of five depositions that summer, he was asked approximately 100 questions related to marital infidelity. He pleaded the Fifth on 97 of them. www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Now he plans to attack Hillary for being an enabler and allegedly insulting Monica in private: emphasis added
The cameras have returned because of the headlines: a conservative Web site has gone poking around the University of Arkansas archive of one of Hillary Clinton’s closest friends and admirers, Diane Blair, and has unearthed a cache of memos from the 1990s. In some of them, Blair, who died in 2000, quotes the former First Lady about her husband’s relationship with me. Though Hillary, according to Blair’s notes, claimed to find her husband’s “lapse” inexcusable, she praised him for trying to “manage someone who was clearly a ‘narcissistic loony toon.’ ”
My first thought, as I was getting up to speed: If that’s the worst thing she said, I should be so lucky. Mrs. Clinton, I read, had supposedly confided to Blair that, in part, she blamed herself for her husband’s affair (by being emotionally neglectful) and seemed to forgive him. Although she regarded Bill as having engaged in “gross inappropriate behavior,” the affair was, nonetheless, “consensual (was not a power relationship).”www.vanityfair.com/...
I can certainly see why Monica would want to stay on the sidelines this political season. But consider that no matter how she feels about Hillary now, and no matter how she feels about Bill, she still is being dragged into the campaign by a notorious misogynist bully (cyber and in every other way) and having Trump as he defender may disgust her enough to speak out.
Few Republicans were keen on discussing Trump’s debate performance or defending the personal dramas he has reignited. McConnell bluntly swept aside questions about Trump.
“This is not something that I am going to discuss today,” the Senate leader told one reporter who asked about Trump’s impact on Senate races.
Pressed by another reporter about why he would not speak about Trump, McConnell replied, “Because I choose not to.”
When Ryan was asked to comment on Trump’s attacks Tuesday on Machado, the Wisconsin Republican demurred: “I was working out and working this morning. I didn’t watch.”
Embattled GOP senators found various ways to avoid evaluating Trump’s debate turn.
“I didn’t see it, guys. I was on an airplane,” Florida’s Marco Rubio told reporters.
“I have no idea. I’m not a pundit,” Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson said.
No comments:
Post a Comment