We have long been astounded at the reports of cosmic amounts of money raised for political campaigns, most notably regarding the coming November Presidential election. We presume the better part of such financing is consigned to partisan media advertisements.
However, regarding the singular context of the forthcoming November Presidential election, the extent of utility and pragmatic effect of such costly political advertisements may be limited, given MAGA’s devout worship of its perverse pied piper and semi-deity, Donald Trump.
In the context of the traditional American election, the voting public has a choice of two diversely articulated policy platforms. In such competition, the expenditure of adequate capital supporting a candidate and his proposed platform is strategically comprehensible,
By unprecedented contrast, the forthcoming November, Harris-Trump contest presents a sui generis event, unrelated to the customary dynamics of voters’ choice of party platform and anticipated performance. It is uniquely different in that, rather than a contest of diverse voter opinion, evinces a dimension having little to do with political policies, In unusual contrast, it appears to be a historically, determinative test of the determinative strength of an unprecedented, cultish devotion by the considerable populist underbelly of the nation, for a deceitful, but convincing, demagogic snake oil salesman, despite his publically announced intention to be an autocratic dictator.
Our two-party system, before the disastrous ascendency of Donald Trump, from his status as a real estate gonif and host of an inane television game show to MAGA cult leader, had already experienced a growing political and social hostility. In our perception, affiliation with a political group developed into a cogent source of personal identity. Political moderation declined among the general public and its elected legislature and officials. Such democratically harmful phenomenon increased to the extent that divergent political camps were decidedly homogeneous in their principled opposition to the other, As we have observed in earlier writings, groups of like-minded (“group think”) individuals became adherents to ardent political camps in dynamic opposition to analogous groups of divergent opinion. Such polarization metastasized and unfortunately became inconsistent with normal neighborly or fraternal friendship,.
The highly toxic entry of Donald Trump into such a divisive political scene, catalyzed by his tactical cultural success among the Nation’s large horde of grievance-oriented populists, enhanced the existing polarization to unparalleled levels. Empirical truth, morality, and aspirations for personal and social advancement inclusive of the attainment of universal legal equality were, with Trump’s blessing and encouragement, discounted and tactically demeaned. With his demagogic encouragement the pernicious growth of a populist, (MAGA) disrespect for empirical truth, there developed among such Trump acolytes a virtual pandemic of bizarre paranoid ideational conspiracies, such as, the government had secreted tiny investigative computers in Covid vaccines, Isreal shoots rockets from outer space to the Planet, that horse worming salve is the cure for Covid, that 9/11 was a CIA c conspiracy, that homosexuality was being taught in public schools, that Global Warming is a ruse, perpetrated by the coastal elite, and so many others floating freely and unhampered in the exotic and extensive mist of irrational ideation.
Most recently, both Trump and his “weird” candidate for Vice-President may have succeeded in attaining the zenith of political science fiction, inarguably, surpassing their most clinically delusional prior pronouncements, The two, seemingly deranged candidates (see “Two Flew Over The Cuckoo Nest,” blog # M. 133), bizarrely declared that Haitian Immigrants, residing in Springfield, Illinois (Vance’s district) were kidnapping pet cats and dogs and eating them, We will refrain from honoring such insane drivel by the recitation of the ample proof of their falsity.
The salient point is that the Trump conglomeration of worshipful lemmings actually believes such insane ravings, confirmed by Trump and the other mental inmates, running the Republican asylum. It has proven frustrating and pragmatically naive to attempt or encourage the large MAGA horde to see reason, the latter seems, thematically, as not being contemporaneously relevant.
If, as empirically demonstrated, only democratic voters appear to be receptive to persuasive argument and reason. we thematically wonder, as to the wisdom of the expenditure of millions of dollars by the Democratic Party for purportedly, persuasive campaign advertisements,
-p.
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