Wednesday, July 20, 2016

provocateur: a very different worldview

Over on Twitter, James, whom I follow, and who leans way, way harder to the left than I can even imagine, has a very different take on the near future when it comes to Donald Trump's and Hillary Clinton's respective political fortunes. Quite the opposite of some pro-Trump optimists, he sees a world in which Trump is debased and Hillary reigns triumphant. I now reproduce his series of tweets, edited for form:

1) As amazing a clusterfuck as the RNC has been so far, I'm willing to bet the most amazing moment of the Trump campaign comes in October when...

2) down by at least 10 points in national polls, and with the electoral map a solid blue, Trump quits because "I have credible info. Hillary and the CIA..."

3) "are planning to assassinate Melania, Donald Jr., and / or Eric."

4) He will throw the nomination back to the Republican Party, and even desperate power-whores like Cruz and Rubio won't accept that hot potato.

5) So Trump remains on ballot, losing even bigger, but blaming HRC / the national media / non-existent death threats /...

6) ...and the Republican Party (this is critical!) for his loss.

7) The GOP doubles down on crazy, does nothing to reform its structural racism, and, frankly, HRC is a pretty good POTUS who rules for eight years.

8) The GOP probably splits into establishment / Tea Party Cuckoo camps around, oh, let's say late 2017.

9) The End

You might need some context before you react. I don't doubt that James, good lefty that he is, sincerely wants to see Trump crushed, or that he views the GOP as racist and a "clusterfuck," but you need to realize, too, that James is often funny as hell, and he's not seriously proposing the above scenario as if it were an actual prediction, so please don't confuse him with an earnest election-year prognosticator. That said, he's putting forth a worldview that's very different from the "Trump in a landslide" faction's. I'd almost say this is worthy of further discussion, but the above isn't an argument so much as it's merely a scenario. Twitter isn't the place for arguments: there's no room to marshal evidence and have substantive exchanges. That's what blogs, and their comment threads, are for.



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