FEAR & LOATHING in OHIO

Donald Trump’s Fascist Bacchanal

True-believers: Death to Hillary Clinton

FEAR AND LOATHING PHOTO

HEIL TRUMP! Old-time Dixie bigots and American neo-nazis salute their hero in the lead-up to a Cleveland jamboree of xenophobia, white racism, and hush-hush porn. Polite media called the Republican Party gathering a convention. Others called it a Klanvention.

by Thomas Adcock

Copyright © 2016 – Thomas Adcock

NEW YORK CITY, near America

Like flies buzzing over hot dung, admirers of the execrable Donald J. Trump flocked to mid-July’s Republican Party convention in Cleveland—as both duly-elected delegates and a sidewalk rabble of heavily-armed nazis, white nationalists waving Confederate flags and semiautomatic assault rifles, spittle-spewing Jesus jumpers howling about abortion and black helicopters coming to get them, and pistol-packing motorcycle louts with muscled arms inked in swastikas. Consistent with Ohio state law, the rabble goose-stepped outside the Quicken Loans Arena with loaded weaponry on full display.

Inside, the scene was no less exotic. Credentialed delegates—some two thousand of America’s suburban and small-town bourgeoisie, many with concealed revolvers—broke into frequent chants of “USA!…USA!…USA!” Alternate bellowing referenced Republican nominee Donald J. Trump (“SAY HIS NAME!”…”BUILD THAT WALL!”) and his Democratic Party opponent, Hillary Clinton (“LOCK HER UP!“). They wore funny hats and an array of lapel pins indicating their witty distaste for Mrs. Clinton, the most ubiquitous of which read “LIFE’S A BITCH, DON’T ELECT ONE.”

Enjoying himself in the élite seats as Mr. Trump mounted the convention podium in a Las Vegas-style cloud of theatrical fog—was Geert Wilders of the Netherlands, a bright star in the galaxy of European proto-fascism. As parliamentary leader of the far-right Dutch Party for Freedom, Mr. Wilders’ Islamophobic and anti-immigrant bona fides are as impressive as those of his American idol, who pledges to deport some eleven million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. for generations, and ban Muslims from entering the country until “we find out what the hell’s going on.”

Enjoying himself as he watched the televised proceedings at his home near New Orleans was David Duke, America’s best-known racist, anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist, and Holocaust denier. A former member of the Louisiana state legislature and one-time grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, Mr. Duke now seeks election to the U.S. Senate as a Republican. He said of Mr. Trump’s bizarre speech upon accepting the party’s presidential nomination, “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

In that dark and dystopian acceptance address, Mr. Trump vowed, “I alone” will solve the nation’s problems and needs. Among the needs, as he reckons them, Mr. Trump again pledged to build a continent-wide wall along the southern border to prevent the entry of “murderers” and “rapists,” as he calls dirt poor Mexicans desperate to improve their lives in El Norte. The speech scared the bejeezus out of those who hold faith in an America of democracy and mercy. With reference to ultra-right programming at Fox Television network, David Remnick of The New Yorker magazine wrote that the entire Republican convention was “like a four-day-long Fox-fest, full of fear-mongering, demagoguery, xenophobia, third-rate show biz, pandering, and raw anger.”

Surprisingly, no one was killed inside or outside the convention arena, though not for a lack of promoting death and bloodshed.

TO CONTINUE…

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TrumpNBC

Why is This Man Laughing?

‘Are Americans, Like, Stupid?’   

“The genius & menace of ‘Glorious Leader’

By Thomas Adcock    

Copyright © 2016 – Thomas Adcock

NEW YORK, near America

“Tommy, would you like to know how come I’m so goddamn rich?” asked the boss. Said I, of course, “Yes, Jack—“

Smack in the middle of nerve-jangling days at his bustling Madison Avenue agency, the late great John G. “Jack” Avrett would call me into his baronial sanctum sanctorum: a mahogany-paneled corner office with full bar, maroon leather club chairs, protective humidors for his Cuban stash, an impressive view of midtown Manhattan. Wunderkind of the New York advertising dodge from the 1950s until his death in 1997, Jack enjoyed creating interludes of philosophic calm while those beyond his closed door—save for lucky me, an apprentice of sorts—scurried about under neurotic convictions that whizbang products invented to combat bodily imperfections were as vital to humanity as polio vaccine and therefore worthy of expensive hullabaloo.

One day, Jack fired up the VCR (how I date myself) to run his favorite clip from “The Hucksters,” a 1947 motion picture spoof of the ad biz. The scene: Whippersnapper ad-man (Clark Gable) meets blustery Tycoon (Sydney Greenstreet), the owner of client firm Beautee Soap Company. At the head of a long table full of corporate sycophants, Tycoon pounds hammy fists and bellows, “Soap is just soap!” SidneyTycoon then demands something fresh, grabby, and searingly memorable from his ad-man: a hard-sell campaign to hammer into consumers’ tiny heads the indelible notion of Beautee Soap as greater than anything God ever created in the cause of clean living. Tycoon proceeds to demonstrate what he means by memorable: he first upends a pitcher of ice water, sending the contents dribbling down the length of the table; next, he removes a set upper and lower dentures and slides them clear through the river he’s made; finally, he educates Whippersnapper with, “You have just seen me do a disgusting thing. You will never forget it.”Clark

“—There are two kinds of people in the world,” Jack explained. “Smart people who know what smart people want, and geniuses who know what stupid people want.”

He added, “Tommy boy, do you have any idea how easy it is to sell Americans anything?”

Indeed, as the iconoclastic newspaperman and social critic H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) told us, “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. No one has ever lost public office thereby.”

In this rambustious campaign season, I cannot help being reminded of the sensibilities of my old boss and friend Jack Avrett.

He would be horrified to see Donald J. Trump on the November ballot as the presidential nominee of his old-school Republican Party. Nevertheless, Jack would marvel at the salesmanship of a vacuous vulgarian—a faux billionaire, huckster of cheesy TV merchandise and snake-oil elixirs, and chancellor of a sham “university” currently defending itself in state and federal courts against charges of fraud. And: a man with absurd yellow hair enhanced with gold-leaf spray and micro-cylinder extensions who commandeered a once respectable political institution of mainstream conservatism—a man who would, at best, transform multicultural American democracy into a herrenvolk social order.

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ADDITIONAL PHOTO CREDITS

Clark Gable and Sydney Greenstreet – MGM Pictures

Donald Trump – NBC Television