Celebrity politicians and the ruin they've wrought

Trump is only the latest

Those of us who have been on this insane ride of American politics for any amount of time are used to the game, by now. The days of sane, rational, sober governance haven’t really been fashionable since… well… I’m not sure when. If I had to venture a guess, at least in my lifetime, I’d say the 1988 election of Reagan’s VP, George H.W. Bush.

I’m sure there are many who will writhe and spit, just at the mention of his name, but it is what it is. The first Bush presidency wasn’t marked by charisma, mass media sloganeering, or anything other than boring, run-of-the-mill, politics as usual. Love him or hate him, in that day, looking back now, there’s got to be a bittersweet sting of nostalgia for the mundane.

Following the first Bush presidency, we got two terms of Bill Clinton, who came on the scene as a would-be reincarnation of John F. Kennedy. He was hip and slick. He appeared on the Arsenio Hall show and played his saxophone. He appeared on an MTV broadcast and talked about his underwear preference, much to the delight of the commoners.

Look! He’s just like us! He wears tighty-whities, instead of magical politician underwear!

Then, of course, there were the scandals that sparked a lifetime of late-night jokes and social media memes that will live on forever.

I remember the impeachment trial of President Clinton. I, like most Republicans of the day, was disgusted and outraged by these allegations. I was even more disgusted by how quickly the narrative turned from the actual charges to focus on his affair with a young intern, Monica Lewinsky.

To this day, there are willful idiots who think he was impeached for receiving oral sex in the Oval Office!

All of that aside, it was rather heartwarming to see the post-presidency relationship built between Clinton, and his predecessor, George H.W. Bush. Once political rivals, they put politics aside to form an alliance and work towards funding for disaster relief, giving aid to areas hit by tsunamis and hurricanes.

At the time, the elder Bush became a father figure to Clinton, who had grown up without the benefit of a strong male role model. President Bush’s wife, Barbara, once stated plainly, “I love Bill Clinton.”

Clinton, himself, described his relationship with his former opponent as, “one of the great gifts of my lifetime.”

Even the younger Bush, former President George W. Bush, referred to Clinton as, “my brother from another mother.”

That’s how you do politics; Agree or disagree, keep it civil, and understand you’re all working for the well-being of the same nation.

Getting back to this insanity of celebrity politicians, I would be remiss not to mention Barack Obama – the man, the myth, the nightmarish odyssey that truly showed how unserious our republic has become.

On the one hand, I get the appeal of Obama for the left. For ages they’ve talked a good game about racial equality, but election cycle after election cycle, they’ve failed to really put their money where their mouths were and to back any emerging candidate of color. At least, not for the big prize – the presidency.

Once on the scene, Obama charmed with colloquial flair, late night talk show appearances, and “beer summits.”

I’ve seen everything from Obama church fans to Obama perfume.

There were school children being led in Obama anthems. Others were doing specialized marches and displays, all to give glory to Obama for opening doors for children of color.

Want to talk about cultish indoctrination? Start there.

Of course, all of this is hogwash. The opportunity was always there. Obama did nothing on his own. It was a cadre of handlers and media-savvy consultants working in the background, with no small amount of help from legal wranglers and muckrakers that pried open the door for him.

And while Republicans ran one of the more qualified and serious candidates in their (or any) stable – John McCain – back in 2008, they knew he was far too serious, and possibly, too bland to capture the imagination of the public. They saddled him with a young, female “rogue” out of Alaska to be his running mate.

Sarah Palin did exactly what it was she was selected to do. She absolutely got people talking. She was sassy, toughened by the Alaskan terrain, a mom, a wife, a mayor, and recently elected governor. It didn’t hurt that she was also quite photogenic. She gave a sense of bravado to the McCain campaign that it otherwise lacked. McCain was not willing to get in the mud, once even publicly correcting an audience member at a town hall, who spoke about fearing what Obama might do. McCain quickly intervened to tell her he worked with Barack Obama, knew him, and knew him to be a good man. They simply disagreed on the issues.

Palin may have been a bit too much, too green, and in retrospect, was so far in over her head, there was no saving that ship, once it began to sink.

OH – but for the lack of more men like John McCain, our nation suffers.

Obama won the media war in 2008, which means he won the presidency. It was the same in 2012. He ran against a principled, decent Republican candidate – Mitt Romney, who refused to play dirty. Their debates were some of the most policy-heavy fare on record, which, by today’s standards, means some of the most sand-dry television imaginable.

When a snitch began to circulate news of Romney’s “binders full of women,” the story was twisted in such a way that the feminazi crowd began their mindless shrieking, not even sure of what they were in outrage over. All they knew: Republican, binders full of women, bad.

The reality was, Romney was determined to give women a bigger role in his possible Cabinet, and the “binders full of women,” were the resumes of qualified women, in consideration for prime positions in our government.

How is that a bad thing for the feminist cause?

It’s not. It wasn’t, but as always, identity politics are stupid, backed by stupid people, and too often, they end up shooting themselves in the foot.

After two Obama terms, with far too many incidents of arrogance to ignore, a backlash was coming.

C’mon… Did you really think a president telling one half of the nation to “Sit down, shut up, we won” wouldn’t come back to haunt us all?

I’ll admit I have a lot more respect for Obama now that he’s out of office than I did while he was in. Also, while there were so many stories about how absolutely abrasive Michelle Obama was, to the point that it was rumored she had to be kept out of the spotlight for a bit, while her image went through some “tweaking,” I find myself once again, warmed and encouraged by the absolutely adorable friendship that has developed between she and former President George W. Bush.

But, again, the backlash was coming, and when it hit, it was enough to ruin us all.

Refer to my previous comment about the stupidity of identity politics.

In 2016, Democrats chose to run Hillary Clinton, the worst candidate to ever run for any office. How bad was she? She was so bad she lost to Donald Trump!

The horror of the hacked DNC emails from that election cycle showed that candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders was being purposely thwarted, in order to give the candidacy to Hillary Clinton. It was “her turn.” The DNC had successfully ran and elected their first president of color, so now it was time for a woman. It didn’t matter what the people wanted. The Hillary candidacy, as the hacked emails and phone conversations, released by Wikileaks shortly before the election proved, was all manufactured. A handful of power players within the party were crafting the outcome. The people had little to no say in it.

This revelation outraged the Democrat voters and spelled the beginning of the end. In retaliation, they either sat out the election, or threw their crucial votes to third party candidates. Russian pinup girl, Jill Stein, and her Green Party took a large share of votes that would have been helpful in pushing back against what was to come.

Before the usual suspects dumbly accuse me of supporting Hillary Clinton, nothing could be further from the truth.

I was a hardcore Rick Perry supporter in 2016. I didn’t care about his past “OOPS” moment, which likely cost him the candidacy in 2012. I cared about results. I cared that he’d successfully governed what was the 12^th largest economy in the world, knew about our border, and was well qualified to begin leading on Day 1.

Yeah. We blew that one.

Once he was out, I begrudgingly supported Marco Rubio, but my main focus was on keeping my state of North Carolina’s gubernatorial office in the hands of Governor Pat McCrory, the most successful governor the state has ever had.

Yup. Blew that one, too.

Because of the backroom treachery of the DNC and the Obama backlash, our nation got Donald Trump, and we saw the full weight of years of social engineering and dishonest media reaping the poison fruit that had been planted.

Trump is the result of a perfect storm of complete crap.

- No firm Civics learning in public schools

- Public disdain for basic civility

- Media flash over commonsense substance

- You push us, we push back

With Trump, we have got the worst of the worst. He is every puerile, vain, selfish, ugly human impulse in one lumpy, orange-tinted sack of idiocy. His appeal is that he makes dumb racists feel as if they still have a place in our society. He gives them the green light to wallow openly in their hatefulness and lack of basic human empathy or simple grace.

Meanwhile, the reality is that he’s a wannabe despot, wrapped in garish patriot-face. Without a doubt, he’s the lowest version of who we are as a species.

Even more, he is the spotlight on the American stage, giving the audience of the world a perfect view of just how broken our society has become.

With Donald Trump, we see more than just politician-as-celebrity. This is full-on cultism, even more alarming than the Obama years. At least with Obama, even as his public treated him like some sort of eternal icon, the man at least understood that he was bound by the confines of his office and our Constitution.

Trump, especially in this second term, does not have those guardrails. There’s no Congress willing to flex their authority. The courts have given some pushback, but when he decides to ignore them, where are the repercussions? If all they do is talk about what he can’t do, but fail to enforce it, then it really is just talk, and for a man who has a drooling cult fan base, who care more about his glory than the nation they live in or the Constitution that created it, talk will not move him.

The world has watched in horror – or in the case of our geopolitical foes, many of whom are pulling the strings – in amusement – as a once-great nation falls under the weight of stupid people who view this one intensely flawed man as a god.

The tenets of wretched Trumpism read like scholarly primer for studies in cult behavior:

· Donald Trump is always right, even if all the evidence shows he’s wrong.

· Donald Trump is not bound by our Constitution, even though he took an oath to protect it.

· You are not allowed to question anything Donald Trump says.

· You are not allowed to question anything Donald Trump does.

· If you waver or fail in any way on points 3 and/or 4, you were never a true supporter of Trump and are a liberal, no matter your actual political leanings.

· Homosexuality is absolutely wrong and gross, except for the blatantly homoerotic memes of Donald Trump shirtless, with tanned, rippling muscles, and a smoldering stare (which, by the way, is exactly how he’s built, even if he looks different on TV with his clothes on).

· What benefits Trump and his family, promotes the Trump brand, or enriches Trump personally is the duty of all MAGA to support.

· Kings are bad, except Trump, who should be king for life.

In other words, the MAGA faithful, the cult of Trump, they have no principles and no patriotic foundation to stand on. They are loyal to no nation and no god, except Trump. They fly their American flags but only serve the Trump flag.

As a nation, we stand on the precipice of war, when we’ve never been so ill-prepared. The leader of our terrorism unit is a 22-year-old former grocery store clerk, whose sole qualifications is rabid Trumpism. The leaders of our crucial departments gained their jobs by pushing through a gaggle of other bootlicks and showing themselves to be the least principled, but most willing to gimp for Trump.

I don’t see any of this ending well for us, given our current trajectory. I say all this, however, to get to this: Should the providence of a holy God see fit to deliver us from this horrific morass we’ve created, through inattention, unseriousness, and silly tribalism over true unity, may we never forget that men are not to be idolized, nor do we give room for our worst instincts to fester and boil over.

We are the UNITED States of America. Or we were. We need to get back to that, or we will be no more.