A friend tipped me to this video. It’s no secret. Hundreds of thousands of viewers have seen it, but I hadn’t.
My friend also sent along his comment:
How could the man in this video be a presidential candidate? Our media has debased people with trash for half a century and has shaped what we have become as a nation. Trump’s fear-mongering is a natural result of our political system and culture. When the hyped-up Cold War ended, we moved on to the hyped-up War On Terror. Uniting people through fear and bigotry has been a central part of US politics for at least a century. Trump is not an anomaly, he’s just showing us a central part of America’s personality. Someone should make a video of government officials talking about smoking gun mushroom clouds and WMDs in Iraq, and end with pictures of Abu Ghraib, Iraq’s massively bombed infrastructure, and the now one million or so dead in the country. When it comes to fear mongering, Trump is a dilettante. He should leave that sort of thing to the US government as aided by the Washington Post and The New York Times …
Somebody somewhere must have made that video. In an earlier era it was called the
Five O’Clock Follies.
Arts Journal is one place I go to get relief from politics and wall-to-wall doom & gloom news. And now I see it here as well. Did it ever occur to you that many people, I would venture to say the majority of people who support the classical arts are moderate to conservative? I have a friend and great musician dying from lung cancer because he breathed in ash from the Twin Towers when they fell. Europe is a killing field and 100 members of the LGBT Community were shot, half of them are dead, in Orlando. All under liberal administrations. I am finished with Arts Journal and it is because of articles like this one.
“All under liberal administrations?” You think that’s what did it? You can’t be serious. And if you are, good riddance.
Jan, surely this video is a spoof with someone impersonating The Donald. It’s not for real. It’s a joke. Also the first comment, from your friend who sent the video, is disturbing ,,, I’m surprised you’d post his comment; this isn’t the Jan that I know. Your faithful fan, Gail
Dear Gail — Surely it’s a spoof? No, that really is Donald Trump in the video. Definitively NOT an impersonator. The video is real, too — as real as all WWE productions were when it was made. Your disbelief is a measure of how utterly ridiculous a creature Trump is. To have thought that the creature in the video MUST be an impersonator shows that you’re giving Trump more slack than he deserves.
As to posting my friend’s comment with the video, what is the objection? That the home of the free and the land of the brave hasn’t lived up to its billing? Or that the media we’ve come to trust hasn’t? Or both? The fact that millions of Republican primary voters adore Trump indicates that he is less of an anomaly than you seem to grant — and it appears that they adore him precisely because he is so ridiculous and, let’s not forget, so dangerous.
(Here’s a further explanation of the reality of that video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkghtyxZ6rc )