Posted on 08/25/2015 11:41:48 AM PDT by EveningStar
... Watching Donald Trump bluster and bluff his way through a presidential campaign, I wonder if we underestimate the ways in which Internet vitriol has broadened the parameters of political debate. We are "shocked, shocked" by Trump's language, but all of it is exactly the sort of thing anyone can encounter in the normal course of reading about politics online. John McCain isn't a war hero? I'll bet he finds worse insults than that on his Facebook page, and so does everybody who writes about him. All Mexicans are rapists? I open my Twitter account every morning to find similar and worse (my personal favorite, translated from Polish: "Reading what that @anneapplebaum writes I understand anti-semitism. Jews have an incredible gift for pissing you off"). The language of online political discourse is now so extreme, and often so far divorced from reality, that Trump's words fit right in, especially when they make no sense.
Trump's defenders -- and I know because they tell me so online -- say they admire him because he is allegedly "anti-establishment." They are wrong: He isn't anti-establishment at all. As a vastly wealthy man -- one who can invite an ex-secretary of state to his wedding and expect her to come -- he lives at the very heart of a certain slice of the establishment. But of course he is different from other politicians in another sense: He is the only presidential candidate who uses, on television, the kind of language normally found in the comment section of a celebrity Web site or the more aggressive Reddit forums. Vulgar insults, racist slurs, manufactured "anger" and invented "facts" are all a normal part of debate in those kinds of public spaces. Thanks to Trump, they have now migrated to presidential politics, too ...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Anne Elizabeth Applebaum (born July 25, 1964) is an American and Polish journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author who has written extensively about communism and the development of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe. She has been an editor at The Economist, and a member of the editorial board of The Washington Post (2002–2006). She is married to Poland's former Minister of Foreign Affairs Radosław Sikorski.
This person is into PC mind control that the left loves.
Projection. I see it a lot in liberals. E.g. they vote for Obama because he’s black, therefore you voted against him because he’s black. Etc.
Well, at least she’s not elite.
Another wacko posing as a writer.
Dear Anne, The Beaner Express is overloaded and headed North. How many can we drop off at your Residence?
The TDS FReaks will be along soon enough to worship their new hero Anne Elizabeth Applebaum.
(I’m enjoying using their buzzwords!)
AND I’M DAMN PROUD TO HAVE HIM AS MY CANDIDATE TOO, SO THERE.
Cenk agrees:
Donald Trump Breaks Lindsey Graham Like a Boy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3PQOP6eax8
Trump is not my guy (yet) but the MSM’s viral affliction with TDS is bringing such joy with every added outburst. It’s becoming nearly a parody of itself and they just can’t see it.
Drinking buddy of Megyn Kelly?
She is just another lying Communist who hates America and has the full endorsement of the Lefty rag WaPo.
All Mexicans are rapists?
AMERICANS ????
She should return to Poland and work on giving it back to Soviet Union. At least the Poles wouldn’t cheer her on.
Fight on, WaPo!! We the People will be heard.
Exactly.
These east/west coast elitists only see ‘internet vitriol’ pointing one way. And they themselves the epitome of rational and unbiased thinking.
Let them pal around in their own echo chamber to oblivion.
Woo hoo! I’m in the popular crowd! Annie’s just sore because she isn’t.
I am surprised she did not use “racist”, “homophobes”, “Conspiracy Theorist” and “Nazis”.
Wow the Establishment is freaking out and sooooo desperate!
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