Posted on 01/20/2016 7:16:26 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Where there are open flames, there will always be curious moths. Tonight, at a little after six o'clock, Sarah Palin will succumb at last to overwhelming temptation and sign up for Donald Trump's ever-glistering light show. And in that remarkable moment, the mask will fall off completely.
If you are surprised by this development, you shouldn't be. Ours is an age in which politics and entertainment are melted together without opposition or disfavor; a silly, self-indulgent, shallow age in which Kanye West thinks he can be the president of the United States and the president of the United States thinks he can be Kanye West. That Palin and Trump are together at last is no accident of ideology or timing; rather, it is the inevitable and rational confluence of two ghastly cults of personality -- a fat-cutting, cash-saving merger that will serve to increase overall market share. Under their own steam, both figures have convinced a significant portion of the American population that their personal advancement is the key to the country's success. Together, just think how great America can be!
Talk to a Palin fan and you will be told in a matter of moments that to oppose her is to oppose "real America." Talk to a Trump fan, and you will be told that to knock him is to knock "We the people" -- of which, it is made abundantly clear, you are no longer a valued part. All told, this symmetry makes sense, for the pair have of late become mirror images. Sarah Palin started in politics and moved seamlessly into television and entrepreneurship; Donald Trump started in business and, after a quick foray onto the small screen, readied himself for the ballot box. Now their most effective cudgels can be wielded as one: You're not so effete that you're against the both of them, are you?
They will pretend otherwise, of course -- and their screaming acolytes will mewl their way into acquiescence -- but, by uniting, the pair has shown the way toward a new sort of conservative establishment. Last year, long before Trump made his ambitions clear, I submitted that if one "wanted to find a figure to which Palin can be reasonably compared . . . it's not Ronald Reagan. . . . It's Donald Trump." And so it has come to pass. Like Palin, Trump has mastered the art of the interminable ramble, the purpose of which is not to convey meaning or to advance a useful argument but to stun the audience into dumb submission. Like Palin, Trump has embraced his ignorance and wielded it as a sign of strength and normality against the ever-protean "elite." And, like Palin, Trump has betrayed his desire to fix the political system not by mastering or replacing it, but by becoming it. This isn't an insurgency, it's a shakedown. And the conmen are moving in packs.
Alas, there is no grand principle on display here. There is nothing but opportunism and ego. For a long time now, Sarah Palin has been apt to say anything and everything to keep the cameras buzzing around her hive. This rotten endorsement completes the decline. What, we might ask, has become of Palin's beloved Tea Party? What, too, of her purported admiration for limited government, and of her ostensible hatred of heretics and fakers? The prospect of a mass movement that was earnestly committed to libertarianism was always a little too good to be true, but even I didn't imagine it ending like this. All that talk of the Constitution and the Declaration; all that energy expended against the cronies and the rent-seekers; all those purifying voter drives -- and for what? So that Sarah Palin could add a few zeroes to her bank balance and Donald Trump could go from the purchaser to the bought? Today was the day that Rick Santelli's famous yelp finally melted into populism and avarice. Today, at about ten minutes past six, P. T. Barnum beat out Hayek for the soul of the insurgent Right. Today, the rebels became the charlatans they had set out to depose. What comes next will be anybody's guess.
-- Charles C. W. Cooke is a staff writer at National Review.
The woman who coined the term Crony Capitalism comes out in support of the man who made Crony Capitalism into an art form.
Man a lot of squealing voices today in the media...
So instead we should vote for Bush or Kaisch?
Whatever else you think about this essay, the following is worth remembering:
“Ours is an age in which politics and entertainment are melted together without opposition or disfavor; a silly, self-indulgent, shallow age in which Kanye West thinks he can be the president of the United States and the president of the United States thinks he can be Kanye West.”
At least she didn’t sell her husband to get a loan from her husbands employer. Talk about cheep. Cruz sold his wife for a million. Hope it was worth it. And he can’t even talk to his mother, father and children. It’s like he is terrified of them. So sad. So glad to rid ourselves of him soon. Max March 1st hopefully......I know it sucks it’s still 6 weeks away until the nightmare is over.
RE: So instead we should vote for Bush or Kaisch?
Does anybody still remember Ted Cruz?
He got a much better interest rate on his loan from Citibank than Goldman Sacks. Ted Cruz is good for the money. He repays his loans. Some people don't. If Ted Cruz wants to borrow $50,000 from me at 3.5% interest, I'll give it to him on a handshake. If Donald Trump wants my money, then he's going to have to pay a very high interest rate, because he is a high risk borrower.
RE: Cruz sold his wife for a million.
Do you think she’s so dumb as allow herself to be sold?
What is this, the Middle East?
As long as he mets the requirements then Kanye is free to run.
If he presents an appeal platform, then he can win.
We elected a man that acted in a movie with a chimp, and he turned out far better than the guys that followed him, that was head of the CIA.
Maybe, despite so many “explanations” that don’t, Gov. Palin knows what she’s doing....
Hyperbole much?
“Crony Capitalism” was coined long ago as a euphemism for Fascism ... Palin just revived it.
All of her reality TV income probably made that unnecessary.
Well Kanye’s Dad was a black panther and he grew up in China so he’d be the perfect narrative as the next Obama.
Probably true. So who is the smart one? Palin of course.
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