I was wrong about Donald Trump: Camille Paglia [snip]

[ ... Trump with his pragmatic real-life record is a far more palatable national figure than Ted Cruz, whose unctuous, vainglorious professions of Christian piety don’t pass the smell test. Trump is a blunt, no-crap mensch, while Cruz is a ham actor, doling out fake compassion like chopped liver. Cruz’s lugubrious, weirdly womanish face, with its prim, tight smile and mawkishly appealing puppy-dog eyebrows, is like a waxen mask, always on the verge of melting. This guy doesn’t know who the hell he is—and the White House is no place for him and us to find out. ...]

...Trump with his pragmatic real-life record is a far more palatable national figure than Ted Cruz, whose unctuous, vainglorious professions of Christian piety don’t pass the smell test. Trump is a blunt, no-crap mensch, while Cruz is a ham actor, doling out fake compassion like chopped liver. Cruz’s lugubrious, weirdly womanish face, with its prim, tight smile and mawkishly appealing puppy-dog eyebrows, is like a waxen mask, always on the verge of melting. This guy doesn’t know who the hell he is—and the White House is no place for him and us to find out.

LOL!!! Camille Paglia is an extraordinarily discerning person, whom I've admired for many, many years. She has the most finely calibrated B.S. Detector of any cultural commentator I know of, and she spares no one, Left or Right, if she sees shenanigans -- not even a "cultural icon" like professional feminist agitator Gloria Steinem. I think she gets Ted Cruz "to a Tee" here. Brava, Camille!

Just had a thought pop into my little head, just five minutes ago, right out of the blue. (I do get thoughts every now and then.) It is this: The people who loathe and disparage Donald Trump aren't so much loathing and disparaging HIM as they are loathing and disparaging the Trump VOTER.

And who is the Trump voter? Largely working class folks, folks in the trades, middle-class people. Those of us smug about our fine college educations often think such people are hapless, stupid, clueless about how to manage their lives without expert help. Certainly they can't be trusted to run our government.

And then there are the hardcore elitist types, like Tim Cook of Apple, and other captains of industry not to mention banking, that have become "patrons" and funders of the corrupt state in exchange for government protection of their interests at taxpayer expense, who get a rash just thinking about what the world would look like, if such folks were in charge. Not to mention how their privileges might be denied to them, if the government were run by "the common people," the "great unwashed."

Trump has genuine empathy for such people. He knows they are the ones that are being shorn like sheep to maintain the corrupt status quo, notwithstanding all those pious tsk-tsk-tsks about "the evil one-percenters." That's just so much camouflage, designed to conceal actual reality from view while the predators continue to depredate without constraint.

It has been my experience that great wisdom lies in the people at large; and some of the wisest people I know have been people in the trades.

FWIW

p.s.: Just in case the link doesn't work for you, the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language defines "depredate" as:

Steal from, typically using force; plunder:
Examples:
"many types of predators depredate bird nests"
"wandering flocks of pigeons depredating barley crops"

Who are you, betty? You are not the woman whose words I read with regularity for so many years here on FR, because you were so unfailingly intelligent, eloquent and fair. Reading some of your posts of late, when those posts concern Donald Trump and his political opposition, I have scratched my head in disbelief, wondering where the fairness went.

I am a vehement opponent of Donald Trump, and have written much regarding how I came to join that particular camp. And my writing has included much negativity regarding the man and what I believe he represents. At the same time, I have never personally disparaged any Trump supporter. Not his allegiances. Not his perspective. Especially not his personal motives for his political viewpoint. Not one of the above.

You suggest that those of us who oppose Donald Trump (people who are often 'smug about their college educations') do not actually dislike Trump himself but, instead, actually dislike 'working class folks, folks in the trades, middle-class people'.

That you, never having personally met me or others who will not support Donald Trump and are very vocal about our dislike of him, would attribute to us a personal distain for that segment of America that was (and still is) most responsible for America's rise in becoming the most moral and prosperous civilization in the history of mankind, is beyond inconceivable to me.

My Dad, the most incredible human being I have ever known, was a blue-collar worker for fifty years, often working 10-12 hours a day to put food on the table for his family during the 50s and 60s, and whose intelligence, sense of duty, industry, honesty, and love of country were second to none. He instilled in me, and virtually everyone he knew well, a deep and abiding reverence for 'working class America', and I have lived my life sharing that message.

I am a part of a group here in our township that is working on a program that we hope will allow us to speak at schools in our area of the state, presenting a program called 'The Case for Working With Your Hands' (based loosely on This article by Matthew Crawford).

And I am by no means alone. I would estimate that close to half of my (and my husband's) friends are college-educated 'professionals' and well over half are blue-collar workers, tradespeople, stay-at-home mothers, and the like. And I know, for a fact, that not a one of those friends has a negative opinion of the kind of people you theorize that we 'loathe and disparage', for any reason, and certainly not by virtue of the fact that we are not supporters of Donald Trump. To even intimate so is a stereotyping that is beyond unjust, and it hits me, personally, at the core of who I am, as well as reflecting poorly on many of my friends and family, who most certainly do not deserve to be the recipients of such unfair negative stereotyping, simply by virtue of whom they are supporting/not supporting in this election cycle.

You will note that, in this response, I have not once attributed personal motives/perspectives to your assertion, even when that assertion painted, with a broad, black brush, both me and many of the people I love/loved and whose opinions I cherish. Such broad, negative generalizations have no place in civil debate.

Dearest sister Joanie, I really think you should stop taking things so personally.

Nothing I said in the post you cited was directed at YOU. Or Jeff. I was thinking of the GOP establishment types, and their supporters in the private sector, MSM, and academe. I have very little doubt that they loathe and disparage the Great American Unwashed. They are a bunch of ideological snobs and control freaks. 'Nuff said.

I AM NOT DISPARAGING YOU.

We disagree in our assessments of the characters of Ted Cruz and Donald Trump respectively. I strongly suspect Cruz is a man of unsteady character and little wisdom, but with great personal ambition -- towards what end is completely unclear to me. I used to love the guy, until I noticed the dirty tricks, and started analyzing his manner of speech.

As to the latter, I note the difference between persuasion, which is entirely legitimate; and manipulation, which is not. I see a good deal of the latter in Cruz's manner of speaking.

But I recognize that you are entirely free and warranted to disagree with my assessment; and that does not make you any less in my eyes. We go back a long ways, and almost always agree in our assessments of matters that come to the attention of the forum.

I have long regarded you as a person of fine character and excellent understanding and intelligence. Nothing has changed for me in that regard. We just happen to disagree this time, maybe for the first time.

Our disagreement is based on what we know, on what we have seen; on evidence, logic and experience. We are looking at the same things; but our takeaways are different.

But the state of our knowledge is different, probably because our education, training and experience are different. For one thing, I am a keen analyst of language and the usages to which it can be put, which run the gamut from the accurate description of reality to the transformation of reality into shapes more pleasing to our subjective desires. I'll just leave it at that for now. (I could write a lengthy paper on the systematic abuse of language that has become rife in American culture in recent times. Maybe I will actually do that some time, if only for my own self-amusement.)

In closing, I still love you dearly. And may the best man win.

No matter what, come hell or high-water, I'll be voting for the Republican presidential nominee (even if I have to hold my nose) in November.

May God ever bless you, Joanie.

Hi, Sisters Betty and Joanie. I have watched your debate, and I don’t think either of you are attacking the other. When our candidate is downplayed, it only feels like we are the ones being targeted. My wife, an upper level math teacher, often says that she teaches an intimidating subject. The students will sometimes transfer that to her and say she is an intimidating person. The truth is that she’s a real softie who cries at birthdays and weddings.

But, it’s the subject that’s intimidating, and she’s very good at it, and she refuses to play games with grades. She wants the students to learn it, because in math you will see it again. It builds.

On to Cruz and Trump. Let’s insert some reality into this. We’re not hearing it in the media but it is simple fact. Here is reality: Kasich and Rubio are out of it. They have no mathematical pathway to victory

Check the numbers. There are about 1400 delegates left. If Cruz loss oh and fl, there are 1240. Cruz needs about 900 of those. He’s already behind in Illinois and n. Carolina and missouri, so that means 900 out of 1100.

He might get that if trump dies or he finds Harry potter’s magic wand, but that’s his only hope.

Cruz is not anywhere near the lead in either Ohio or Florida. That means this is over for Cruz MATHEMATICALLY.

So, we need to unite behind Trump and push him over the top so the establishment is fired.

Betty, you cannot make blanket statements such as this:

The people who loathe and disparage Donald Trump aren't so much loathing and disparaging HIM as they are loathing and disparaging the Trump VOTER. And who is the Trump voter? Largely working class folks, folks in the trades, middle-class people. Those of us smug about our fine college educations often think such people are hapless, stupid, clueless about how to manage their lives without expert help. Certainly they can't be trusted to run our government.

... and then, when a person who fits into the category you are describing as 'loathing and disparaging the Trump voter' takes offense at that characterization, you suggest that that person is too thin-skinned and shouldn't be taking your comments 'personally'.

Your description of those who do not support Trump was wide-ranging and unfair, and I, and almost all of my close family and friends, happen to fall, unfairly, into your stereotypical group. Rather than adjusting your description so as to possibly include a much smaller subset of Trump non-supporters, you choose instead to suggest that I must have a tendency to 'take things too personally'. That is not the case at all, and I believe that it is you who might want to consider reining in your blanket criticisms, and your apparent penchant to lump together all of those citizens who choose not to support Donald Trump by describing them as somehow intolerant of working-class Americans. That is a deeply offensive blanket characterization, and one's skin would have to be armor-thick in order to not be personally offended by it.

I'll not pursue this anymore, and I suspect that you also would prefer to end this discussion.

I, too, wish you well, and I, too, will vote for whomever the republican nominee is, no matter how distasteful to me his candidacy might be.

It’s funny ‘cause FR used to be SOOOO in love with Ted Cruz at one time. I never paid much attention to him...I just assumed that he was pretty darned conservative considering his enemies. I started to pay a tiny bit more attention to him once he started running.

Listening to him speak. He has always struck me as a typical, greasy car-salesman type politician. He may in fact be a very good man in real life. I’m sure he’s smart. But if he is striking me that way, a conservative female that tries to look somewhat beyond the superficial, then how is he coming/going to come across to the masses that only think about what is shoveled into their mouths by the MSM? Whether we like it or not, looks and persona do matter. Gut feelings matter.

I’m not a fan of Trump, even though I got excited last summer when he was talking about things that the others were not. I don’t trust him much. But I think the writing is on the wall. There seems to be no stopping him. He will be the Republican nominee. We better wrap our brains around that fact. I sure as heck am not going to sit out an election. And I would rather be roasted on a spit than vote for Hillary. She’s right next to Obama when it comes to evil. They are different personalities in evil. They have different purposes. But they are still very much both that.

Just my two cents. Now I’ll go back to surfing cat and dog pictures.

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