[Billthedrill]

Not just 0bama, not just Democrats. I have seen the likes of this paranoid group terror only once in my memory, and that was when the Reagan campaign began to pick up steam in '80. "Trump cannot EVER be President! He CANNOT!!" Ask the speaker why and you find he or she can't actually articulate why Trump is so fundamentally awful apart from the usual vague accusations of racism (he isn't), sexism, (he isn't), financial skulduggery (from people who have never run a business) and the one I love the most, "he's a bully." From people who voted for 0bama and are about to vote for Hillary. No disconnect there, no feeling for the cognitive dissonance that is fueling the terror.

The range of the victims of this contagion describes a portion of the political landscape that barely recognizes itself. Why, for example, the pearl-clutching shortages of breath among media celebrities? Why the spittle-throwing hostility from entertainment industry celebrities? Why the lofty condescension from the political punditry, also celebrities? Sure, their power is being threatened, but what is really being threatened is their vanity.

I suggest that there is the cause of all this inchoate passion, and so long as most of its victims are unable to recognize that it's vanity that is the source of the disturbance they're experiencing, there is no hope for a cure. Let them suffer, they have it coming.

[DarthVader]

! agree with you on this and remember it well. My first presidential election in 1980.

[marktwain]

“I suggest that there is the cause of all this inchoate passion, and so long as most of its victims are unable to recognize that it’s vanity that is the source of the disturbance they’re experiencing, there is no hope for a cure. Let them suffer, they have it coming.”

I think it is cognitive dissonance. Trump articulates a world view that they completely discount as false. The joke is on them, because they are the ones who hold the false premises about reality.