August 27, 2024

The classic "Fear and" title is "Fear and Loathing," but somehow, in these days of loathing, we've got "Fear and Joy."

I'm so skeptical... as I'm reading "Fear and Joy in Chicago/The excitement that radiated through the Democratic National Convention was the other side of what had until recently been a deep despair" by Fintan O'Toole (NYRB).
[T]he Democrats in Chicago were singing a redemption song. It had three parts: valediction, malediction, and benediction....
Having taken a break to listen to "Redemption Song" (see below), I will concentrate on the malediction:
[B]ad-mouthing Trump at a Democratic convention is not that hard. Yet it too had its complications. Just as the Democrats had to navigate between loving Joe and giving him a jubilant cheerio, they had to figure out how to manage another contradictory feat: cutting Trump down to size while retaining a clear sense of the threat he poses to the very existence of the American republic...

They seemed — to O'Toole — to be trying "to reconfigure Trump as the Wizard of Oz, a little man who has conjured an illusion of MAGA magnitude." 

Even the renegade Republican Adam Kinzinger was entirely on message when he called Trump “a weak man pretending to be strong. He is a small man pretending to be big…. He puts on quite a show, but there is no real strength there.”

I add my favorite blog tag, "big and small." 

Barack Obama characterized Trump as a spoiled child “who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago.” He drew shrieks of delight from the audience when he mentioned Trump’s “weird obsession with crowd sizes,” while holding his hands out to suggest a body part that was visibly small.

For more on that, I recommend "D*ck Jokes at the DNC | Superfly with Dana Carvey and David Spade | Episode 30" (see below).

Back to O'Toole:

Veronica Escobar called Trump “a small man speaking at small venues.” Michelle Obama said that “going small is petty. It’s unhealthy. And quite frankly, it’s unpresidential.” Bill Clinton shrank Trumpism all the way down to the scale of a single, isolated, solipsistic individual: “The next time you hear him, don’t count the lies—count the I’s. He’s like the tenor warming up before the opera: me, me, me, me.”...

Each day featured performances in which a speaker carried onstage an enormously oversize volume containing the Project 2025 text and thumped it down on the lectern to emphasize its massiveness.... This was pure agitprop theater....

He's just a tiny little man... the man who's been scaring the bejeezus out of us for 10 years....

52 comments:

mikee said...

What would the Dems do without Alinsky? Maybe say things that might be true about themselves? Nah, that's so crazy it couldn't ever happen!

ron winkleheimer said...

Weak men don't get up after almost having their head blown off and yell "fight, fight, fight."

ron winkleheimer said...

"American republic..."

I thought we were a democracy?

mindnumbrobot said...

Didn't David Pflouffe say in a recent interview that Trump was barely mentioned at the DNC?

Anyway, the Wizard of Oz was the good guy.

ron winkleheimer said...

"Anyway, the Wizard of Oz was the good guy."

According to him he was a good man, but a poor wizard.

Rob C said...

They have created a rather interesting problem trying to square the circle I guess:

"cutting Trump down to size while retaining a clear sense of the threat he poses to the very existence of the American republic"

So he's small but can still destroy America?

Lloyd W. Robertson said...

I went looking for something funny to respond to "Valediction, Malediction, Benediction." I found a comment I made on this site in November 2017:
Movie "A Christmas to Remember": To borrow from a commenter on YouTube: "Favorite scene: Jason Robards talking about getting Eva Marie Saint drunk and the four stages of drunkenness: jocose, lachrymose, bellicose and comatose. Wonderful movie."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3inykNgeGS8

Althouse link.

narciso said...

thats just blarney it's not even entertaining blarney like robert gleason might write

narciso said...

larry miller had a similar routine,

RideSpaceMountain said...

In the spirit of Hunter S. channeling Dr. Gonzo, "There goes the democratic party...one of satan's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant organization of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too rare to live, and too weird to die.”

hombre said...

It is heartbreaking to realize what a petty people we have apparently become. In the case of Democrats it is also as someone said here, "They have the intellectual depth of a puddle." They are not grownups.

ron winkleheimer said...

However, he did send Dorothy on a suicide mission in order to get rid of her. And don't even get me talking about Glenda.

narciso said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJdzoY-Wsc8

Mattman26 said...

Uh oh, there's a Glenda problem?

RideSpaceMountain said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Mattman26 said...

The tension between "he's the biggest threat our republic has ever seen" and "he's nothing, brush him off like a piece of dandruff" is a problem very much of their own making. Let them enjoy it. Both propositions can be seen as false with the slightest effort.

Aggie said...

"Fear and Joy in Chicago/The excitement that radiated through the Democratic National Convention was the other side of what had until recently been a deep despair" .

Yeah..... No. That 5-day Democrat Infomercial was pretty much still 'Fear and Loathing' for anybody approaching Normal. Hunter Thompson would have been absolutely disgusted at the state of play of so-called 'Liberal politics' these days. My guess is, he would have correctly perceived the absolute craven greed that has become ubiquitous with these power-crazy sellouts.

ron winkleheimer said...

She sent Dorothy on a dangerous, unneeded journey. Nobody knows why.

narciso said...

Hunter would shoot himself again, the eldritch stench of the place, well would summon the Old Ones, nice to know Molotov monthly hasn't lost its touch,

narciso said...

Hunter loathed Nixon but had a strange respect for Pat Buchanan, who turned out to be prophetic in many ways,

ron winkleheimer said...

Though some suspect this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=munbt8qpCiQ

Iman said...

Adam Kinzinger: Tears, Tears and More Tears.

FullMoon said...

Every one of those speakers, and frankly, any other politician would have taken plea deals and retired if faced with the outrageous lawfare Trump has been fighting. And, of course, any of the speakers would either go into hiding or spend months recovering from being 1/4 inch from a bullet in the brain.

Remember Biden's inauguration? Barbed wire fences and National guard troops. Typical democrat Profile in courage.

Incidentally, that vid of Obama salivating over imagining holding Trumps substantial manhood was not exactly presidential. Def would never see a Republican be so obviously aroused

narciso said...

Tucker always had the most maudlin take on Kinzinger, whose favorite pic was when he was standing with the head of the Storm Battalion, and Egg McMuffin, I mean McMullin,

narciso said...

didnt he need ivf as well, Obama was a very crass and not particular smart Soros sorcerer's apprentice,

Butkus51 said...

Joe was fiery

same people

narciso said...

that misspelled gassy and dyspeptic,

Rick67 said...

"They had to figure out how to manage another contradictory feat: cutting Trump down to size while retaining a clear sense of the threat he poses to the very existence of the American republic"

One among the dozens of contradictions in the Harris-Walz campaign. Perhaps the biggest is "if elected I will fix these problems" said the person who has been Vice-President for nearly four years.

JIM said...

"I'm just here for the hope". BTW hope is a terrible plan. But apparently it's all Democrats need to hear. Even without the change factor.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

Meh! Kissinger was just projecting.

Lazarus said...

Democrats and the media are joyful because the party has a chance to win again, but have they given anyone else reasons to be joyful? It doesn't look like it.

Fear of Trump has been around for a long time and may be getting stale, but will alternating fear and ridicule really work for Democrats? It may be too complicated and inconsistent to work. The perceived key to victory may be so needling Donald Trump that he loses his cool and lashes out unpredictably, but it would be very embarrassing for Harris -- and for the country -- if she manages to win because of a campaign based on penis size.

PM said...

The Dems use 'existential threat' the way Belushi used 'here comes Skylab'.

MadTownGuy said...

Italics off?

mikee said...

Althouse, please do "Fear of..." next. Erica Jong fans would love the comments!

robother said...

Dick jokes and "weird." The Democrat Party is betting that the American Presidency can be decided the same way Homecoming Queen is elected. At some point, though, I think the American people deserve to know, if Kamala were a tree, what kind of tree would she be. I remain confident that the Mainstream Media will not rest until ascertaining that.

RCOCEAN II said...

Adam KIngzinger - like Mitt Romney - is a coward. Both were simpering and quaking with fear on J6, afraid some protester might say "boo" to them. Both are liars, who pretended to be "serverley conservative" to get nominated and elected, then dropped the mask and showed themselves to liberal globalists.

Trump, whatever flaws in may have, is one of the most courageous politicians in my lifetime. People always seem to forget that Trump didn't need to do any of this. In August 2015, he was a popular billionaire with a beautiful wife and family. And in last 8 years, he's been relentlessly attacked, mocked, threated, and the subject of endless boycotts and lawsuits designed to destroy his business.

He was almost assassinated, censored, raided by the FBI, convicted on bogus charges, and everyone who's associated with him since 2016, has been harrassed, sued, and jailed.

Yet Trump fights on.

Yancey Ward said...

And when the film had stitched your eyes
A creature gasped "Reprieve"!
Which anguish was the utterest — then —
To perish, or to live?

Mattman26 said...

Well that's food for thought. Just glad it didn't involve the Trilateral Commission.

tcrosse said...

At least Kamala could be Miss Congeniality.

BG said...

“The next time you hear him, don’t count the lies—count the I’s. He’s like the tenor warming up before the opera: me, me, me, me.”...
It seems to me Obama liked to interject plenty of “I” and “me” into his sentences.

FullMoon said...

I'm gonna save that and repost it once in awhile, with credit, of course.

Earnest Prole said...

Normal Americans are sick of endless presidential campaigns. If they could choose between two-year campaigns every four years or six-week campaigns every six years, I suspect a majority would choose the latter. Harris is benefitting tremendously from that emotion.

robother said...

It just occurred to me. Did they test that cocaine in the Whit House for Hunter Thompson's DNA? Could be left over from him visiting Pat Buchanan during the Reagan years. They got the wrong Hunter!

Michael K said...

It's no wonder Melania Isn't around much. She is probably pissed at the risks he is taking.

Two-eyed Jack said...

The crowd chants at the DNC were boring and repetitive. That's why I kept thinking of new and better chants:

I love Joe, you love Joe.
That is why we tossed him out the window!

Two-eyed Jack said...

I hate Trump, you hate Trump.
Let's steal his policies and push them on the stump!

FullMoon said...

Check it out, read the part about paid tiktokers. Poor Dems seem kinda childish
On the first night, there are at least 66 speeches. I know, I know — lawyers gonna lawyer. Most of them follow this format: The speaker will come on, give an incredible foxy smirk at the audience and then say, “Can you feel somethin’ happenin’? Somethin’ stirrin’? It’s the MAGIC OF KAMALA HARRIS.”

And the crowd will then get to its feet and scream and shout, and then another person will come on and say, “I was raped by my stepfather after years of abuse” or “In 2
013 I was sex-trafficked across California,” and then you’re passed a stick saying, “We love Joe.” It’s intense.

RCOCEAN II said...

Ha. Thanks for the link.

n.n said...

What happens at the Democratic clinic... convention, is sequestered at the clinic... convention.

Smilin' Jack said...

“ The classic "Fear and" title is "Fear and Loathing,"…

Nah, Kierkegaard’s “Fear and Trembling”. Now that’s a really fun book.

Kirk Parker said...

Robother,

"The Democrat Party is betting that the American Presidency can be decided the same way Homecoming Queen is elected."

That's already happened. See: 2008.

Blair said...

Bob Marley's Redemption Song is AGAINST the idea of redemption songs. He wants to sing "Songs of Freedom" instead. That's the whole point of the song.

I don't want the Democrats' Redemption Song. I too want to sing Songs of Freedom. But pirates they come and rob I. How long will they kill our prophets?!