Clown King
"Europe itself would do well not to be complacent about the Little Mussolini of Arcore. For many years now, it has focused on his cabaret-style behaviour at international summits, on the ridiculousness of his hair transplants and facelifts, on the wishful boasting of a third-rate Casanova, on the banality and vulgarity of his jokes. Since the personage is not serious, Europe thought it did not have to take seriously the democratic destruction being accomplished by "the clown of Europe"..But when a farcical character can amass enormous power.., the prank has become a calamity."
Paulo Flores d'Arcais' description of Berlusconi reminds me that the The Donald here in the US is part of a wider trend. Americans are perhaps to be congratulated for having largely rejected Trump but perhaps it was just circumstances. If Donald owned the kind of media Berlusconi controlled, if he was Murdoch-Meets-Koch Brothers for instance, perhaps we too would be as far down the rabbit hole as Italy. Of course the Catholic church has always played an important role in distorting Italian "democratic politics" as such, but I think capitalist corruption, in both it's particular and more general sense, is also a culprit.
As Flores points out: "Berlusconi is the paladin only of a shadow-freedom, in which only those with the most have the right to protection. The only freedom Berlusconi knows is that of the animal spirits of unregulated capitalism: a cannibal freedom, homo homini lupus.I
Though Flores uses the term "little Mussolini" he is careful not to call Berlusconi truly fascist ( supplanted armed gangs with clients) and I think what we see here in the US, sometimes labeled fascist, only uses some of the stylistic flourishes. It could certainly devolve in that direction as authoritarian hardness/meanness becomes the post-ironic signature for the media-entranced audience. Our own Evangelical tradition and nativist tendencies play into this as well.
Most of all, I am dreading the necrotic fascination of the up-coming election season, like watching a plane crash into a high-rise over and over. Like watching Rodney King being clubbed. Destruction porn. So hard to turn away, so hard to watch.Banality and vulgarity sells, what can you say?
posted by troutsky @ 6:55 AM
30 comments
30 Comments:
Obama failed miserably, so now the Right gets another turn.
Woo-Hoo!
...of course cleaning up the mess that Obama leaves is going to be quite a chore... but we won't complain about the work to be done NEARLY as much as Obama did.
Who knows, with luck SCOTUS will throw out the entire kit and kaboodle! ;)
I'm not getting how Berlusconi is any more or less fascist than any of the other European elitists, so maybe you can explain that one to me. Is it because he likes young pussy? Hell if that's all it takes I changed my registration to the wrong party the other day.
On the other hand, if its because they have a penchant for big government control, and a regulated society, then I can see that, but there again, what is it about Berlusconi that stands out above the rest.
None of them are as fascist as Barak Obama and the Democrat Party. They are trying to cut back on that shit to some extent, but Obama and the Democrats just want more and more big government and regulations.
More to the point, most Americans, or at least half of us, don't want the shit, while most Europeans can't seem to get enough of it.
Of course I know you're talking about the Tea Party when you throw out that bit about stylistic similarities to fascism. But just how does that work? Are Tea Parties fascist because they want to protect people's rights to own firearms? And this is fascist how, exactly?
I guess the Democrats wanting to create a police state, a state where people are dependent on government, and on social services, and the police, and want to make sure the populace is unarmed to as great an extent as possible-that's not fascist? What do you call that then?
The Baggers do go gaga over "businessmen" when the run, at least temporarily.
Look at Herman Cain. The right starts touting him as the founder of Godfather's pizza as if he weren't just some guy who was appointed by Pillsbury to run it and promptly ran it into the ground. But they love him.
Guy mouths some crazy talk about he gold standard and they lap it up. Ask the fringe right for a solution to trade issues under the gold standard and they clam up. Details aren't their strong suit.
Too bad Donald seems to be fading. Have to admit, trout, you have to laugh out of self defense.
Oh well, Italian politics is for the masochist.
Yes sir Pagan, no way the unarmed can throw off a dictator, just ask the Egyptians.
If the Egyptians had been armed, there's no way they would have been controlled and brutalized by Mubarek for so long. Or at all.
Hey, unless the Left is collectively goose-stepping around a country's parliament buildings in circles and singing paeans to the poor and oppressed, they're never happy. Get used to it, I am.
Speedy, blue filters should be banned.
Sick of them but leave it to a right winger to be 10 years behind the ties.
Interesting that Gingrich said that the 2012 election, will be one of the greatest battles in American history, about the meaning of the Constitution. Like him or not, he's a real historian.
The only other periods the Constitution was debated was; after the Revolutionary War when it was written, and before the Civil War.
Ducky: Business people are supposed to grow companies, not shrink them. That is a contradiction for the right, who like business candidates.
Yep, Herman Cain is coming on like gang busters, now all of a sudden the left has him in their crosshairs, putting him down cos you're scared shitless of him.
Come on now, don't let me down guys. Go ahead and give us on the right some friendly advice about how we'd be much better off getting behind a "reasonable", "moderate" candidate like Pawlenty or Romney. You know, somebody that knows how to cross party lines and get things done for the American people. You know, somebody like Dole, or McCain.
he's a real historian...
BWAH-HA-HA-HA-HA!
Historical "novels" are hardly history.
Business people are supposed to grow companies, not shrink them. That is a contradiction for the right, who like business candidates.
Business doesn't grow in the face of expropriation (or higher taxation). Just ask Hugo Chavez.
Hey fellers, I saw Hucka bee play Cat Scratch with Ted Nugent yesterday just before the big let down. Ted adopts what I would call fascist style, Pagan, a natural born killer approach.
I hope everyone is prepared to dig deep because this is going to be very expensive.
Burlosconi directly controls three national commercial channels and the other three government channels. Italians get 90% of their info from TV.
Renegade: That Constitutional battle will expose deep rifts among liberals. I'm all for this Herman Cain pizza person.
Troutsky, you still haven't explained to me how conservatives, especially the Tea Party, who supports and promotes smaller government and less government intrusion in all areas of life-in fact, as little as possible-equates to Fascism. You can't explain it, because such an equation makes no sense. None whatsoever. But I'm waiting patiently.
Troutsky, you still haven't explained to me how conservatives, especially the Tea Party, who supports and promotes smaller government and less government intrusion in all areas of life-in fact, as little as possible-equates to Fascism. You can't explain it, because such an equation makes no sense. None whatsoever. But I'm waiting patiently.
I don't think the Tea Party is fascist, or the US will ever, with a working class majority.
Hitler was pro-small business. His writing was populist and nostalgic, about the4 virtues of small business.
The Tea Party has beaten up vulnerable people. To be fascist, it would have to act like a gang more. The potential for it to be fascist like is there. They used to flaunt being armed.
Speedy G: Business doesn't grow in the face of expropriation (or higher taxation). Just ask Hugo Chavez.
I was right. Nobody on the right can answer my question.
I don't know of any Tea Party people ever beating anybody up. I've seen plenty of videos of union goons assaulting people, including an old woman and a sixteen year old, who was giving a speech in support of Governor Walker while some union activist piece of shit yelled at her and repeatedly called her a bitch. I saw an old woman pushed to the ground. And there was other examples of union thuggishness during the 2008 election. Why don't you talk about that shit? Frankly, I've seen enough bullshit out of these union asshats I don't give a shit if the Tea Party folks get rowdy ever now and then. Sometimes I wish they would. I for one would openly cheer them on. I just don't know of it happening.
I was right. Nobody on the right can answer my question.
lol! Do you really think that the Tea Party is going to endorse an idiot liberal media-made Trojan Horse business candidate like Donald Trump???
Donald Trump is a Democrat. He couldn't get the conservative vote if pulled out all his hairplugs and did a full blown G. Gordon Liddy impersonation.
So this is the Tea Party crowd?
Pagan: You totally misunderstood the piece. I never accuse any party or group of being fascist. The original article is about how Burlosconi is a new form and I thought the Donald emulated it.
Now Speedy tells me he is a Democrat proving my point it is all theatre of the absurd. I could say The Donald is Chinese or the Buddha at this point.
Donald Trump was a registered Democrat in 2001.
A "conservative" doesn't jump and flip-flop party's (like Trump did in 2009) or suddenly "get religion". That's what an "opportunistic liberal" Trojan Horse idiot does.
So where's the Donald's Chinese birth certificate now, troutsky?
But Farmer,Trump is such a great media story.
A network wants to boost the ratings for his show so they have the "news" department pump up his "candidacy".
Right now they are trying to figure out how they can ditch his pretaped final show and have him announce his decision in "the board room" live.
Damn the liberal media, huh?
I heard that the Donald was going to jump a shark on the series finale of the Oprah Winfrey Show. But if he were a real candidate for president, the Secret Service wouldn't let him...
Donald Trump IS a Democrat. Think back, Troutsky, to the last time Donald Trump considered running for president. It never went anywhere, but for what brief time he was publicly mulling it over, he was thinking of running as a Democrat. I don't remember for sure when it was, though I think it was 2004, but the point is, he's not a Republican, and he god damn sure is not a Tea Party conservative. If anything I think he's making fun of the Tea Party, lampooning them for what he falsely believes is their obsession with Obama's birth certificate, which is actually important only to a fringe element of the Tea Party. Most TP people don't care about that, other than wishing Obama would produce the damn thing so it would no longer be a distraction.
Donald Trumps other issues are boiler-plate populism that are as or more likely to appeal to a Democrat as a conservative. Tariffs on Chinese goods, the hostility towards Saudi Arabia-the one group of Arab Muslims liberal Democrats seem to think it's cool to attack.
Even though I only agree with Democrats maybe ten percent of the time on a bad day, I still only agree with traditional Republicans maybe sixty percent of the time, and the Tea Party maybe eighty percent. And I can tell you now, I know enough about all three to tell you there's a war for the soul of the GOP.
Mike Huckabee, the Big Government Conservative leader, was the first casualty. There will be others. Trump will probably not be among them, for the simple fact he's not really in the running.
My short list of preferred candidates would include-Sarah Palin, Allen West, Herman Cain, Marco Rubio, Michelle Bachman, and Rand Paul. People like them, who believe in limited government, a minimum of regulations, low taxes on EVERYBODY, state's rights, strong national defense, the Second Amendment meaning the right of every citizen to own firearms, a strong secure border, and a right to work without being extorted by union thugs either in the private or public sector, and the list goes on and on.
That's what the Tea Party stands for, not the corporate welfare and big government conservatism of the traditional national Republican Party, which hates and fears the Tea Party as much as Democrats if not more.
Republicans hate them because it would mean the end of their privileged positions as the head of the go-along-to-get-along party of corporate fat cats who will go along with anything just to get a few tax breaks and what not.
Democrats because they know the Tea Party speaks a populist message they can't even begin to counter, other than through lies and intimidation.
And they all hate them because they know that if the Tea Party takes over, first the GOP and then the country, it's toodle-fucking-oo to the welfare state, and fare-thee-well to the public sector gravy train.
The Donald represented just another attempt by the liberal MSM at Tea Party detournement.
But that which arises out of tachisme cannot be defeated with liberal "form-u-lies".
The starfish just laughs at the spider's webs. ;)
Allen West, Pagan?
The stupid douche who had no interrogation experience or authority and had his men beat the crap out of an asset and then fired his weapon and completely compromised the asset causing West to be discharged?
What's the appeal of something that stupid?
You're getting there, Farmer
Romney seems to be the one, the establishment reluctantly picked. His pandering is ugly.
Pawlenty's strength is an ability to keep his mouth shut, and not expose he is to the right of Atilla the Hun.
Pawlenty's weakness is that if he did open his mouth enough to reveal he was to the right of Attila the Hun nobody would hear it because they would all be asleep by the time he made it to that point.
Is it possible that Obummer will discover something like a progressive sensibility during his second term?
I doubt it. The political landscape is bleak indeed.
The right wing has destroyed itself and there is barely anything to be gained.
minibus reklamlari
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