Wouldn’t it be great if the American people rose up? I’m talking about a popular revolution. I’m talking about a government, an economy, and a society run by regular folks for regular folks—a moment, a movement if you will, to throw off the yokes of political corruption and corporate greed and bring popular values to Washington. Of course I mean such popular values as thrift and hard work, not so much xenophobia or contempt for education. And I’m not saying I want populism in culture, either. Obviously I don’t want to see centuries of tradition reduced to The Big Bang Theory. Today is Friday, and I want a popular revolution without the racism, cultural repression, stupidity, or war of vengeance in the Middle East. Won’t you try to cram the genie back in the bottle with me?
Tag Archives: trump
Donald Trump withdraws from Republican debate
Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, has confirmed that the wealthy meringue will boycott tomorrow night’s Republican debate in Des Moines. “He’s definitely not participating in the Fox News debate,” Lewandowski told the Washington Post. “His word is his bond.” Trump cited two reasons for his refusal. The first was that he felt he had been treated badly at the first Fox News debate by moderator and intelligent resonating crystal Megyn Kelly. The second was that someone else was making money on the deal. I quote WaPo:
“Why should the networks continue to get rich on the debates?” Trump told reporters at a news conference in Marshalltown. “Why do I have to make Fox rich?”
Just to clarify, debates among presidential candidates are not original reality programming from Fox News. Certain theories of democracy view them as a service to voters. But whoever he thinks his clients are, Trump has pulled Maneuver X.
The tomatoes in the word salad of Palin’s Trump endorsement speech
Do not read it aloud or you will summon her, but the full text of Sarah Palin’s endorsement speech for Donald Trump is here. Props to Smick for the link. Palin’s style has always worked better in speech than it does in print. More than one journalist has complained that the hardest part of transcribing her is knowing where to put the periods. She hews to a verbless, pastiche style reminiscent of Allen Ginsberg, if Ginsberg worked primarily in cliché. What is most striking about Palin’s speech from last night is the way it swings from phrase to ready phrase—in it to win it, drill baby drill, failed agenda, lead from behind, we the people and, now, make America great again—much as Tarzan swings from vine to vine. She’s just hollering in the spaces between. Still, certain themes emerge. Video after the jump.
How am I to react to “men should stop writing?”
You may have noticed that Combat! blog has gotten later and crappier recently. That’s because I changed my workflow. I generally break my writing day into two-hour slots, with 15-minute breaks between. Combat! used to be the first slot of the day, because it’s an unpaid, non-deadline project and therefore the easiest thing to not do. Now that I’m actively writing prose fiction, though, that’s the easiest thing not to do. So I do it as soon as I wake up, when I am still groggy and mistakenly remember writing as fun, after breakfast but before I do anything else. I used to read the newspaper a little, just to get my brain going, but I changed that policy after I read this interview with Eileen Myles in the New York Times. I quote:
I think it would be a great time for men, basically, to go on vacation. There isn’t enough work for everybody. Certainly in the arts, in all genres, I think that men should step away. I think men should stop writing books. I think men should stop making movies or television. Say, for 50 to 100 years.
What am I to do with that?
Friday links! The enemy of evil is good, right?
I tuned into the sixth Republican debate hoping to watch a spider fight a banana slug, and I was not disappointed. But I was also scared. Back in June, when Trump had yet to enter the race and governors dominated our nominating predictions, Jeb! Bush seemed like the saddest thing that could happen to the GOP. Now his warlike nepotism looks quaint. Ben Carson ventured into the realm of speculative fiction last night with his vision of a simultaneous cyberattack and electromagnetic pulse, but Trump and Cruz articulated the real doomsday scenario. Today is Friday, and the Republican nomination has become a contest between a billionaire too dumb to see the truth and a sociopath too smart to speak it. Won’t you choose the lesser evil with me?





