Tiwtter Aint' the Fuckin' World, Part MMXX

Trump supporters lose it as their grievance-spouting Mad King spirals down the drain https://t.co/xtGfOuJuwt

— Raw Story (@RawStory) July 7, 2020

Normally, I wouldn’t be at all concerned about a professional tabloid weirdo like Kanye West running for president. Today, however, I’m actually quite concerned, and not because I think Kanye is likely to win or even fumble his way onto enough ballots to make a dent. He won’t. For now.

The problem with Kanye or other political hobbyists running for president is that it further erodes the already threadbare integrity of our presidential politics, making it increasingly acceptable for other famous-for-being-famous nincompoops to run, and perhaps win. The last four years have illustrated how profoundly dangerous that can be.

The problem is not with Kanye West (whom I regard as a mentally ill individual who should be getting treatment, not publicity) nor even the "already threadbare integrity of our presidential politics."  The problem is with confusing Twitter with anything more serious than the national billboard where almost anything can be posted, and where most of it is ignored.

If I had a Twitter account and announced I was running for President, who would notice?  Or even take me seriously?  My friends would either wonder that the joke was, or start planning an intervention.  Would that "further erode[] the already threadbare integrity of our" etc., etc.?  No, of course not.  Is Kanye West's tweet somehow more authoritative because it was published by Kanye West?

No; of course not.

Maybe, by now, Yeezy has started to file the paperwork in all 50 states, complete with supporting petitions, necessary to get on the ballot for election as the President of the United States.  But I'm gonna go out on a limb and say he hasn't.  I'll further assert he hasn't even tried, and he's never going to try.  I wouldn't be surprised if he's already forgotten about this, or if it in fact turns into an ad campaign for his next album.  That's actually the most reasonable explanation.  I'm old enough to remember when Lyndon LaRouche was a perennial third-party candidate for President.  I'm old enough to remember when George Wallace ran for President; and Ross Perot.  You can't begin to talk about "threadbare integrity of our presidential politics" if all you've got is a tweet from a very famous crazy person.  Lyndon LaRouche was convinced the Queen of England sat at the center of an international drug ring, among other things, and he had people who believed every crazy thing he said.  Q-Anon is a pack of pikers and school children compared to LaRouche; that guy was around for decades!

Or Father Coughlin, who championed FDR, then turned against him, then, based on conspiracy theories about Jewish bankers, began supporting Hitler and fascism until WWII gave FDR the authority to shut him up and shut down both his radio program and his newsletter.

Hell, I'm old enough to remember when Pat Paulsen ran for President.  Stephen Colbert even set up a Super-PAC, that I remember, too.  The "integrity" of our Presidential politics has been "threadbare" since Jefferson ran against Adams; maybe even since Washington refused to run again.

And you think the Republic is coming to an end because Yeezy fired off a tweet?

These days, the ground is especially fertile for dilettantes and tourists to run for national office. 

Like I said:  LaRouche; Wallace; Perot.  Paulsen. Every four years the ground "is especially fertile for dillettantes and tourists to run for national office."

LaRouche was a perennial candidate for President of the United States. He ran in every election from 1976 to 2004 as a candidate of third parties established by members of his movement. He also tried to gain the Democratic presidential nomination. In 1996, he got 5% of the total nationwide vote in Democratic primaries. In 2000, he received enough primary votes to qualify for delegates in some states, but ultimately was refused those delegates at the convention.

In 1986 several LaRouche candidates won the Illinois Democratic primaries, only to be defeated by the Democratic candidates running on a third party ticket in the general election.  28 years LaRouche ran, and you think 2020 is "especially fertile"?  Gimme a break.  And please:

It became blindingly noticeable in 2016, but during the course of this year in particular, our national freakout has worsened to a point where sound judgment has been dangerously inhibited, while reality and reason have become increasingly rare commodities, largely abandoned by at least 40 percent of us.

Stop throwing that number around like it means something.  It doesn't. Using it as if it were a hard cold fact just contributes to a narrative as false as Trump's claims about the coronavirus.  We've got enough bullshit in the air; don't fight it with still more bullshit.

Alleged grownups are routinely scolding anyone wearing a mask, either because the mask wearers are, they say, succumbing to fear or because the mask wearers are merely doing it to express their disapproval of Donald Trump, whose existence as president, by the way, is more responsible than anything else for the breakdown. Trump has exploited the bully pulpit to undermine our national sense of right and wrong, of reality and fiction, to the point where his most loyal disciples — again, chronological adults — don’t have any idea what’s real and what’s fake.

Again: please stop pushing the fake narrative.  I don't go out much, or to many stores (I'm cautious), but since things got worse in Texas, I haven't seen anyone in any store without a mask on.  Yes, daily I see a video on line somewhere of some beleaguered white person (why is it always a white person?) screaming about how they don't have to wear a mask.  Usually right before they leave the store because, peer pressure, ya know?  I've never encountered those people, never been in a store where I even heard such a person. I'm sure it happens but then, Lyndon LaRouche had followers and even voters, too.  Oddly, you don't hear about him anymore, even though his last gasp was only 16 years ago.  He's been quite thoroughly erased from memory, and good riddance to him.

Yes, it is bad to have Donald Trump as our President, especially right now.  Right now he's so bad, the situation is so bad, he's so incompetent and clueless and downright evil, it's becoming a topic for discussion almost everywhere except in the pages of the Grey Lady (whose coverage of Trump reminds me of the stories Molly Ivins tells about trying to write for the venerable institution, which hired her for her distinctive voice and then tried to suppress it out of her, or at least out of their pages.  But that's another story).  We know things are bad, we know Trump is a menace.  Stop making it worse with clueless accusations and mindless repetition of equally stupid narratives.

Surely we can at least discuss our problems in a way that doesn't imitate Trump.  Surely we can do better than that.