Fear Level Trump

I remember a time when a cabbage could sell itself by being a cabbage. Nowadays it’s no good being a cabbage – unless you have an agent and pay him a commission. Nothing is free anymore to sell itself or give itself away. These days, Countess, every cabbage has its pimp.
― Jean Giraudoux, The Madwoman of Chaillot

This election seems to have traumatized the usually, and increasingly, somnambulant public in the US to the degree that a number of various mental affects are activated, and maybe even some old wounds finally surfacing again, but most of all it has generated a new level of panic among the bourgeoisie.

There was a piece in the New York Review of Books on Trump, the candidate, written by Jonathan Freedland. And it touches on the strange almost surreal resiliency of the Trump campaign. There was another odd bit of fluff at the Guardian (where fluff is becoming the norm) on Claire Danes bottled and excessive tan at the Emmy awards show, which the author attributed to, or equated with, Trump and his sun lamped skin. One TWEET (quoted by the Guardian) went…“Claire Danes’ bronzer is threat level TRUMP”.

The NYRBs is, of course, a pretty reactionary rag these days, notwithstanding my fondness for the minor esorterica it includes (Mesopotamian art exhibits or reviews of obscure medieval history books, etc). But Freedland (arch liberal though he is) pretty cogently summed up Trump and the seething anger that drives his followers. Or the visible…

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