* Rex Weiner wrote an article for High Times in the 1970s called “The ABCs of How to be Cool.” Here are excerpts of some of the attributes that fit Trump.
Attitude: If you’re absolutely convinced that what you’re doing is cool, then it’s cool. With the right attitude you can get away with anything.
Competent: Cool people are always competent (but not necessarily the other way around). The coolest way to take over a scene is to be better than everybody else.
Danger: Cool people are always dangerous because they take risks. Danger is cool because you know you’re not going to live forever, and knowing that let’s you relax. When people find out exactly how relaxed you are …when taking a controversial stand on some issue, they tend to give you the respect you deserve.
Energy: Cool people have a great deal of energy. . . They get everything done on time and always have about three or four things going on at once. [Trump sleeps four hours a night.]
Irrational: Get a reputation for being unpredictable and crazy. You’re the kind of person who’s likely to do anything anywhere anytime. But also gain a reputation for consistency. Paradox is the absolute essence of cool.
Jerks: Cool people always keep a few around, just to catch flak. [Jeb and Marco.]
Mainstream: Go against it. If everyone around you is busy being hip, be square. In a roomful of nervous people, be calm. Talk loudly in libraries. What the hell.
Opinions: Have lots of them. Like or dislike people immediately and don’t be afraid to say so. [Rosie, Megyn] Too many people go through life without ever deciding whether they want mustard or ketchup on their hamburgers.
Sex: If you’re cool, you’re sexy. [“Best sex I ever had!’ says former Trump girlfriend.]
Unique: Eminently cool people are always unlike anybody else. Nobody knows quite what makes them so, but they’ll spend hours trying to figure it out. What they come up with, often enough, is, “Boy, I sure hate that son of a bitch!” [see: Charles Krauthammer, George Will, Jonah Goldberg, Greg Gutfeld, etc.] Being hated is no less cool than being loved.
Work: Cool people are always busy. It’s cool to work. Cool people are always busy. But cool people never work up a sweat.
Extra: If you’re cool, you invariably ask for a little more, and if you’re cool, you invariably get it.
* What I’m finding fun to exam is how loyal Red Team members are slowly coming to realize that being on Red Team is not worth their time. It’s different than what we’re seeing with Blue Team, where the freak show is slowly breaking away from the main. Red Team has always defined itself in opposition to Blue Team. They are socialist and we are capitalists!
On Red Team, you see people suddenly confronting the fact that their team has always sort of hated them. At the same time, the old guard is struggling to figure out why the trouble makers appear to be mocking them, rather than fearing them. Calling Donald Trump a Nazi, for example, was met with laughter.
In Europe the realignment is easier and further advanced. You have existing parties into which dissidents can find refuge. if you have become fed up with Muslims in France, you the FN. In America, no such refuge exists. The fringe parties are nuts and the main parties are locked in a passionate embrace.
* Interesting comment at Hot Air:
Trump’s popularity is a mystery until you compare him to Putin.
Regular Americans feel emasculated, weak and disrespected in the world… and ignored/hated by their own elected officials.
Same way Russians felt crapped on and ignored (by Gorby) after the end of the Cold War.
As a backlash, they now have Putin. He might be a bully… but he’s their bully. Which is preferable to being under a wuss who cares more about the UN and world opinion than he cares about his own people. Everyone hates Putin… except for the 90% of Russians who love him.
It’s the same thing with the US today. People are tired about the President selling out to Iran. They’re mad at electing two houses of GOP Congressmen… who act like Democrats. They’re mad that their jobs are gone to Mexico and China. And they can’t figure out why the US military isn’t crushing ISIS in two weeks.
Trump is rude, crass and bombastic, but he knows his audience. And that audience would rather have a braggart, US-loving bully than another mom-jeans-wearing, UN-loving sellout.
Just watch. The more he acts like Putin, the more Americans will embrace him. It’s only natural given what they’ve been through.
* Fun guy, this Trump, but it won’t go anywhere.
This Mexico-bashing and China-bashing are ultimately meaningless since those nations have no direct control over the US.
Trump, like everyone else, is totally mum on the people with the real power. He doesn’t even have the guts to take on the homos.
In the end, it’s all about style. There is no real substance here.
And suppose Trump wins. Anyone who thinks he will make a difference is like the fools who thought ARNOLD could really change California.
Hasta La Vista, Baby.
* Trump’s parents attended Norman Vincent Peale’s church, which was part of the Reformed Church of America, which is, I think, kind of like Presbyterian but a little more liberal.
Peale was the author of the huge self-help bestseller The Power of Positive Thinking. I suspect there are all sorts of connections between the thinking of Peale and of Trump.
One interesting aspect is that Trump comes out of this pro-business power of positive thinking Protestant background, but without the Ned Flanders-style nicey-niceness that usually goes with it. Romney was kind of dragged down by his related Mormon nicey-niceness, and George H.W. Bush had to struggle with his.
Pat Buchanan survived for decades in an ideologically hostile media environment because he’s a wonderful individual who is deeply liked by most people who know him well.
* I remember being surprised when I read The Great Shark Hunt at how much Hunter Thompson liked Pat Buchanan–of all people.
* Steveosphere is a little bit behind the curve here.
Whether Trump is cool was hashed out over the past ten years on Apprentice. It’s all right there.
* Megan Kelly is Ailes/Murdoch PROXY. Wake the hell up. Fox tried to end Trump’s political career that night. There is no bigger opponent for Trump now. Exactly because Trump is an alpha with killer instinct is why he pursues his opponent relentlessly. Trump has the potential to do real damage to the Fox brand and Roger Ailes knows it.
* Trump and his family attended First Presbyterian in Jamaica, Queens before going to Peale’s Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan.
Peale’s positive thinking is definitely evident in Trump’s attitude and speaking style and presentation. Trump is relentless in applying positive thinking. Everything he says about himself and his projects and goals is unequivocally positive.
The positive thinking “philosophy” was very much a part of bourgeois, pro-business, Protestant American mainstream culture, but now largely persists among some evangelicals e.g. Rick Warren’s “Purpose Driven Life” and in a non-Christian, New Age context. The self-help tropes about having a positive attitude, thinking positive, waking up in the morning and staring at the mirror while repeating positive mantras about yourself to yourself every day, etc., derives from positive thinking. Mainline Protestants today find it declasse and are sort of embarrassed by it.
Part of the Ned Flanders nicey-niceness comes from positive thinking philosophy, whereby being effusively positive towards other people is believed to lead to positive outcomes, just as thinking and speaking positively about yourself is. Trump’s brashness and ego however adds a twist to this formula, and he won’t speak positively to or about someone and will put someone down if it leads to himself thinking, feeling, and looking more positive.
