A fellow American told me that he & his buddies, "a group of old white guys" returning home in a private plane from a golf vacation, decided prior to landing that although they, to a man, "hated Hillary", they were all going to vote for her anyway. They'd shaken hands on their unanimous H- loathing, yet there was no explanation forthcoming - the "old white guys" (middle-aged successful businessmen) offered no facts, no reasons as evidence, they just knew that Hillary was hateful, period.
Scott Adams, creator of the satirical comic strip "Dilbert" and a self-described trained hypnotist, gave the nation a startling new perspective on the presidential candidates while a guest on Bill Maher's show last Friday night.
Adams said that hypnotizing people was a snap (sorry) - since most of us are "irrational", we do not have carefully-thought-out reasons for what we do or believe, therefore we can be very easily "persuaded".
Trump, he said, in these terms, was a "master persuader", essentially hypnotizing his followers. Hillary Clinton, Adams opined, has little chance against Trump's level of manipulation - he has taken "a flamethrower to a stick fight".
According to Adams, Trump insinuates himself into popular subconscious, via outrageous observations that cannot be backed up or verified: thus he provides no targets, no policy details for his rivals to strike back at. Trump is fact-less, on purpose. He's not interested in information, he's interested in focusing attention on mesmerizing negative-trivia. (Think Kardashian-thrall, think reality TV.) Wielding the Velcro insults he makes up (& invites his audiences to make up with him) he unforgettably invents a "crooked Hillary", a "goofy Elizabeth Warren", a "crazy Bernie" - thus pinning the targets on his rivals.
Of course Hillary is the most qualified candidate for President.
She is the only candidate with a track record in high office, she has highly-specific economic plans, plans for dealing with student debt and the minimum wage, women's rights and foreign policy. She has solid experience, she's skilled and brilliant. You don't have to agree with every statement she's ever made or stands taken, but she is unarguably the best candidate for president.
Do you really care whether she used a private server for her emails? Do you really think this makes her unfit for the presidency? Colin Powell also used a private server - how many people would rise up, outraged, after hearing about his State Dept. email habits? But since she's been dubbed "crooked Hillary" by Dumpable Trump her email habits somehow morph into questions of personal character.
Second-Place (you see how this works?) Bernie Sanders' insistence on her connections to Super Pacs, & speeches to Goldman Sachs, etc. works some of this same hypnosis. Candidates for office raise money wherever they can raise it. They always have. Why doesn't anyone ask Second-Place Bernie why he still hasn't released his taxes, why he only became a Democrat (the party he's managing to tear apart) a few days before he declared his candidacy - why the promises he is making to the young can never be realized? Why aren't we discussing the fact that his cockamamie budgetary proposal would put the country 18 trillion dollars in debt - according to a nonpartisan committee's conclusion? Why did he once refer to his former teachers as "old bitches"? Do his followers realize he voted bigtime for the 1994 Crime Act he blames Hillary for? Because Second-Place Bernie too is swinging that "you're feeling sleepy" bauble in front of his followers' eyes.
Hillary once described "a vast right-wing conspiracy" against the Clintons - & voila! it's here! Dumpable Trump has created a vast conspiracy of hypnotized Americans, as he stealthily empowers the impassioned worst and plays on embedded misogynistic and xenophobic terrors.
Snap! Wake up! You think there's no misogyny among the candidates? Dumpable Trump followers along with Second-Place Bernie fans encourage personal attacks on Hillary for being a woman. "Burn the witch" shows up on signs, along with calls for sexual assault.
Recently Dumpable Trump commented (playing to a vicious misogynist internet campaign attacking the new all-woman cast of "Ghostbusters") "Now they're re-making Ghostbusters with only women. What's going on?" he asked. "Only women", (those objects of derision) - how can they take the lead, carry a film? What's going on indeed - there's Trump Slime covering everything!
I'm a poet - so here's a cursory (nursery) rhyme : Trumpty-Dumpty sat on his Wall, but his Tiny Hands caused him to Fall! Then all the dark forces, bad racist men - couldn't put Trumpty together again!
Trumpty-Dumpty's got America in a trance - time to shake awake & push him from each fake wall he's erected among us.
Scott Adams faulted a Hillary slogan, "Love Trumps Hate" as counterproductive - bad word order - why begin a slogan with "Love Trump", why use his Dumpf last name as the main verb?
Syntax matters in the wars of hypnosis -- in this age of instant forgetting.
But back to the "old white guys" on their private plane. If they're half-hypnotized by hate (Half-hate !) it's still beats being completely narcoticized by Trumpery. At least they'll vote for Hillary in the end. In the end, they know it's the only way to wake us up from this nightmare.
Last chance to push Trumpty-Dumpty off his wall, shatter his fake shell, spill all that orange goo - till he can't slime anyone with Hypno-Hate ever again. Snap! Wake up, America!
- Carol Muske-Dukes