{"id":32706,"date":"2015-09-12T04:00:06","date_gmt":"2015-09-12T08:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=32706"},"modified":"2015-09-11T16:48:41","modified_gmt":"2015-09-11T20:48:41","slug":"trump-isnt-a-political-candidate-hes-a-political-fireship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/09\/12\/trump-isnt-a-political-candidate-hes-a-political-fireship\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump isn’t a political candidate … he’s a political fireship"},"content":{"rendered":"

Grant McCracken<\/a> explains why revelations of faults and gaffes not only don’t cost Donald Trump any support, they often increase his appeal to voters:<\/p>\n

The answer, I think, is that his supporters don\u2019t want a president. They want a fireship.<\/p>\n

Fireships were instruments of destruction when the world was ruled by wooden ships. The idea was to pack a ship with flammables, set it ablaze, and send it in the direction of enemy ships in the hope that it would set these enemy ships ablaze. Fireships helped defeat the Spanish armada gathered in the English Channel.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump promises to make a very good fireship. He lacks the subtlety, intelligence, breadth, and leadership we look for in a candidate. And that\u2019s precisely what makes him such an effective instrument of political disruption.<\/p>\n

Reckless, boorish, self centered? Perfect. Trump\u2019s flaws make him a unassimilable. Washington is its own empire with formidable powers of hegemony. Many reformers go to Washington. Virtually all are claimed, colonized, incorporated. The Trumpians believes they have found a candidate so full of himself not even the Borg can absorb him. (If you can\u2019t have incorruptible, unassimilable will have to do.)<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s just Step 1 of the Trump disruption, the passive play. Step 2, the active play, is a candidate who thinks he\u2019s smarter than the system. Most Trumpians know that Trump isn\u2019t smarter than the system. They just want him to act as if he is. That guarantees the destructive chaos they\u2019re hoping for. I don\u2019t think anyone doubts that Trump is a bully and a blow hard. They just want him to knock lots of things down when he throws his weight around. (If you can\u2019t have cunning, clumsy will have to do.)<\/p>\n

Trumpians don\u2019t want a candidate. They want an agent of chaos. They don\u2019t want to reform Washington. They want to burn it down.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Grant McCracken explains why revelations of faults and gaffes not only don’t cost Donald Trump any support, they often increase his appeal to voters: The answer, I think, is that his supporters don\u2019t want a president. They want a fireship. Fireships were instruments of destruction when the world was ruled by wooden ships. The idea […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,13],"tags":[1037,188,517,985],"class_list":["post-32706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-usa","tag-donaldtrump","tag-electionwatch","tag-republican","tag-washingtondc"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8vw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32707,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32706\/revisions\/32707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}