Does H-> Remind Anyone Else of Norma Desmond?

      The 1950 film noir classic Sunset Boulevard told the story of a young, penniless writer who ends up trapped writing a script for meglomaniacal has-been Norma Desmond.  Desmond lives in a fantasy world where people long to see the silent star on the big screen again.  Her decaying mansion becomes the place where the young writer dies, murdered by the delusional Desmond.
       One starts to assume that Hillary Clinton actually thinks Peace & Love Inc. will make a comeback, and that her rapist husband and repellent self will one day occupy the White House again.  Hey H->, everybody is getting really sick of your pity party, your endless litany of people other than yourself who are supposedly responsible for Orange Blatherskite's victory.  We thought you were a pandering old fool, claiming to carry hot sauce in your purse, and speaking pidgin English on the campaign trail.  You're as popular as the plague.  Go away, while you still have some scintilla of dignity.

Conservatives Without Chests

       "Reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them."David Hume A Treatise of Human Nature, Part III, Section 3
       "The crudest sentimentalism (such as Gaius and Titius would wince at) about a flag or a country or a regiment will be of more use.  We were told it all long ago by Plato.  As the king governs by his executive, so Reason in man must rule the mere appetites by means of the 'spirited element.'  The head rules the belly through the chest--the seat, as Alanus tells us, of Magnaminity, of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments.  The Chest--Magnanimity--Sentiment--these are the indispensible liason officers between cerebral man and visceral man.  It may even be said that it is by this middle element that man is man:  for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal.  The operation of The Green Book and its kind is to produce what may be called Men without Chests.  It is an outrage that they should be commonly spoken of as Intellectuals.  This gives them the chance to say that he who attacks them attacks Intelligence.  It is not so.  They are not distinguished from other men by any unusual skill in finding truth nor any virginal ardour to pursue her.  Indeed it would be strange if they were:  a persevering devotion to truth, a nice sense of intellectual honour, cannot be long maintained without the aid of a sentiment which Gaius and Titus could debunk as easily as any other.  It is not excess of thought but defect of fertile and generous emotion that marks them out.  Their heads are no bigger than the ordinary:  it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so." C.S. Lewis The Abolition of Man, (p.34-35)

       Watching Donald Trump talk like a social conservative is like watching a mime pretending to have a heart attack.  The portrayal is an academic exercise, disconnected from his real sentiments.
       Trump opposes Cosmopolitanism, the stoic idea that all men are brothers.  He peddles a mixture of self-interest and white nationalism.
       The secular educational system replaces conscience with conditioning.  Rather than encouraging moral behavior, it teaches adherence to the conventions of society.  (Sittlichkeit over moralitaet, you might say.)  Trump's abusive personal insults and dubious personal behavior are a fruit of demoralized American society.  This explains why his arguments against abortion seem so anemic.  Trump isn't arguing from his heart, but according to what he thinks he needs to say.
       Why would someone pretend to hold convictions when he has none?  Perhaps it is just another role;  Trump master of deals was followed by Trump, television star, which was followed by Trump University.  Next will be Trump, TV network owner!  His entire life has been a series of commercial moves.  How is this any different?
       The place of morality being the only check on nature means that lack of morality necessitates outside force to create order.  In the case of Donald Trump, he promises to be the autocrat molding America into his image.  If Trump believed in liberty, part of his message would be morality and self-regulation.
       Strength is a totem with Trump.  He clearly admires people who force their will on others.  This is another sign of Trump's deficit in benevolence and morality.  A politician within the Tao would recognize that he is, after all, only a man himself.  The fact that all men have a law written in their hearts should mean that there is no need for Strong Men.
       Donald Trump is what C.S. Lewis might have called a conservative without a chest.  He is a caricature of sorts--vulgar, selfish and crude.  There is no mediation of the emotions between his mind and the animal appetites of his belly and loins.  Thus, he knows only the self-interest of his mind married to the urges of his body.  Estase used to refer to the Clintons as mechanistic;  Bill and Hillary's politics were all about satisfying needs, with no element of the edifying or noble.  It is the opus magnum of Hillary's career that, at the crucial juncture where America could reject her and godless progressivism,  she managed to get a conservative without a chest as her opponent.

Mrs. Daesh

       Turkey is the land of destiny for the Middle East right now.  The Daesh will be reinforced or destroyed by Erdogan.  As of now, it looks like Turkey is intending to reinforce the Daesh.  The coup against Erdogan was likely a publicity stunt to serve as a prelude to an Islamist crackdown in Turkey.
       The fight against the Daesh by the U.S. appears to be a paper tiger.  When the Daesh attacked Paris and Istanbul, the official State Department mouthpiece, CNN, was sure to blame Bashir-al-Assad for the attacks.  Assad is one of the leaders fighting for his life against the Daesh, and somehow, he is responsible for the Daesh!  The same network that fed us a phony narrative of how the mean old Serbs were conducting a one-sided slaughter fest against the Bosnian Muslims (then, as now, on behalf of the State Department) is blaming Bashir-al-Assad for his own opposition.
        All the while, Hillary Clinton looks certain to be our next president.  This means certain war with Syria and Russia.  The irony of the current election cycle is that Trump, being an ignoramus and a brute, looks like a warmonger.  All the while, the pantsuited lesbian is the one who really means to start World War III.

The Wafer-Thin Mint

         For anyone, such as myself, who has reviled the Clintons for decades, the current stir over Hillary's secret e-mails, which even Foggy Bottom doesn't have access to, may seem like manna from Heaven.
          But not so fast!  After Whitewater, Rose Law Firm, Vince Foster, the Arab Winter, and Benghazi, why this?  It reminds me of the scene in Monty Python and the Meaning of Life where the enormously fat guy explodes because he ate a mint.  Years of skullduggery, and all anyone cares about is her e-mail?  Some might say that it is the straw that broke the camel's back, but I harbor deep suspicions that the news media, who have been consistently uninterested in any story that reflects badly on Obama or the Clintons to this point, are now trying to take down Hillary.  It's like someone who has nearly eaten themselves to death being done in by a mint.

Genderflecting to Hillary

       I introduced a piece of terminology last year that now applies to Hillary Clinton.  I said that people genderflected to Ruth Bader Ginsburg because she happens to be a grandmother.  Now, the guy who married into the Clinton family (not because he was a social climber, but because he fell in love with a woman who looks like Bill Clinton) seems to have impregnated Chelsea.  Now, all of the people who use the maternity of a daughter as proof of their own matronliness encourage us to genderflect to Hellery Clinton.  Never mind the fact that Hellery was co-President to the man who, prior to Oh Blah Blah, was the most pro-abortion president in American history.  Never mind that she got Ambassador Chris Stephens killed by gun-running to Syria.  We are all to admire Hellery Clinton as an exemplary human being despite all this.  Sure, she was not the kind of woman to "stay home and bake cookies," and she wasn't the type of woman who would "stand by her man" a la Tammy Wynette.  All must genderflect to the angry harridan from Rose Law Firm.