I know this post will be a virtual repeat of previous posts this week, but I just can't let go of the "Romney in London" debacle. I've been spending altogether too much time at #AmericanBorat and #RomneyShambles, and I'm not even a Twitter fan! One thing that strikes me about Mitt's gaffes, both in the UK and at home, is that they expose Mitt Romney as an inexperienced rube... British Prime Minister David Cameron hinted at this:
"We are holding an Olympic Games in one of the busiest, most active, bustling cities anywhere in the world. Of course it’s easier if you hold an Olympic games in the middle of nowhere.”
It's funny, with all of Mitt's money and international business experience, he's really a n00b and a rube. He's the kind of guy who travels to a foreign country not to experience the culture, but to change it- all the while dodging the draft he supported. Yay, Mitt, trying to sell an abstemious belief system to a nation of oenophiles. Sure, he may have picked up a smattering of the language, but his missionary activity argues for a contempt of the culture he lived among, like a tapeworm. As an aside, can we stop calling him a "vulture capitalist"? He was a "parasite capitalist", taking over healthy companies and feasting on them while killing them.
As much as his overseas trip has exposed this provincial plutocrat side, even his campaigning in the States has revealed him to be a barbarian who denigrates the local cuisine and puts "the help" in awkward situations. He is an abrasive, overprivileged prick, who has never had to make an effort to respect the attitudes and mores of others. It will be interesting to see how this oddly sheltered, intellectually incurious twit will fare in Israel and Poland, two countries which don't share his Anglo-Saxon heritage.
POSTSCRIPT: In terms of Simpsons' characters, Romney is a mash-up of the worst characteristics of C. Montgomery Burns and Ned Flanders- he combines Burns' ruthlessness and lack of understanding of the commoners with Flanders' excess of piety and goofball white-bread cluelessness.
missionary activity argues for a contempt of the culture he lived among, like a tapeworm
ReplyDeletePREACH, Brutha! That says exactly exactly the point I have tried to make for years, with much more succinctitude! 10Q!
Doesn't matter that much here, I suspect.
ReplyDeleteThe right is running with "you didn't build that" (and leaving out what THAT referred to), and in the end, it's probably coming down to how many people are unemployed in October.
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It's an American national election. It's entirely premised on racial and sectarian hatred and class resentment. It's about fear and lies and the received wisdom of the ignorant masses.
ReplyDeleteThink for a moment what we'd be discussing if there was any honesty or reality or even political and economic understanding in play. Instead we argue about the deficit when rates are negative, the Fed pursues inflation rates BELOW targets at the cost of millions of unemployed, the rich have decided they don't wish to contribute support to the nation that made them wealthy and they've made common cause with the rubes over a belligerent hatred of people who are not like them.
This is a sad, sick end to what genuinely was a great democratic experiment. The lesson is that the autocrats and plutocrats cannot ever actually allow the unwashed masses to govern themselves, and the other side of that coin is that the people have to hold autocrats and plutocrats at genuine risk in order to control their own political destiny.
And damn. That may be the greatest sentence I've ever written!
It's inexcusably rude to make derogatory comments about what your hosts offer you. Most children know this. That he didn't even try a cookie before weighing in on them is phenomenal.
ReplyDeleteLike I said, he's the kind of guy who'd visit a country with the hopes of fundamentally changing its culture.
PREACH, Brutha! That says exactly exactly the point I have tried to make for years, with much more succinctitude! 10Q!
Athankee!
The right is running with "you didn't build that" (and leaving out what THAT referred to), and in the end, it's probably coming down to how many people are unemployed in October.
Yeah, but I can't see another "debt ceiling" showdown a la Eric Cantor helping anyone. Obama should use his SuperPAC money to hire a cadre of young canvassers to pound the pavement for him.
This is a sad, sick end to what genuinely was a great democratic experiment. The lesson is that the autocrats and plutocrats cannot ever actually allow the unwashed masses to govern themselves, and the other side of that coin is that the people have to hold autocrats and plutocrats at genuine risk in order to control their own political destiny.
In my darkest hours, I feel that this is right, but I'm just not willing to consider giving up, because I know that the safety and well-being of millions of people depends on the federal government having its shit together.
He's just Mittens from the block.
ReplyDeleteYikes, now I'm picturing Mitt with a J-Lo booty... NEED BRAINBLEACH!!!
ReplyDelete