Arm music ii

The weekend ending today

saw the most fecklessly

out-of-his-depth pretend-

er to the Presidency, de-

livering the apposite sum-

mation of the most degen-

erate mess to which any-

one living has seen an A-

merican political party

sink. We are losing our

Republic, Rubio said. Yet

still there are the mo-

tions to go through, of

dividing up the spoils of

this least republican of

parties. Donald Trump is

expected to defeat Rubio

in his home state, and

lumber on to a Convention

desperate to bar the door.

The longtime writer for The

New Yorker, Adam Gopnik (The

Table Comes First, Paris to

the Moon) cut best, I be-

lieve, through the odd deni-

als of who is responsible

for Donald Trump, in an es-

say I link below. Trump is,

Gopnik argues, not because

there is anger in his demo-

graphic, which he inflames,

but because he offers solu-

tions.

This weekend we saw Trump's

volatile but carefully cal-

ibrated escalation of inten-

tional incivility reaching

a crescendo suggesting com-

plete confidence, now, in

taking over the Republican

Party. "Violence" is its

voice and its solution.

Every website of serious an-

alysis one could visit was

dominated by one hate-filled

portrait after another, and

all of the same discolored

face. How long Donald Trump's

face remains the logotype of

that Party is anyone's guess.

Whether it should become ours

or not, the world has watched

its emergence, and probably

has framed contingency plans

for the loss of our republic.

Here, it seems only Trump is

comparably prepared. His sol-

ution, meanwhile, is working.

Adam Gopnik

Roots and Rot

  Dodging the Blame

  for Donald Trump

March 9, 2016

The New Yorker

Condé Nast, 2016©

Glen Heppner

This way

undated