Just because it’s quieter doesn’t make it any smarter.
Thursday night’s Republican presidential debate in Miami — one of what physics tells us could theoretically be millions — was a subdued affair, especially compared to the flailing, hair-pulling, spitball-shooting daycare fight of last week. But the best thing you can say about it is that a controlled and even-toned insane statement can be just as menacing and just as insane.
The immediate concern for the other Republican candidates is that the beast seems to be learning. Donald Trump’s opening statement actually sounded as if it had been prepared and considered, a disciplined departure from his previous free associations about winning, doing the opposite of not-winning, then getting sick of it. Now that the finish line is in sight, the raw, ravening animal that is the spirit of the Trump campaign appears willing to play at looking tame if it will snooker more squares on the way to the ballot box.
It doesn’t mean it’s any less threatening. When questioned on a recent incident in which a Trump fan at a rally in North Carolina sucker-punched a black protester in the face, Trump expressed dislike for the incident. But he understood. His supporters “have anger that’s unbelievable. They love this country. They don’t like seeing bad trade deals. They don’t like losing their jobs.”
Then he defended violent statements he’d made about protesters in the past by talking about “some protesters who are bad dudes... they are swinging, they are really dangerous... We had a couple big powerful strong guys doing damage to people.” Bottom line: these sorts of things are bad, but when they happen, the protestors have it coming.
A decent chunk of the debate audience cheered, by the way. That’s an important thing to remember, because the rest of the GOP field would prefer voters to think that the Trump campaign is a recent, invasive violent species in their ecosystem, rather than a more aggressive mutation of the same species. Demonising the left, minorities and foreigners as a mortal cancer growing unchecked within the American body politic has pretty much been the playbook since 1968. Angrily rejecting them is not only necessary but a constitutionally protected right for the good sorts of Americans.
And if that observation seems a little abstruse, then there was Ted Cruz to clarify it for you. You see, he understands the anger of people at Trump rallies because Barack Obama is an imperial president and “Washington isn’t listening to people”. He understands violence, because he can pivot it to his brand: #MakeDCListen. And as for Trump, Cruz, Republicans in general — they don’t need to take steps to condemn violence themselves, because curbing it is impossible anyway. It’s Obama’s fault. We just have to wait out the clock on his hate-inspiring dystopia.
Things did not get any more sensible on foreign policy. When asked to defend his previous statements about going after terrorists’ families and killing them, which is a war crime, Trump said that the United States cannot be hamstrung by laws. Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) can drown people in cages, but we can’t waterboard. Solution: “We have to obey the laws, but we have to expand those laws, because we have to be able to fight on somewhat of an equal footing”. Addington, Bybee and Yoo would be proud.
When asked for comment, Marco Rubio distanced himself from Trump by essentially saying the exact same thing. We will not go after the families of terrorists, just the terrorists themselves. We will do that by expanding the army, navy and air force — three notoriously pinpoint-precise entities that historically exhibit near priest-like restraint and never kill things in the same vicinity as terrorists, like families. He also repeated his call to take terrorists to Guantanamo and do everything we can to find out everything we know. It’s a cute allusion to indefinite detention and torture, which is a war crime.
Cruz did not repeat his earlier calls to carpet bomb areas of the Middle East where Daesh hides — which would not only be just as futile as every other historical incidence of carpet bombing, but would also be a war crime. His followers have probably not forgotten, though.
If you want to round out the depressing tour of insanity, there was also Rubio’s statement on climate change, which breaks down to these component parts: America is not a planet. Our doing things does not stop others from doing things, so all action is futile. Renewable energy will only ever cost more money that fossil fuels, and asking people to pay more on their electric bill now will be much more ruinous than, say, relocating tens of millions of Florida residents to high ground later. He lives in Miami, and it is built on a swamp.
Singling out Rubio might seem unfair, like physically kicking a rejected contestant out the door, but his responses to what even the American military and intelligence committee considers a massive coming global security and economic crisis are no more or less intelligent than anyone else’s, except Kasich, who matters almost as little.
If there is any lesson here, it is that a measured professional-sounding set of stupid ideas is no less dangerous than one screamed from a step-pyramid of upended shopping carts. It just makes it easier for people enamoured of unreasonable things to subscribe to such stupid ideas in public.
That’s a lesson Trump has learned, and he ended the evening with a Bernie Sanders-esque sales pitch about all the new voters he’s attracting. “Embrace these people, who for the first time ever love the Republican party,” he said. “Be smart and unify.”
He just may make it happen.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
