[Janice D. Soderling]

They all walked right into the trap. The media, the twitterites, the pundits.

Of course the Melania Trump speech was intentional plagiarism. Of course it was. The Trump people knew it would generate media attention and blow smoke over the real issues.

Trump has from the very beginning used memes proven already to work starting with Reagan's "Make America Great Again" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_America_Great_Again to the copied speech stance of Mussolini to the recycled lines by Nixon and the George Wallace strategy of defiance. From Day One all the memorable things he has said or done are straight from a playbook titled "It Worked Before and It Will Work Now".

If you are old enough to remember Moral Majority you will recognize familiar bugaboo rhetoric. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Majority

He knows that Americans are politically illiterate and he is a showman.

"There's a sucker born every minute" is a phrase closely associated with P. T. Barnum, an American showman of the mid-19th century, although there is no evidence that he said it. Early examples of its use are found instead among gamblers and confidence men.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%...n_every_minute

Full Definition of one–upmanship

1. : the art or practice of outdoing or keeping one jump ahead of a friend or competitor <engaged in a round of verbal one–upmanship

He knows exactly what he is doing and everyone fell for it.

And remember Trump never says anything without soon denying he said it--and the time span can be immediately or next morning. Even though it is caught on camera by the sleezy, dishonest media and there for anyone to see.

America is buying a pig in a poke. I want to boldface "pig" but I will refrain.

[Gail White]

Right, Janice, and another thing he is doing is recycling Nixon's "Southern Strategy" of coded racial messages while proclaiming himself above such things. All this about making America Safe and Great conceals the real agenda - turn back the clock and Make America White Again.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Yes, Gail, this from back in April.

It’s all a political and cultural flashback to the turbulent 1960s. Many raging Americans are looking to Trump to “Make America Great Again”, just as angry white “hard-hat conservatives” looked to Republican Richard Nixon to reestablish “law and order” and to take their country back from liberal politicians, minorities, and unwashed hippies.

Not so silent
The 2016 GOP frontrunner has been shamelessly borrowing from the Nixon playbook, using a Nixonian phrase to rally diehard, disenchanted conservatives: “It’s a term that I haven’t heard for years,” Trump intoned at a rally in Phoenix last summer. “But I really think it applies now more than maybe ever before, and that’s the term ‘the silent majority’… But the silent majority is back, and we’re going to take the country back.”
The crowd cheered boisterously. As Nixon used the phrase in 1968, so does Trump now in 2016. The silent majority was code for all those whites who were tired of civil rights protesters in the streets and anti-war agitators on college campuses. When Trump fumes about Mexican rapists or calls president Obama a “loser,” the so-called silent majority roars with approval.

http://www.salon.com/2016/04/23/dona...erica_partner/

The "silent majority" became the "moral majority" and then the Tea Party. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/03/t...rump-ted-cruz/

http://www.salon.com/2014/05/18/the_...ristian_right/

The country is totally obsessed with "winners and losers" mentality and a perverted belief that real Americans are exceptional to the rest of the world.

This egg has been a long time hatching, but now we see what was in it. A little monster that quickly grew taller than the Frankenstein who put it in the nest.

I said way earlier and I still think there is a very real chance that tried-and-true rhetoric and the misogynous attacks on Mrs. Clinton will put him in the White House and hand him the nuclear code.

[John Whitworth]

You don't realy think he's going to blow up the world do you Janice? After all, George Dubbya never managed it and he's a much bigger fool.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Ah, but there are fools everywhere, dear John. They pop up in the most unexpected places.

Theresa May has said she would be willing to authorise a nuclear strike that could kill 100,000 people, as the House of Commons voted overwhelming to replace Britain’s Trident programme.

The prime minister confirmed she would be prepared to press the nuclear button if necessary as she opened a debate about whether the UK should spend up to £40bn replacing four submarines that carry nuclear warheads.
After more than five hours of discussion, parliament voted in favour of Trident renewal by a majority of 355 in a motion backed by almost the entire Conservative party and more than half of Labour MPs.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...MCNEWEML6619I2

“But you, Achilles,/ There is not a man in the world more blest than you--/ There never has been, never will be one./ Time was, when you were alive, we Argives/ honored you as a god, and now down here, I see/ You Lord it over the dead in all your power./ So grieve no more at dying, great Achilles.’

I reassured the ghost, but he broke out protesting,/ ‘No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus!/ By god, I’d rather slave on earth for another man--/ Some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive—than rule down here over all the breathless dead.”
― Homer

[John Whitworth]

You are caling our new Prime Minister a fool, which is certainly your prerogative Janice, but I cannot agree. In fact I agree with her promotion of Trident, though I previoust thought it a waste of money. For the moment it keeps the British profile high. We and the French are the only nuclear countries in Europe. But it is the Germans who are most warlike and they wish for a European army. Fortuntely that will never now come to pass.

Incidentally, I previously thought Tony Blair a wicked man who would kill millions in order that he had a war to wake him look as big as Margaret Thatcher.

I now incline to think I was wrong. He was and is a deluded fool, next door to mad, those wild staring eyes...

[Julie Steiner]

Meanwhile, no one cares that the U.S.-led coalition's airstrikes have killed more than 100 civilians in Syria since June, because that has less entertainment value than making fun of Melania.

[Janice D. Soderling]

That was the point of the whole smoke-and-mirrors, wasn't it? To divert attention from real issues.

[Roger Slater]

Not making fun of Melania, but making fun of the Trump campaign that was so incompetent as to let this happen, with the not unreasonable suggestion that if this is how badly he runs a campaign then we might all shudder to think how badly he would run the country.

It is inconceivable to me that the Trump campaign did this on purpose. Sorry, but I find the idea to be ludicrous.

[Janice D. Soderling]

You might not like Hillary Clinton, or Sam Harris, but this I found "share-worthy".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Az1JyDJ_iKU