The Digest—Thursday, 15 December, 2016

[The Digest is a collection of articles, videos, and other media I've viewed and found significant throughout the day. It is a way to divest myself from other social media that is more reliant on likes, click-bait, and peer-approval rather than quality, intelligence, and diversity of opinion, which are the qualities I find important. It is also a way to devote myself to daily contributions to this space...at least in theory.]

-=Summary: Trump's grodie Grill(e), TRUMP HATES vanity Fair, Arnie wants you to "stop whining," & The Prisoner=-

Articles:
Trump Grill Could Be the Worst Restaurant in America
Tina Nguyen from Vanity Fair

From the sound of it, the author was spot-on in saying that, "The allure of Trump’s restaurant, like the candidate, is that it seems like a cheap version of rich." And again:

If the cheeseburger is a quintessential part of America’s identity, Trump’s pledge to “make America great again” suddenly appeared not very promising. (Presumably, Trump’s Great America tastes like an M.S.G.-flavored kitchen sponge lodged between two other sponges.)

Brilliant. But what gets to the heart of the matter is, 

Perhaps Trump’s veneer of a steakhouse is too obviously a veneer, meant for the hoodied masses to visit once and never return. (There are already an infinite number of articles about how Trump’s mass-produced products are meant to impress a hollow sense of wealth.)

This is Trump all over, in everything, each ostentatiously gilded chair, each spray tan, cheating the government out of taxes and contractors out of pay, running for president—they are shoutouts to wealth and power, objects and activities and behavior meant to say, explicitly, I am rich and thus I am powerful and thus I can do anything I want so nyaaaahhhh, though the word "thus" is a bit complicated for him. 

Everything he does, everything he buys, every building he vandalizes with his name and tweet expelled to pollute the cybersphere is not an expression of wealth and power, but an expression meant to confer the perception of wealth and power. He really really really really wants everyone to know just how much wealth and power he has so that you will treat him like he's the wealthiest, most powerfulest perfect specimen of half-orangutang to have existed ever ever ever. 

The desperation and fragility of this construct is readily apparent in his hypervigilence toward criticism and the hysterical rage he ejaculates in response. The reason he thinks his daughter is such a hot "piece of ass" is not just about her looks, but that he played a role in her creation. 

More on Trump's ragefail below. 


Trump just can't let go of feud with Vanity Fair
Jill Disis from CNN

The above critique of his Grill(e) might have played a role in this, but the following was the most succinct and disturbing line:

Last year, he said he loved seeing Carter and Vanity Fair "failing so badly"

As Gore Vidal said, it's not enough to win; others have to lose. Here is a man who has so much wealth that losing $19 billion in a single year was seen as a bonus because of future tax avoidance. Here is a man who urgently needs everyone to think he has it all, is the best, perfect, a genius, buys what he wants, grabs what he wants (and where he wants), and virulently rejects anything that defies his own personal mythologizing. 

But it is not enough for Trump to "have it all." He needs to see others not just fail, but to suffer. He enjoys it. His attacks are not just about compensation for the remarkably weak veneer of his ego, but about the delight of the bully inflicting pain. He surrounds himself with sycophants and yes-men reliant on him for their welfare and pounces with glee at the opportunity to cast them back down, then makes a spectacle of tearing out their wings.

This is not political behavior. This is Trump's joie de vivre, and no one is immune from its insatiability.

Schwarzenegger talks 'Apprentice,' tells anti-Trump voters 'stop whining'

Eugene Scott from CNN

New "Celebrity Apprentice" host Arnold Schwarzenegger told Americans who did not support Donald Trump need to "stop whining" and get behind the president-elect.

DON'T THINK. OBEY. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.
I might accept that from bald, sexy aliens, but not from a human-orangutang hybrid and an Austrian nanny-fucker. It should be very ¡¡¡¡¡FIVE-ALARM FIRE MAGNITUDE 9.1 CATEGORY 5 DEFCON TWO TERRIFYING!!!!!

You know what I say to that? 

"I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum."

DAMN RIGHT.

But seriously. How do they not see how insidious such statements are? "Quit whining" utterly dismisses the very real anger, fear, and despair many are feeling. It says "shut the fuck up and fall in line." It says there can only be one voice, one idea, one opinion, one value in this country: Trump, only-Trump, always Trump. Right now he attacks personally on Twitter. What about when he is in actual control of the FBI and NSA and CIA?

TV/Film:

The Prisoner, episodes 2 & 3

Yay and yay! I wish more people knew this show.