Ted Rall for July 23, 2015

Fought in an actual war?

That excludes pretty much every Republican after Bush I.

Unless you include Lindsey Graham, who has a side ‘career’ in the Air Force, a full chicken colonel. He fought several wars in the jungles of South Carolina.

What Trump show us is just how base the GOP base is, and the sad thing is they will turn out and vote so the rest of the candidates have to cater to them.

The dumb/angry shall lead us.

Trump isn’t a serious candidate. His only purpose is to be bombastic and outlandish. One of the mainstream GOP candidates will win the nomination and seem like a moderate in comparison. Republican voters, even those that supported Trump, will line up to support the eventual nominee. Some independents will look at the eventual GOP nominee and think “this guy isn’t so bad, just look at who it could have been”. Other independents will look at their two choices, Clinton and Mainstream GOP guy, and not vote at all because neither one appeals to them.

The GOP strategy to winning a presidential election is low voter turn out. Their base shows up to vote regardless. If they can sway a few independents and discourage minorities and remaining independents, then they win.

If the media were truly as left-leaning as some would have you believe, they would simply ignore the Trump sideshow and focus on the stupid things the mainstream candidates are saying. But the media ISN’T about choosing sides. They are about getting viewers and making money. Trump is outrageous and sensational. That sells. So, we get almost non-stop coverage of this idiot.

I agree that Trump is not serious. He’s a self-aggrandizing egotist who is seeking publicity.

Can you imagine the Mexican government handing out applications to those Mexicans who want to move to the US. They are not sending them, they, the illegal immigrants, do it on their own. What is their background? Who knows? As long as the border is like a sieve, they’ll come.Who opposes this the most? Is the immigrant who came through the front door, who submitted to background, and medical checks and paid the required fees. Granted there are people who have immigrated as refugees, but they are doing it legally. the truth is that the Mexican government doesn’t care who goes to the US, as long as they keep sending dollars back to mexico. In the mean time they are laughing all the way to the bank, chanting; let’s screw the gringos.

It’s called critical thinking. When I studied educational psychology I read that psychologists state that about 60% of the population never advances to the critical thinking cognitive stage. My first reaction was that I thought that figure seemed kind of low.