Trump Confederacy in Kissimmee.

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KISSIMMEE, Fla. — The most controversial moment of a Donald Trump rally here Thursday night may have come before the bombastic candidate took the stage. For a solid 20 minutes, a Confederate flag with the words “Trump 2016” hung from the railing in the Silver Spurs Arena.

It was easily visible even as public figures like Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and Pastor Mark Burns gave warm-up speeches before the Republican presidential nominee took the stage. Then minutes before Trump began his speech, organizers asked the supporters who brought the flag into the venue to furl it.

The imagery harkens back to a heated debate throughout the South over the flag’s racist meaning after another mass shooting, in Charleston, S.C., which ended with the flag being removed from the capitol grounds. It also harkens back to a New York Times video that recently went viral that recorded unfiltered remarks by Trump supporters that were unabashedly racist, misogynistic, and xenophobic. Confederate symbolism makes an apperance there as well.

The media doesn’t often focus on the attitude of the Trump crowds. Even in this latest case, as tends to happen at Trump rallies, such symbolism got brushed aside as the crowd got whipped up over other matters.

[…]

Most importantly, Trump was speaking in a suburb of Orlando two months after the Pulse massacre and hours after meeting with pastors and evangelicals during an event critics have called an anti-LGBT gathering. Trump made mention of the Orlando attack, saying more people should have reported shooter Omar Mateen to the FBI: “People knew he was demented.” In fact, Mateen was interviewed multiple times by the FBI based on complaints placed by those who knew him.

Clearly building off the closed-door discussions with leaders at the American Renewal Project conference in Orlando earlier in the day, Trump appealed to social conservatives in the room. “The evangelicals took me to a point that I never even thought we could reach,” he said. “All around the country we did well.”

The Advocate has the full story. Speaking of the intense anti-LGBT gathering in Orlando, again, Marco Rubio just will not shut up about being a keynote speaker, and keeps on attempting to defend his stance, while at the same time, telling people not to be judgmental. Hypocrisy knows no limit where Rubio is concerned:

 

ORLANDO — In a speech laden with scripture, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio on Friday compelled church leaders at a conference here to “abandon the spirit of judgment” against LGBT neighbors. The remarks came on the two-month anniversary of a shooting at the Pulse night club located about 10 miles from the religious gathering.

[…]

Rubio was the headline speaker for The American Renewal Project’s two-day event in Orlando, and on Friday devoted much of a 30-minute speech to encouraging preachers to create an accepting environment free of discrimination. “In order to love people, we have to listen to them,” he said. “When it comes to our brothers and our sisters, our fellow Americans, our neighbors in the LGBT community, we should recognize that our nation, while the greatest nation in the history of  mankind, is one with a history that has been marred by the discrimination against and the rejection of gays and lesbians.”

He also emphasized his continued opposition to marriage equality, saying his faith called for the elevation of the “union of one man and one woman.” But he said Christian leaders should understand many gays and lesbians felt “angry and humiliated” that the law until recently did not recognize their own loving relationships. “Many have experienced sometimes severe condemnation and judgment from some Christians,” Rubio said. “They have heard some say that the reason God will bring condemnation on America is because of them. As if somehow God was willing to put up with adultery and gluttony and greed and pride, but now this is the last straw.”

[…]

Rubio’s anti-LGBT record is lengthy. The senator doesn’t support the Equality Act proposed in Congress, for example. It would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the 1967 Civil Rights Act, ensuring protection from discrimination in housing and employment. When he had a chance to vote in 2013, Rubio voted against passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which some moderate Republicans helped pass 64-32 in the Senate, though it would stall in the House. But his discriminatory policy stands don’t stop there. Rubio has in the past said letting LGBT people adopt children is a “social experiment” that he opposes. He also opposed reversing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that required LGBT people to stay closeted while serving in the U.S. military.

The Advocate has the full story.

Diagnosing Tea Party Style.

Dr. Jane Orient (Screen cap via NewsMax TV).

Dr. Jane Orient (Screen cap via NewsMax TV).

On Wednesday, pro-Trump website Breitbart published Dr. Jane Orient’s unfounded speculation that Hillary Clinton could be “medically unfit to serve,” referring to Dr. Orient as the “executive director of a physicians’ organization.”

AAPS is a small nonprofit organization with Tea Party ties that prioritizes “individual liberty, personal responsibility, [and] limited government.” Their journal, as Mother Jones reported, has published articles suggesting that abortion causes breast cancer, that vaccines cause autism, and that AIDS is not caused by HIV. (Breitbart, naturally, has publishedarticles lending credence to at least two of these disproven theories.)

The AAPS also has a long history with the Clintons as well. The organization’s “About” page prominently features its opposition to the 1993 Clinton health care plan. In fact, the organization spent the better part of the ’90s embroiled in litigation against the former first lady, first suing her in 1993 to gain access to the records of the Task Force on National Health Care Reform. Eventually, in 1999, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of the Clinton administration.

[…]

Orient is quite the Trump fan, which of course, make her long distance diagnoses perfectly okay, yessir.

“Surely [Trump’s] style can be abrasive and blunt,” she wrote. “But a huge number of ordinary Americans cheer him, probably because he said what they were thinking.”

Her praise for Trump supporters continues: “They are sick of being pushed around and disrespected by the politically correct crowd who are hypersensitive about almost everything—but constantly spew profane, obscene, and vulgar language that demeans American and Christian culture and blames it for all the world’s evil.”

[…]

In her blog post, Orient repeats the usual conspiracy theories about the former Secretary of State’s physical condition. First, she comments on the photograph of Clinton supposedly having difficulty with a set of stairs, which was actually taken after an accidental slip.

“Did she simply trip?” Orient asks. And then, breathlessly: “Or was it a seizure or a stroke?”

In addition to that bit of grossly unethical speculation, Orient uses circuitous, Trump-esque phrasing to paint a picture of an ailing Clinton.

Instead of using the signature Trump phrase “many people are saying,” for example, Orient says that “it is widely stated that [Clinton] experienced a fall that caused a concussion” (emphasis added). She opines that certain videos of the Democratic nominee, “if authentic,” are “very concerning.” And she packs a mouthful of qualifiers into her claim that an object in a Secret Service agent’s hand “purportedly might have been an autoinjector of Valium” (emphasis added).

[…]

The irony of Orient adding fuel to that fire is that she herself is critical in the blog post of people who are “tossing out psychiatric diagnoses” such as narcissistic personality disorder to criticize Trump. …But even when asked why she would critique lay diagnoses of Trump if she engages in speculation about Clinton, Orient insisted that her choice was not unethical or hypocritical.

“Asking questions based on observable events is not engaging in unfounded speculation,” she told The Daily Beast. “I feel it would be irresponsible to ‘choose’ not to raise important questions.”

Via The Daily Beast.

ZAPP presents…Famous Trump Quotations!

Nothing else today will be anywhere near as cool as this gift from Billy West, so this is Cool Stuff Friday. :D

MAKE AMERICA BRANNIGAN!

Where the Confederacy Is Rising Again.

static2.politico.com

John Savage at Politico has an in-depth article about the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who not only continue their constant fight to keep confederate statues, symbols, and flags in place and protected, but are now planning a massive confederate monument, at the intersection of Interstate 10 and Orange’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, in the town of Orange, East Texas. Nothing subtle about that.

…Throughout this tempest, the Texas chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, an aging army of deeply religious, federal government distrusting, neo-Confederate true believers, has emerged as a steadfast defender of Confederate iconography. The Texas SCV only claims about 5,000 members, but their ideology carries significant weight in the state. SCV members sued the University of Texas in an effort to stop the removal of the Jefferson Davis statue. They distributed more than 1,000 Confederate flags in Fort Worth after the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo banned the Confederate battle flag. Wherever someone wants to rename a school or remove a statue that honors the Confederacy, the SCV’s members soon follow.

But the Texas SCV is not only fighting against the disappearance of Confederate symbolism, they are behind the construction of what is likely the largest Confederate memorial built in a century — a multi-ton shrine nearing completion in an east Texas town near the Louisiana border. For the SCV, this battle is not just about protecting a Confederate heritage, it’s about resurrecting it, restoring that heritage so that they will continue to have something to protect.

[…]

Jim Toungate is the adjutant of the Williamson County chapter of the Texas SCV, and Savage had a long interview with him at his residence.

[Read more…]

“Until I am out of ammo or out of blood, I WILL FIGHT”

trump-rnc-afp-800x430A lawsuit has been filed by a Trump campaign staffer, because it seems NC campaign director Earl Phillip was fond of motivating staffers with a gun. Phillip was relieved of his job just last week.

According to WBTV in Charlotte, when Vincent Bordini approached higher-ups in the campaign, they did nothing. Another campaign official confided to Bordini that he, too, had been threatened at gunpoint by Phillip.

WBTV’s Nick Ochsner posted the first page of Bordini’s complaint on Twitter. The incident took place in Phillip’s Jeep in February of this year, reportedly, when Phillip “produced a pistol, put his right index finger on the trigger, and drove the barrel into Vincent’s knee cap.”

Bordini went straight to campaign officials, the suit says, speaking first to the Trump campaign’s regional director of western North Carolina. “The Director told Vincent that he, too, had been brandished upon by Phillip,” the lawsuit says. “He was terrified.”

According to Ochsner, “campaign leadership, including then-camp mngr Lewandowski, refused to act.”

[…]

Phillip’s Facebook timeline is littered with pro-gun memes. “Until I am out of ammo or out of blood, I WILL FIGHT,” says one post.

“Life is about kicking ass,” says one image depicting an Army special forces operative brandishing an assault weapon, “not kissing it.”

Via Raw Story. I don’t have words for this, I really don’t. At this point, I’m not the least bit surprised, and like most everyone else, the constant stream of awful has left me numb. I know that’s bad, but I’m having trouble maintaining an effective sense of outrage. At this point, I’m just grateful this doucheweasel didn’t manage to kill or maim anyone.

You’re never “just joking.” Nobody is ever “just joking.”

Jason Steed’s tweet storm has gone viral, and with good reason. He tackled the idea that Trump was “just joking” about that whole 2nd amendment people taking care of Clinton.

But in a certain sense, it doesn’t really matter what Trump intended. This tweetstorm, from Dallas lawyer Jason P. Steed, explains why.

Before becoming a lawyer, Steed was an English professor. He wrote his PhD dissertation on “the social function of humor” and found something important: Jokes about socially unacceptable things aren’t just “jokes.” They serve a function of normalizing that unacceptable thing, of telling the people who agree with you that, yes, this is an okay thing to talk about.

This, Steed explains, is why “it’s a joke” isn’t a good defense of racist jokes. By telling the joke, the person is signaling that they think racism is an appropriate thing to express. “Just joking” is just what someone says to the people who don’t appreciate hearing racist stuff — it shouldn’t matter any more than saying “no offense” after saying something offensive.

Likewise, Trump is signaling that assassinating Hillary Clinton and/or her Supreme Court nominees is an okay thing to talk about. He’s normalizing the unacceptable.

This is very much the same as the standard you walk past is the standard you accept, but people are always trying to exempt humor from that, and it is not exempt, in spite of all those who wish it to be.

Vox has the whole tweet storm, and Think Progress has an in depth article and interview with Steed.

Homosexual totalitarianism is out of the closet!

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Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump will meet with a group of around 700 evangelical pastors this week, hoping to win over hardline, anti-gay Religious Right leaders who have thus far been hesitant to embrace his struggling candidacy.

Trump is scheduled to speak on Thursday at a closed-door meeting in Orlando, Florida hosted by the American Renewal Project (ARP), a group of evangelical Christian pastors. The event has been widely criticized as anti-LGBT, with another selected speaker — former Florida senator and former GOP presidential candidate Mark Rubio — fending off accusations of insensitivity for appearing at the event so soon after the tragic murder of nearly 50 people in Orlando at a gay nightclub in June.

Rubio has also defended his doing so, won’t shut up about it, actually. These are people who have no empathy whatsoever, don’t know what compassion means, and are utterly bereft of lowly sympathy.

Accusations of anti-gay sentiment are rooted in inflammatory statements made by the ARP’s founder, David Lane. Lane’s group is sponsored by the American Family Association, which is listed as an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. In addition, he has personally called for “war” against the “pagan onslaught imposing homosexual marriage” in the past, and repeated similarly bombastic sentiments to Bloomberg this week.

“Homosexual totalitarianism is out of the closet, the militants are trying herd Christians there,” Lane said.

Indeed, Lane appeared hopeful that Trump would be swayed to his right-wing ideology. He said he appreciated the businessman’s support for repealing the Johnson Amendment — the law that makes it illegal for churches to retain tax-exempt status if they explicitly endorse candidates — but remained focused on pushing him to embrace policies many believe discriminate against LGBT people in the name of religion.

“[Repealing the Johnson Amendment is] a good first step,” Lane told Bloomberg. “But what about the religious liberty of Christian photographers, Christian bakers, Christian retreat centers, and pastors who believe same-sex intercourse and marriage is sin? These Christians were simply living out their deeply held convictions of their Christian faith when they politely refused to provide services for a same-sex wedding. Doesn’t the First Amendment give us all a right to our beliefs?”

As usual, these bigoted hate-mongers manage to completey lose the “all” in all a right to our beliefs. Yes, we certainly do have the privilege to believe whatever we like, no matter how daft, reasonable, or hateful. The key word being all. That means you don’t get to make the rules, Mr. Lane. Your right to believe what you like does not extend to harming people, and yes, discrimination is harm.

Trump could, hypothetically, push on without such endorsements, but there is a tactical value at stake: Evangelical turnout operations are often heavily reliant on leadership — especially faith leaders who attend Pastors and Pews meetings, many of whom played a key role in evangelical get-out-the-vote efforts during the 2012 election cycle.

This means Lane’s wish for a more vocally-anti-LGBT Trump could very come true, if only out political necessity. Nearly three-quarters of white evangelical Christians remain opposed to marriage equality — even though most other major religious groups in America support it. Since the group still makes up a sizable part of the Republican electorate, Trump may be hoping to revive his rapidly decreasing poll numbers by winning back the core of his Republican base.

This might be more than a probability, given Trump’s latest attempt to wrest money from people, the “Trump Gold Card“:

According to Trump, the card will signify to the world that you “are tired of a government that bows down to foreigners, refuses to even say the words ‘Radical Islam,’ and leaves our borders wide open!”

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Trump Woos Radical Christians at Think Progress. The ‘Trumpet your Trumpness’ is at Raw Story.

32.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Whitehouse.gov.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Whitehouse.gov.

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office in 1933, as many as 2 million sheep grazed on the Navajo Nation.

That was in addition to hundreds of thousands of goats, cattle and horses that foraged on the 27,000-square-mile reservation spanning parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. The Navajo population itself had quintupled since 1870 and, at the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, about 39,000 Navajos lived on the sprawling reservation, embracing a life of pastoralism and moving livestock from winter homes to summer pastures.

But the Navajo, who were almost entirely dependent on income from sheep and wool, were hit hard by the worst economic disaster in American history. The livestock population skyrocketed while revenues plummeted, and the Navajo Agency reported in 1933 that income had “greatly reduced to the vanishing point,” according to Raymond Friday Locke’s “The Book of the Navajo.”

The land was also showing signs of overgrazing and environmental distress, and its deepening gullies and parched vegetation caught the attention of the federal government. Four months after Roosevelt took office, his newly appointed commissioner of Indian Affairs, John Collier, toured the Navajo Nation and proposed an aggressive and often coercive livestock reduction program.

John Collier. Corbis image/Wikipedia.

John Collier. Corbis image/Wikipedia.

[Read more…]

Five Steves.

Trump economic adviser Tom Barrack, CEO of Colony Capital, spoke at the July Republican National Convention. CREDIT: AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill.

Trump economic adviser Tom Barrack, CEO of Colony Capital, spoke at the July Republican National Convention. CREDIT: AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill.

Trump has announced his economic policy advisory team, all men, five Steves, and one person with a Ph.D. Naturally, the amount of actual economists on the economic policy advisory team is short, to say the least. Economists on economic policy? That would be silly. Or something.

Steve Roth, a fellow real estate investor and the billionaire CEO of Vorando Reality. Roth and Trump reportedly co-own a Manhattan office tower together.

Harold Hamm, an oil and gas billionaire and chairman and CEO of Continental Resources. He served as an energy adviser to Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign and as a major donor to the pro-Romney Restore Our Future super PAC.

Howard Lorber, president and CEO of Vector Group — a company that owns both real estate and tobacco companies.

Steven Mnuchin, a hedge fund investor and co-CEO and chairman of Dune Capital Management, he is a longtime friend of Trump’s despite the candidate’s public criticism of hedge fund investors. In May, Trump appointed him national finance chairman for the campaign.

Tom Barrack, another real estate investor and CEO of Colony Capital. He founded Rebuild America Now, a pro-Trump super PAC. During the Republican primary, Trump denounced super PACs and requested the return of all donations to any supporting him, but he hasn’t rejected their support during the general campaign.

Stephen M. Calk, CEO and chairman of Federal Savings Bank. He has been a critic of the Obama administration’s banking regulations.

John Paulson, another billionaire hedge fund manager and president of Paulson & Co. Paulson, made billions of dollars in profit from shorting the market during the 2007 housing bubble.

Andy Beal, a billionaire investor and founder of Beal Bank. In addition to making a huge profit buying up undervalued assets during the 2008 recession, he has made waves as a mathematician and high-stakes poker player.

Steve Feinberg, the secretiveCEO of Ceberus Capital Management, a private investment firm which specializes in “distressed investing.” Among the firm’s assets: Remington, the manufacturer of the AR-15.

David Malpass, founder and president of Encima Global, a economic consulting and research firm. He held positions in the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations and unsuccessfully ran for the New York Republican U.S. Senate nomination in 2010.

Peter Navarro, a business school professor and anti-China author. He has praised Trump’s “peace through economic and military strength” strategy as “right out of the Reagan playbook.

Stephen Moore, the Heritage Foundation scholar, former Wall Street Journal columnist and founder of the anti-tax Club for Growth. His economic predictions have been wildly inaccurate.

Dan DiMicco, the former president and CEO of steel giant Nucor Corporation. DiMicco authored a 2015 book urging a return to American manufacturing.

Via Think Progress.

Sunday Facepalm.

Pat Boone Paul Archuleta/FilmMagic/Getty Images Oh, he just won’t shut up. Last week, in a column for world nut daily, Pat Boone opined on how God has done turned his back on his most favourite place, Amerikka.

Pat Boone declared that “God has lifted His hand of protection from the United States of America,” claiming that the use of food stamps, the national debt and ISIS terrorism are all signs that “we’re pretty much on our own now.”

Instead of “Morning in America,” we have 20 trillion in unpayable debt, dollar bills worth about 0 cents in purchasing power, CIA reports of festering ISIS cells in all 50 states and 47 million citizens on food stamps.

Following a president and attorney general who refuse to enforce existing immigration laws, we have a candidate who intends to admit 80,000 Syrian refugees into this country, while both the FBI and CIA guarantee there will be many trained terrorists in that number.

How can our beloved country have deteriorated so drastically? I’ll tell you how.
God has lifted His hand of protection from the United States of America.

In effect, He’s saying, “You as a people have increasingly let me know you don’t need me, you don’t even want me, to guide and determine your affairs. So … have it your way. Try it on your own for a while, and see how it goes.”

We’re pretty much on our own now.

Yes, just like we have always been. Our current state of affairs? Well, that would be humans being human, and humans are prone to fucking things up. Interesting that in the middle of all these horrible things, people on food stamps still come in for their share of blame. I guess it isn’t a proper opine if you can’t work in some way to blame poor people.

…If God can use an ass for His purpose … He can use a Donald Trump, for example. Or, of course, a Hillary Clinton. The question: Which one, if either, will actually look to Him, seek His will and not “political correctness” in the crucial decisions that will determine our future?

How will we choose? How to decide? I quote from Mae West, “If I have to choose between two evils, I’ll go with the one I haven’t tried.”

Pat Boone has never been funny, but he seems to have become an unintentional comedian. I doubt he has the slightest idea of just how much he pinged the irony meters here.

One we’ve tried, and know perhaps too well. The other is unknown, but will he seek to do the will of God if elected?

This is what we do now: Ask God to make plain to us His choice. Is there yet another David to confront our Goliath?

You better shout at that god of yours to hurry the fuck up, Pat, you’re running out of time here. Also, I have to point out that no, we have not “tried one” and we don’t know too well, because Hillary Clinton has never been president. I know it’s a difficult concept for Christians like yourself, but really, women are capable of using their brains, and having their own ideas and opinions. It might be nice if you could think through this one little problem: that David of yours seems to be quite interested in using nuclear weapons. While that might give Christians a thrill, it’s not so good for the rest of us, who are not anxious to give extinction a helping hand.

Via Right Wing Watch.

NYC: ‘Blue Lives Matter’ Bill.

CREDIT: eddtoro/Shutterstock

CREDIT: eddtoro/Shutterstock

New York has become the latest state to introduce a Blue Lives Matter bill, which would classify assaulting an officer as a hate crime. The bill was introduced today by New York Assemblyman Ron Castorina (R), with support from Council Member Joseph C. Borelli (R) and NYPD Sergeant Joe Imperatrice, the president and founder of Blue Lives Matter NYC.

Hate crime legislation currently only applies to attacks based on race, sexual orientation, national origin, and religious affiliation. But this new legislation would classify cops as a protected class, aligning them with ethnic and religious minorities and the LGBT community.

In an interview with the New York Observer, Castorina noted the recent attacks on cops in Baton Rouge and Dallas this past month as a driving force for the bill. He also blamed Black Lives Matter protests for provoking violence against law enforcement.

“It’s based on this climate in this country right now where police officers are being abused and they’re being disrespected, and we’re seeing they have a target on their back, in Louisiana and in Dallas,” Castorina said. “You can envision this happening at a protest, where somebody might throw a rock or a bottle or a punch.”

Talk about a bad, knee-jerk reaction. This is completely unnecessary, as punishments for assaulting a cop are much higher than assaulting a non-cop, and everyone knows that cops will already do whatever they need to in order to tack on a resisting arrest charge, so now they’ll be busy finding ways to tack on an assault charge, too. Oh, this won’t lead anywhere bad, no, of course not. :Insert spine popping eyeroll here: Honesty would be welcome. Why not just call this what it is, a brutal enforcement of bowing down to authority? Being a cop is nowhere near as dangerous as a number of other jobs, and the majority of cops are killed in traffic accidents. The stats are quite clear as to there being many more civilians shot and killed by cops, then cops being shot by civilians.

Civilians get killed by police far more often. Law enforcement officers shot and killed some 990 people in 2015 and another 491 in the first half of this year, according to the Washington Post’s award-winning tracking of police shootings.

That’s almost 1,500 police killings in 18 months, compared to 305 law enforcement officers attacked and killed in the line of duty in the six-year span of numbers in the new report. Police officers have shot and killed about 82 people each month nationwide since the start of last year, and have been killed by attackers roughly 4 times per month going back to the start of 2010.

So of course, cops must be made into a protected class, oh my yes! As these bills pass, and they will, we can all look forward to many more people dying unjustly at the hands of cops, and those who don’t die may well end up with extended prison sentences because of cops who will claim assault. Just what our already over-burdened, fucked up penal system needs. Fuck stormtroopers.

Via ThinkProgress.

A Neuroscientist Tackles Loyalty to Trump.

Audience member Robin Roy (C) reacts as U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump greets her at a campaign rally in Lowell, Massachusetts January 4, 2016. (BRIAN SNYDER / Reuters)

Audience member Robin Roy (C) reacts as U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump greets her at a campaign rally in Lowell, Massachusetts January 4, 2016. (BRIAN SNYDER / Reuters)

A neuroscientist takes on the remarkable loyalty and obliviousness of those who support and follow Trump. It’s a fairly comprehensive article, starting with the well known Dunning-Kruger effect, and ending with the unfortunate affliction of being entertainment addicted. Just a bit from the end of the article here, click over for the full read.

  1. High Attentional Engagement

According to a recent study that monitored brain activity while participants watched 40 minutes of political ads and debate clips from the presidential candidates, Donald Trump is unique in his ability to keep the brain engaged. While Hillary Clinton could only hold attention for so long, Trump kept both attention and emotional arousal high throughout the viewing session. This pattern of activity was seen even when Trump made remarks that individuals didn’t necessarily agree with. His showmanship and simple messages clearly resonate at a visceral level.

Essentially, the loyalty of Trump supporters may in part be explained by America’s addiction with entertainment and reality TV. To some, it doesn’t matter what Trump actually says because he’s so amusing to watch. With Donald, you are always left wondering what outrageous thing he is going to say or do next. He keeps us on the edge of our seat, and for that reason, some Trump supporters will forgive anything he says. They are happy as long as they are kept entertained.

Of course these explanations do not apply to all Trump supporters. In fact, some are likely intelligent people who know better, but are supporting Trump to be rebellious or to introduce chaos into the system. They may have such distaste for the establishment and Hillary Clinton that their vote for Trump is a symbolic middle finger directed at Washington.

Full article here. I found the Hypersensitivity to Threat and Terror Management Theory sections very interesting. Going by that, it’s much easier to see why so many people have flocked to Trump, and manage to defend every horrible, evil thing he says.