Friday Political Awakenings, and Other Fever Dreams

Last night was the Trump-less Republican debate, which someone unfortunately scheduled for the exact same time that Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum showed up at a pep rally for Donald Trump. Awkward for Fox News, huh? And as Trevor Noah said this week, the fact that we’re even talking about it means that Trump won.

Meanwhile, in advance of Iowa, all of the candidates are either polishing up their Christian badges by staying in a Holiday Inn - for Trump, that’s like chilling with the lepers - or spending $1.1 million on ads to attack Ted Cruz's Jesus street cred when you’re at 2% in the polls. It's the final line of the terrifyingly even-keeled and non-flabbergasted NYT piece above on Trump in Iowa that sums up the this strange dog and pony show: "Classic rapid response, pragmatic logistics and overt shows of faith are all basic parts of the job of running for president.” One of these things is not like the other...

In other news, one reality that actually helps me get out of bed in the morning is that the first episode of Samantha Bee’s new late night show “Full Frontal” airs on February 8th. Let it be known: I LOVE Samantha Bee. Not only is she a fellow Canadian-(New) American, she honed my twenty-something female awareness (read: incredulity) of the world as the longest serving correspondent of The Daily Show, which I watched via iTunes downloads from my dorm room. Bee sat down with Rebecca Traister of NY Mag to discuss the new show and it’s awesome. I cannot wait.

And for some light reading into the mind of disaffected young men, may I suggest Ayn Rand Made Me a Communist: How an adolescent love affair with "Atlas Shrugged" opened up the world of radical politics. I’d like to draw attention to this section in particular, which Jacob Bacharach tells before mentioning he smoked pot and read Marx;

To a disaffected teenager, Atlas serves as a thrillingly direct indictment of the whole damn system, man. The government is hopelessly corrupt. Society is hopelessly corrupt. But for a few men of genius—the reader is implicitly invited to imagine himself as one of these, even if Rand herself would’ve disdained the pimply physical defectiveness of her lumpen adolescent readership—the world would be a morass of totalitarian misery. Let the world burn, and out of the ashes arise a new order!

Yours in political awakenings,
Amy