{"id":4687,"date":"2016-03-01T14:32:38","date_gmt":"2016-03-01T19:32:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lobenthal.com\/blog\/?p=4687"},"modified":"2016-03-04T12:59:39","modified_gmt":"2016-03-04T17:59:39","slug":"40-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lobenthal.com\/blog\/?p=4687","title":{"rendered":"A + B X 40 = TRUMP"},"content":{"rendered":"

He is the logical and inevitable culmination of the softening up and stupidification practiced on the American population over the last forty years.<\/p>\n

Part of the degradation involves making celebrity the be-all and end-all, the one undying, ubiquitous cathexis of the “mainstream” media.<\/p>\n

Andrew Bacevich writes<\/a> at The Nation.<\/p>\n

“To an extent unmatched by any other figure in American public life, Trump understands that previous distinctions between the ostensibly serious and the self-evidently frivolous have collapsed. . . in contemporary America, celebrity confers authority. Mere credentials or qualifications have become an afterthought.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He is the logical and inevitable culmination of the softening up and stupidification practiced on the American population over the last forty years. Part of the degradation involves making celebrity the be-all and end-all, the one undying, ubiquitous cathexis of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lobenthal.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lobenthal.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lobenthal.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lobenthal.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lobenthal.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4687"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/lobenthal.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4702,"href":"http:\/\/lobenthal.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4687\/revisions\/4702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lobenthal.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lobenthal.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lobenthal.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}