Performance Art?

Your Intertubes are abuzz with speculation over what the non-self-made ostensible (though 4 times bankrupt) billionaire with the four-dimensional comb-over is really up to -- is he running for President, trying to bump up ratings for his inane "reality" show, or just amusing himself in a semi-psychotic way?

Who the hell knows and who really cares? But he has certainly eliminated all doubt about the true beliefs of Republican primary voters. He shot right to the top of the polls by going all-in birther, and now he's showing us full frontal racism, which I will bet you four cans of hairspray is only going to boost his numbers. That, along with his foreign policy wisdom -- we should just "take" all the oil in Iraq as payment for freeing the country -- demonstrates conclusively what we're up against if we really want to defend representative government. The people who say they will vote for this evil idiot do actually get to vote.

Andrew Sullivan, who vacillates between good sense and insanity like a Lorenz attractor, thinks this is all very bad because it will further legitimize insanity and lies as instruments of politics. "My fear is the following: that by merely trumpeting these claims and stirring these fears, Trump gets more and more media platforms to promote them. And they slowly penetrate the culture, delegitimizing the president even more deeply among the Fox News base."

Fortunately, what Sullivan fears is impossible: there is no place deeper than the bottommost pit of lowermost sewer, and that would be Fox News. Trump is just painting a clown face on the devil, and thereby, I hope and believe, sapping his power. We shall see.