EXACTLY...O_o

*HUGS*

'I thought he was more on point and more reasonable this debate.'

SERIOUSLY?? No.nononononononononononononoooooo.

UGH.

*headdesk*

I realise there must be considerable PAIN re Trump, but... Lj cut please? (This is also a bit of a disturbing (& large) gif to have slapped on your flist first thing in the morning!)

*hugs you*

Oh, don't worry - and not at all, plenty of people are yet to wake up and check their flists! It was just a wee bit freaky. But clearly expressive of the PAIN. You have all my sympathies!!

…you bet.

♥

I know the feeling and France doesn't have anything close to a Trump. *sighs* Sometimes you wonder if this shit is even real.

Oh, Jean-Marie Le Pen was pretty awful as far as antisemitism, racism and overall "I'm going to find the thing that will most make you want to throw up and say it"-ness went. (Pétain was quite a fine man, the gas chambers were a detail of history, homosexuality is a biological and social anomaly, the Declaration of Human Rights was the beginning of the decadence of France etc etc. Oh, and torturing people in Algeria was also quite all right. He would know, he did it.) Marine Le Pen has completely normalized the whole thing though, that's the whole point. It's a lot less nauseating, pretty much your regular European populist party now, but it's how she got so close to power.

and his daughter has taken up his cause since his death, if I recall correctly
Oh, but this is where it gets delightful: he's very much alive and kicking—kicking in the general direction of his party and daughter, since she is now too tame for his liking. She had him expelled for some random antisemitic shit he said, which was horrible, but no more and no less horrible than the 1,000+ atrocities he'd spoken before—it gave her a reason to do it though, and now he's sueing everything in sight to get back in. He even made noises about having his own group running in the Assembly elections next year. Against the party he created. It's… thankfully very entertaining, since unlike her, he is no longer in a position to harm anyone by his mere political existence.

But yeah. The point about Le Pen was that he was perfectly happy being horrible in his corner, it was like he didn't even want power as long as he had room to yell his ideas in. It took his much, much cleverer daughter to get anywhere at all. Which is why the parallel with Trump has its limits, and why we can only relate to some extent to the surreal experience the American people is having right now… :/



Edited at 2016-10-11 05:00 pm (UTC)

Bad Kathy, for not knowing that!
You can't know everything ;)

I think that perhaps American citizens, particularly American political observers, got lulled into complacency by the thought that our crazies were perfectly happy being horrible in a corner — this despite having seen, again and again since the mid 1980s, that they were oozing out of that corner — and now we're recoiling in horror. More fools, we.
Yes—it's just that "this can't possibly get really serious" feeling, when people are just so awful or blatantly incapable, their getting anywhere near power appears surreal. And yet we get the nastiest surprises :(

Hah, yes, I heard all about that too. For some reason I think he should not have loudly told the world he, unlike others, had never actually assaulted a woman. Finally, a lie too big..