were in response to the New York Times' scathing editorial today, urging voters to reject Trump and his enablers in Congress. Trump told his MAGA cultists to pretend he's on the ballot. The NYT agreed with him and strongly advised voters to give him an incontestable message.
Here's the comment to that editorial and a follow-up comment to it:
Julio Wong
El Dorado, OH · 7h ago
This election should not be limited to a repudiation of Trump, It should be a repudiation of the Republican Party as a whole - specifically, its acquiescence to Trump; its embrace of anti-democratic and unconstitutional norms; its abandonment of truth, justice, and the social contract; and it’s corruption. Republicans up and down ballot are complicit in America’s recent decline. And they should all be held accountable at the ballot.
Jim Brokaw
California · 4h ago
@Julio Wong -- This! When a member of Congress takes office, they swear an oath to the United States Constitution - Not the president. Not a political party. They swear an oath to the entire nation through the Constitution. The position of being a member of Congress carries with it certain Constitutional duties and certain Constitutional privileges and powers. The Republicans in Congress have grossly and negligently broken and ignored their oaths of office by failing to do their Constitutional duty diligently and for the United States rather than their president, their party, and their own political careers. For this failing the Republicans in Congress all deserve and have earned defeat. Not all will fall in defeat in this election, but to the extent that many do lose, that they suffer the consequences of their negligence will perhaps be instructive to those who remain - and it certainly will be a restorative to the entire nation.
13 comments:
The fact that so many of the candidates are close in the polls tells us Americans who vote for Republicans haven't learned a damn thing.
This country is very much a former democratic republic in steep decline,
The Democrat's "Superlative Kayfabe Principle" invoked...
The "superlative principle" of kayfabe dictates that the presentation of characters, conflicts, and events must always be absolute, heightened, and unyielding to maintain the illusion of reality. In professional wrestling, kayfabe is the unspoken code where performers and audiences collectively pretend that a staged performance is genuine. The superlative principle is the engine that drives this illusion. It ensures that storylines never admit to being halfway true or moderately important—they are always matters of ultimate supremacy, ultimate hatred, or life-and-death consequences.
How the Superlative Principle Governs Kayfabe
• Absolute Characters: A wrestler cannot simply be a "good athlete." They must be the most dangerous man on the planet, an undead entity, or a billionaire royalty. The characteristics are taken to their furthest logical extreme.
• Total Conviction: Performers must present their reality with 100% commitment. If a villain ("heel") encounters their rival in public, the superlative principle requires them to maintain total animosity rather than breaking character to be friendly, protecting the "code of silence" at all costs.
• Hyperbolic Stakes: Matches are rarely fought just for points. They are fought for ultimate validation—"The Greatest of All Time," absolute revenge, or career survival.
Broader Applications Outside Wrestling
Because the principle demands an unyielding insistence on an artificial, heightened reality, the term has migrated into other fields:
• Politics: When a political figure or campaign treats a manufactured rivalry or an exaggerated narrative as an absolute, existential crisis—completely ignoring nuance or factual contradictions—they are utilizing the superlative principle of kayfabe.
• Media and Marketing: Reality television and online influencers frequently apply this rule, inflating minor disagreements into permanent, catastrophic feuds to maximize audience engagement.
...the Trumpian Supervillain MUST be Stppoed NOW!
In professional wrestling commentary and storytelling, the "superlative principle" is the narrative rule that the current moment, match, or villain must always be framed as the absolute greatest, most dangerous, or most historic of all time.
Coined in media analysis surrounding Vince McMahon’s traditional WWE commentary style, this principle dictates that past events—no matter how monumental—effectively cease to matter in order to maximize the drama of tonight's show.
Key Characteristics of the Superlative Principle
• Erasure of the Past: Last month's pay-per-view or last year's historic storyline is treated as a distant memory. The current event is aggressively promoted as the absolute pinnacle, often with claims that not even legendary events like past WrestleManias were bigger.
• The "Ultimate" Threat: Every new villain or rival is presented as the most diabolical, destructive, or dangerous force in the history of the sport, threatening to end the hero's legacy forever.
• Hyperbolic Urgency: Commentators use continuous superlatives (the greatest, the most, the ultimate) to command viewers' immediate attention and build intense, short-term emotional stakes
Shaw... this is essentially what I have been saying for years. Absent a vocal repudiation or rejection of a party's extremes, the party becomes those extremes.
We saw it with the Dems when no one who was pro life was allowed to run and we're seeing it now with the GOP.
It takes people who generally, in this case, support MAGA but realize the damage it has done their their party, to step up. And step up not to just repudiate Trump, but the entire party.
Unless and until the people like Z, Skud and others tell the GOP to get back to business, which includes supporting our Allies and bringing the deficit under control, as opposed to endless culture wars, we'll never get better.
Here's an experiment for our conservatives. I start with this... every party has it's fringe, it's extreme elements.
What views do the extremes of the current GOP hold? What policies are their favorites?
That will tell us a lot, should our conservatives choose to answer.
Trump is the gift that keeps on giving to the democrats. When you have an overall approval rating of 31% (Updated October 20, 2026 Trump's approval falls to record low of 31% as midterms near, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds). When he made the statement think of me think of me as though I was on the ballot (MS Now Sept. 21, 2026, 6:00 AM EDT “I’m asking you to just pretend I’m on the ballot just one more time,”)
IMPO he has done more harm to the republicans running than if he had just shut up. IMHO he still feels he is important.
Now the democrats can plan for his impeachment and develop a new platform for the 28 elections on how to do nothing for the America people and follow the example of the republicans.
("Jeffries will almost certainly be under pressure from the far left to move more swiftly to articles of impeachment against Trump, who during his first became the first president to be twice impeached by the House." PBS Updated on Sep 28, 2026 12:26 PM EDT).
Can you actually give us YOUR OWN thoughts ever on a subject? This is just labeling and not addressing what was in the Times's editorial. IMO, what Trump has been doing over the past decade is acting out his personality disorder, and it's gotten worse over the last 2 years. He's in mental decline and he taking the country with him.
Hopefully Americans, who are struggling just keep their heads above water due to inflation caused by the Moron In Chief and his illegal war of choice, will consider the longer term economic and societal decline if his moronic tariffs and his illegal war of choice continue.
The so called president has no plan relative to ending the illegal war, he intended to continue tariffing the hell out of everybody, he had no plan for improving the shitty health care system, he is methodically dismantling our democratic norms in favor of authoritarianism (fascism), he continues to line his pocket (2.3 billion in less than 2 years and favors his oligarch budies in ever business sector, and more.
If we do not put roadblocks in place with this mid term to stop the Moron in Chief America as a functioning Democratic Republic will cease to exist.
Exactly as trump and his fascist capitalist elites are salivating over.
Skud... See, that's not so hard is it? But... I doubt Trump will be up for impeachment UNLESS it's a blue wipeout next week.
More likely? Look at Hegseth for impeachment, unless he get appointed to be Senator for Tennessee after Blackburn becomes Gov and vacates her Senate seat.
Or don't look at him because Trump is going to pardon EVERYONE anywhere near the White House for all crimes past and present in service of his Admin.
The Democrats would be abandoning their oaths to the Constitution (as the Republican Party has) if the don't impeach Trump. It is mandatory, IMO, for the Democrats to show the American people the extent of Trump's and the GOP's corruption and ineptitude Trump 2.0 has engaged in.
You may not understand how angry the American people are. Trump brags about his golden ballrooms and vanity arches while the American people suffer. My question to you: How has your life improved in the last 2 years? And, how interested do you think the American people are in Minaj's ass?
The red states that enacted draconian anti-abortion laws are actually NOT pro-life:
• Maternal Death Rates: A study published in the American Journal of Public Health indicated a potential 9% rise in pregnancy-associated and pregnancy-related deaths in states that imposed abortion bans following the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
• Specific State Trends: In Texas, research by the Gender Equity Policy Institute found that maternal mortality rose by 56% during the state's first full year under an abortion ban.
• Delayed Care and Sepsis: Studies from organizations like the Population Reference Bureau show that narrow legal exceptions force clinicians to delay life-saving procedures for miscarriages and incomplete abortions until a patient's condition becomes critical, leading to a 50% increase in second-trimester sepsis rates in Texas.
Once the geniuses decided to put the medical care of girls and women who are experiencing difficult miscarriages and pregnancies in the hands of politicians and out of the hands of medical experts, girls and women started dying from what would normally be standard medical care for those girls and women going through natural miscarriages. How is that progress? And how is that pro-life? I don't understand why those states accept these avoidable deaths. (Well, maybe I do. It's girls and women's lives involved...)
Everything Trump does comes from the WWE, and the DNC has become his kayfabe foil. Right down to picking cabinet members and staffers from celebrity media and turning them into Superstars with a new Trumpian "Amnesia" character/theme and Narrative. Much as no one watches the WNBA for the Sports, nobody follows politics for the policies. It's pure Entertainment.
ps - That wasn't an Editorial, it was a "worked shoot" from entirely within the kayfabe Dems vs Trump "universe".
Interesting take on how Trump operates as POTUS. However, the facts are that his supposed "kayfabe" performances alla WWE don't add up as we watch his deteriorating speech (barking, slurring, and swearing) are organic, not performative. He is actually deteriorating in front of us. And that's no joke.
You may think he's pulled off some sort of clever performance that exposes the banality and futility of our government and politics, but I'm not as cynical as you are. I still believe we need a functioning government with dedicated people (they do exist, despite your cynicism).
You may believe you have some secret knowledge of what this is all about and you're on the outside looking in with this insight that the rest of us don't have about how Trump is really playing us all, and we're all gullible fools.
Cynics, conspiracists, and paranoids often think this.
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