Seventy prominent Republicans call for an “immediate shift of all available RNC resources [away from Trump and] to vulnerable Senate and House races [in order to] prevent the GOP from drowning with a Trump-emblazoned anchor around its neck.”

Trump sounds like a 12-year-old — a willful and abusive braggart. He is remarkably ignorant and uneducated about the world that we face and the means we may use to defend ourselves.

“On other campaigns, we would have to scrounge for crumbs,” says a senior Clinton adviser. “Here, it’s a fire hose. [Trump] can set himself on fire at breakfast, kill a nun at lunch and waterboard a puppy in the afternoon. And that doesn’t even get us to prime time.”

… Ireland Public Services card.

He-Man Trump and his hunting party bagged them some big donor game in Portland Oregon. Lined up three rich guys from that city to host a Seattle fundraiser in a couple of weeks. His campaign sent out fancy invitations in their names and waited for the RSVPs to roll in.

One of the three hosts is a Portland State University trustee – UD mentions this merely because this is a blog about universities and it’s always nice to find a university angle.

So with the press alerted and the invitations circulating, one, two, and then three of the hosts listed said it was the first they’d heard of it and actually Donald Trump can go fuck himself.

A Ferndale state senator is forced to explain why three Portland businessmen listed [as hosts] on an invitation for an upcoming Seattle fundraiser for Donald Trump say they have no plans to attend.

Republican Doug Ericksen is a Trump campaign leader – he says the draft invitation was prematurely circulated and released to the media before plans were finalized.

Premature circulation is the sort of thing that can happen to any guy who’s too excited for his own good, shooting stuff out before asking if it’s also good for his partner.

And it can definitely lead to hard feelings. That Portland State trustee, for instance.

“I have requested that the campaign and Republican Party correct their records,” [Peter] Stott says, “and remove my name from any invitations or other materials.”

He doesn’t sound happy.

*****************

Update: Ah fuck it.

Trump has cancelled.

Of all the denunciations of Donald Trump, UD finds most eloquent Senator Susan Collins’ set of reflections on his cruelty.

UD likes in particular one phrase Collins uses — his constant stream of cruel comments — because it is rather poetic and also quite simple. It assumes – correctly – that Collins does not need to define cruelty; it takes for granted the fact that all of us recognize cruelty when it occurs – in speech, in action – because we are all vulnerable human beings who have ourselves, in the course of our lives, suffered cruelty. We know intimately, deeply, historically, how it feels to be the object of someone else’s cruelty. That feeling never goes away.

(We have all inflicted cruelty too, and, if we are decent people, our recognition of our capacity to be cruel in the way of Donald Trump provokes things like shame, apology, and reflection on why we behaved that way.)

There is indeed something obscenely, intimately knowing in the way Trump stimulates Americans – even feeds them – with his cruelty, and makes his cruelty theirs. Commentators talk about the “nihilism” of Trump’s tea party followers, but don’t people really mean their cruelty? Trump leads them into a thrillingly disinhibited realm of communal disgust, horror, and violence – SHOOT THE BITCH – and the reason people attach “nihilism” to this is that, when you actually examine it, there’s nothing there. Nothing political. (This explains why his followers don’t mind that Trump also is a political black hole.) What’s there is inchoate inner rage, exteriorized into pleasurable cruelty by a charismatic sadist. (Pleasurable vindictive cruelty, as when Eliza Doolittle, having hurt Henry Higgins very badly, says triumphantly Ive got a little of my own back, anyhow.)

****************

In his poem, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other,” William E. Stafford notices how easy it is for human beings to give up the struggle to understand one another:

If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the
world
and following the wrong god home we may miss
our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break …

That nihilistic shrug says I’ve tried to understand you – really understand you – but it’s too difficult or threatening or something so I’m going to betray you and my better self by letting the fragile human intercourse between us, our tentative conversations in the direction of mutual comprehension, break. I’m going to retreat to “a pattern that others made,” to regress to whatever my parochial upbringing might have been in regard to people outside my circle.

Cruelty, the root of cruelty, says the poet, is willful blindness to the vulnerability and complexity of the human beings around you. It’s the decision to shrug off the moral imperative to be careful what you do and say with vulnerable and complex people:

… I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something
shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should
consider—
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the
dark.

This makes me think of Trump’s “Second Amendment people’ dog whistle the other day, his knowing what was occurring but deciding not to “recognize” it as it got transmitted to a fragile and complicated social world. He shrugged and “fooled” people rather than considering the darkness into which, with his careless words, he led them.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to
sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

Turns out you can’t attack a female reporter … for reporting, and a grieving mother … for grieving, and make death threats against the first female presidential nominee who’s kicking your ass in the polls — and still get as many women as you’ll need to win.

… Changed’ graph, and note
how the shape of the future

looks just like a woman.

While unexpected, the death [of the Duke of Westminster] has not come completely out of the blue.

“He was a depressive and had been unwell for many years,” a source tells The Daily Beast.

… hangs out with its star, Rebel Wilson.

The child does get around.

… with Donald Trump today coming close to suggesting Hillary Clinton should be shot.

*******************

UD thinks it’s time to roll out the term Kafkaesque to describe what this nation will be going through until the beginning of November if the Republican party is unable to figure out a way to replace Trump as their candidate. We are experiencing, for the first time in our history, the presidential campaign of a person who exhibits signs of serious mental disturbance.

***********

Michael Hayden thinks the Secret Service should interview Trump; UD thinks instead that the relevant security outfit should interview his personal physician. Trump behaves like a person with an opioid dependency. (“He’s almost like someone with an addiction who can’t stop,” [one Republic political operative] said. “Until he gets help and admits it, he won’t be able to change.” — UD would suggest that he may indeed be a person with an addiction…)

***********

For anyone who cares about the future of American politics, the comment represents a dwindling commitment to politics itself, to the notion that, through rhetoric and competition, we might find a common way as a people. Instead, the Republican candidate made a casual nod to the final force of arms. At this stage, so little that Trump says shocks us, but, now and then, it is worth stepping back and regarding the full damage of it all: the wounds to our fading global image of openness and generosity; the stomping on our admiration for intelligence, eloquence, or honesty; and now the blithe contempt for safe and civil government.

*******************

UD thanks Greg.

#7.

#8.

#26.

POETRY BOOKS ARE NOT ALWAYS FINANCIALLY VIABLE

Enter Père Trubu, shredding a copy of the New York Times:

FIFTY FAILED ELITES! That’s all they are! By my green candle, Madam, I’ll chop every one of them up into tiny bits and flush them down this gold-plated crapper!

Mère Trubu:

OOOOhhh but ooh Père Trubu also that nasty Senator Collins called you a nasty little merrrdddrrrrre plus she’s not voting for you. What’re we gonna do, Père Trubu? Your campaign’s the one in the crapper! How’re you going to be PRESIDENT and eat all the Boston Cream Pie you want and sit around and tell everybody what to do? Come on Pa Trubu: BE A MAN.

PT:

Pschittabugger and buggerapschitt Ma Trubu another word out of you my lady and I’ll shove your stinking face in the crapper! [Rushes into the bathroom; returns brandishing an unmentionable brush.] DON’T MAKE ME USE THIS. [Chases Mère Trubu about the penthouse. She screams.]

MT:

You MORON. You COWARD. You must capture the Clinton woman and JAIL HER.

PT:

Fuck me Madam brilliant idea HOW do you propose that I do it?

MT:

You must sneak up behind her while she’s giving a speech and scream THUS EVER TO TYRANTS and give her a big fat rap on the head with your brush and drag her off.

PT:

You’re a genius my fine woman but wait what if it doesn’t work and I get caught and I get put in jail?

MT:

You MORON. You COWARD. No one will expect a presidential candidate to do something like that so you will have the advantage of surprise. For once in your life SHOW SOME GUTS.

PT:

Call me a coward again Ma Trubu and I’ll smash your teeth in! [Again runs after her with the brush. She screams. End of Act Two.]

… fails to endorse – indeed denounces – Trump (H/T: TPM).

Remarkable, thinks UD. Given that the 538 Election Forecast has Trump at 98.4%, Clinton at 1.5% in Oklahoma.