Donald Trump isn't funny anymore

And honestly hasn't been for a while now,  oh sure, his campaign launched with the ridiculous escalator entrance, the paid attendees, the rant about Mexican immigrants, but it's like the drunk guy who knows only one joke at a party, he's been telling it over and over again for three hours, and it started out kinda racist, and he keeps adding worse details with each telling, and eventually you aren't sure if actually is a joke or if he really does wants to put all Hispanic folks in camps.

I lost control of the metaphor there, sorry.

The GOP has lost control of him, if they ever had any to begin with, and I don't see how they prevent him from getting the nomination short of changing their rules in the primary at this point, they are hoping more people drop out and the rest of the base starts to rally around Rubio, Kasich, or JEB! but I don't see it working, JEB! is running perhaps the worst campaign by an establishment candidate in modern memory, his vast amount of funds and backers are not overcoming his own lack of motivation it seems, plus Trump seized control of the narrative early on by labeling him low energy, and he hasn't been able to take it back.

As for Rubio and Kasich, they are having difficulty appealing to the base, Kasich has always been a long shot as he is by far the most boring man in the race, but his attempts to distinguish himself have been by attempting to go further right than anyone else, most recently with his desire to start a new government agency to promote "Judeo-Christian" values in places like the Middle East. The problem with this, outside of the obvious one of being flagrantly unconstitutional, is that his base hates government even more than they love Jesus, and he caught hell over proposing to expand the government from them. Rubio meanwhile is running a relatively solid campaign, but has failed to explain to voters why he is preferable to Trump, policy-wise, he has nothing really unique on the table, save for probably the most draconian opinions on abortion of the entire crowd, but he also isn't firing up the hate machine that the party run on these days.

I think everyone underestimated the degree to which Trump represents the Id of the Republican party these days, and like I've said before, the party has no one to blame but itself for the monster they have created, since the Reagan era they have courted the far right evangelicals and, well, racist white trash of America, and they have done so by demonizing such things as education, critical thought, and a functioning government. The thing is, for twenty plus years, that worked pretty well, the base voted how they wanted them to vote, and the candidates who were elected went ahead and did whatever they wanted anyway, as candidates have done since time immemorial, they could safely ignore the craziest demands of their constituency because they could count on their voters not actually bothering to look at what they were doing once they got elected.

But the wheels have come off and they have come off for two reasons, the first is that by now, many of those voters are starting to get into politics themselves, they are true believers an they are finding themselves with power, or they recognized their opportunity and will do anything to appeal to that base, even if that includes destroying the lives of millions. The other thing is the internet and the twenty four hour news cycle, including the right wing talk shows, suddenly the average voter has the ability to see with very little effort, exactly what their candidates have done, or not done, for them, and there absolutely has been a backlash with betrayed conservatives looking for a representative who will truly represent them, we saw some of that in the Tea Party waves in 2010 and 2014, as the House and Senate became filled up with truly appalling individuals, some of whom are running for president now.

The GOP has lost control of the narrative entirely, the base doesn't trust them, the candidates are not interested in business as usual and some of them truly believe what they say, and they don't control the sources of information anymore, yes Fox is and always has been a conservative mouthpiece, but it seems to be increasingly clear to me that it isn't a mouthpiece for the party line anymore, if it really ever has been.

Enter Trump, a complete outsider, a megalomaniac with delusions of competency and a shit-ton of money, he truly believes he has what it takes to run the country, and will say and do anything to do get there, more than that he actually seems to be enjoying himself, he is as genuine seeming a Republican candidate as we have seen since Reagan, and the base seems to trust him implicitly.

I don't think he has a chance in hell of winning the general, and I think him running will damage the Republican party in ways that they will be decades repairing if they ever do, but what scares me, and why he isn't funny anymore, is how many people he has who support him, let's actually turn that around, how many people he seems to be supporting, his opinions, real or fabricated, have struck a vein of overt racism and hatred that rarely comes out in public in this day and age, he's retweeted demonstrably false statistics on racial violence put out by white supremacist organizations and stood by them even when confronted, he called all Mexican immigrants rapists and drug dealers, he wants our Muslim population to be identifiable at all times, by having special identification. He literally called for Syrian refugees to be put in camps, as well as doing similar for Mexican immigrants.

And his polling numbers keep increasing, there are a lot of people in this country who agree with him, or at least who are so oblivious they don't realize the person they are following. Fortunately, I don't think there are enough of them to carry the general election, we will not see a President Trump in the White House, but I do expect it to effect the down ticket races for Senate seats, Governors, and city level positions, the gerrymandering in the red states especially means that a motivated minority can exercise far too much power over those elections.
I expect racial violence and a rise in terrorist acts committed by white supremacists. All because Trump uncovered the river of filth that is our countries institutional racism, jumped in, and invited everyone to take a bath in it with him.