Day: June 26, 2024

Winning Through Intimidation

Fandango18 Comments

Intimidation: the action of frightening or threatening someone, usually in order to persuade them to do something that you want them to do.

I have to give credit where credit is due. Somehow, Donald Trump has intimidated an entire political party — one of the two major American political parties — to stand by and support him, despite all of his unethical, illegal, misogynistic, racist, amoral, and criminal actions.

In the latest issue of The Week magazine, there is an excerpt from an article that Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times wrote. It’s just the latest example of Trump’s winning through intimidation.

Goldberg’s article is about a new movie titled The Apprentice. The movie covers Donald Trump’s rise to fame under the tutelage of his Machiavellian mentor, lawyer Roy Cohn. Cohn was the young lawyer and prosecutor who came to prominence for his role as the chief counsel to the now disgraced Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Army–McCarthy hearings in 1954. Cohn assisted McCarthy’s investigations (witch hunts) of suspected communists that destroyed the careers and the lives of so many talented and creative people.

Back to the present time, American audiences may never see The Apprentice, an unflattering film that features “extraordinary” performances by Succession star Jeremy Strong as Cohn and Sebastian Stan as the young Trump.

Film distributors in many countries have bought rights to show it. But U.S. movie studios reportedly became afraid to touch The Apprentice after Trump’s lawyers attacked the film as “foreign interference in America’s elections” and have threatened to sue those who promote or distribute the film.

Corporations have seen the boycotts the MAGA right launched against Bud Light and Disney, and fear that if Trump is re-elected, he will actively use federal regulators to punish them. In his first term, Trump’s Department of Justice tried to block AT&T’s purchase of CNN’s parent company, Time Warner, to punish the news network for its coverage of him.

Trump ally Kash Patel has warned journalists and the media that if Trump gets a second term, “we’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly.” The fear of releasing this movie in the U.S. is a “sign of democratic decay,” writes Goldberg, and it portends “greater self-censorship to come.”

The mantra of the man who might be the next President of the United States might very well be “Winning Through Intimidation.” It has served him well.

One-Liner Wednesday — The Debate

Fandango5 Comments

“If he doesn’t literally light himself on fire on Thursday evening, some will say he was downright presidential.”

Hillary Clinton on how low expectations are for Donald Trump in his upcoming debate with President Joe Biden

Written for Linda G. Hill’s One-Liner Wednesday prompt. Image credit: BBC.com.

Simply 6 Minutes — Lost in Translation

Fandango10 Comments

Mark was tired. He’d been working for the firm for more than a decade, yet when it came to getting promotions and raises, he was always passed over. He never missed a day of work and was very diligent when it came to carrying out the responsibilities of the job. He couldn’t make any sense of it why he was not being promoted.

Mark’s frustration over his work situation was getting the better of him and he knew he needed to do something about it, but he didn’t do well with confrontation, so he felt stuck. But then, as he left his small suburban house to head to the office, he saw something on his well-manicured lawn glistening in the morning sun. He went to investigate what he saw and it was an ornate brass object that looked like one of those antique lamps you rub and a wish-granting genie pops out.

Mark picked up the object and took it back into his house. He set the item on his kitchen table and then walked into the dining room to look for a silver polishing cloth. He found it and walked back into the kitchen. Mark picked up the brass object, touched the silver polishing cloth to it, and started rubbing the cloth along the object’s side. “Genie,” Mark said, “show yourself and grant me my wish.”

Suddenly a puff of blueish-white smoke came from the object’s spout and from within that puff of smoke a large blue genie emerged.

In a thick foreign accent, the genie said, “You have summoned me. Your wish is my command.”

Mark suddenly saw an opportunity to quickly advance to the top spot at his firm and whispered his wish to the Genie. The genie nodded.

When Mark arrived at the office half an hour later, he noticed that everyone was staring at him. He assumed that it was his aura of confidence. He put his stuff on his cubicle desk and headed straight to his boss’s office and shut the door.

Mark’s boss looked at Mark and said, “Oh my God, Mark, what the hell happened to you?” Before Mark could respond, his boss marched him into the private bathroom, and told Mark to look at his image in the mirror. Mark was aghast as he looked at his reflection.

“Explain yourself, Mark,” his boss demanded.

“I found a genie bottle on my lawn this morning, rubbed it a few times and a genie popped out and told me it would grant me my wish. But the genie had a thick foreign accent and I think there was something lost in translation,” Mark explained.

“What did you ask the genie for?” the boss asked.

“I told him that I wanted to be the big man at the firm and it seems he took it too literally.

Written for Christine Bialczak’s Simply 6 Minutes Challenge. Image credit: no attribution.

FOWC with Fandango — Tight

Fandango10 Comments
FOWC

Welcome to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (U.S.).

Today’s word is “tight.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Please check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, ÿplease manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. Show them some love.