By P. J. O'Rourke
In How the Hell Did This Happen?, P.J. brings his severe eye and inimitable voice to a few heavily dicy company. beginning in June 2015, he asks, “Who are those jacklegs, high-binders, wire-pullers, mountebanks, swellheads, buncombe spigots, four-flushers and lively spittoons supplying themselves as priceless of America’s optimum office?” and surveys the entire solid of presidential applicants together with all people you’ve already forgotten and everybody you need you may forget.
P.J. bargains a short heritage of ways our insane technique for selecting who will run for president developed, from the first actual nominating conference (thanks, Anti-Masonic celebration) during the reforms of the innovative period (because there’s not anything that can’t be worsened by means of reform) to the current. he's taking us in the course of the debates and key primaries and analyzes every thing from the crusade systems (or lack thereof) to presidential sort (“Trump’s appearance―indeed, Trump’s existence―is a bit guy’s notion of dwelling huge. a personal aircraft! A swell joint in Florida! Gold-plated bathroom handles!”). And he rises from the depths of depression to return up with a greater approach to opt for a president. Following his come-to-Satan second with Hillary and the start of finish instances in November, P.J. reckons with a brand new age: “America is experiencing a metamorphosis within the nature of management. We’re disposing of our leaders. And we’re beginning on the top.”
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Extra info for How the Hell Did This Happen?: The Election of 2016
Example text
If there’s a libertarian moment in the future it won’t be while liberals are in charge. —owing to the climate change that liberals insist upon. If there’s a libertarian moment in the future it won’t be while conservatives are in charge. The libertarian moment can’t happen during the conservative Christian Rapture when the faithful are being transported to heaven. This will leave too many Democrats behind to let libertarianism flourish. And if there’s a libertarian moment in the future it won’t be while moderates are in charge.
Make America more like Europe? Where do you even go to get all the Nazis and Commies and 90 million dead people it would take to make America more like Europe? Bernie is a socialist. He says so himself. He thinks the Eighth Commandment, “Thou shalt not steal,” doesn’t apply to him, at least not when he’s in public office. ” He wants to take your flat-screen TV and give it to a family of pill addicts in the backwoods of Vermont. Perhaps Bernie feels the same about the other nine Commandments. He and his supporters certainly don’t have much use for the Tenth, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass .
Rand isn’t a pure, capital-L Libertarian. He calls himself a “constitutional conservative,” favors legal limits on abortion, tolerates but does not endorse gay marriage, is willing to entertain some notion of American international military intervention, and doesn’t even support legalization of recreational marijuana. Libertarians would pass a law against not supporting legalization of recreational marijuana, if libertarians believed in passing marijuana laws. But Rand is as close to a libertarian as an American presidential candidate is likely to get.
