So Why Are We Surprised at Anything the Candidates Say?

Ten years ago. Trump's third marriage, and he hadn't been working all that hard to hide his libidinous proclivities anyway. We knew already what sort of person he was ten years ago.

And we knew what sort of things he would brag about, off-the-cuff, in certain kinds of situations, in certain kinds of company.

And we think we know that he has grown up a bit. Otherwise, we wouldn't have given him the Republican nomination, now, would we?

I had junior high school teachers who said things like

Them as do, don't talk about it.

when the young boys were bragging in the locker room.

(One teacher/coach in particular, having said that, would later point out in class that it was a truism, not a truth.

He was just trying to get the boys to "engage their brains before engaging their mouths." And trying to point out that "The talk often doesn't match the walk."

I didn't appreciate that teacher then nearly as much as I do know. He was a good man, not perfect, not nearly as smart as he wanted to be, but trying hard to give the students some benefit from his own experience.)

I never made such brags. I didn't join in those conversations, in part because I was a good Mormon and Mormon boys (are supposed to) learn not to think their personal worth depends on the opinions of the people around them. My not joining in those conversations helped keep me out of the prevailing social circles, but I preferred it that way, really.

But I will admit I bragged some stupid brags about non-sexual matters.

(50cc Eisenhower? Hah. Although I did, after that brag, waste some time daydreaming, and maybe drawing up some crude diagrams of a model motorcycle that would take a 5cc model airplane engine, which I would hand-letter "Eisenhower" where Honda had lettered the Elsinore brand in.)

I am not a fan of "the Donald".

My wife responded to later radio news that mentioned the brag in the process of announcing the debate that was just starting with, "Why don't they both just drop out of the race?"

And I basically agree.

I've pointed out elsewhere in this blog (here, too) that I am not looking forward to el espectáculo of the next four years if either of the "front-runners" gets elected. But I also expect whoever gets elected to eventually get used to the job and do it no worse than many of the past presidents have.

It's lousy timing for a lousy president, but we've had lousy presidents before. Sometimes, lousy presidents have been, overall, good for the country. We are not supposed to be dependent on our government that way.

I expect the USA to survive. Maybe just barely, but the country, as a whole, will survive as long as the people, overall, remain loyal to the inherent responsibilities of freedom.

The circus the media is making of this is the greater shame.

(Unless, of course, we actually have a general cultural awakening to the errors in thinking that sex is about conquest, and not just an outcry, to be forgotten in less than four weeks, and whitewashed over in four months.)