October 7, 2022
UNFAIR TO E.T.:
The Astronaut and the Alien: In an uneventful debate, Mark Kelly has an encounter of the GOP kind. (AMANDA CARPENTER, OCTOBER 6, 2022, The Bulwark)
Arizona's Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, an honest-to-goodness astronaut, must have felt like he was talking to an alien tonight.No, not in space. At the Arizona PBS debate, where Kelly had a "first and likely only" encounter with his opponent, GOP Senate nominee Blake Masters. Yes, it was weird.Masters--a Peter Thiel creation--is a bastard conglomeration of the internet and Trumpism. Take one part Silicon Valley bro and add one part rad-trad Crossfit philosophy, shake on some Stanford pretentiousness, stretch it out into something that resembles a slightly more human form than Jared Kushner and you'll get the idea. Watching the debate, one got the sense that Kelly, a stocky man who is not just a retired astronaut but also a naval aviator with combat experience and a master's degree in engineering, didn't know what to make of the being who called himself "Blake." Probably because Masters is wholly and only conversant in the tongue of Trump.Most GOP nominees running in the midterms are election deniers. Would it be all that...Whenever Kelly tried to make a point about the upcoming elections and democracy, Masters steered the conversation to how the FBI supposedly suppressed information in some deep-state conspiracy to elect President Joe Biden. It was as if Masters were speaking another language.
He's only conversant in dog whistle.
Posted by Orrin Judd at October 7, 2022 12:00 AM