Trump has singlehandedly turned the Republican presidential race into a reality show that stars only him and has a supporting cast of “bit players.”

The ongoing Republican presidential nomination circus has caused me to delay a trip to Reunion Island to help with the search for parts of the missing Flight MH370 that are not in Kazakhstan. Faithful readers of mine will remember that early-on, and with good reason, I suggested that the missing plane was in Kazakhstan.

I still believe this to be true. I think the wily Kazakhs who have the plane decided it was time to throw folks like me off the scent by hurling a “flaperon” from the wing of the plane into the Caspian Sea.

For those of you with an interest in geography, the Caspian Sea borders Kazakhstan and flows nowhere. But Iran borders the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf, which flows into the Arabian Sea and on to the Indian Ocean and Reunion Island. The best speculative evidence available to me at the moment implicates Iranian Sunni dissidents who seem to have arranged transport for the discarded “flaperon” overland, followed by a dump into the Persian Gulf. Prevailing seas did the rest.

With the news media all over the found “flaperon” and CNN busily working on a life-size graphic model of the missing plane, to which will be attached a replica of each new piece found until the model itself can actually fly, the political pundit brigade was fighting for its lead story life. Then along came Donald Trump, the great “debate” and an in-your-face discussion of the role that female hormones play in right-wing media bias. Frankly, I hadn’t thought of this as an explanation for why otherwise really beautiful woman are Republicans, but now it has to be considered.

As critically important to the world order as finding MH370 appears to be, the US viewing public apparently cannot get enough of the collective train wreck that is the US Republican Party. However, train wreck though it may be, it is very sobering to recognize that the Republican Party is one of only two viable political parties on the sharply-divided US political stage.

So there I was watching the great “debate.” My immediate takeaways were that Fox News’ Megyn Kelly is really gorgeous and Marco Rubio has really big ears. While both of these observations may seem a bit superficial, there was so little substance to behold that Rubio’s really big ears stood out from the rest of the group’s ears, and Kelly is so mesmerizingly attractive that I wanted everyone else to be silenced so I could get another inquiry from her beautiful mind.

Trump was front and center with his egocentric world view and distain for anything that confronts him on it. This guy has singlehandedly turned the Republican presidential race into a reality show that stars only him and has a supporting cast of “bit players,” all seeking to outdo the others in spewing right-wing orthodoxy.

For the debate show itself, a pre-selected audience of 19^th century acolytes was on hand that mindlessly cheered every right-wing soundbite. The excitement was palpable as a couple of the bit players declared that aborting a fetus to save the mother’s life is not pro-life enough. The only problem this created is that the star of the show doesn’t seem to agree, so they got no reality show points for this stance, and they pissed off women voters even more than the Donald has.

Reality TV

To make matters worse for the few among the “bit players” with a serious message about anything, the collective press hyperventilates in anticipation of its segment in the reality show, What Would Trump Say?

This segment works like this. Let’s say a few of the “bit players” want to talk about the Iran nuclear deal, which they all immediately dismiss because Barack Obama negotiated it and they each love Israel more than life itself. The “bit players” say the predictable in a debate or interview, and then the press lines up to say in unison: “What would Trump say?” Remember that Trump is the star of the show, so he gets to tell each reporter how he personally would have starved the Iranians into submission before beginning negotiations and that would have been that.

This is how it is going to go, at least for a while. Since there isn’t much good news out there, we should revel in this moment of supreme angst for the “bit players” as they try to figure out what to do next. Since Trump has no record of public service, except his self-proclaimed buying and selling of the “bit players,” and he has said a lot about a lot of things about which he knows next to nothing, I expect that the “bit players” are going to trot out the dreaded “liberal” label and try to slap it on the Donald to slow him down.

However, in order to try this, right-wing orthodoxy will have to creep ever closer to the Dark Ages precipice. I see a coming clarion call for good American Christians to unite and arm themselves even more than they are now for a new and glorious Crusade. Think of Mike Huckabee and Lindsey Graham astride donkeys, AK-47 in hand, headed for the Promised Land.

*[A version of this article was also featured on Larry Beck’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit: Christopher Halloran / Shutterstock.com

We bring you perspectives from around the world. Help us to inform and educate. Your donation is tax-deductible. Join over 400 people to become a donor or you could choose to be a sponsor.