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Cj-B
All the same...I saw it first.



Registered: 07/16/11
Posts: 4,479
Loc: The Library of Babel
Last seen: 4 years, 14 days
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Donald Trump has an amusing resemblance to President Gentle from Infinite Jest 1
#23518370 - 08/07/16 10:31 AM (7 years, 5 months ago) |
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It struck me a little earlier as I was thinking about rereading it that Donald Trump is essentially President Gentle from David Foster Wallace's book Infinite Jest. Gentle was a germaphobic, super tan, hotel lounge performer in Vegas that ran on a platform of "Making America a tighter, tidier nation" and won based on the support of people on the really extreme ends of the political spectrum and a bunch of moderates (explicitly stated to be) disillusioned with 'Rush Limbaugh and Hillary Rodham Clinton'. Once elected, he had the government build giant catapults to fling all of New England's trash into Quebec, and uses the NAFTA agreement to strong-arm Canada into just dealing with it (also by ordering the military in those regions to remove their missiles and replace them upside down while threatening to detonate them and use massive air displacers to send all the remaining trash and radiation into Canadan territory). All while becoming increasing more popular with the American public despite his increasingly frightening and erratic behaviour.
This thought amused me, so I pulled out my copy and dug up the relevant passage (or at least one of them, I couldn't be fucked finding every mention in a 1000+ page novel) and 'd a bit more at how eerily accurate it was in a handful of ways. Figured I'd share. I wish Zappa were still around, I'm sure his input on this would've been a barrel of laughs. That guy loved Infinite Jest.

Quote:
"Mario’s thing opens without credits, just a crudely matted imposition of fake-linotype print, a quotation from President Gentle’s second Inaugural: ‘Let the call go forth, to pretty much any nation we might feel like calling, that the past has been torched by a new and millennial generation of Americans,’ against a full-facial still photo of a truly unmistakable personage.
This is the projected face of Johnny Gentle, Famous Crooner. This is Johnny Gentle, né Joyner, lounge singer turned teenybopper throb turned B-movie mainstay, for two long-past decades known unkindly as the ‘Cleanest Man in Entertainment’ (the man’s a world-class retentive, the late-Howard-Hughes kind, the really severe kind, the kind with the paralyzing fear of free-floating contamination, the either-wear-a-surgical-microfiltration-mask - or - make - the - people - around - you - wear - surgical - caps - and - masks - and -touch - doorknobs - only - with - a - boiled - hankie - and - take - fourteen - showers - a -day - only - they’re - not - exactly - showers - they’re - with - this - Dermalatix - brand -shower - sized - Hypospectral - Flash - Booth - that - actually - like - burns - your -outermost - layer - of - skin - off - in - a - dazzling - flash - and - leaves - you - baby’s -butt - new - and - sterile - once - you - wipe - off - the - coating - of - fine - epidermal -ash-with-a-boiled-hankie kind) then in later public life a sterile-toupee-wearing promoter and entertainment-union bigwig, Vegas schmaltz-broker and head of the infamous Velvety Vocalists Guild, the tanned, gold-chained labor union that enforced those seven months of infamously dreadful ‘Live Silence,’ the total scab-free solidarity and performative silence that struck floor-shows and soundstages from Desert to NJ coast for over half a year until equitable compensation-formulae on certain late-millennial phone-order retrospective TV-advertised So-You-Don’t-Forget-Order-Before-Midnight-Tonight-type records and CDs were agreed on by Management. Hence then Johnny Gentle, the man who brought GE/RCA to heel. And then thus, at the millennial fulcrum of very dark U.S. times, to national politics.
The facial stills that Mario lap-dissolves between are of Johnny Gentle, Famous Crooner, founding standard-bearer of the seminal new ‘Clean U.S. Party,’ the strange-seeming but politically prescient annular agnation of ultra-right jingoist hunt-deer-with-automatic-weapons types and far-left macrobiotic Save-the-Ozone, -Rain-Forests, -Whales, -Spotted-Owl-and-High-pH-Waterways ponytailed granola-crunchers, a surreal union of both Rush L.– and Hillary R.C.–disillusioned fringes that drew mainstream-media guffaws at their first Convention (held in sterile venue), the seemingly LaRoucheishly marginal party whose first platform’s plank had been Let’s Shoot Our Wastes Into Space, 150 C.U.S.P. a kind of post-Perot national joke for three years, until — white-gloved finger on the pulse of an increasingly asthmatic and sunscreen-slathered and pissed-off American electorate — the C.U.S.P. suddenly swept to quadrennial victory in an angry reactionary voter-spasm that made the U.W.S.A. and LaRouchers and Libertarians chew their hands in envy as the Dems and G.O.P.s stood on either side watching dumbly, like doubles partners who each think the other’s surely got it, the two established mainstream parties split open along tired philosophical lines in a dark time when all landfills got full and all grapes were raisins and sometimes in some places the falling rain clunked instead of splatted, and also, recall, a post-Soviet and -Jihad era when — somehow even worse — there was no real Foreign Menace of any real unified potency to hate and fear, and the U.S. sort of turned on itself and its own philosophical fatigue and hideous redolent wastes with a spasm of panicked rage that in retrospect seems possible only in a time of geopolitical supremacy and consequent silence, the loss of any external Menace to hate and fear. This motionless face on the E.T.A. screen is Johnny Gentle, Third-Party stunner.
Johnny Gentle, the first U.S. President ever to swing his microphone around by the cord during his Inauguration speech. Whose new white-suited Office of Unspecified Services’ retinue required Inauguration-attendees to scrub and mask and then walk through chlorinated footbaths as at public pools. Johnny Gentle, managing somehow to look presidential in a Fukoama microfiltration mask, whose Inaugural Address heralded the advent of a Tighter, Tidier Nation. Who promised to clean up government and trim fat and sweep out waste and hose down our chemically troubled streets and to sleep darn little until he’d fashioned a way to rid the American psychosphere of the unpleasant debris of a throw-away past, to restore the majestic ambers and purple fruits of a culture he now promises to rid of the toxic effluvia choking our highways and littering our byways and grungeing up our sunsets and cruddying those harbors in which televised garbage-barges lay stacked up at anchor, clotted and impotent amid undulating clouds of potbellied gulls and those disgusting blue-bodied flies that live on shit (first U.S. President ever to say shit publicly, shuddering), rusty-hulled barges cruising up and down petroleated coastlines or laying up reeky and stacked and emitting CO as they await the opening of new landfills and toxic repositories the People demanded in every area but their own.
The Johnny Gentle whose C.U.S.P. had been totally up-front about seeing American renewal as an essentially aesthetic affair. The Johnny Gentle who promised to be the possibly sometimes unpopular architect of a more or less Spotless America that Cleaned Up Its Own Side of the Street. Of a new-era’d nation that looked out for Uno, of a one-time World Policeman that was now going to retire and have its blue uniform deep-dry-cleaned and placed in storage in triple-thick plastic dry-cleaning bags and hang up its cuffs to spend some quality domestic time raking its lawn and cleaning behind its refrigerator and dandling its freshly bathed kids on its neatly pressed mufti-pants’ knee.
A Gentle behind whom a diorama of the Lincoln Memorial’s Lincoln smiled down benignly.
A Johnny Gentle who was as of this new minute sending forth the call that ‘he wasn’t in this for a popularity contest’ (Popsicle-stick-and-felt puppets in the Address’s audience assuming puzzled-looking expressions above their tiny green surgical masks).
A President J.G., F.C. who said he wasn’t going to stand here and ask us to make some tough choices because he was standing here promising he was going to make them for us. Who asked us simply to sit back and enjoy the show. Who handled wild applause from camouflage-fatigue- and sandal-and-poncho-clad C.U.S.P.s with the unabashed grace of a real pro. Who had black hair and silver sideburns, just like his big-headed puppet, and the dusty brick-colored tan seen only among those without homes and those whose homes had a Dermalatix Hypospectral personal sterilization booth. Who declared that neither Tax & Spend nor Cut & Borrow comprised the ticket into a whole new millennial era (here more puzzlement among the Inaugural audience, which Mario represents by having the tiny finger-puppets turn rigidly toward each other and then away and then toward). Who alluded to ripe and available Novel Sources of Revenue just waiting out there, unexploited, not seen by his predecessors because of the trees (?). Who foresaw budgetary adipose trimmed with a really big knife.
The Johnny Gentle who stressed above all — simultaneously pleaded for and promised — an end to atomized Americans’ fractious blaming of one another for our terrible 151 internal troubles. Here bobs and smiles from both wealthily green-masked puppets and homeless puppets in rags and mismatched shoes and with used surgical masks, all made by E.T.A.’s fourth- and fifth-grade crafts class, under the supervision of Ms. Heath, of match-sticks and Popsicle-stick shards and pool-table felt with sequins for eyes and painted fingernail-parings for smiles/frowns, under their masks.
The Johnny Gentle, Chief Executive who pounds a rubber-gloved fist on the podium so hard it knocks the Seal askew and declares that Dammit there just must be some people besides each other of us to blame. To unite in opposition to. And he promises to eat light and sleep very little until he finds them — in the Ukraine, or the Teutons, or the wacko Latins. Or — pausing with that one arm up and head down in the climactic Vegas way — closer to right below our nose. He swears he’ll find us some cohesion-renewing Other. And then make some tough choices. Alludes to a whole new North America for a crazy post-millennial world. First U.S. President ever to use boss as an adjective. His throwing his surgical gloves into the miniature Inaugural crowd as souvenirs is Mario’s own touch."
-------------------- "I have no way of knowing whether you, who eventually will read this record, like stories or not. If you do not, no doubt you have turned these pages without attention. I confess that I love them. Indeed, it often seems to me that of all the good things in the world, the only ones humanity can claim for itself are stories and music; the rest, mercy, beauty, sleep, clean water and hot food (as the Ascian would have said) are all the work of the Increate. Thus, stories are small things indeed in the scheme of the universe, but it is hard not to love best what is our own—hard for me, at least."
Edited by Cj-B (08/07/16 11:00 AM)
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akira_akuma
Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι ὕψιστος φιλεῖ


Registered: 08/28/09
Posts: 82,455
Loc: Onypeirophóros
Last seen: 4 years, 1 month
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Re: Donald Trump has an amusing resemblance to President Gentle from Infinite Jest [Re: Cj-B]
#23518378 - 08/07/16 10:36 AM (7 years, 5 months ago) |
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yeah, and of course, the convexity ensues through this guy.
clean up the streets, this scum...funny thing is, they are all puppets.
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idiotek


Registered: 02/06/04
Posts: 40,728
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Re: Donald Trump has an amusing resemblance to President Gentle from Infinite Jest [Re: Cj-B] 1
#23518380 - 08/07/16 10:37 AM (7 years, 5 months ago) |
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Nobody is going to read this shit.
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akira_akuma
Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι ὕψιστος φιλεῖ


Registered: 08/28/09
Posts: 82,455
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Re: Donald Trump has an amusing resemblance to President Gentle from Infinite Jest [Re: idiotek]
#23518385 - 08/07/16 10:38 AM (7 years, 5 months ago) |
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yeah, Shroomery for a tidier nation! down with posts that i don't like!
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idiotek


Registered: 02/06/04
Posts: 40,728
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Re: Donald Trump has an amusing resemblance to President Gentle from Infinite Jest [Re: akira_akuma]
#23518390 - 08/07/16 10:39 AM (7 years, 5 months ago) |
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Yeah, I fully support that sentiment.
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akira_akuma
Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι ὕψιστος φιλεῖ


Registered: 08/28/09
Posts: 82,455
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Last seen: 4 years, 1 month
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Re: Donald Trump has an amusing resemblance to President Gentle from Infinite Jest [Re: idiotek]
#23518401 - 08/07/16 10:43 AM (7 years, 5 months ago) |
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alright, boss-man. you just hop on down to the bank with that senteement, and see what they say about it.
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idiotek


Registered: 02/06/04
Posts: 40,728
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Re: Donald Trump has an amusing resemblance to President Gentle from Infinite Jest [Re: akira_akuma]
#23518407 - 08/07/16 10:45 AM (7 years, 5 months ago) |
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I don't believe in banks, therefore, they don't exist to me.
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akira_akuma
Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι ὕψιστος φιλεῖ


Registered: 08/28/09
Posts: 82,455
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Last seen: 4 years, 1 month
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Re: Donald Trump has an amusing resemblance to President Gentle from Infinite Jest [Re: idiotek]
#23518414 - 08/07/16 10:47 AM (7 years, 5 months ago) |
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idiotek


Registered: 02/06/04
Posts: 40,728
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Re: Donald Trump has an amusing resemblance to President Gentle from Infinite Jest [Re: akira_akuma]
#23518417 - 08/07/16 10:48 AM (7 years, 5 months ago) |
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Ah, going for the old closed veil technique. Well met.
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akira_akuma
Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι ὕψιστος φιλεῖ


Registered: 08/28/09
Posts: 82,455
Loc: Onypeirophóros
Last seen: 4 years, 1 month
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Re: Donald Trump has an amusing resemblance to President Gentle from Infinite Jest [Re: idiotek]
#23518438 - 08/07/16 10:54 AM (7 years, 5 months ago) |
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but you didn't even use the gif! this is not the same move.
you could have actually compiled the technique with your brilliant retorts.
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hex_enduction
satta massa gana



Registered: 01/26/14
Posts: 12,051
Last seen: 2 years, 8 months
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Re: Donald Trump has an amusing resemblance to President Gentle from Infinite Jest [Re: akira_akuma]
#23518442 - 08/07/16 10:55 AM (7 years, 5 months ago) |
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Ayyy, Akira's back. Place wasn't the same without ya
--------------------
Connoisseur said: oh ive cried on drugs sunshine said: Tragic. I told the cop not to do it but he didn't listen.
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Cj-B
All the same...I saw it first.



Registered: 07/16/11
Posts: 4,479
Loc: The Library of Babel
Last seen: 4 years, 14 days
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Re: Donald Trump has an amusing resemblance to President Gentle from Infinite Jest [Re: idiotek]
#23518449 - 08/07/16 10:56 AM (7 years, 5 months ago) |
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Wow, 10 whole paragraphs sure is a lot.
-------------------- "I have no way of knowing whether you, who eventually will read this record, like stories or not. If you do not, no doubt you have turned these pages without attention. I confess that I love them. Indeed, it often seems to me that of all the good things in the world, the only ones humanity can claim for itself are stories and music; the rest, mercy, beauty, sleep, clean water and hot food (as the Ascian would have said) are all the work of the Increate. Thus, stories are small things indeed in the scheme of the universe, but it is hard not to love best what is our own—hard for me, at least."
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idiotek


Registered: 02/06/04
Posts: 40,728
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Re: Donald Trump has an amusing resemblance to President Gentle from Infinite Jest [Re: akira_akuma]
#23518454 - 08/07/16 10:58 AM (7 years, 5 months ago) |
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Hmm, not gonna bite on that one.
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akira_akuma
Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι ὕψιστος φιλεῖ


Registered: 08/28/09
Posts: 82,455
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Last seen: 4 years, 1 month
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Re: Donald Trump has an amusing resemblance to President Gentle from Infinite Jest [Re: hex_enduction]
#23518455 - 08/07/16 10:58 AM (7 years, 5 months ago) |
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there's no place i'd rather be.
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akira_akuma
Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι ὕψιστος φιλεῖ


Registered: 08/28/09
Posts: 82,455
Loc: Onypeirophóros
Last seen: 4 years, 1 month
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Re: Donald Trump has an amusing resemblance to President Gentle from Infinite Jest [Re: idiotek]
#23518460 - 08/07/16 11:00 AM (7 years, 5 months ago) |
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Quote:
Geoff Peterson said: Hmm, not gonna bite on that one.
my brilliance persuades you into folly! A-HA!
you honestly could have just left this retort at
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idiotek


Registered: 02/06/04
Posts: 40,728
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Re: Donald Trump has an amusing resemblance to President Gentle from Infinite Jest [Re: akira_akuma]
#23518479 - 08/07/16 11:05 AM (7 years, 5 months ago) |
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You're kind of like one of those training bots I used to slaughter at the troll training center in trade school.
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akira_akuma
Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι ὕψιστος φιλεῖ


Registered: 08/28/09
Posts: 82,455
Loc: Onypeirophóros
Last seen: 4 years, 1 month
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Re: Donald Trump has an amusing resemblance to President Gentle from Infinite Jest [Re: idiotek]
#23518486 - 08/07/16 11:07 AM (7 years, 5 months ago) |
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 trades? wow.
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idiotek


Registered: 02/06/04
Posts: 40,728
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Re: Donald Trump has an amusing resemblance to President Gentle from Infinite Jest [Re: akira_akuma]
#23518490 - 08/07/16 11:07 AM (7 years, 5 months ago) |
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I'm not clicking your links. Try again.
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akira_akuma
Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι ὕψιστος φιλεῖ


Registered: 08/28/09
Posts: 82,455
Loc: Onypeirophóros
Last seen: 4 years, 1 month
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Re: Donald Trump has an amusing resemblance to President Gentle from Infinite Jest [Re: idiotek]
#23518493 - 08/07/16 11:09 AM (7 years, 5 months ago) |
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no one is like posting links brah. they are images...i mean the linkes are ne linke'd.
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idiotek


Registered: 02/06/04
Posts: 40,728
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Re: Donald Trump has an amusing resemblance to President Gentle from Infinite Jest [Re: akira_akuma]
#23518501 - 08/07/16 11:11 AM (7 years, 5 months ago) |
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It's an option you can select. Because I have to protect myself from being exposed to things which might take me out of my comfort zone, ok.
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