Don’t look now, but the democratic process is making a little comeback. On March 6, 2017, the Speaker of the House of Representatives proposed a structural bill to re-imagine health care in the United States. Almost immediately and uniformly, everybody found something wrong with it. And Ramparts couldn’t be happier.
The difficult, but ultimately elevating process of real legislative action under the influences of a functioning democracy is a wonder to behold. The United States Congress, that had abdicated its responsibilities over the last several decades in leaving bill philosophy and structure to the mercy of “experts” and regulators, and adjudicated budgets to the dustbin of history, suddenly finds itself awakening from a Van Winkle like sleep to find the country shocked by the November outcome in a much different place.
Ramparts railed against the damage being done to democratic vitality by the abdication of the legislative branch in 2011:
Madison recognized the legislative process as coming closest to mirroring the will of the people. As designed, representatives would review and vet the merits of the law in committee, debate and adjust it, assess its effects on the general good and its expenses to the general treasure, then representatively vote, so that a record would be available to the voting population to assure compliance with the will of the people in the next election, or adjust the legislature accordingly. The entire process commands that the people have a will, and that the will of the people is respected. Legislative branch has suffered most under the modern corruptions of lack of civics understanding, money of special interests, and general disinterest in the common good and importance of governmental restraint. In the past few decades, laws have achieved epic status, thousands of pages in depth, so that no serious vetting of their effect is feasible. Committees have given themselves up to poor attendance and lobbyist influence with legislators forming their opinion before reviewing a law’s consequences. The massive influx of money has made legislators progressively immune to the ballot box, and more willing to do the bidding of the interest that is supplying them with their re-election funding than for the voter citizen. The citizen has become ignorant of the importance of informed voting, and has accepted lax standards as to the sanctity of the vote, the propagation of numerous “democratic” votes to preserve non-democratic and self serving governmental mechanisms, and dis-interest in the outcome regardless of its effect on the society that has protected his rights for over 234 years. Ramparts – Can Our Democracy Survive Without A Legislative Branch? March 27, 2011
The so called American Health Care Act and following close behind it, a proposed Budget by the Executive that actually outlines priorities in a budget that balances the effect of the priorities, are like an enormous breath of fresh air to the process of democracy. For too long, the United States had simply functioned without a budget, operating on reconciliation bills, because no one had the courage to both list the nation’s priorities and attempt to fund them in relation to each other. The draconian sequester process forced ceilings on spendings regardless of priorities because there was simply no courage to do the hard work of arguing over relative value in a world of limited resources and determining that some might need pruning in order to invest in others more urgent. Committees met to determine the speed of growth of programs, not whether their existence any longer fit the current priorities of the nation. In the end, the every other year process of electing officials to do this work became only a relative break on the speed of governmental dominion, not the direction or value.
In similar fashion, the so called Affordable Care Act of 2010 was passed with members of the legislative branch voting for something they had never seen, recommended by leadership to vote for it so they could learn what was in it. ‘What was in it’ was a mechanism for the total re-write of American health care by bureaucratic regulators that would assure no interference with the inevitable investment of the government to assure every health decision be codified in an extra-legislative fashion. The bureaucracy grew 25% to assure this path became immutable. Within 6 years, the ‘expert’ bill fashioned by the elite, crashed upon the shoals of this very lack of vetting and revision the legislative process was designed to achieve through hard fought compromise. Some achievement. Some legacy.
Nobody likes the American Health Care Act, because this time its been proposed and immediately peppered with the many shades of interest a nation’s various constituencies empower in its elected officials. It will be diced, sliced and remodeled by these competing forces, and when it is done, it will be available for round after round of revision. Just the way its supposed to work. The budget and taxes will follow close behind, and in the end, the legislature will have realized that the founders wanted just this kind of discourse and national conversation, the kind that underlies a vibrant and healthy democracy.
It’s a shame that the Democrat Party stubbornly insists to remain on the sidelines, and only throw rocks at whatever is proposed and what ultimately passed. Rocks that are going to bounce off the ramparts of real democracy, ultimately to strike those who don’t participate in strengthening our future through real give and take.
There was a time where a new administration was given a little room to maneuver, assess the lay of the land, and propose their version of the future. It was euphemistically called the ‘honeymoon’ period. With the tensions of the political battle settled by the democratic vote, all sides took a breath and allowed the usual mild chaos of coming and going administrations as a typical price for the democratic tradition of peaceful transition.
So much for past munificence. We are in a time of open wounds and feeding frenzies, and the careful accords of a functioning democracy are teetering on the brink of real trouble. Yet, the leaders of this society, pushed by the most fragmenting and anarchic of their base, continue to push blithely toward the edge of no return and project a smug happiness about their actions. The carefully balanced blocks of our civility could come tumbling down and woe to those who pretended that their actions were independent of the calamity.
The President gave a speech to a joint session of Congress the other night and asked for the focus and attention of all on the nation’s values and societal challenges. He presented the following radical notions.
the nation should stand united against all hatred and prejudice.
the nation should set an agenda of improvement that will be in keeping with the appropriate 250th anniversary celebration of the founding of the nation
we need to marshall our strengths to defend our borders, defeat the epidemic of drug addiction, restore our neglected inner cities, and keep our promises to the American people
we will reduce stifling regulations that stand in the way of entrepreneurial advancement of the society
we will restore our defense capability to prevent threats to our nation’s security from gaining traction
we will restart the engine of the American economy to help those who have been left behind
we will ask for all parties to work together to fashion an immigration process that supports stability and the rule of law
we will ask all parties to work together to restore health care access and affordability
we will ask for support for education reform that provides opportunity for disadvantaged youth
we will ask that our international partners play a meaningful role in operations to preserve free societies, and pay their fair share of the burden to defend themselves.
we are one people, with one destiny, with shared values of freedom and civic duty
Half of the audience, and half of the country behind them, could not see a sliver of commonality in any of these vision statements of our shared challenges. They could not see the value in rising to their feet to salute the sacrifice of one of their own brethren in a fair off land who sacrificed his life for their freedom. They could not hear any hope, any desire to improve the country, any recognition of the means to restore the nation’s pride, stability, prosperity, or leadership in the world, delivered by an individual that they have determined is illegitimate, because he won an election they assumed was theirs.
Within hours of the speech, the talk has returned to undermining the new leadership at every turn. The ‘dark state,’ the permanent bureaucracy tied to the agenda of statist philosophers, demands investigations, leaks confidential information, calls for resignations, declares chaos, shrieks invectives, and obstructs in a developing meme they refer to as the #resistance. The President, a pugilist at his core, lashes out with a nefarious eye for an eye mentality, darkly suggesting the previous President dictatorially used the enormous powers of the dark state to directly spy on him as a candidate.
Each contributor to the madness positions themselves for posterity rather than focus on the nation’s needs. The left violently disrupts free speech and the exchange of ideas on campus, disrupts town halls with organized chaos, form fit news into pre-baked descriptions that bias any objectivity. The right stands back and picks apart every idea that is not ideologically pure, and waits for the President to fail so they can be proved right that he was not philosophically worthy. The middle loses any faith in the democratic model to address the societal issues , as every issue is assigned as a win or a loss in the epic war for a singular society in which the outcome is predetermined and only one version of the truth exists.
We are asking for trouble, and trouble will find us. If real threats arise, will we be paralyzed by our differences and unable to respond in a concerted way? If there has been real malfeasance, have we lost the capacity to stand up for equal justice and the rule of law? If any of the President’s visions bring a form of success, will we be incapable of recognizing it and investing in the momentum? Would we throw 250 years of human progress away, out of spite that progress must be in keeping with the principles only we recognize?
President Reagan recognized the frailty of our society and the role each generation must play in recognizing their responsibility in preserving the experiment in freedom:
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
Every day we cannot be at war with each other, or we will be unable to recognize when real conflict begins. Building greatness is not about being great. It’s about structuring the society so that each at least has the chance to be great, in their way, and in their time. We can argue about the means to attain the idealization of our values, but if we are arguing our very values, then the American experiment is truly done.
Let’s get off each other’s backs. Let’s point toward what we can get done, and get to work. You don’t have to be comfortable with every version of success, to recognize that success is a desirable outcome. To everyone who wants to simply sit on their hands and wait for the ship to finally tip over, find another occupation. We simply can’t hold up winning any longer to make you feel better about yourself.
Dr. Larry Arnn is the President of Hillsdale College, an institution of learning that is dedicated to the idea that values still matter, and learning is a journey of discovery that should build on all of our accumulated wisdom. He’s afraid for the future of this free society. Take some time to listen, and start your healing.
Sean Connery teaches the bad guy a lesson in… From Russia With Love 1963
After 8 years of resetting relations to a much more mature realpolitik level under the careful direction of Barrack Obama, the world has awoken to the realization that suddenly the Russians with willing accomplices are undermining democracies. As if.
The nefarious Russians are apparently under every anti-liberal rock and a massive conspiracy at the level of Pearl Harbor and 9/11 is under way and must be ruthlessly expunged. We are at one of those wonderful hypocritical crossroads where liberal thought can’t maintain a single intelligence stream of logic, when it comes to America and its place in the world.
There was a time when liberals considered the efforts to identify and eliminate Russian influence as hatespeak. As told in mythic form in movies and coffee houses all over America, the fascist and drunken buffoon Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin initiated a witch-hunt in the 1950s to expose Russian communist influence in the American government, and created a holocaust upon American values in which liberal individuals with supposed communist ideals were accused of being influenced and influencing America at a time of great threat to our liberal notions of a free people. Now the left is asking for a witch-hunt to expose Russian influence in the American government, in which conservative individuals with supposed fascist ideals are accused of being influenced and influencing America at a time of great threat to our liberal notions of a free people. Light the Torches!
The first Russian mole in the government has been rousted out by the torch carriers, General Michael Flynn. President Trump, when he was just Donald Trump, found a soulmate in General Flynn that gave the candidate-to-be some gravitas. The general was no slouch. Flynn, who had rose to the illustrious three star rank of Lieutenant General in the United States Army, was considered a star in intelligence circles and had been named head of the Defense Intelligence Agency by President Obama in 2011. Opinionated and brusk, he did not easily mesh with the Obama Administration who saw only one strategic thinker, Obama, and retired in 2014. Post government, he continued to speak his mind and was unsettlingly comfortable at times with non-traditional relationships with foreign governments that spoke to his poor political antenna.
The disgraced, brief National Security Advisor General Michael Flynn
A former democrat like Trump, he saw in Trump a compelling figure who might be capable of injecting Flynn’s anti-Iran Great Power World order philosophy to American foreign policy. When the upset of upsets occurred on November 8th, 2016, Trump loyally looked to Flynn to be his National Security Advisor, placing him at his career pinnacle of power and influence. And thus, the first piñata to be broken in the Trump Administration was nicely positioned. In just three weeks, Flynn’s questionable contacts and difficulties in working with others, particularly Vice President Pence, the designated adult in the room, did him in, and he was asked to resign.
Unlike President Obama’s administration, it appears the Trump Administration understands the concept of resignation when the individual places the administration or country at dissonance with the stated values. General Flynn, a non-consensus character type, inappropriately positioned by President Trump in a job that is designed to achieve consensus opinion, did the right thing and resigned. The inarticulate President, who continues to attempt his own Russian reset, while mangling his outreach in lousy analogies and lousy syntax, allowed the myth of Russian ‘control’ of American democracy to rise from the position of Democrat Party excuse for its own brutal incompetence, to a story that implies the new found liberal Russia haters are evangelists for protecting American freedom and security. Again…As If.
That said, there are obvious issues in underestimating the malevolence of Putin or any other previous totalitarian Russian leader’s desire to influence, undermine, and confuse American resolve. The track record is there now, just like it was in the 1950s, when it was ‘laughed off’ by those who did not want to see the very real penetrations into the government in the form of Alger Hiss, the Rosenbergs, or the Hollywood Writers Guild. Free societies can protect free speech, without subverting itself to the darker forces, and Garry Kasparov deserves to be heard when the enemies of freedom extend their reach malevolently. At the same time, the slop that passed for internet security first when Hillary Clinton determined to engage in felonious behavior by utilizing an unprotected private server to expose confidential American information to any high school level hacker, then, the ridiculous sloppiness of the Democratic National Committee through John Podesta, who looked to confuse a grade school level hacker with the password to his account, Password, were no challenge to the first class hackers employed by our enemies. None of this was Trump’s or Flynn’s doing, and none of it required special Russian desire to infiltrate American politics. The losers of November 8th, 2016 set themselves up for their loss, all by their lonesome.
The real scandal is not that foreign governments will take advantage of our own sloppiness as we would take advantage of theirs, but that the means for the destruction of the National Security Advisor of the United States, was promulgated by the ‘hacking’ of confidential information by leakers within our own government, and released to the willing press hoping to take the new leader down a few notches. Putin doesn’t have to do anything to undermine a society that is willing to undermine its own values for political gain. The General is gone, but those who were willing to undermine him stay behind and are better moles than any Putin could hope to pay for. When the bureaucracy feels it is more important than the American experiment in governance by the People , it won’t take a Russian Czar to threaten our future. We will accomplish it all by ourselves.
President Trump signs executive order in Oval Office – photo /Houston Chronicle
One of my best friends has a life story the new President of the United States has been adamant we should be on guard against. Born in Mexico, early in life my friend had to cross the border in what might be charitably described as less than documented. Now legally and successfully a permanent resident, he has become Americanized as well, and is studying the underpinnings of American civics as he is seeking to be a citizen of the United States. At the very moment he is about to secure the rights of citizenship, he is faced with a leader dually elected who would prefer he not have gotten here the way he did. Needless to say he’s not exactly thrilled about a President Trump. Yet the very requirement of familiarity with the nation’s foundational documents as part of the his pathway to attain citizenship has brought him to a significantly more prescient understanding regarding the recent elevation of Trump compared to many Americans. The civic lesson of this election he states, is that “in a successful democracy, a citizen must be a participant and better pay attention.”
Pay attention indeed.
The smug assumption that Mr.Trump had during the campaign promoted raw ideas simply to stir sufficient emotional response necessary to win, and would, upon gaining the job, revert to the usual model of backtracking on promises to gain “acceptance” of the establishment, has been obliterated in one week. Executive orders to reverse Obamacare? Check. Extreme vetting of immigrants from the unstable Middle East? Check. Forge ahead with “building the wall”? Check. Restore the “special relationship” with Great Britain? Check. Withdraw from the Trans Pacific Partnership? Check. Restore the approval of the Keystone and Dakota Pipelines? Check. Prepare to restore the conservative majority on the nation’s Supreme Court?
Checkmate.
If you were not paying attention, you are paying attention now. Like the antimatter superhero from the alternative universe, President Trump, using the exact same tactics of his predecessor Obama, has slashed deep gashes into the supposed fundamental transformation the previous chief executive crowed about. The bureaucrats of the EU in Brussels, the President of Mexico, the stunned establishment media, and the angry victimhood clingers that make up the majority of the Democrat Party are all on their heels, and are surely paying attention now. It seems to be that the ‘conviction-less’ candidate assumed by establishment observers, has more convictions then you can shake a stick at.
The larger question is not whether President Trump learned from his successor’s success in using the executive order to effect change, but rather whether he learned from Obama’s failure in his willful discarding of the democratic institutions of the country, and the compromise necessary in a democracy to turn transient executive actions into permanent law. Obama achieved only one legislative triumph, the Accountable Care Act of 2010, which rose out of the legislature through sleight of hand and a complete lack of engagement of the opposition, then never again returned to the concept of enacting laws for fear he would have to negotiate his vision of the world with representatives of the deplorable caste. President Trump will have to face the exact same challenges if he is determined to see his vision come to full fruition, and there will have to be compromises galore. There is no indication yet that the ‘fun’ of being President and simply declaring actions, will be set aside for the gritty sweat and tough hours of negotiations and compromises with others necessary to effect real change. We shall see.
The beauty of this version of democracy, as Ramparts has trumpeted since its inception, is the ingenious set of checks and balances envisioned by the founders, that prevents any one power group or transient notion from being immune to the influences and adjustments required by all other competing opinions. James Madison described this in Federalist #10:
“…the smaller the number of individuals composing a majority, and the smaller the compass within which they are placed, the more easily will they concert and execute their plans of oppression. Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens[.]” (No. 10)
We have lost the appreciation of this careful structure as citizens. The ever growing government that sought to determine through regulation every facet of our lives and represent a singular “truth”, managed to sever the average person’s conviction that they could effect change in their own lives, and they grew increasingly detached from holding the monster bureaucracy accountable. Like a thunderclap from an approaching storm, the November election of Trump asserted the original framers intentions are not yet dead, and Trump’s first week has restore the sense that elections do matter after all.
The key issue that will determine the future of representative democracy in the limited government ideal put forth by our founders, is not whether the new president will govern from the middle. He is under no obligation to do so. No, the key will be if this president will allow the middle to govern, in the way this whole magnificent experiment of freedom was built to function. A President Trump who achieves his election mandate through the prism of careful democratic vetting and review, will have restored this country back on to the stable footing of personal freedom and civic responsibility that is the envy of every other land.
Like him or not, we are all paying attention again. On that alone, President Trump has succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations.
The Obama Presidency 2008-2016 photo — national review
Every election of a new President of the United States brings a quirky American tradition to the forefront — the need to rate or rank the President about to leave office against his predecessors in some hastily assessed scale of accomplishment and gravitas. The academicians and faux historians love doing it, because it implies they themselves alone have sufficient stature and authority to summarily adjudicate recent history and immediately weigh it against distant history. Additionally, they can make sure their version of success or failure, their definition of consequential, will set the standard by which their favorites are judged. The current President Obama, as he prepares to leave office, is already being rated “highly,” as if they would possibly let objective insight get in the way of their feelings for the man of hope and change.
History of course is its own best guide, as distance and events begin to provide better perspective to the actions and inactions of the President, that determine if the country and the world were left a better place and important arcs of history were affected downstream.
President Obama is doing his utmost to try to self define his Presidency as transcendent, because that was standard he set for himself at the moment of his election in 2008.
Transcendent Presidents are few, as their capabilities and depth of awareness of the forces of history, and the collective and progressive openness of the people to their message must additionally be transcendent. President Obama’s message, for good or ill, was transcendent, the transformation of the United States as a world leader and defendant of individual freedom, into a more passive collaborator in globalist ideas, and a country that needed constant and consuming racial and societal reflection at home to achieve a society “worthy” of its out of proportion bounty. This was a President that wanted to be transcendent, consequential, and to the elites that righteously demand a world they alone can admire, he was the perfect talent for the job of societal transcendence.
Some Presidents have left quietly and allowed others to reflect on their time in office, others have suggested their own sense in a few chosen words, the challenges of their time and their hope for the country. President Obama felt the need to restate his place in history through an hour long, rambling speech that tried to stay ahead of the sickening feeling in his political gut, that the country did not see his consequentialness consistent with his own opinion. If you have been told over and over again by the fawning elite and your own ego, that you are the unique answer to the nation’s yearnings, it is, I’m sure, a very uncomfortable feeling to see the country rapidly averting its eyes to your vision.
Hope and change in the end did not feel consequential to the country’s needs and yearnings, and in many ways the fall from grace has been stark and total. In the period of the President’s ‘transcendent’ leadership, the party reflecting his views has gone from a position of dominance, to the loss of majority in the state legislatures, governorships, house of representatives, senate, the presidency, and soon, supreme court. The President’s personal charm did not translate into an aura of leadership that anyone was willing to follow. He achieved essentially one legislative victory, the Accountable Care Act, that took on his persona and became extricably linked as Obamacare, a veneer of “progress” in healthcare that rapidly collapsed under the weight of its poor depth of structure and lack of alignment with the average person’s needs. Its overwhelming inconsequentiality will be forever defined by the law being overturned literally as its namesake is replaced. This inconsequential President, unwilling to seek consensus with others on so consequential a concept as overhaul of the nation’s health delivery system, will be consigned to leave office with his singular achievement leaving the stage alongside him.
President Obama, elected as the literal answer to the prayers of millions who believed in Martin Luther King’s dream of a society based not on the color of one’s skin but the content of one’s character, had an incredible opportunity to bring this message to final transcendence. Maybe more than any other President, his unique characteristics offered the ultimate bully pulpit to cement a new racially advanced society, to the benefit of all. It was most disappointingly in this arena, where his talents and leadership proved most difficient and ham handed. The eight years of Obama showed a steady deterioration in inter-race relations, with ‘victories’ claimed through the championing of victimhood and political correctness, and the profound indifference to urban violence, police relationships, and cycles of family demise and neighborhood opportunity. The final twin daggers to the President’s tone deaf, failed recognition of his own role to educate and to lead were both stark, and frustratingly familiar to previous events. The first was the awful reverse racist event of four black youths torturing a mentally disabled white youth and proudly broadcasting it on Facebook, and the President unable to articulate any principle of race that would speak to the universal concepts of civilized decency and respect whatever the direction of racial ignorance. The second was the President removing the protection of Cubans escaping the totalitarian, oppressive government of Cuba and requiring return to Cuba of those without appropriate documents. This move is a fit of pique to hamstring the next administration, and to support a legacy event of restoring relations with communist Cuba. The ruling pretends to support legitimate immigration processes, when for eight years administration has allowed porous borders and sanctuary cities to shield many individuals who sought to do America and its citizens great harm, yet treat them as equals of Cuba’s oppressed and desperate escapees.
Finally, Obama’s foreign policy of retrenchment from a perceived American expansionism left the country far more vulnerable, and the world infinitely more unstable. A radical transformation of the nation’s focus from international human adversaries, to an attempted quixotic war on the world’s core temperature, left America and the world progressively detached from the President’s effort to be a transcendent world leader. The superficiality of the vision without the hard work of philosophical development and the backbone to assure adversary respect led leaders to ignore “redlines” and “sanctions” when they realized Obama’s reaction would be inconsequential, his attention easily diverted to personal rather than national goals. Pathetic attempts to use his supposed personal and rhetorical gifts to re-direct Russia, mollify the Muslim world, and influence elections in Britain and Israel collapsed upon the emptiness of his leadership. The unfortunate result for all the planet is that the country that must lead for a stable world to exist, has been led by the most inconsequential of leaders on the foreign stage. It is not clear if the wake of such inconsequence will be the darker consequence of upheaval, but history would suggest the outcomes of such failures are determined in the eventual collapse of rational actions by aggressor nations.
The many other examples, the regulatory waterboarding of American enterprise, the weakening of the military, the enormous deficit spending and ballooning of debt assure the need for consequential actions of subsequent Presidents to address the distracted dithering of the current one. Consequential Presidents set in to place forces that assure decades of shared purpose regardless of politics due to the overwhelming reality of the positive impact of those consequential decisions on society. There are no examples of consequential leaders where the very lack of their presence on the stage led to a rapid and complete overhaul of everything they had directed, and a society satisfied to see it happen. For consequential presidents, the historical consensus can often turn to epic recognition. For this President for whom so much was felt possible, it looks like his inconsequence will result in the legacy of – 15 minutes of fame.
2016 U.S. Presidential Election Donald Trump 306 Hillary Clinton 232electoral mapwikipedia
At 1:31 AM on November 9th, 2016, the impossible became possible, and the possible became reality when the Associated Press declared on the basis of projected results Donald J. Trump as the winner of the election for 45th President of the United States of America. The stunned establishment media, pundits, professional pollsters and bicoastal elites that had assumed their version of history was irresistible and unstoppable, were speechless. Trump, derided throughout the election process as a misogynist nincompoop with a cult following of racists, deniers and loony birds, faced the universal prediction of a comfortable win for the establishment candidate Clinton, that despite all her faults, clearly would dominate the incompetent Trump when the American people entered the voting booth and faced the two alternative futures.
The American people entered the voting booth, faced the two alternative futures, chose Trump and never looked back.
I have taken several days to digest what just happened, and face up to my own journey regarding this election. For a conservative like myself, I have dreamt of the magical moment when I could wake up the day after the election and contemplate the following conservative American electoral revolution. A Republican House. A Republican Senate. 33 of 50 states run by Republican Governors. 31 of 50 state legislatures are fully controlled by Republicans. And… The President of the United States is the Republican candidate……Donald Trump. Wait….Donald Trump?!?
The last part, as unexpected as the extent of the revolution, was of course the part I had struggled to contemplate for months. I looked initially to Rick Perry of Texas. Then Marco Rubio of Florida. When it came down to two, Ted Cruz. Anything to protect the principles of classical conservatism I had spent my adult life educating myself upon and looking for candidates who saw the answers to the world’s problems as I did. Limited, effective government. Personal freedom. Protection of happiness and opportunity for all. There was no place in my universe for emotional populism and nativist appeals. Trump was the poster child for just such appeals. He threatened to build a wall between America and Mexico against all reality. He threatened to throw out all undocumented immigrants, than let them back in. He threatened to throw out all trade treaties, install nineteenth century tariffs. He stated President Bush’s mistake was not only going into Iraq, but not confiscating their oil. He recommended the withdrawal of the United States from NATO, the allowance of Russia to absorb sovereign Ukraine. A supporter of Democrats all his life, he promoted “infrastructure spending” on a massive scale, and declared sacred all entitlements against any attempt at reform. On a personal level, he attacked everything that moved against him. Bush was “low energy”. Fiorina was “ugly” Rubio was “little”. Cruz was “Lyin’ Ted”. And in the end game, “Crooked Hillary”. He egged on many of the darker elements of American society to see immigrants as “other” and stood back as lewdness and crudeness poured out of such dead-enders onto the other candidates through social media.
Not exactly a dream candidate. It is however critical to recognize that it is likely no other candidate other than Donald J Trump could have brought about the November 8, 2016 revolution. Try as I might, I can not imagine any of the other Republican hopefuls standing up so courageously under the withering barrage of the establishment media that had crushed so many others, and giving it back more than he got, to spectacular effect. I can see no other candidate focusing like a laser beam on the flaws of Clinton as a candidate, and not giving an inch, until the entire world saw her for what she was. I can’t conceive of any other candidate ignoring political operatives and managers who relied on mechanized,sterile get out the vote campaigns, trusting instead the motivation and enthusiasm of the masses he saw so clearly in ever larger mass rallies, held in the outback of America the establishment had ignored for years. In retrospect, Donald Trump was THE unique force of nature to pull off one of the greatest upsets in American electoral history.
There were obviously other realities in the perfect storm that produced a President Trump and the republican wave election. His opponent, Hillary Clinton and the Democrat Party, were the perfect foils, and profound contributors, to just such an outcome.
The revenge of the “Deplorables”:
In mid-September, the normally careful Clinton made the gaffe of the election when she stated, “half of Trump’s supporters belong in a basket of deplorables.” Her insulated audience laughed and applauded. Of course they did. Democrats had for decades derided massive quantities of Americans as “fly over country”, “rubes”, and to quote the current President, “bitter clingers”. When these rubes defended their liberty to see marriage or abortion as a religious philosophy, they were harried. When they stood up for the Second Amendment, they were castigated as accepting mass murder. If they defended family values or showed concern regarding the societal fractures and flaunting of government preferential treatment to non-citizens over citizens, they were denounced as racists. If they complained that they were concerned about government delivered health insurance, they were told to pass it to see what’s in it – the designers of Obamacare stated the insurance was passed in such a way “to fool the stupid people.” The result were massive premiums, huge deductibles, and loss of insurance for hundreds of thousands of the “stupid people”. This massive swath of the American electorate decided to form the famous coalition that President Nixon so famously called the “Silent Majority”, and crush Clinton in the “fly over” vote.
The Disappearance of the Vote Machine:
Hillary Clinton developed a massive war chest and huge ground operation to do what President Obama had managed to do in the previous two elections, turn on the Democrat vote machine. Sickly, and lacking the personal stamina to physically drive enthusiasm, she relied on traditional voting turnout processes that would replicate the overwhelming numbers in the patchwork coalition Obama had built: urban votes driven by democrat political machines and unions, female and minority votes driven by perceived grievance and fear of exclusion from a place at the decision table, and young idealistic voters pushing societal redesign. Her lack of personal charisma drove a dramatic imbalance between the negative of voting to prevent an outcome and the positive of a projecting a better world. The result? Although it appears Trump will equal Romney’s 2016 popular vote, Hillary Clinton will fall nearly 7 million votes behind Obama’s 2008 voting turnout. Having been provided nothing by Hillary Clinton to vote for, they just stayed home.
It’s The Corruption, Stupid:
In 1992, the male Clinton candidate for President, Bill, famously recognized the underlying gorilla in the room, the anemic economy, as the insurmountable reality the first President Bush would not be able to overcome. The Clinton war room made sure they never overlooked this fact, pasting the sign “It’s the Economy, Stupid” on the wall. In 2016, failed female candidate Clinton after the election pathetically blamed her loss on FBI Director Comey’s letter two weeks before the election announcing the reopening of the Clinton email investigation due to new findings. Clinton felt the re-opening of the investigation lost her the election. It wasn’t the letter. It was the Corruption Itself, Stupid. Clinton’s brutal abuse of the law regarding the maintenance of a private server for government business, exposed high level security information to foreign government hacking, in order to cover up the even larger scandal of ‘pay for play’ of the Clinton Foundation selling US government influence for millions and millions of dollars of personal Clinton profit. This was cynically followed by the willful State and Justice Departments’ coverup of destroyed documents, producing nonsensical immunity agreements to keep the most culpable quiet, highlighting the fundamental corruption of having one standard for regular americans, another standard for the elite, rife throughout American government. The voting American had seen it again and again. Sanctuary cities. The marauding IRS targeting conservative Americans. The environmental nazis flying private jets burning massive quantities of oil, to devise treaties to lambast normal americans heating their houses or driving their cars with oil. A Culture of Corruption so vast, that Clinton merely was the pathetic, greedy poster child. It was the Corruption Stupid, and the chant that took over the last days of the election was – “Drain the Swamp.”
Americans are Patriots:
It may be that the average American can not recite the document that contains the fundamental differentiator of American identity, “Life,Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”, but they feel it in their gut. For too long, the meme had been America is evil, America has abused others, America is in inevitable decline. The Democrat Party had progressively positioned itself as the defender of personal emotions, over societal success. Americans recognize the uniqueness of the American experiment, and want to pass on the hopes and opportunities to their children and grandchildren. They wanted someone who could articulate this, hoping first it was President Obama with “Hope and Change”, but soon recognized this was predicated upon giving up the American Dream of a life well lived. This sense of American patriotism wasn’t building empires or rigging the system to the “victim” of the moment, it was a positive belief that being American focused most on hard work and fair play winning the day. Hillary Clinton promised more of the same sagging of the American spirit. More victimhood, more collosal government oversight and hegemony. Like the Brexiters in Britain, the voters in America were not yet willing to undergo an enforced setting of the sun without a fight.
On November 8th, I went into the booth for the first time in my life truly questioning what I would do. In the isolation of the voting booth, I thought about all the things I previously believed were important in a President. Deft understanding of foreign affairs to avoid mistakes in a dangerous world. Respect for the American Constitution and what it uniquely protects for every individual in the nation. A life time of respect for the rule of law and equal justice for all. A clear understanding of fair play and respect for people of differing views. A life of public service to understand the complicated world of compromise and values.
I thought about the country and the path it was on. I thought about how I have defended the ramparts of civilization as the means to a better world. I thought about who was willing to go to the mat for the country and its people.
In the end, I did my job as a citizen, and pulled the lever. The lever for Donald J. Trump. I don’t know if he can help make America great again, but I at least know he has not already decided America should never again be great. I may regret selecting the neophyte over the known quantity, but like 62 million of Americans, I decided I’m willing to risk seeing if he can learn on the job.
The election is over and the hard work now begins.
As a curious postnote, it turns out that the most clairvoyant political pundit, the person who saw America more clearly than any Washington DC pundit, was someone as unexpected as the candidate Trump who pulled off the electoral miracle.
This Guy:
Kurt Cobain -Lead singer of the rock grunge band , Nirvana
We are ten days away from an epically unpleasant choice for the presidency of the United States between two candidates who show genetically ingrained layers of sleaze in their makeup heretofore not seen. The virtue of entering a polling booth, completing by decisive vote an extended period of consideration as to who can best effect a positive future for the nation, a privilege not universally held in this world still populated with tyrants, is truly absent to us this year. Instead, we will have to wallow in the mire adherent to both candidates covering our own virtue with shame, or opt out, and passively accept the decision of those who wallow better. Do we select the candidate who has lived a life bereft of principles, of shady deals, broken contracts, meandering ethics and political loyalties, history of cheating and uncouth,abusive behavior? Or do we select the candidate who has epitomized self-aggrandizement, character assassination, decades of corruptive behavior, and very likely criminal behavior that placed at risk the nation’s very security through their malfeasance? Worse, is this election a simple house of mirrors and both candidates reflect the same essential person?
The seeds of this disaster of democracy were planted over many years and have many contributors. We lost our compass as a society when the binding force of holding common virtues gave way to an undisciplined meme of the immature, to do your own thing and accept no consequence, and was subsequently elevated to the status of ultimate virtue for the society as a whole. Individual rights, once celebrated as protecting one’s intellectual capability of changing their own life tract and protecting individual expression against the tyranny of the rulers, became the compromise of giving up the right of individual beliefs for the right of being anti-societal and forcing society to accept. Some bargain there. Life in this set of “freedoms” is one of constant hypocrisies – demanding unique freedoms and demanding others reduce their understanding of virtue to bend to your own. This gashing of virtues has led to candidates stating they are best positioned to restore virtues because they have lived lives of literally ignoring every one of them and have paid no penalty.
The concept of “cleaning house” by voting in the ‘outsider’ attracts many voters this year in the theory that burning down all foundations is the best tact to severing our connection with this path we have been on. Given the alternative, it is easy to see the attraction to this option. The hard truth is of course the outsider has always lived as an insider, showing no identified introspection that would suggest he has any remorse for his life inside the bubble, or would govern any differently. In fact, at times he has shown dark behaviors of personal threat and intimidation towards those that disagree and quiet passiveness in those supporters who hold racist or violent beliefs, that border on a very dangerous fascist core.
The alternative candidate has shown her core to be the intertwining of power and greed that is even more dangerous. Decades of using levers of power to create personal wealth has destroyed her capacity to separate out the nation’s best interests from her own family. Recent Wikileaks emails suggest the personal aggrandizement of the Clintons through their foundation has already succeeded 60 million, with more millions yet mandated, for favors that have stunk for decades as “pay for play”. As they used to say – you can put lipstick on a pig…. The result as is typical for those who would hang around the slop for some reflected glory or profit, they are increasingly covered in the mud themselves, whatever their original virtues.
The self corrective mechanisms once in place to identify and root out such people have long since been broken. The Department of Justice progressively functions as the long arm of intimidation and coverup of those who benefit from the status quo. The FBI has twisted itself into knots to avoid doing due diligence, providing immunity to the most culpable, and injecting itself into interpretation of the law rather than obtaining the dispassionate elements of facts that would allow judgement to be considered in an objective setting. The tools for maintaining the independence of our virtues used to be housed in individual’s personal value system fortified by the shared virtues we all respected. In positions of power, the weapon of choice was resignation for both the virtuous and the culpable. On Saturday, June 20th, 1973, President Nixon, in an effort to maintain executive privilege in a matter of potential criminality demanded his Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire the Watergate independent special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, who had subpoenaed Nixon’s personal secretly recorded tapes of Oval Office conversations. Believing the demand to be extra-constitutional, Richardson resigned. Nixon then demanded the deputy attorney general William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox. Ruckelshaus on identical principles, resigned. Nixon was forced to go to the Solicitor General Robert Bork and name him acting Attorney General who finally complied.
The acts of personal virtue in the face of enormous pressure inevitably had their profound effects. Within eight weeks, Nixon himself was forced to resign under the weight of proposed articles of impeachment reinforced by his behavior. Robert Bork, one of the truly brilliant minds of constitutional law, destined for a career culmination on the Supreme Court was forever tainted by his subservience to the executive at the risk of his personal virtues, and was turned down by the US Senate for the Supreme Court in 1987, a Senate that had not forgotten or forgiven.
The tradition of resignation for principle has left our country’s political class and our society as a whole. When the Attorney General of the United States sees massive flaunting of the laws that protect our nation’s security, does she demand an independent and cleansing investigation that upholds the rule of law? No – she rapidly secures immunity for those most culpable to protect the executive against any exposure of the slovenliness that may well have reached the Oval Office. No resignation for those who left their principles long ago. Does the FBI director who recognizes the extent of involvement demand the concept of equal protection and enforcement under the rule of law, or resign as a matter of personal integrity and respect for that virtue? No – he tries to ride the razor’s edge of acceptance and survival. Does the Chief Justice of the United States when facing the objective extra-constitutional nature of a law in its coercion upon all citizens to purchase a governmentally mandated product, stand up for the principles of his life long advocation, or resign in the aftermath? No-he subverts the law in front of him to call the mandate a tax, when no one, pro or con to the law which will affect society permanently has argued, to protect his ‘reputation’ as non-interventionalist.
Ten days from now, we will face the most odious choice in years in the election booth. We are in this position, both Democrat and Republican, because we have wallowed in the mud with such people, and have gotten used to the dirt and the stench, to the point where it doesn’t effect us when we are covered in it. Certainly as long as we don’t notice it affects us, all is forgiven. We have sacrificed our personal virtue as a beacon of how to act, and how to expect others to act. The result will cover us all, and not in glory. Regardless, this is a democracy, and it relies on participation. As someone recently said, vote your conscience, but vote you must. However it turns out, the new America must demand a more rigid standard of virtue from the winner, or prepare to withdraw support from those who will not be virtuous. We must ask of all who serve, and of ourselves, the willingness to balance the scales of virtue, or resign in their absence – to let those in power know, their hollow core of corruption will no longer be tolerated. We will need to show once and for all, they don’t own us, and they can’t buy our personal virtue.
The national election of one of the world’s great democracies is now two months away and our moment of truth is soon upon us. On November 8th, 2016, the American people will take on their Constitutionally granted duty and select among perhaps the two worst candidates ever nominated by the major parties for the job of Chief Executive. Horrors.
The seeming ease for those of us most resolved to stand back and not in engage in the misery was but a month ago a Hobson’s choice. The supposed competent Criminal was going to beat the incompetent Clown like a screen door in a hurricane. Well, the political competence of the Criminal has proven to be – not so competent. The polls now suggest the election has tightened to the point where we might all go around on November 9th and hear those immortal, nightmare inducing words of 2000 – how do you count a hanging chad?
The swing states of Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, and Colorado are now swinging because the Orange One has managed to get his mojo together and show some real prescience and discipline, and the Ethically Challenged One has managed to be herself. The establishment media, which is used to parroting lockstep the meme that will reinforce the good guy liberal bad guy conservative story to an effective conclusion in November, has struggled mightily with the seeming disinterest of the public in what they have to say. The media obviously has not been helped by the chosen one’s incredible weakness as a candidate to the point where it appears she may have to be physically carried across the doorstep to victory.
Hillary Clinton’s aversion to the truth and obsession for secrecy to obscure her lies has proven to be genetic. William Safire so many years ago nailed her persona precisely. She lies to prevent real malfeasance from coming to light, and we have let her off the hook each and every time. The latest blizzard is connected to the bottomless pit of lying she has performed regarding the never ending email saga. Every remark she has ever made about it is a lie, and every lie she tells, attempts to cover a lie she told. Now that’s a real liar. Many might say, so what, we all lie a bit as our reality is often less sexy or self enhancing. But as our mothers all once admonished us, lying will make you sick. For Hillary, whether its the lies that making her sick, or the lies about her real sickness, the two devastating blows to her character are showing a rickety and sagging floor in her voter’s enthusiasm for her, and it might be terminal. Even a party like the Democrat Party, which has such voting discipline when it counts that one might rename it the Hold Your Nose Party, is struggling mightily with this Clinton. You don’t need enthusiasm for New York, Illinois, and California – those states are so long gone to rational debate that Mrs. Clinton could abdicate and she would still beat her opponent. You do need it however in the large swath of the country that still foolishly believes an election should be a debate about the future, and there, the Clinton screen door is banging loose from its hinges.
Then there is Donald Trump, who was supposed to have a real ceiling of enthusiasm, and oh boy what a rigid ceiling. Its bad enough having the Democrats decrying your blissful ignorance regarding every conceivable policy debate, but what do you do when at least a quarter of your own voters think you are a knucklehead? Well, maybe its not a quarter of the republican vote any more. Trump’s last month of simply avoiding every single cow pie of his own making, has made him looking like, dare I say, the competent one. The apparent ceiling of 40 % of the voter’s who would vote for Mr. Moose to effect change is now a ceiling no more. Mr. Trump is in a statistical heat with Mrs. Clinton and it is reflecting not only on swing states but even the supposed lock down states like Michigan and Nevada that Mrs. Clinton’s union brigades were going to bring home for her. The adage that 60% percent of the country couldn’t possibly vote for a clownish, completely unprepared figure like Trump for our nation’s most complex political position, is abutting the realization that 55% may not be able to vote for the alternative. Trump has helped the perception of a rising ceiling with a heretofore unrevealed discipline to follow the script of competence, even if his id wants to drive him into nonsensical ‘lookatme’-ism.
So here we, the American People, stand in the basement, the ceiling above pushing on the floor below, just waiting for the whole unstable pile to crash down on us. From our dim perspective the future does not look very bright, but what it is definitely looking like more and more, is unpredictable. The first debate comes at the end of September and we will all be drawn to watch like moths to a flame. Can Hillary stand on her feet for a half hour under bright lights without collapsing? Can Donald Trump go five minutes without stepping in a cowpie so huge even his own hugeness can not extricate himself from it? Can a formative debate occur where literally no one is capable of telling the truth about anything? Are we so beaten down that we can’t any longer discern the difference?
Don’t lie. You want to watch. Reality television has become – reality.
In one of the most dispiriting contests for leadership of a great nation since Otho displaced Galba, the 2016 election continues along its unmerry way. In a not so epic battle between an implacable prevaricator and a self amused charlatan, the nation sheds its weary tears. 2016 could be the epochal election where whoever wins, the nation is the biggest loser.
The prevaricator Clinton, firmly in the lead, recognizes the safe thing to do is to say nothing. That is to say, nothing true. Caught in a blizzard of lies regarding her impossibly stupid and criminal use of a private e-mail server for the highest level of government secrets, she continues to do what she does best – lie as only liars can lie. Confronted with never telling the truth, she states she has always been truthful about lying. When the media attention, so minuscule compared to any similar event in a candidate’s life not wearing a democratic party mantle, becomes the least bit focused, she manages to lie stating that former Secretary Colin Powell suggested she maintain her own server. See? Everybody did it, so how bad could it be? Not so fast! declares the fastidious Powell. The turd-nado that would normally accompany such a cascade of untruths is nowhere to be found – just the gentle drizzle of sure she’s a liar, but how could you possibly vote for the dangerous crazy orange guy?
The self amused charlatan, Trump, otherwise known by the media as the dangerous crazy orange guy, has firmly re-enforced the notion that he might be dangerous crazy. Propped up by an alternative right crowd that is even more dangerous crazy then he is, Trump has continued the drumbeat against his election foes with aplomb- Ted Cruz and his father, the Gold Star Khan parents, the New York Times, and those who ousted Saddam Hussein. This laser focus on the immaterial has had its inevitable response in the mid-August polls. 0 for 23. Generally not a good predictor of victory. The captain of the ship responsible for the course directly into an iceberg, did what wayward captains in such circumstances do – he fired his iceberg averse crew and hired new crew who aren’t afraid of hitting icebergs.
And then, out of nowhere, a deliberative Trump produces two consecutive speeches that carry the perfect balance between the nation’s problems and thinking that gets to the core of those problems. First the foreign policy speech that lays out in clear, concise fashion that difference between the inherited middle east of Obama – Clinton and the tattered calamity that has been left in the wake of their policies:
Libya was stable.
Syria was under control.
Egypt was ruled by a secular President and an ally of the United States.
Iraq was experiencing a reduction in violence.
The group that would become what we now call ISIS was close to being extinguished.
Iran was being choked off by economic sanctions.
Fast-forward to today. What have the decisions of Obama-Clinton produced?
Libya is in ruins, our ambassador and three other brave Americans are dead, and ISIS has gained a new base of operations.
Syria is in the midst of a disastrous civil war. ISIS controls large portions of territory. A refugee crisis now threatens Europe and the United States.
In Egypt, terrorists have gained a foothold in the Sinai desert, near the Suez Canal, one of the most essential waterways in the world.
Iraq is in chaos, and ISIS is on the loose.
The media so engrossed in the meme of the age of “smart” foreign policy brought as a gift to America by the twin geniuses Obama and Clinton, was put aback by the Trump’s precision artillery, and his brazen willingness to expose the Potemkin village of supposed successes of the “intellectuals” running the country. And then like a championship prize fighter, not the drunken brawler he had been, Trump came immediately back the next night with an even more provocative spot on speech, a take down of the myths associated with race baiting, and the democratic stranglehold on urban centers in the United States fomenting the devastating outcomes that have resulted in perpetual poverty for its poorest citizens:
There is no compassion in allowing drug dealers, gang members, and felons to prey on innocent people. It is the first duty of government to keep the innocent safe, and when I am President I will fight for the safety of every American – and especially those Americans who have not known safety for a very, very long time. I am asking for the vote of every African-American citizen struggling in our country today who wants a different future.
It is time for our society to address some honest and very difficult truths. The Democratic Party has failed and betrayed the African-American community. Democratic crime policies, education policies, and economic policies have produced only more crime, more broken homes, and more poverty.
Let us look at the situation right here in Milwaukee, a city run by Democrats for decade after decade. Last year, killings in this city increased by 69 percent, plus another 634 victims of non-fatal shootings. 18-29-year-olds accounted for nearly half of the homicide victims. The poverty rate here is nearly double the national average. Almost 4 in 10 African-American men in Milwaukee between the ages of 25-54 do not have a job. Nearly four in 10 single mother households are living in poverty. 55 public schools in this city have been rated as failing to meet expectations, despite ten thousand dollars in funding per-pupil. There is only a 60% graduation rate, and it’s one of the worst public school systems in the country.
1 in 5 manufacturing jobs has disappeared in Milwaukee since we fully opened our markets to China, and many African-American neighborhoods have borne the brunt of this hit.
To every voter in Milwaukee, to every voter living in every inner city, or every forgotten stretch of our society, I am running to offer you a better future.
For the first time, this Donald Trump did not simply cut to the chase as to what the real world was like compared to the liberal narrative. This time he started to identify and suggest solutions that could appeal to people directly caught in the violence and poverty vortex:
The Democratic Party has run nearly every inner city in this country for 50 years, and run them into financial ruin. They’ve ruined the schools. They’ve driven out the jobs. They’ve tolerated a level of crime no American should consider acceptable. Violent crime has risen 17% in America’s 50 largest cities last year. Killings of police officers this year is up nearly 50 percent. Homicides are up more than 60% in Baltimore. They are up more than 50% in Washington, D.C.
This is the future offered by Hillary Clinton. More poverty, more crime, and more of the same. The future she offers is the most pessimistic thing I can possibly imagine.
It is time for a different future. Here is what I am proposing.
First, on immigration. No community in this country has been hurt worse by Hillary Clinton’s immigration policies than the African-American community. Now she is proposing to print instant work permits for millions of illegal immigrants, taking jobs directly from low-income Americans. I will secure our border, protect our workers, and improve jobs and wages in your community. We will only invite people to join our country who share our tolerant values, who support our Constitution, and who love all of our people.
On trade, I am going to renegotiate NAFTA, stand up to China, withdraw from the TPP, and protect every last American job.
On taxes, I am going to give a massive tax cut to every worker and small business in this country, bring thousands of new companies and millions of new jobs onto our shores – and make it very difficult for our businesses to leave.
I am going to reform our regulations so jobs stay in America, and new businesses come to America to hire workers right here in Milwaukee. Every policy my opponent has sends jobs overseas. I am going to bring trillions in new wealth back to the United States.
On education, it is time to have school choice, merit pay for teachers, and to end the tenure policies that hurt good teachers and reward bad teachers. We are going to put students and parents first.
Hillary Clinton would rather deny opportunities to millions of young African-American children, just so she can curry favor with the education bureaucracy.
I am going to allow charter schools to thrive, and help young kids get on the American ladder of success: a good education, and a good-paying job.
On crime, I am going to support more police in our communities, appoint the best prosecutors and judges in the country, pursue strong enforcement of federal laws, and I am going to break up the gangs, the cartels and criminal syndicates terrorizing our neighborhoods. To every lawbreaker hurting innocent people in this country, I say: your free reign will soon come crashing to an end.
On healthcare, we are going to get rid of Obamacare – which has caused soaring double-digit premium increases – and give choice to patients and consumers. Aetna, just today, announced they are dropping out – as are many of the major insurance companies.
On government corruption, I am going to restore honor to our government. We’ve seen the corruption of Hillary Clinton, the mass email deletions, the pay-for-play at the State Department, the profiteering, the favors given to foreign corporations and governments at your expense. We’ve seen a former Secretary of State lie to Congress about her illegal email scheme, risk innocent American lives, and bring dishonor onto our government.
In my Administration, I am going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law.
I am going to forbid senior officials from trading favors for cash by preventing them from collecting lavish speaking fees through their spouses when they serve.
I am going to ask my senior officials to sign an agreement not to accept speaking fees from corporations with a registered lobbyist for five years after leaving office, or from any entity tied to a foreign government. This is all just the beginning.
We are going to make this a government of the people once again. This is our chance to take back power from all the people who’ve taken it from you. The reason you see the establishment media lining up behind my opponent is because they are scared that you, with your vote, can take away their power and return it to your family and community.
As the week closed, the self amused charlatan suddenly looked like the guy with the ideas and the other candidate the poster child of more of the tired, failed lies we tell ourselves.
The pundits of the media class pontificated that this was clearly the “pivot to presidential” that for months they had breathlessly claimed would appear as soon as Trump had escaped the partisanship of the primaries. From my standpoint 48 hours of laying out some clarifying rationales that define the difference between two opposing political views does not a pivot make. Does any candidate that has determined to lead a great nation require a pivot if the reason for running in the first place was a long pondered and vetted set of principles and beliefs that define them? Trump’s epiphany may be that he finally realized that neither candidate had any principles, and that a principles vacuum existed. A principled Trump could provide some separation. Can Trump stand in front of a mirror long enough to stop admiring himself, and consistently begin to look within himself? The data to this point in time would suggest we will be back to a large dose of demagoguery lickety split.
If instead the miraculous has happened and someone has gotten to Trump, to remind him he is our reflection and not his own – maybe, just maybe we could have ourselves a real election.
The blessed gift of summer, warm, long days and star filled nights, with the nature’s bounty in full bloom, is brief but treasured paradise for every midwesterner. August then arrives, and the buildup of heat begins to linger, with more muggy humidity and flying bugs, more substantial thunderstorms, and the first hint of the etherial nature of warm pleasantries in a northern clime. These are the dog days, and even the dogs know it. The energy lags. The baseball team is going nowhere. The world is skittish about the number of unhinged people with grievances looking for a violent moment in the sun. The political scene is an unadulterated mess. The Olympics are sliding into the politically correct abyss. Maybe its best to just curl up in a ball, and sleep it off.
Historian Andrew Roberts in the UK Telegraph reminds us August, named for the most dominant of Roman Caesars, has been notorious for being the month of great upheaval. The calamity known as World War I was triggered in August 2014 when massive mobilizations across Europe triggered the inevitable initiation of direct conflict between million man armies. World War II was seared to a close in the dropping of the two atomic bombs on August 6th, and August 9th 1945 in a fitting close to the Armageddon of World War II, launched on August 31st, 1939 by the Nazi dictator who fondly dreamed about Gotterdammerung. The Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein decided August 2nd 1990, was an appropriate time to attempt to take over a third of the world’s oil with an invasion of Kuwait and in all probability the Arab Gulf States, until the United States and its allies determined to upset his fantasy of untold wealth and power over the next 6 months. Caesar Augustus would likely have been offended that the violent month would be associated with the man who brought the world Pax Romana. Not so much the violent part, just the fact that leaders were unable to instill the iron discipline that prevented upstarts from starting conflagrations threatening the order of things.
The world is drifting into muggy somnolence this August. Polls have suggested a waning interest, particularly among youth, for the engagement, hard work, and need for compromise, that sustains democratic rule. Despite the abysmal records of socialist top down governments, there is a growing comfort with the idea of a “strong” leader to go above the heads of legislatures where nasty differences in opinion have to be worked out, and have the efficiencies of decisions that are determined to be in our “best interest”. The United States, with almost a perfect process of checks and balances to prevent the development of a supreme leader, finds that its current President has used extra-legal means to secure his agenda, and nothing is done about it. To secure a treaty with the arch enemy Iranian mullahs, Obama made an agreement that didn’t require Senate approval as demanded in the Constitution, and flaunted the laws placed to prevent paying ransom for hostages, making Americans everywhere at risk for the long arm of terrorists. So much for the checks and balances. Its current candidates for the executive office, Hillary Clinton, the felonious sieve of our nation’s security, continues in a pattern typical for her entire public life, to lie and deceive with the intent to exhaust ear, and eventually the rectitude of the voter. The water canon Donald Trump, spews out conflicted concepts unburdened by circumspect thought, suggesting only The Donald is capable of solving an infinity of national problems. Not with solutions, mind you, simply the power of extra-constitutional will. Sounds pretty “strong man” to me. The two party system that propelled these two anti-democratic poseurs has made a shambles of the idea of principled democracy. It will not be enough to simply roll up in a ball. We are going to need a significant shower to wash off the rhetorical dung.
Out there exists more of the same. A disconnected populous takes selfies to record their own existence, not their society’s accomplishment. People carelessly give up their unique identity more and more to nefarious software parasites that steal identity like they used to steal jewels, destroying the trust in the marketplace, the concept of citizenry, and the power of the vote. Athletic contests are tainted with doping and men are running as women to defeat women running as women, to alter artificially the concept of competition, and more fundamentally the idea of envisioning the accomplishment of an outcome based on the concept of effort, dedication, and equal opportunity. Judges seek to actively overrule laws that offend their political senses, not their training, regarding the process of law and the importance of rule of law in a democracy. The somnolence extends to the “governmentalizing” of health care, where life prolonging decisions will be made on politically correct behaviors, not by practitioners and patients objectively dealing in a private way with disease and mortality.
Oh, the dog days. Its hard to look at them as anything other than something to be tolerated rather than overcome. A nice secure place to roll up in a ball and sleep it off seems to definitely have its merits. Of course, at some point, we are going to have to wake up, stretch, look around, and get to work and start fixing this mess.
