The Mother of all Elections

Donald Trump pulled off one of American history’s most stunning upsets, defeating establishment favorite Hillary Clinton decisively in the electoral college. Hillary is said to be far ahead in the popular vote, and her lead is further said to be growing. As a clueless American outside the corridors of power, I find it surprising that votes are still being counted a week after the election, and that the post-election vote seems to be so tilted in Hillary’s favor.

The response on the part of the mainstream media was predictable, but the reaction of Clinton supporters across the land was embarrassing and juvenile. Crying parties? Students being given passing marks on midterm exams because of their grief? Has any student ever been given such an important pass over the death of even a close family member? College kids being consoled with play dough and crayons, even pacifiers? Students generally just walking out of class in protest with no repercussions?

On social media, I’ve asked for an explanation regarding just what it is the protesters are protesting. Obviously, they don’t like the outcome of the election, but nothing appears to have been amiss in the electoral count, and Clinton conceded the next day. It appears that the protesters simply want the election results overturned. “Not my president” and all that. They are tantamount to a spoiled toddler kicking and stamping and trying to scream loud enough to get their way.

The authorities appear to be totally unresponsive to the protesters, despite numerous instances of violence directed at Trump supporters. I know, this contradicts the narrative that Trump’s supporters are the ones “hating” and causing the violence, but then reality always seems to contradict the mainstream media’s official narratives.

I’ve been open to the electoral college being abolished for a long time. The problem here is that you can’t abolish it post-election and then change those election results to suit your whims. I think it’s pretty obvious that if the results had been opposite (as many of us thought they’d be), with Hillary prevailing in the Electoral College and Trump winning the popular vote, those same protesters would be backing the old system to the tilt. They’d also be relentlessly ridiculing any Trump protesters as whiny cry babies and poor losers.

Hollywood in particular is distraught. The film industry may completely grind to a halt. How will America survive with Cher blasting off into space? Should Trump be “tolerant” and just allow Robert DeNiro, George Lopez and countless other celebrities to come to the White House and punch him? After all, we’ve been told that Trump opponents are in “fear” of what his presidency will mean. They need time to process the election results. They need to release a lot more videos of themselves explaining how upset they are. Miley Cyrus will probably need to get even more naked.

Now as for Trump himself, he has sent mixed messages so far to his supporters. Naming Bannon as Chief of Staff seems to have been a good move, judging by the histrionic reaction on the part of the establishment. Preibus was a predictable bone thrown to the mainstream Republicans. Most of the names being bandied about as Cabinet choices are exceedingly distressing to hear. John Bolton? Jamie Dimon? Apparently, warhawk extraordinaire Frank Gaffney is a part of Trump’s national security team already. That’s a troubling choice for someone who proclaimed that he wanted to put “America first.”

I’m hoping that most of these establishment, neocon names are just wishful thinking on the part of the mainstream media. In other words, they are names they’d like to see picked. I will be worried if no real outsiders show up in his cabinet. How about Ron Paul for Treasury? Pat Buchanan for Secretary of Defense? I’d really love to see Trump extend an olive branch to left-wing populists like Cynthia McKinney, Dennis Kucinich and Ralph Nader. Giving them a voice in his administration would go a long way towards quelling the nonstop howling from the inside the beltway crowd.

If Donald Trump reneges on his pledges to the American people, I will be the first to lash out at him. In many ways, that would be a greater betrayal that the typical broken promises of mainstream Republicrat candidates. Most of us are astute enough by now to understand that there is no point in “reading the lips” of these hack stooges. We expect their promises to be broken, and since most of their campaigns revolve around the same tired political rhetoric, they usually don’t even make any promises.

Trump needs to remember who it was that elected him. It wasn’t neocons wanting war with anyone and everyone. It wasn’t the sort of Rockefeller Republicans who seem to be all too visible a part of his transition team. It was those “forgotten Americans” who have seen their job prospects diminish, when they have jobs, and have grown tired of the special interests of a myriad of groups taking precedence over the welfare of all. In Trump, they saw a symbolic figure that seemed to maybe, just maybe, have their interests at heart.

I will studying with a keen interest the final popular vote tallies. As a “conspiracy theorist,” I naturally am suspicious of such things, especially when they take so extraordinarily long to count. Much of this late vote appears to be coming from California, where Jerry Brown’s law allowing non-citizens to get drivers licenses effectively opened to door to them voting, since only a drivers license is required as identification in that state. Some “conspiracy theorists” think some three million illegals and undocumented people voted in this election. Needless to say, that was more that enough to tip the scales towards Hillary.

On the positive side, Trump continues to stress the restoration of relations with Russia. This has incensed the warhawk “liberals,” and cranky old John McCainiac, who basically dared Trump not to pursue peace. McCain was inexplicably re-elected, by voters who returned 90 percent of our putrid representatives to the Senate, and 96 percent to the House. Common riff-raff like me find it hard to juxtapose these head- shaking numbers against the less than 10% approval rating Congress receives in virtually every poll of these same voters.

I hope that none of the countless Americans, some of them high profile, who have threatened Trump with assassination actually carry out their plans. I hope that Seattle’s District Representative Kshama Sawant doesn’t succeed in her goal to disrupt Trump’s inauguration. I hope the guy who held up the “Rape Melania” sign doesn’t do that. I hope that the same “comedians” who devoted far too much time to making fun of Sarah Palin’s Down Syndrome son don’t start attacking Trump’s youngest son; it has already been speculated that he is autistic.

It’s pretty clear at that point that the country is divided like never before in our history. No matter how many celebrities stress its importance, for instance, you are never going to get a substantial portion of the population to support, or even care about Transgender bathrooms. What’s just as obvious is the fact that the side whose candidate lost this election will never be willing to “come together.” Remember, these are the same people who demanded Trump promise to stand by the results of the election. To a disinterested observer, it looks very much like all those people in the streets, and screaming on narcissistic videos, are refusing to stand by those results.

These are frightening, breathtaking and unprecedented times. Like the unexpected Brexit election results in Great Britain, the election of Trump gives us some hope, for the first time in many years. Will he disappoint, creating even more disillusionment and cynicism,  or carve out an honored place in our history?

“Liberals” vs. Populists

With the most interesting election of my lifetime only days away, it is appropriate to consider the way Donald Trump has changed the political dynamic in America. Never has any political candidate, at any level, been the subject of such continuous hatred and vicious attacks, including numerous physical threats, than Donald Trump has.

Trump is no traditional Republican. Regardless what happens on November 8, the old GOP is dead. If Trump is elected, it will signal the birth of a new Republican Party, one that is more populist in nature, and open to hordes of independents. If he loses, there will never be another Republican president. The demographics are simply against it.

I have lost too many friends on social media because of my support for Trump. A lot of good people, who certainly ought to know better, have been relegated to defending the thoroughly corrupt Hillary Clinton, and fantasizing that she hasn’t always lusted for war, been addicted to chicanery, been in bed with large banks and corporations, and supported anything else her fellow One Percenters want. Her entire career is an advertisement for special interest/identity politics, and her every action has been against the interests of the common people.

This election season has uncovered several uncomfortable truths. First, anyone who trusted the mainstream media in the least bit has seen incontrovertible proof that they are an updated version of Pravda, little more than mouthpieces for the state. Second, anyone who believed in the fantastic “left” and “right” paradigm, which produced milquetoast “opponents” for the chosen candidates in each presidential election, has had their illusions forever shattered. The Bush family and every other neocon Republican hates their own candidate and are publicly supporting Clinton.

The slew of important disclosures by Wikileaks and Project Veritas have been met with silence by the kept establishment press. They do, however, have a burning desire to uncover the identities of those who leaked the information. Their favorite culprit is Russia, in conjunction with Trump. At any rate, they have no interest in the massive corruption being exposed.

Just what is it that the “left” hates about Putin? His ironclad stance against GMOs and Big Pharma? His ban on the Rothschild banking elite entering Russia? His attacks on military and police corruption? His encouraging Russians to have more children, which has angered every eugenicist in high places all over the world?

What does the establishment “left” offer us at this point? Their attacks on Trump are illuminating; nothing about his blowhard comment about executing Edward Snowden, or about his heavy handed “stop and frisk” mantra. Instead, they focus on things he may or may not have said at some point in his career, that were not politically correct. Or his alleged involvement with several women, who were so traumatized by Trump’s “harassment” that they waited years, sometimes decades, before going public shortly before the election. Or the fact the KKK leadership supposedly supports him. Is Trump supposed to stop David Duke, or the KKK, from voting for him?

Have Hillary Clinton, or Joe Biden, or Tim Kaine, or Nancy Pelosi, or any other prominent “liberal” today, ever done anything remotely populist? Have they even said anything that indicated they’re concerned with protecting our civil liberties? Have any of them opposed our non-stop foreign escapades in far flung tiny nations? Have any of them shown the slightest indication that they agree with any part of John F. Kennedy’s timeless, immensely powerful American University “peace” speech?

The establishment “left” has devolved into a messy mix of identity politics, social justice warring and authoritarian control freaks. They not only care nothing about protecting free speech and press, they are constantly attempting to suppress ideas they find offensive. I don’t think there is any chance that the Bill of Rights would be approved by either house of Congress today. If it somehow were, any of our recent presidents would veto it, and any of our recent Supreme Courts would declare it unconstitutional. It survives in the tattered state it does simply because it hasn’t become politically expedient for our leaders to officially discard it.

Because of my support for Trump, some people think I’m a right-winger, even a “conservative.” Nothing could be further from the truth. My all-time political hero is Huey Long, who accomplished more in his short life, before the corrupt elite of his time assassinated him, than all of our modern “liberal” politicians put together.

Genuine Liberals like Thomas Jefferson are smeared today as “racists” by authoritarian social justice warriors. Patrick Henry is mostly forgotten, as is John Hancock and many other Founders. The great William Jennings Bryan is recalled chiefly now as a Bible-thumper who embarrassed himself at the Scopes trial. In reality, Bryan’s opposition to evolution was mostly based upon his belief that it would lead inevitably towards the growth of eugenics.

Because the present-day establishment is nominally “liberal,” using a bastardized definition of the word, its heroes were as flawed as they are. Thus, Huey Long is castigated as a “demagogue,” and Eugene Debs is nearly forgotten. Few remember the great anti-war crusader General Smedley Butler. But Woodrow Wilson, a chronic warmonger and genuine racist, is extolled as an early example of “liberalism.” FDR was every bit as corrupt and war-loving as the Clintons and their ilk are today. But the court historians love them, and claim they represent true “liberals.”

LBJ’s chronically rude nastiness is swept under the rug by a media who considers him favorably in comparison to our last great president, John F. Kennedy. Rob “Meathead” Reiner- a loud mouthed Hollywood “liberal”- makes a film extolling the hopelessly corrupt LBJ, while the mainstream media continues to paint all the Kennedys as reckless, mafia-connected womanizers. As we all know, the medium is the message. Whatever message the sheeple hear the most, becomes the truth to them.

The “left” that is desperately trying to steal this election for the Queen of Corruption now proclaims that there is “no evidence” of voting fraud. Many of them supported Bernie Sanders, and presumably maintain a straight face while saying this. Wikileaks documents proving the DNC conspired to deny Sanders the nomination be damned. Other documents proving the DNC paid “protesters” some $1500 each to cause violence at Trump rallies be damned. The man is “dangerous” and must be stopped.

My point is there is a huge difference between “leftist” historical heroes like Wilson, FDR, Truman and LBJ, and genuine populists of their respective eras. There are still a few honest Liberals in public life today. Ralph Nader. Cynthia McKinney. Dennis Kucinich, for example. The list is short, however. James Trafficant was another one, and he was run out of Congress via a political assassination that rivals few in our history.

True “liberals” would not have supported odious trade deals like NAFTA. They certainly wouldn’t support the horrendous TPP, and would have been aghast at the secretive, undemocratic way that bill was presented and passed. They wouldn’t have voted to bail out the bankers. They wouldn’t support “free speech zones,” or believe there is a such a thing as “hate speech” or “hate crimes.” They would have strongly opposed every modern “war” of my lifetime. They would be protesting the very idea of drones, and certainly would have been horrified at any American official publicly supporting assassination.

Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and most other leading members of the “liberal” establishment consider Edward Snowden a traitor, not a hero. Have any of them spoken out about the unjustly incarcerated Bradley Manning? Now they are turning on Julian Assange, because his revelations reflect poorly on their candidate of choice.

“Liberalism” today, in contradiction to the inane quote from the sappy old movie Love Story, means always being willing to say you’re sorry. Authoritarian “leftists” foam at the mouth over any vestige of “racism,” “sexism,””homophobia,” that they can detect emanating from the mouths or fingers of some unsuspecting soul. Then there is a furious crescendo for the poor offender to be fired, excluded from polite society, and most of all to apologize. These apologies serve only as excessive vengeance, as they never save the victim from losing their job and their reputation.

Populists oppose corruption on any level. They are against excessive power concentrated anywhere, in government or business. They support what is best for all the people. The establishment “left” supports every globalist notion ever devised, and whatever concentrates power further and improves the lives of the One Percent.

America stands at a crossroads. I firmly believe we are on the brink of economic and cultural collapse. Memories of Rome burning and the Titanic sinking come to mind. The election of Donald Trump may accomplish nothing. But symbolically he represents a good portion of the population, who are tired of decades of politics as usual, empty rhetoric, broken promises, and a decreasing standard of living.

We will never have another Huey Long. Or another William Jennings Bryan. But we can stop swallowing the nonsense spewed out by career politicians, especially overtly corrupt ones like Hillary Clinton. We can stop re-electing our putrid congressional incumbents. We should expect better and we should demand better.

True Liberals want reform where reform is needed. They stand up for the little guy, regardless of race, religion or creed. They don’t want to punish someone, or see them lose their livelihood, because of something they said. They don’t side with big banks, or international corporations, against the people. Huey Long used to brag about never taking a case against a poor person. True liberals are magnanimous, and possess plentiful amounts of empathy. They will defend to their dying day someone’s right to say things they disagree with.

The campaigns of both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump prove that populism is the wave of the future. Power to the people. This election represents a referendum, with the voters having the ability to give a thumbs up or thumbs down to our corrupt establishment. Any poor or working class citizen cannot possibly approve of the way our country has been run, for a very long time.

Already, we’ve seen indications that voter fraud is rampant, even before election day. There have been several reports of votes being changed automatically from Trump to Clinton (never the other way around). Is this the kind of electoral system we want?

On election day, vote thumbs down. Tell the establishment that we want better.