I don’t think I could ever support Trump – he’s ignorant of
policy or even a simple understanding of how the US government works – the
ideas that he does espouse are at best unfeasible, at worst ill-conceived,
wrongheaded or flat out misguided if not utterly incoherent and unmoored from
reality – his temperament seems deeply flawed and not well suited to the job of
president – and he seems to be just as much an inveterate liar as Hillary. The
only way I could possibly be coaxed off that position is if I was convinced Trump would leave the running
of the country to Pence and Christie – but how could one ever be certain of
that? Trump would have to come out before the election and clearly state that
that’s exactly what he planned to do – and no way that’s happening. So there ya
go – I can’t support Trump.
But for all Trump’s flaws I’d say the chief reason I can’t
support him is foreign policy – he’s pretty ignorant when it comes to most if
not all policy questions but that ignorance is at its deepest and most
frightening when it comes to foreign policy – and since Obama will be leaving
an absolute unmitigated foreign policy mess behind when he quits the White
House I can not with any clear conscience vote for a man who appears to have so
little understanding of history, military strategy, diplomatic guile and nuance
and the powerful ebb and flow of world affairs and how such relates to America’s
key role as sole super power and only credible defender of Western Civilization
against the threats posed by those rising and falling tides. Hillary may not be
great or even good when it comes to those things but at least she has relevant
experience, at least she knows the rules of the game. My sense is contra Obama
she’s more sober realist than naïve ideologue when it comes to foreign policy –
she may certainly prove to be just as misguided as Obama but at least she’ll be
coming into the job with some clue as to all the things that can and will go
wrong, some knowledge of all the forces out there that can lead a president
down some very dark and winding roads. Trump would be coming in blind, devoid
of relevant experience in any way, shape or form and promoting some deeply
flawed and outright specious notions re foreign policy - and therefore
dangerously vulnerable to making some truly awful decisions. So again, can’t
support Trump. Not that I’ll be voting for Hillary – in so many ways she’s just
as flawed a candidate as Trump, especially if she caves to the lunatic demands
of the far left – but when it comes to foreign policy she’s clearly the
superior candidate, which is faint praise indeed given how unprepared for the
job Trump is.
But… having said all that, I think I understand the appeal
of Trump – and what brought it into focus for me was the controversy over the
insufferable shit head quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers refusing to stand
for the national anthem because he refuses to pay tribute to such an awful
racist country like America – he’s happy to profit from the marvelous economic
system created by those evil white racists, but damned if he’ll thank them for
the wealth their brilliant industriousness created for him. The San Fran
quarterback is an insufferable moron – but what really galls is the media
treating his message as justified if albeit inappropriately delivered. Are
these people stupid or just so tightly locked in their ideological echo chamber
that reality can simply no longer operate there? If America is such an awful
racist hell hole where life for minorities is bleak and hopeless then how is it
that the most successful ethnic group in America are Asians? It’s not whites –
it’s Asians. If America is a rigged system run by racist whites how the christ
is that possible? Well, it’s possible because Asians work hard, have a low
divorce rate, honor family values and make damn sure their kids get a good
education – they don’t spend a lot of time sitting around blaming all their
troubles on a phantom horde of white racists that’s out to get them. There’s a
large white working class population out there that’s sick and tired of the grievance
mongering and absurd blathering of the left and would just love to say to that
idiot quarterback: either leave the country if it’s such an awful place – or
shut your fucking mouth you hypocritical, piece of shit moron – and they’d like
to say the same thing to the liberal elite that makes such idiots possible.
Trump captures that emotion.
It was not too long ago that America’s now reviled white
working class saved the world from fascism – Spielberg made a great movie
honoring those men called Saving Private Ryan – the left is so unhinged by its
progressive zealotry, I wonder if that film could get made today – there’s no
blacks in it, it extolls the virtues of both the American military and the
industrious brilliance of American capitalism, and it lionizes the heroic,
selfless ethos of the American white working class that made victory possible –
all those things modern liberal ideology would have great trouble with. I bet you the film couldn’t get made. That
it’s not absurd at all to contemplate such a thing goes a long way towards
explaining Trump.
[are you saying there’s no racism in America? Well,
obviously not – racism, or more accurately, intolerance based on identity and
cultural differences, is a staple of human behavior and has been since the
Sumerians were wondering around the fertile crescent – every society that has
ever existed has manifested this intolerance and not surprisingly pretty much
every society that has ever existed practiced some form of slavery – note to
Black Muslims who embrace Islam out of a hatred for racist white America:
Mohamed owned slaves, the Koran endorses the keeping of slaves – oddly enough
only one country that I know of has fought a bloody civil war to put an end to
the practice, which makes it especially galling that liberals still talk of the
white working/middle class of America as the be all and end all of racism.
Look, it’s a ludicrous tautology to state that racism played
a significant role in the black experience in America – point one is making is
that racism no longer accounts for the problems plaguing black communities, as
the numbers make clear – blacks make up about 13% of the population but commit
over 50% of violent crimes and account for over 50% of violence against police –
so it’s hardly surprising that police interaction with black men seems
disproportionate – it is – but the cause is math and probabilities, not racism
– the numbers go on - close to 80% of blacks are born into fatherless homes, a
huge problem – I can’t remember the ratios but a distressingly high number of
blacks do not graduate high school, which is a bare minimum requirement if one
hopes to survive in the new economy – what’s worse, even those who do graduate
from high school are coming from inner city schools that do an absolutely
horrible job of educating their students, which is not surprising since it is now
liberal doctrine to consider it a micro aggression to ‘force’ proper english
grammar upon blacks – charter schools are helping to correct this problem, but
what does the NAACP do? Comes out against charter schools. Liberal insistence
on seeing racism as the root of all evil in America is doing nothing at all to
serve the interests of blacks and is increasingly pissing off the white
working/middle class that is dealing with a slew of problems of their own,
problems which are largely being ignored by the elites of both parties – although
that doesn’t include Paul Ryan, the man who would be the next president if
common sense had any role to play in the politics of the moment.
Anyway, point is the in many ways justifiable anger roiling
the white middleclass and the conservative media’s relentless pandering to the
populist nationalism it has given rise to pretty much explains Trump. But of
course conservative media didn’t just pander to the ‘movement’, it actively helped
create it through its ceaseless jabbering about some evil republican
establishment out to save their cushy jobs by stabbing ‘true’ conservatism in
the back at every turn – always an absurd fantasy but now we know just how
absurd since clearly Trump is no ‘true conservative’ – apparently what these
media provocateurs wanted all along was nothing more than a Mussolini type to march
on in, take a giant shit on political correctness and then head off to
Washington to kick some butt. Complete nonsense, but a lot of people bought the
snake oil – and this too explains Trump. Indeed, since these media provocateurs
have played a key role in turning an election that given Clinton’s problems should
have been a slam dunk into something of a hail Mary, one could argue that the
best thing that could happen for conservatism in America is if Trump wins and then
utterly fails to make good on any of the promises he made to the angry mob and
their media goons - that should shut up the Hannitys and Limbaughs and Coulters
of the world – because we all know that if/when Trump loses, big or small, the
angry mob and the media goons are gonna blame it on a rigged election and that
evil republican establishment. The absolute last thing they’re gonna do is look
in the mirror and say “you know what? You are a complete fucking moron”.
So you’re saying you do
in a way support the Trump nomination? No - god no – it’s political suicide and
probably means the end of the GOP as a national party because I don’t see how
you ever clear the air of the populist shit Trump has stirred up – republicans
have nominated the one political
figure in the country that is more hated than Hillary – they had a entirely
winable election in front of them and threw it away in a fit of populist anger
- that’s pretty much the definition of stupid.
Although, for a variety of reasons a Trump win is not impossible given how awful a
candidate Hillary is herself – extremely unlikely, but not impossible – an
email surfaces that proves she knowingly jeopardized
national security by using a private server or that she or her husband clearly profited from the selling of
influence while she served as Secretary of State, hard to see how her campaign
survives that, even with the media doing everything in its power to save her.
And let’s remember that the state of the economy is usually the single most important factor influencing elections and
the American economy has more or less sucked throughout the Obama presidency
and recent numbers suggest that it’s getting worse – I think the awfulness of
Trump as a candidate severely undercuts that would be advantage, but who knows]
