Trump Wins
A few thoughts after my viewing a replay of last night’s presidential debate on the KTLA website. Moderator Lester Holt’s debate questions stemmed from three major areas of focus 1) “achieving prosperity,” 2) “America’s direction,” and 3) “securing America.”
I never watched “The Apprentice,” we don’t have a television, and I’ve not been keeping up with the sound bites. As a point of order I never do, and especially not during national election campaigns. I do have the October 10 copy of The Nation with Senator Bernie Sanders on the cover wearing a neat blue jacket, and judging by his absence from tonight’s debate, I presume he was double-crossed and outed by the Democratic National Convention, because he seemed to have been the most competent career statesman previously in the running. (I haven’t opened the magazine yet; there seems no need, as the photo on the front speaks volumes. But there must be some reason I didn’t renew my subscription this time. Hmmm, non-renewal was probably due to all of its cheerleading for the Clinton campaign, but it’s not Katrina vanden Heuvel’s fault, she only has one Jeremy Scahill and she can’t clone him as if he were Alex Krycek on the “X-Files.”
Anyway, Secretary Clinton’s not the only female in the pack of candidates, you know. Look at Jill Stein, for example. She probably has female parts, you great big bunch of crotchwatchers. But anyway, I was pleased to experience Mr. Trump’s business acumen which is quite sound indeed, and it out-shined that of Secretary Clinton to an embarrassing degree. I was shocked, honestly.
⍟Tax policy. Trump will cut them, Clinton will raise them, not much elaboration. Trump was the first to mention Ronald Reagan. Secretary Clinton points out that Mr. Trump doesn’t pay his income taxes. Well, I say, it’s worth pointing out that taxation without capitation is unconstitutional to the letter, and the 61st Congress was packed with rich, classist, inegalitarian industrialists who ramrodded the 16th Amendment into legislation in order to yolk the American labor force to the global war effort in the run up to World War I, at the peak of the industrial revolution. And it’s been a century and the global war party is still alive and well, and is significantly headquartered in the continental U.S. (ahem, powerful enough to pave the way for a highly incompetent Secretary Clinton into the Democratic party nomination.) Secretary Clinton notes that all presidential candidates, for decades and decades, have released their tax records during the campaign, and glanced askew upon Mr. Trump for not having done so yet, because “everyone has done it.” I say to you, I never want to hear those four words coming from the mouth of someone who speaks for me politically at any level. Never ever.
Mr. Trump notes American businesses are “leaving because taxes are too high” and because of “red tape,” and describes the United States as a “debtor nation.” In which case, a highly competent businessman as head of state is probably a damn good idea, in my view. U.S. based wealth, public and private, is what’s financed and abetted the industrialization of mainland China, using filthy coal, and it’s too late at this point to do it correctly the first time. So, dear China (dear U.S. political and financial interests in China), it’s all about retrofitting everything with solar and wind. And don’t get me started on the Three Gorges Dam (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam#Environmental_impact); mark my words, that abomination needs to come down, ecologically speaking. It’s all our infrastructure anyway, and the Chinese politburo is a thinly veiled front for American business interests. It’s part of the Cold War Propaganda, which still thrives and thrives; In case you didn’t know, now you do.
Secretary Clinton at one point grouped together “Wall Street and foreign banks,” which struck me as ironic because what’s the difference, as Wall Street is occupied, writ large, by foreign financial interests. You hadn’t noticed that? Mr. Trump was the first to bring up the heavily politicized nature, essentially the occupation of, the Federal Reserve Bank.
⍟Race relations in America. Mr. Trump notes Secretary Clinton’s racially insensitive historical statements about “superpredators.” Secretary Clinton notes Mr. Trump’s early career involvement in a multijurisdictional class action against real estate owners who refused to rent to blacks. Say what one will about the past, but hear this from an investigative reporter, forensic professional, and former police beat reporter yours truly: Mr. Trump was right on the money regarding law enforcement and the sociology of race relations in American cities. Secretary Clinton’s statements were those of an out-of-touch rich old white lady aristocrat who cannot even properly define the issue when prompted, much less speak or govern authoritatively on the subject. It doesn’t surprise me at all that Mr. Trump has the support of high ranking U.S. Naval and U.S. Army officers, as well as that of police unions. Of course he does. He bears the N.R.A. endorsement with a grain of salt because the N.R.A. seems often a prophylactic for white racists; but he bears it nonetheless, as a constitutionalist where the Second Amendment is not ambiguous.
Secretary Clinton was first to bring up “gun violence,” “gun epidemic,” “gun plague.” Alternatively, Mr. Trump intimates anecdotes about various U.S. metro areas, and is aware of statistics and qualitative comparisons among cities, e.g. Dallas, N.Y.C., and Chicago are a few jurisdictions which he discussed very knowledgeably and with candor of how the people most harmed by the scourge of gun violence, and urban violence generally, are the metro/inner-city blacks and latinos, like e.g. latino and black business owners not black and latino criminals obviously. Without him making that point, the conversation would have been reduced to the horrible nonsense homegrown-terrorist lie about “all cops are white and all people with guns are white and all guns shoot innocent blacks and the black proletariat hates guns.”
Anyway, furthermore, there was some disagreement between the candidates of high court opinion regarding former Mayor Bloomberg’s Terry Stop (stop-and-frisk) policy, which occurred alongside a decrease from some 2,200 to 500 murders in New York, but which was discontinued by Bloomberg’s successor. Secretary Clinton says the policy was ruled unconstitutional, Mr. Trump said there’s no such binding precedent procedurally. Do any of you remember the discussion of such case law from your Constitutional Law class in college? I do. Clearly speaking from his experience as a property owner and businessman, Mr. Trump spoke frankly about law and order; his views on local/domestic peacekeeping are accurate, and they bely a philosophy that’s also required to deal with international hostilities (insofar as the United States should even be involved in foreign wars in the first place). If there was one issue which was most worth hearing discussion of, it was this one, and made my watching of the entire debate worthwhile. I was impressed with Mr. Trump all around, but this may have been his most shining area of competence. He gets skin color. But is that really a surprise for a casino owner?
⍟Surveillance state. On this subject, Secretary Clinton immediately set to pointing fingers at Russia, and cited Mr. Trump negatively for being involved in dialog with V. Putin. People hear this: Show some respect for your Russian brothers and sisters. They’re family and they’re not going away and they’re potentially the best ally you have and they’ll teach you peace one way or another. Your choice. That’s the reality of cohabitation, whether global or household. And the Bear doesn’t like being scapegoated by incompetent American politicians. Secretary Clinton said we need to show China and Russia and whatever other non-N.A.T.O. nations that “we’re better” and that we’d rather not use our unnamed super-duper international cybersecurity assets but unfortunately we have to.
Secretary Clinton discussed how we need to really ratchet up our online surveillance for terrorists; what that means to me is, that while continuing their century-old bloody imperialism on foreign shores, they’ll continue putting more millennials, recent immigrants, and other johnny-come-latelies on some payroll to distribute corporate propaganda, and terrorize working American journalists all the day long which is illegal and I’m blue in the face from saying so. I’ll grant you, that’s a fairly narrow perspective of this issue, but it’s a sensitive issue for me, and if you had spent the past fifteen years doing what I do, you’d feel the same way. Secretary Clinton’s all hopped up on the terrorist watchlist also. Mr. Trump points out, numerous times, the irony of her advocating for continuing with surveillance-state policy into perpetuity, in a war which her partisans began years ago and which they have perpetuated through bad policy.
⍟Military policy. Mr. Trump was first to bring up I.S.I.S. apropos of foreign military intervention, and remarked on the silliness of Secretary Clinton’s campaign website giving instructions on how to fight I.S.I.S., insofar as the policy of the administration which she’s a part of is to blame for I.S.I.S.’s regional proliferation and its control of petroleum assets in the Middle East and North Africa. Mr. Trump said the nuclear threat is the world’s number one problem; I will agree it’s not a pretty scenario, but disagree that it’s the biggest problem. In my view, the ecological issue and climate change is the biggest threat to humanity and civil order here on earth. Meanwhile Secretary Clinton romanticizes N.A.T.O.’s Article 5.
Additionally, based on a statement he made, I judge that Mr. Trump has the confidence of Bibi Netanyahu. And, Mr. Trump rightly said that North Korea is China’s jurisdiction to contain, as the nearest superpower, and I have a feeling he could bend China to his will along those lines. Displaying a classic Libertarian stripe, Mr. Trump said all countries to whom the United States provides free military protection should be paying for it. Secretary Clinton was the first and only one to whip out the old bloody “support our troops” call to arms (during her complaining about Mr. Trump’s not paying his federal income tax; Yes, such central banking supports the global war machine that is occupying your national government, for which Secretary Clinton is a harebrained patsy).
⍟Energy policy and Ecology. Secretary Clinton mentions need for commitment to clean energy, a modernized domestic grid. Kudos for saying the right thing. But in light of her corporate backing, I do not believe her. Alternatively, Mr. Trump states that his energy policy is inextricable from the bottom dollar. But I say this, in general: The energy issue was glossed over quickly. I know Secretary Clinton said the right words during the debate, but she would do the wrong thing (that is nothing, and retain the current status quo). I’d rather educate a candidate on one issue, rather than attempt to completely reeducate a candidate about every damn other thing. However, I suspect Mr. Trump said the right thing implicitly, that is, he skirted out-loud speech on the subject because he knows bad-mouthing the coked-up international petrodollar cabal on live national television is the wrong approach. Therefore I suspect he knows better regarding energy issues in general. Truly, I say, we need to mount solar panels on everything in sight, all around the world. Believe that.
⍟Trade policy. Secretary Clinton touts the presidential leadership of her husband, former U.S. President William J. Clinton. Mr. Trump quickly noted that W. Clinton signed N.A.F.T.A., which Mr. Trump has vowed to dismantle as the single worst trade deal ever approved in United States. Secretary Clinton noted that she voted against C.A.F.T.A. Trump was the first to mention President Barack Obama (and his Trans-Pacific Partnership). Regarding jobs on the American continent being exported overseas for the corporate capitalization of cheaper foreign laborers, the question put by Mr. Holt was from an economic standpoint only, not from the ethical heart of the issue which involves abuse of low-income laborers regardless of their location or nationality. Mr. Trump was the first to bring up national debt. Secretary Clinton was the first to say “Great Recession” and made the only mention of former President George W. Bush.
⍟Secretary Clinton was the more cavalier with low blows, using an outright ad hominem attack for example in referring to Mr. Trump by the pejorative trigger word “crazy.” I say, that is a very tin-eared slip for someone who purports to politically represent struggling masses whose daily rat race includes victims whose self-advocacy can be easily muted and disenfranchised through their being labeled crazy by an oppressor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry). There were additional such mumblings and stammering from Secretary Clinton e.g. argumentum ad populum, argument from incredulity, loud false gregariousness, etc. Secretary Clinton aped, mumbled, and crowed like an smug idiot in stark contrast from Mr. Trump’s always clear and unequivocal denials, or rejections of a point, or succinct quips. Secretary Clinton is incompetent, uneducated, petty, and inexperienced; It begs the question of how well this secret is kept. I believe I’ve been spared this revelation by never watching television. Maybe a good question is, can the T.V. constituency no longer see the obvious?
Nobody will miss the corporate wars he inherited and didn’t quash due to his partisan affiliation, but I will miss Mr. Obama as a useful, young, thoughtful, and fit head of state. His political will remains of course. He has style and efficacy, albeit that of a highly competent attorney not a highly competent businessperson. I’ll take either one. Secretary Clinton has neither of these vocational backgrounds to rely upon for an edge up, and she evidently lacks even the refinement to correctly pretend she understands, which I suppose isn’t her fault right now technically. But it would be our fault if we allow the corporate media to shoo her into office.
Secretary Clinton is a jaded, farting socialite with a horrible temper, given to flying into rages, and she is cruel to the help. She is a political hack with zero innovation for policy. She’s bred into aristocracy by hook and crook, one couldn’t find a more boring or more useless figurehead, and I promise that’s all she’d be in her occupying the office of the President of the United States of America. What a demoralizing, tedious disappointment for the colorful courts of the earth’s faraway lands, she would be. We don’t need any more Maltese Falcon decoys and dusty Third Reich wall art fetishes; Secretary Clinton would be an ineffectual head of state at a time when we—everybody—Americans and all citizens of earth—need their best people in high office. Right now, the United States of America needs the best leadership that its dollar can buy, as it were, not the silliest merkin. The United States’ election of an ineffectual intellectual bottom, at this key and troubled period in history, would result in the crushing of the American political currency at an international level, summarily. You do see the problem; This would be a bad time for that. We as Americans share a common responsibility to collaborate with all nations and all citizens of the world, not just the Chardonnay/NPR crowd of atrophied milquetoasts stewing around and pretending to rule the world from some snotty seaside borough on the East Coast.
Mr. Trump does have style, and a sense of humor, and he is an especially competent individual. He has a young family and a personal interest in the bettering of this grand experiment that’s gone so awry, this U.S.A. Mr. Trump is involved strictly because he’s willing and able to competently operate the U.S. chief executive office. As a bonus, he happens to be respected by, and be of interest to, leaders abroad as well as his peers in business and people in high office stateside. We cannot say the same for Secretary Clinton.
I always seem to be the last one to figure out stuff like this. You all probably already knew all this, right? It’s obvious who the superior applicant is. Mr. Trump, you are hired. We, us and ours, we go forward together. You have my vote too. Any vote for your opponent is a vote for class warfare, from the top down.
Secretary Clinton isn’t stealing this election from me.
C.G. Braswell, host of The Odelay Show
