De-friended

Well, Harry, you’ve really put your finger on the crux of the real issue.  It goes to the heart of government, and emphasizes why Democracy is so very difficult to work.  While authoritarianism makes every problem seem simple because it tells you what to do, and all you have to do is shout and charge into compliance, democracy is very different.  Democracy requires you to meet with people who are different from you, and who do not even like you or completely trust you, and you don’t trust them.  But democracy requires that you get to know them, and sit down with them and work together to solve a common problem.  It assumes that your solution may not work at first, and even if it does, the main problem will not be solved, but it changes and becomes a more complex problem, and you and your counterpart must develop a more complex relationship to deal with it and the other issues that you will create together.

Make Your Vote Really Count – Vote Twice!

First, go to your computer. Find the sample ballot identical to the one you will have given to you when you go to the polling place.  You can find this by completing an application form.  It may be available on the computer or it may have to be mailed to you.

Now, you vote the first time. You can do this over the next day or two.  Take your time.  Enjoy some coffee, tea or beer or wine.  Sit down and reflect.  There will be a few long choices (some with over 100 words - and up to 15 “ands” and several “ors”).  You can think about some of these for a day or two, even pick up the phone and play auditor, or ask questions on Facebook or Twitter or Whatever. 

There may be some positions you have never heard of and a lot of names you have never heard of.  But now you have time to think about all this, even get with your friends and ask questions, get a conversation going, get a dialog, talk about your problems.

Finally, you vote the second time.  This time in your polling place.  You are ready!  Even with a completed ballot you have worked on for the past day or two.  AND you can make this vote REALLY represent you, AND you will move through the voting process quicker than anyone else who has not already voted for the “first time”.

The Real Problem is Not Trump

“I will keep you in suspense!”  Those words from Donald Trump.  Said like he is pretending to decide how he will vote in a beauty pageant or something similar.  What he apparently does not understand is that there are other people running for the office he also seeks, and if he does not get the most votes, it will be because another has been selected by the will of the people.  Yet, by his own words, he may not concede even then.  

Yet there WILL be a tally of the votes.  There WILL be celebrations and despair – by some – at least.  There WILL be an announcement by some “Certified Official”.  There WILL be an inauguration and a moving out of the White House and a moving in by the victor.  If the one who officially lost the election will not concede, he will not be permitted to assume the office.  That is a matter of regimen.

Now comes the binding issue.  The issue created by those who voted for the loser.  Those who voted in what they now might claim was a “rigged” election.  What will these “masses” do now?  A lot of that might depend on the “leadership” they might get from the one they are now choosing to follow.  But there is a much greater danger.

Trump is not a leader.  He is a disrupter, an agitator.  He is one who stirs things up, but he cannot walk a straight line.  Yet there is a magic in stirring,  It creates a force that can attract power and form a center, and if there is some form of coherence that appears with that attraction, some surrogate with persuasive rhetoric, then the stirred center can take on a life of its own.  

Trump's Deplorable Values

The Republican Party is wobbling in its attempts to seek limited form of government, particularly as the world, and the united States also, begins shifting from a mostly rural environment into an urban development.

    

Now comes Trump.  He was nastier than any of his 18 rivals and wound up as the “GOP Choice” for President.  It was a rough coronation, as a brand new guy wandered on to the stage in Cleveland and was “chosen” by the masses.  Two things became immediately apparent:  1)  The self-praise of Trump for Trump, 2)  and the slowly increasing numbers of people either positing they would not vote for Trump, and an increasing number announcing their preparation to leave the Republican Party.  

Arizona Senators Jeff Flake, and John McCain were early departures from Trump, NH Senator Kelly Ayotte, NY Governor Pataki, Carly Florian, SD Senator John Thune, Mitt Romney, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tim Pawleenty, Kasich, Murkowski, Lindsey Graham, Condoleezza Rice, and so on.  (See https://www.hillaryclinton.com/briefing/updates/2016/05/04/conservatives-rebuke-trump-as-he-captures-republican-nomination/   for an amazingly long list of others)   He has exchanged the intellectual  bright lights for the riffraff who show up at his rallies.  

Also represented in the departures from voting for the GOP nominee are Elliott Abrams, Bill Kristol, George Will, Jeb Bush and both former presidents named George Bush. Now comes even Charles Krauthammer with his own list of Trump’s deplorable values:   habitual mendacity, pathological narcissism, profound ignorance and an astonishing dearth of basic human empathy.  And then the threat, if he is elected, to put his opponent, Hillary Clinton, in jail.

The Republican Party, in its moment of death is visited by a Grim Vetter who has come to scatter its ashes.      

Not Fit to Print

The second debate, or “Town Hall Meeting” was a discussion devoted to Donald Trump.  Hillary couldn’t really change the topic because it would look like she was evading his questions or trying to change the subject.  She did try a couple of times but it didn’t work.

The result was there was no discussion of anything that matters to the American people or the world at large.  There were no questions or comments about international affairs, climate change, gun control, infrastructure, or anything other than Donald Trump and his relationship with women who had gotten to know him.  

It was as if Trump was a little boy, perhaps from English history, with incredible power.  He was leering, menacing scowling and stalking.  He even said that Hillary would be investigated if he won the presidency and she would probably be put in jail.  

Now the New York Times has gotten involved in this event, largely due to the income tax information they published.  Trump has promised to sue the nation’s greatest newspaper over this information.  Too bad, because while he will have little chance of carrying through with this, the New York Times has become famous for disclosing “All the news that’s fit to print”.  Now Donald Trump is leading them into a rabbit hole they would normally not find very fitting.

Trump has Grabbed the GOP by Its Pu$$y

He’s got more people voting for him than the Republican Party has and so it is all over now.  Even if the Party wants him to step down, he’s got the power and they don’t.  Republicanism is shattered and is now morphing into a powerful money machine.   Trump didn’t plan this out, ‘cause he can’t plan anything, but he is a very useful tool.  He doesn’t know what is going on and neither does the Party, and they are each looking in the opposite direction for help.  Trump is not the leader of this takeover, but he is the best bait in the world for the real fishermen.  

Debate One

First debate is over and it seems clear and obvious that Hillary won easily.  Trump probably kept most of his supporters though, because they are people who hate the Establishment, those powerful officials who run and ruin their lives.  Hillary would certainly have to be right at the top of that pile of power.

Yet the primary duty of the President is the job of politics.  He (or she) will not get everything they start out to do.  They will have to give as much as they get, and that will not make any difference in the great scheme of history as long as they can weld together what they did get, into a workable program.

One of the biggest differences between Trump and Clinton last night was their demeanor while listening to the other one speak.  Trump appeared to be not listening, or trying to pick up a favorite theme of his, and constantly in the process of interrupting even as he kept his lips pursed. He appeared (to me) to show signs of contempt  while she seemed to maintain an aura of listening with the apparent intent on reaching out and elaborating on his comments. 

Will Trump Leave the GOP?

Hard to say right now.  Trump seems to have the GOP under his command, but he is not going forth to meet a bride, no, he goes forward to take charge.  And many of the old party members are very, very quiet. 

Some long term members are restless  Some, like George Will, are announcing their departure.  And the Repbulicans who are leaving are not becoming Democrats but offering wisdom to a new, still congealing mass of political ideology. 

There will be a showdown later in Cleveland, a city known to some as “The Mistake by the Lake”, when the GOP holds their convention there.  It is not at all improbable  – in my mind at least – that Trump may slam the door there and stomp out, claiming to take the “Real Republicans” with him.  

Well, that would split the Republican Party and hand the election to the Democrats, fancilly engraved on a silver platter!  Or, or would it?  This is the year of Brexit, after all! Could it be that such a stomp n’romp by Trump would open the door for an old socialist Jew to also consider running, seeking liftoff for his last flight into glory?  

Well, who knows?  Now, anyway.  But that would give both Trump and Sanders a chance to make America what it could have been, once upon a time . . . all this while the Democrats and Republicans are just running to make themselves great again.   And – that would throw the 2016 election into the realm of English glory.

Brexit!

Not the worst mistake that England has ever made, but it is a pretty good one.  Too bad they didn’t work harder at being a better member of the European Union.  Apparently, a large number of Brits figured that they could scare the EU folks by showing them how little England was concerned about the “union”.  Whoops.  Now, more than 2,100,000 of them want to vote again  But like too many things involving elections, it is too late to vote again – they (we all) have only one vote to cast.  

Of course we Americans understand the importance of voting.  In fact we turned out 36.4% of eligible voters in our last election.  That’s almost half of the eligible voters who turned out in Brittian this week.  They hit 72%. 

 We Americans may well face a similar problem this November.  We may have to decide in advance.  And like the Brits, we will only get to vote once.  And we don’t want to try to scare anybody!

Donald Trump and the Stairs

The truth about Donald Trump is he is the type of person that those of us who are parents had all tried to keep from raising our kids as.  He IS the Boggie Man Under the Stairs.   He IS the incarnation of the great concepts of Evil, Pitiful, and Ignorance and he shines in the great glory of brilliant greed. He was created by the power of wanton money.  He has attracted the Republican Party and they have begged him to notice them, and now he has grabbed them and won’t let go. 

Is this how the Republican Party ends?  Maybe.  They now have to decide whether an increasingly obvious errant committment to Donald Trump is more important to them than the duty they have to the American People.

Trump's Biggest Surprises . . .

. . . are yet to come!  It is not so much that he will continue to tell us more, as it is that we will gradually learn to understand him better.  We will begin to see what he is trying to show us and some of us will become different people for his taking care of us.  He apparently knows which parts of our democracy work and which parts don’t work, He knows which judges can render “good” decisions and which newspaper and TV reporters can tell the “Truth”, and we really just have to hang on and follow Him.  

The Republican Party is doing as good a job as it can.  Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has come along and apparently accepts The Donald, although it is obvious that he really doesn’t understand a lot of the details.  It is hard to know where Mitch McConnell is, probably because the senate majority leader doesn’t want to tip his hand,  and he is an expert at presenting a “poker face”  under all conditions so that no one else knows whether or not he really understands an issue or not.  We really don’t know what the Republican Party means anymore, so this is a new opportunity for it.

The “grand OLD party” descended from the Whigs of England, which represented a forceable transfer of power from King to Charter.   Only certain actions were permitted by government and these all had to be few and concecrated in writing.  All other power was left to “the people”, meaning whatever you can get, grab!  This brings us to the era of Scrooge and this is where the grand OLD party has become deeply mired. Thankfully, The Donald has emerged, rising to a new crescendo of surprising guidance.  No longer do members of the Republican Party need to take positions on changing conditions of the world, no more stress and concern, just follow The Donald.  Just press the button . . . the head will pop up . . . and an answer will come forth in great glory!

Now The Donald has graciously offered to serve us as President.  He will rebuild our country and make it great again.  He will build walls, and approve religions.  He will choose judges and select reporters.  He will always know what is in our best interest.  He will lead us onward and approve our actions.  No longer will we have to wonder, and test our theories by discussion, there will be no more different issues, no more new opportunities. No more concern.  All we will have to do is just try to carry out orders.

VA Secretary & Disneyland

VA Secretary, Robert McDonald,  told reporters on Monday, May 23, 2016, that the VA should not use “wait times” as a measure of their success because Disney, in their operations at Disneyland, doesn’t use “wait times” either.   Disney relies on how satisfied their clients are.  What Mr. McDonald clearly doesn’t understand is that there is a significant difference between the services Disney promises to provide to their would-be clients, and the service already promised by the VA to those Veterans who have already paid.  AND - if you want to compare the price and service “promised” by Disney to would-be clients, with that “price” already paid by many Veterans - some of which were life-altering, then go ahead and play that game, Mr. McDonald, but first you need to step down from your position and let someone who understands the issue take over.  

More on Trump's Mother

Another connection between The Donald and his mother is the gesture of hands-up – usually it is a woman who would use that as a sign that she has tried EVERYTHING else and she has no idea of what remains to be done!  And therefore, it is THEIR responsibility for whatever consequences follow.

Donald Trump's Mother

Of course I never knew her, but I think we all know some of her features.  She had to have been a fiercely protective creature.  That much is obvious.  She was also a person of power.  She almost certainly intervened between the world of practical problems and her son, Donald.   It is obvious that she constantly assured him that what ever seemed to be happening would be “all right” and would “turn out OK”, that whatever got broken would be made whole and would be great again. He clearly could forget what he had just done, and could look forward to a future devoid of his own personal consequences because what he was going to do in the future was going to be better than anything ever done by anybody any time in the past.   Everything was always going to be much better than it was now, and everything was going to be far better in the future than it had ever been before.