Sunday, May 08, 2016
King Coal
EXCELLENT article by Scott Leigh in the May 8, 2016 Boston Sunday Globe entitled "Trump and Clinton campaign in Coal Country" linked here or below. Secretary Clinton's opinion on coal said in West Virginia to miners may not have won the day when she said it and Trump may now be considered King Coal but Clinton speaks the undeniable truth that coal is losing jobs and will be losing more for a reason and the reason is man's reliance on fossil fuels, including most especially coal, that cause global climate change. West Virginians, of course, did not want to hear that. If the media played the rest of Clinton's speech they would have heard that she wants to turn lost miners' coal jobs into other clean energy and infrastructure jobs to compensate for the loss of coal jobs in W. Virginia. But the media sounds bites are geared for the average American attention span of about 10 seconds and its love of sugarcoated happy ending stories. Myth will serve them just fine. Reality check: Trump will NOT return coal jobs to W. Virginia because science has the last word on everything no matter how hard one wants to deny its truth.
If coal were the wave of the future jobs would be booming in West Virginia but it's not. Those cheering for Trump deliriously are deluded and sometimes uneducated. I can understand their worry BUT climate change trumps (pardon the pun) all. One CANNOT deny science and 99.99999 percent of all neutral scientists who work in the field of global climate change who say it is real, it exists and there is ample proof for evidence. Gravity exists, bacteria cause disease, vaccinations do not cause autism and fossil fuels cause climate change. Science tells us their truth. Believe what science tells us or believe a carnival barker who cares nothing about you but cares about winning the day for himself. Having a cold winter means NOTHING and why would anyone think it does but extreme weather events do. If one cannot see what is right in front of ones eyes all over the nation and the world (witness the massive explosive fire caused by extreme climate change drought in Canada which is still burning its smoke trailing down to Florida seen from space) then we are a doomed hopeless species.
Vicious weather events will pay a visit to even coal country soon if they haven't experienced it already. But, go ahead all you ostriches who bury your heads and want to hear only things that make you cheer and feel good as horrific droughts, extreme hurricanes, massive tornadoes, and floods galore have already come to our nation en masse displacing thousands costing billions and will be paying a visit to your town and you sometime soon.
DEMOCRATS, PROGRESSIVES AND PEOPLE WITH A BRAIN WE ARE IN TROUBLE IF GOD FORBID A THOUSAND TIMES, TRUMP THE BLOWHARD WINS. DO NOT LET HIM. GET OUT THE DEMOCRATIC VOTE. YOU WILL SAVE A LIFE AND ME FROM JUMPING OUT THE WINDOW!
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/05/07/coal-miners-struggle-reinvent-themselves/
Dirty Laundry--My NYT opinion online
Today Trump was at an all time INSULTING high
from the class act Elizabeth Warren whom he called a "doofus" as this
uncouth blowhard insults her, to Clinton's sexual indiscretions and
Hillary's "enabling" to insulting so many in his own Republican Party.
This guy is a loose cannon for sure who could have his hands--small
though they may be--on the nuclear codes. Hillary could not have given
a more apt appellation of Trump.I do not mind admitting I am scared when Trump says he wants to conduct a foreign policy that would eliminate our longest most strategically successful alliance, NATO, to leaving Japan and South Korea without our protection allowing them to develop nukes like their sane next door neighbor N. Korea. What could possibly go wrong?
The hypocrite Trump should not talk about the splinter in the other guy's eye when he has a log or logs in his own. Since the Bible is his favorite book one wonders if he has read that thought allegedly uttered by the head CEO of Christianity, Jesus Christ himself. Trump's own sexual indiscretions by his own admission are legion -- married three times, by his wife's own words allegedly raped her, and speaks near incestuous talk about his own daughter. He even enjoyed a stint on Howard Stern's Sirius radio broadcasting his own filth to the immediate world. This coming from a possible occupier of the oval office? Why after listening to his sexcapades do I feel like I need a shower? Trump is disgusting and SO bad I don't know whether to laugh at him or cry. How did someone who is a bully blowhard as neurotically close to psychotic as he get this far? I am embarrassed for other nations to see our dirtiest laundry. Cannot someone please do a wash?
DEMOCRATS AND ALL HUMAN BEINGS WITH AN OUNCE OF HUMANITY ARE IN EMERGENCY MODE TO ERADICATE THIS REPUBLICAN CANCER FROM OUR MIDST LESS IT SPREAD FAST AND KILL US. FOR YOU, YOUR CHILDREN AND THEIR CHILDREN GET OUT THE VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS WITH ALL DELIBERATE SPEED. VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS AND SIGN UP ALL THOSE WHO NEED TO BE ENROLLED TO VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS IN NOVEMBER. THERE IS NO TIME TO WASTE!
The hypocrite Trump should not talk about the splinter in the other guy's eye when he has a log or logs in his own. Since the Bible is his favorite book one wonders if he has read that thought allegedly uttered by the head CEO of Christianity, Jesus Christ himself. Trump's own sexual indiscretions by his own admission are legion -- married three times, by his wife's own words allegedly raped her, and speaks near incestuous talk about his own daughter. He even enjoyed a stint on Howard Stern's Sirius radio broadcasting his own filth to the immediate world. This coming from a possible occupier of the oval office? Why after listening to his sexcapades do I feel like I need a shower? Trump is disgusting and SO bad I don't know whether to laugh at him or cry. How did someone who is a bully blowhard as neurotically close to psychotic as he get this far? I am embarrassed for other nations to see our dirtiest laundry. Cannot someone please do a wash?
DEMOCRATS AND ALL HUMAN BEINGS WITH AN OUNCE OF HUMANITY ARE IN EMERGENCY MODE TO ERADICATE THIS REPUBLICAN CANCER FROM OUR MIDST LESS IT SPREAD FAST AND KILL US. FOR YOU, YOUR CHILDREN AND THEIR CHILDREN GET OUT THE VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS WITH ALL DELIBERATE SPEED. VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS AND SIGN UP ALL THOSE WHO NEED TO BE ENROLLED TO VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS IN NOVEMBER. THERE IS NO TIME TO WASTE!
Saturday, May 07, 2016
Trump Against Gay Marriage-- A Vote Against ME--My personal thoughts and then some
My Thoughts: How do you think it would make YOU
feel if someone who is a potential nominee of one of the two major
parties running for president said YOU could not get married to the one
you love and that YOU are a second class citizen of the United States;
that YOU do not have rights that everyone else has; that YOU cannot
adopt children; that YOU cannot teach in schools if a state says you
cannot because of your sexual orientation and that YOU cannot buy
flowers from a business because the owner of that business simply does
not like your sexual preference. It offends him.
Step in the other person's shoes for awhile and just think how YOU would feel. And then think of some of the people you know and love who told you of their orientation and that they were frightened by a Cretan who just may take the presidency because he wants to eliminate what should be rightfully yours and that he is a threat not only to the quality of your life but to your life itself.
If you thought about all of that then I will tell you I have too because, big surprise, I am gay. Yep, knew it from age 3. Is that convincing enough that it is NOT a choice but a genetic orientation? I hope so because if you are against all those things that Trump is against then YOU are against ME and if you are against ME then it is my survival that is at stake and I WON'T without a fight let anyone take what has become, after decades if not centuries of struggle, rightfully ours. Think on that for awhile before you ever think of voting for the hater Trump because a vote for him is a vote against me!
Glad's (Gay and Lesbian Defenders)
Taken from Glad (link): https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/
"Donald Trump has started throwing gay and lesbian families under the bus as part of his celebrity businessman act, using his platform to argue against giving these families the same protections that other families have access to."
"I just don't feel good about it. I don't feel right about it. I'm against it… I'm opposed to gay marriage."
"Trump recently appeared on Fox News and made his position clear by emphatically saying once again, “I'm against gay marriage.”
Trump is out of step with many Americans, who are increasingly supportive of marriage for gay and lesbian couples. Last week CNN released the fourth credible poll in the past eight months to show an outright majority of Americans in favor of marriage equality.
Trump is sending the message to the 1 million gay couples who are raising approximately 2 million kids in the United States that they shouldn't be treated equally. He wants their viewership for his shows and their money at his properties (Gay and lesbian travelers spend an estimated $17 billion a year for tourism), but Trump doesn't want to allow them the same dignity and respect as all loving couples and families. This is both an unfair and unwise business practice.
Trump has taken to disparaging the families of gay and lesbian couples as a tactic to get attention for his candidacy. Using Trump's own famous catch phrase, we would like to tell him "You're fired!"
Step in the other person's shoes for awhile and just think how YOU would feel. And then think of some of the people you know and love who told you of their orientation and that they were frightened by a Cretan who just may take the presidency because he wants to eliminate what should be rightfully yours and that he is a threat not only to the quality of your life but to your life itself.
If you thought about all of that then I will tell you I have too because, big surprise, I am gay. Yep, knew it from age 3. Is that convincing enough that it is NOT a choice but a genetic orientation? I hope so because if you are against all those things that Trump is against then YOU are against ME and if you are against ME then it is my survival that is at stake and I WON'T without a fight let anyone take what has become, after decades if not centuries of struggle, rightfully ours. Think on that for awhile before you ever think of voting for the hater Trump because a vote for him is a vote against me!
Glad's (Gay and Lesbian Defenders)
Taken from Glad (link): https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/
"Donald Trump has started throwing gay and lesbian families under the bus as part of his celebrity businessman act, using his platform to argue against giving these families the same protections that other families have access to."
Donald Trump on marriage equality:
"I'm not in favor of gay marriage. They should not be able to marry.""I just don't feel good about it. I don't feel right about it. I'm against it… I'm opposed to gay marriage."
"Trump recently appeared on Fox News and made his position clear by emphatically saying once again, “I'm against gay marriage.”
Trump is out of step with many Americans, who are increasingly supportive of marriage for gay and lesbian couples. Last week CNN released the fourth credible poll in the past eight months to show an outright majority of Americans in favor of marriage equality.
Trump is sending the message to the 1 million gay couples who are raising approximately 2 million kids in the United States that they shouldn't be treated equally. He wants their viewership for his shows and their money at his properties (Gay and lesbian travelers spend an estimated $17 billion a year for tourism), but Trump doesn't want to allow them the same dignity and respect as all loving couples and families. This is both an unfair and unwise business practice.
Trump has taken to disparaging the families of gay and lesbian couples as a tactic to get attention for his candidacy. Using Trump's own famous catch phrase, we would like to tell him "You're fired!"
Friday, May 06, 2016
Photos of Bush on 9/11 (linked below)
He was told that bin Laden to attack the US in his PDB and did nothing but go to Texas and cut brush and then, play a round of golf. After the catastrophe he then invaded a nation, Iraq, based on lies because he could and for other reasons too numerous to state. 5000 Americans and still counting have died. Iraq turned into a blood bath after he stated Mission Accomplished in his flight suit outlining his genitalia. Sickening. Some mission accomplished as Iraq exploded in sectarian violence. Bush, et al had NO plan for what came after did not know a Sunni, Shite from a baseball. The Middle East exploded more and now look at it courtesy of George W. Bush.It is awful. ISIS and AQAP never before there is now and is sweeping many Middle Eastern countries. War, famine, brutality and refugees is the Bush legacy.
Don't let Trump say he was against the Iraq war. Initially like most everyone else he approved. He was for it until he was against it. Ashamedly, I believed the president and never thought he would lie about such a serious enormous thing. He fractured the entire Middle East has sent refugees by the millions to Europe and beyond. Death and destruction is everywhere. This is what the Bush administration gave you, America, and a Trump administration will give us worse MUCH worse. God forbid that blowhard know nothing ever comes near the oval office. As Oppenheimer said after the construction of the nuclear bomb taken from the Bagavad Gita I say about Trump: "Now I am become death destroyer of worlds."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/exclusive-new-photos-show-bushs-response-to-911-attacks/
BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY DO NOT LET A TRUMP ADMINISTRATION BECOME REALITY. HE IS A BRUTAL BUT SMART BEAST WITH NO MORALITY, ETHICS, OR CHARACTER. DO NOT LET HIM TAKE THE OVAL. WORK AS HARD AND AS MUCH AS YOU CAN FOR DEMOCRATS!
Thursday, May 05, 2016
The Ugliest American
The Ugliest American
GOD HELP US. NO, WE MUST HELP US. THIS IS A 911 CALL TO ALL THOSE WHO HAVE A SEMBLANCE OF HUMANITY AND A BRAIN LEFT AFTER WHAT HAPPENED TUESDAY NIGHT. IF YOU CARE ABOUT YOURSELF, YOUR CHILDREN, YOUR GRANDCHILDREN, YOUR FRIENDS OR OF YOU CARE ABOUT YOUR PETS THIS MAN IS HUGELY HUGELY DANGEROUS AND POSSIBLY MENTALLY ILL. IF YOU HEAR CLIPS OF HIM SAYING ANYTHING THAT COMES OUT OF HIS MOUTH TO PROTECT HIMSELF. THEN HE SAYS THE OPPOSITE WHEN THE TIMES DICTATE TO HIM HE SHOULD. HE CANNOT DO ANYTHING OF WHAT HE SAYS. HE IS A PHONY AND THOSE REPUBLICANS ARE GETTING WHAT THEY SO RIGHTFULLY DESERVE BUT IN FACT ARE RIGHT TO IMPUGN HIM. I NEVER THOUGHT I WOULD SAY I AGREE WITH MITT ROMNEY BUT I DO AS TO WHAT HE SAYS ABOUT TRUMP. WORK YOUR POSTERIORS OFF TO RID OUR NATION OF AN EBOLA-LIKE PLAGUE -- THE TRUMP BACTERIA. ERADICATE HIM FROM OUR POLITICAL MIDST SO OUR NATION CAN LIVE!
GOD HELP US. NO, WE MUST HELP US. THIS IS A 911 CALL TO ALL THOSE WHO HAVE A SEMBLANCE OF HUMANITY AND A BRAIN LEFT AFTER WHAT HAPPENED TUESDAY NIGHT. IF YOU CARE ABOUT YOURSELF, YOUR CHILDREN, YOUR GRANDCHILDREN, YOUR FRIENDS OR OF YOU CARE ABOUT YOUR PETS THIS MAN IS HUGELY HUGELY DANGEROUS AND POSSIBLY MENTALLY ILL. IF YOU HEAR CLIPS OF HIM SAYING ANYTHING THAT COMES OUT OF HIS MOUTH TO PROTECT HIMSELF. THEN HE SAYS THE OPPOSITE WHEN THE TIMES DICTATE TO HIM HE SHOULD. HE CANNOT DO ANYTHING OF WHAT HE SAYS. HE IS A PHONY AND THOSE REPUBLICANS ARE GETTING WHAT THEY SO RIGHTFULLY DESERVE BUT IN FACT ARE RIGHT TO IMPUGN HIM. I NEVER THOUGHT I WOULD SAY I AGREE WITH MITT ROMNEY BUT I DO AS TO WHAT HE SAYS ABOUT TRUMP. WORK YOUR POSTERIORS OFF TO RID OUR NATION OF AN EBOLA-LIKE PLAGUE -- THE TRUMP BACTERIA. ERADICATE HIM FROM OUR POLITICAL MIDST SO OUR NATION CAN LIVE!
Wednesday, May 04, 2016
Pray
Particularly poignant in Andrew Sullivan' s
"Democracies End when they are too democratic are: "And right now, America
is a breeding
ground for tyranny" is the paragraph: In Eric Hoffer’s classic 1951
tract, The True Believer, he sketches the dynamics of a genuine mass
movement. He was thinking of the upheavals in Europe in the first half
of the century, but the book remains sobering, especially now. Hoffer’s
core insight was to locate the source of all truly mass movements in a
collective sense of acute frustration.
Not despair, or revolt, or resignation — but frustration simmering with
rage. Mass movements, he notes (as did Tocqueville centuries before
him), rarely arise when oppression or misery is at its worst (say,
2009); they tend to appear when the worst is behind us but the future
seems not so much better (say, 2016). It is when a recovery finally
gathers speed and some improvement is tangible but not yet widespread
that the anger begins to rise. After the suffering of recession or
unemployment, and despite hard work with stagnant or dwindling pay, the
future stretches ahead with relief just out of reach. When those who
helped create the last recession face no consequences but renewed
fabulous wealth, the anger reaches a crescendo."
Continuing:
"The deeper, long-term reasons for today’s rage are not hard to find,
although many of us elites have shamefully found ourselves able to
ignore them. The jobs available to the working class no longer contain
the kind of craftsmanship or satisfaction
or meaning that can take the sting out of their low and stagnant wages.
The once-familiar avenues for socialization — the church, the union
hall, the VFW — have become less vibrant and social isolation more
common. Global economic forces have pummeled blue-collar workers more
relentlessly than almost any other segment of society, forcing them to
compete against hundreds of millions of equally skilled workers
throughout the planet. No one asked them in the 1990s if this was the
future they wanted. And the impact has been more brutal than many
economists predicted. No wonder suicide and mortality rates among the
white working poor are spiking dramatically."
And: “It is usually those whose poverty is relatively recent, the ‘new poor,’ who throb with the ferment of frustration,” Hoffer argues. "Fundamentalist religion long provided some emotional support for those left behind (for one thing, it invites practitioners to defy the elites as unholy), but its influence has waned as modernity has penetrated almost everything and the great culture wars of the 1990s and 2000s have ended in a rout. The result has been a more diverse mainstream culture — but also, simultaneously, a subculture that is even more alienated and despised, and ever more infuriated and bloody-minded."
More: "This is an age in which a woman might succeed a black man as president, but also one in which a member of the white working class has declining options to make a decent living. This is a time when gay people can be married in 50 states, even as working-class families are hanging by a thread. It’s a period in which we have become far more aware of the historic injustices that still haunt African-Americans and yet we treat the desperate plight of today’s white working class as an afterthought. And so late-stage capitalism is creating a righteous, revolutionary anger that late-stage democracy has precious little ability to moderate or constrain — and has actually helped exacerbate."
And
finally: For, like all tyrants, he is utterly lacking in self-control.
Sleeping a handful of hours a night, impulsively tweeting in the early
hours, improvising madly on subjects he knows nothing about, Trump rants
and raves as he surfs an entirely
reactive media landscape. Once again, Plato had his temperament down: A
tyrant is a man “not having control of himself [who] attempts to rule
others”; a man flooded with fear and love and passion, while having
little or no ability to restrain or moderate them; a “real slave to the
greatest fawning,” a man who “throughout his entire life ... is full of
fear, overflowing with convulsions and pains.” Sound familiar? Trump is
as mercurial and as unpredictable and as emotional as the daily Twitter
stream. And we are contemplating giving him access to the nuclear codes.
Read the whole thing which I sent out link below:
My Thought: America, see what you have wrought and then if you are a praying person pray our nation survives this horrific man, Trump and if you are not a praying person then sit in hope that those who pray our nation survives have their prayers answered!
http://nymag.com/.../04/
I lied to myself for years about who my allies were. No more. By: Ben Howe (Diary)
GREAT OPINION!!!!|
Donald Trump is my fault as much as anyone else’s.
It started way back in 2009-2010 when the Tea Party erupted on the scene. At the core of the tea party was a principle that I agreed with so much that I became a conservative activist during that time period. That core was principled, fiscal conservatism and a desire to return to the things that had made America great.
We said it lots of different ways back then. “Take our country back.” “Return to the Constitution.” It really is embodied quite nicely in Donald Trump’s motto: Make America great again.
That’s what we wanted. A budget that the country’s federal government had to live within. A shrinking bureaucracy. An end to exploding entitlements.
Social issues weren’t discussed that much in the very early stages of the Tea Party. We all knew that there was some disagreement on these issues and we wanted to stay singularly focused. We could sort out our differences after we’d stopped the runaway train of government largesse.
By 2011 there were some cracks in the movement. There were groups that seemed to just be profiting off of it without actually helping. There were politicians who’d won on tea party rhetoric in 2010 but seemed less inclined to stop the growth of government once they got to Washington.
It was frustrating. This was compounded by the fact that Mitt Romney became the nominee and then lost in 2012. It was at that point that I believe a lot of people simply put down the signs and went home.
Through it all, my own career was burgeoning in politics. Not only did I begin writing for RedState, I started doing some television appearances and owned a video production company with a laundry list of clients from the movement.
When your life becomes politics and you are surrounded by people in the industry, you learn a key term: allies.
Allies aren’t friends. They may not even be colleagues. They are simply people that you find enough agreement with on enough issues to not go after each other. You don’t have to overtly support one another but you certainly don’t try to hurt each other.
As more and more people knew who I was and I fostered relationships and allies, I found myself more and more having to look the other way. Moments where I would cringe at something someone said, or quietly roll my eyes at a post they wrote, thinking “Gosh, I can’t believe they think that way” or “I swear that person is one tweet away from saying Obama is from Kenya.”
I justified it quietly to myself the way we had at the beginning of the tea party when such things would happen. People would say outlandish things and I would find myself nodding my head and awkwardly walking away, not calling them out for their silliness.
After all, there were more pressing matters.
And so, as I said, I kept quiet about these allies in new media and in Washington. People who I thought I agreed with only 70% of the time. Which normally is a great reason to consider someone an ally, but not when the other 30% is cringe-inducing paranoia and vapid stupidity.
I chose peace over principle. I chose to go along with those I disagreed with on core matters because I believed we were jointly fighting for other things that were more important. I ignored my gut and my moral compass.
The result is that, almost to a man, every single person I cringed at or thought twice about, is now a supporter and cheerleader of Donald Trump.
I looked the other way, and I’m sure many others did too, as these people rose to prominence and their microphones got louder. I ignored it at times because I hate self-righteous liberals who tell anyone they disagree with that they don’t want to be around them and I didn’t want to be like that. At other times because, well, it was easier than standing against foolishness.
I’m done with that now. Albeit a bit too late.
I’ll never be like the indignant pricks I’ve dealt with on the right who judge harshly anyone who doesn’t automatically parrot the Republican leadership. I’ll also never be like the virtue-signallers who feel the need to put rainbow flags over their avatars to prove how socially progressive they are.
But my days of watching crazy people gain readers & listeners right in front of me are over.
Ann Coulter, Gateway Pundit, Laura Ingraham, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Sarah Palin, Breitbart News, Matt Drudge, and scores of others, too many to list here. They are all people that at one time or another caused me to bury my face in my hands. Caused me more than once to say “wait…we ARE the stupid party?” I’m done with it and I’m done with all of them. They are in this for money and power and influence and they think Donald Trump is their ticket. Hell, they may be right. And I’ll go down in flames with my principles befor
Donald Trump is my fault as much as anyone else’s.
It started way back in 2009-2010 when the Tea Party erupted on the scene. At the core of the tea party was a principle that I agreed with so much that I became a conservative activist during that time period. That core was principled, fiscal conservatism and a desire to return to the things that had made America great.
We said it lots of different ways back then. “Take our country back.” “Return to the Constitution.” It really is embodied quite nicely in Donald Trump’s motto: Make America great again.
That’s what we wanted. A budget that the country’s federal government had to live within. A shrinking bureaucracy. An end to exploding entitlements.
Social issues weren’t discussed that much in the very early stages of the Tea Party. We all knew that there was some disagreement on these issues and we wanted to stay singularly focused. We could sort out our differences after we’d stopped the runaway train of government largesse.
By 2011 there were some cracks in the movement. There were groups that seemed to just be profiting off of it without actually helping. There were politicians who’d won on tea party rhetoric in 2010 but seemed less inclined to stop the growth of government once they got to Washington.
It was frustrating. This was compounded by the fact that Mitt Romney became the nominee and then lost in 2012. It was at that point that I believe a lot of people simply put down the signs and went home.
Through it all, my own career was burgeoning in politics. Not only did I begin writing for RedState, I started doing some television appearances and owned a video production company with a laundry list of clients from the movement.
When your life becomes politics and you are surrounded by people in the industry, you learn a key term: allies.
Allies aren’t friends. They may not even be colleagues. They are simply people that you find enough agreement with on enough issues to not go after each other. You don’t have to overtly support one another but you certainly don’t try to hurt each other.
As more and more people knew who I was and I fostered relationships and allies, I found myself more and more having to look the other way. Moments where I would cringe at something someone said, or quietly roll my eyes at a post they wrote, thinking “Gosh, I can’t believe they think that way” or “I swear that person is one tweet away from saying Obama is from Kenya.”
I justified it quietly to myself the way we had at the beginning of the tea party when such things would happen. People would say outlandish things and I would find myself nodding my head and awkwardly walking away, not calling them out for their silliness.
After all, there were more pressing matters.
And so, as I said, I kept quiet about these allies in new media and in Washington. People who I thought I agreed with only 70% of the time. Which normally is a great reason to consider someone an ally, but not when the other 30% is cringe-inducing paranoia and vapid stupidity.
I chose peace over principle. I chose to go along with those I disagreed with on core matters because I believed we were jointly fighting for other things that were more important. I ignored my gut and my moral compass.
The result is that, almost to a man, every single person I cringed at or thought twice about, is now a supporter and cheerleader of Donald Trump.
I looked the other way, and I’m sure many others did too, as these people rose to prominence and their microphones got louder. I ignored it at times because I hate self-righteous liberals who tell anyone they disagree with that they don’t want to be around them and I didn’t want to be like that. At other times because, well, it was easier than standing against foolishness.
I’m done with that now. Albeit a bit too late.
I’ll never be like the indignant pricks I’ve dealt with on the right who judge harshly anyone who doesn’t automatically parrot the Republican leadership. I’ll also never be like the virtue-signallers who feel the need to put rainbow flags over their avatars to prove how socially progressive they are.
But my days of watching crazy people gain readers & listeners right in front of me are over.
Ann Coulter, Gateway Pundit, Laura Ingraham, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Sarah Palin, Breitbart News, Matt Drudge, and scores of others, too many to list here. They are all people that at one time or another caused me to bury my face in my hands. Caused me more than once to say “wait…we ARE the stupid party?” I’m done with it and I’m done with all of them. They are in this for money and power and influence and they think Donald Trump is their ticket. Hell, they may be right. And I’ll go down in flames with my principles befor
Monday, May 02, 2016
My email to Bernie Sanders
Dear Senator Sanders: I am a STRONG Democrat and a believer in most every political policy you hold. I am old enough though to surely remember Ralph Nader and his ruinous third party campaign against Bush. It divided Democrats. It cost THOUSANDS of lives first on 9/11 and then proceeding with the Bush/Cheney ruinous Iraq War dismembering and destabilizing the Middle East. It would not have happened with a President Gore.
If I thought you were the Democratic front runner I would vote for you BUT reality speaks and you are not and I think never will be. It will NOT, one hopes, be a "contested contest" as you aver it will.
I ask you, NO I PLEAD with you NOT to play into media hands by giving them the fuel of discord and division they have seen in the Republican Party and the Trump campaign of which they have taken advantage handing Trump the Republican nomination by infinitely covering him because he is more entertaining. That is NOT how to select a president. Now they look to Democrats to provide them the entertainment of discord which was heretofore the Republican proxy. Do NOT allow that.
PLEASE do not hand Trump a general election victory. Please think about what you say and temper your remarks against Secretary Clinton who will be no doubt our Democratic nominee. Your remarks against her hand the Republican Party just what they want and WILL use all that you say to impugne her.
PLEASE do not let this be a repeat of the 2000 election when defeat was pulled out of the jaws of victory by a divided Democratic Party and progressive movement. Think how different and how many lives would have been saved and importantly what a head start we would have gotten on climate change with an Al Gore as president.
We WILL get the start we need on the ugly reality of man's contribution to climate change by electing the Democrat who will be the most likely nominee of the Democratic Party. I believe that nominee will be Secretary Clinton.
One reaps what one sows and IF you sow discord we will lose this race to the demagogue Trump relegating our nation to a catastrophic fate. We WILL lose lives and many of them through climate change and a reckless even deadly foreign policy by a know nothing god forbid President Trump.
Hillary Clinton has the knowledge, foresight and a plethora of experience to do an effective and professional job as president. As she has said there is more that unites our two political camps than divides us. PLEASE, I beg you, do NOT contribute to Democratic division. Unite us and your followers as only you can do to ensure not only victory to attain this ever so powerful office and election but to see a Supreme Court that finally will decide policy OPPOSITE to what heretofore this right wing extremist court has so destructive to the middle class and the poor bestowed. Justice Scalia is gone. That seat should now be filled with a fair-minded progressive who can make life easier for the poor, the powerless, women and the disenfranchised persons of color. End Citizen's United by uniting us under one Democratic umbrella geared to the probable nominee Secretary Hillary Clinton who will do just that.
PLEASE DO THE RIGHT THING AND UNITE US!
In Harmony,
If I thought you were the Democratic front runner I would vote for you BUT reality speaks and you are not and I think never will be. It will NOT, one hopes, be a "contested contest" as you aver it will.
I ask you, NO I PLEAD with you NOT to play into media hands by giving them the fuel of discord and division they have seen in the Republican Party and the Trump campaign of which they have taken advantage handing Trump the Republican nomination by infinitely covering him because he is more entertaining. That is NOT how to select a president. Now they look to Democrats to provide them the entertainment of discord which was heretofore the Republican proxy. Do NOT allow that.
PLEASE do not hand Trump a general election victory. Please think about what you say and temper your remarks against Secretary Clinton who will be no doubt our Democratic nominee. Your remarks against her hand the Republican Party just what they want and WILL use all that you say to impugne her.
PLEASE do not let this be a repeat of the 2000 election when defeat was pulled out of the jaws of victory by a divided Democratic Party and progressive movement. Think how different and how many lives would have been saved and importantly what a head start we would have gotten on climate change with an Al Gore as president.
We WILL get the start we need on the ugly reality of man's contribution to climate change by electing the Democrat who will be the most likely nominee of the Democratic Party. I believe that nominee will be Secretary Clinton.
One reaps what one sows and IF you sow discord we will lose this race to the demagogue Trump relegating our nation to a catastrophic fate. We WILL lose lives and many of them through climate change and a reckless even deadly foreign policy by a know nothing god forbid President Trump.
Hillary Clinton has the knowledge, foresight and a plethora of experience to do an effective and professional job as president. As she has said there is more that unites our two political camps than divides us. PLEASE, I beg you, do NOT contribute to Democratic division. Unite us and your followers as only you can do to ensure not only victory to attain this ever so powerful office and election but to see a Supreme Court that finally will decide policy OPPOSITE to what heretofore this right wing extremist court has so destructive to the middle class and the poor bestowed. Justice Scalia is gone. That seat should now be filled with a fair-minded progressive who can make life easier for the poor, the powerless, women and the disenfranchised persons of color. End Citizen's United by uniting us under one Democratic umbrella geared to the probable nominee Secretary Hillary Clinton who will do just that.
PLEASE DO THE RIGHT THING AND UNITE US!
In Harmony,
One of the most interesting opinions I think I have ever read
Andrew Sullivan's piece in "New York" magazine entitled Democracies End When they are too Democratic is one of the most interesting, contemplative, and provocative articles I think I have ever read or at least have read in a long time. His thoughts circulate around Plato's "Republic" written around 380 BC. Yes, it is lengthy, but it is synaptic extending. In other words, it makes one think, expand and exercise one's brain -- a perfect antidote against dementia. I post it below and think you should read it as it is an article written for our fearful Trumpian times inspired by a man, Plato, who could never have envisioned our existence.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html
We the Living Must Remember
Kudos, to Jeff Jacoby for his thoughtful editorial in the May 1, 2016 Boston Sunday Globe (linked below) entitled "The End of Holocaust Remembrance." There has been no other event in my historical memory that has had more of an impact on me than the Holocaust. The near annihilation of the Jewish people hit me hard as a Jewish child of 10 years old when I watched my first documentary about it as a prelude to a movie in a local movie theater in Framingham.
The sight of human remains pilled like refuse one on top of the other so that those Allies who liberated the camps could do so quickly with bulldozers lest the stench and disease dead bodies could spread would threaten the living was more than a 10 year old child could bear. I became literally nauseated and nearly threw up especially because I, a Jew, was looking at something that could have befallen me. On some level I knew that one of those bodies could have been my relatives had they not had the foresight to leave Eastern Europe for America at the turn of the 20th century. The Russian pogroms against the Jews of the late 19th century from which they fled in a strange way saved my grandparents from an even worse fate that would have befallen them forty years later.
A relative visited Yad Vashem Memorial in Israel and looked up the statistics of my grandparents' small village of Shepatovka, Ukraine from where they emigrated. 50,000 souls perished there. Luckily they were not among them but they surely could have been.
There is no other single event in history that did more to shape my liberal left of center politics than the Shoa as later after considerable thought I knew the extremist right wing spelled fascist inhumanity. I discerned then the difference between leftist politics and those of the right. It is hard, in view of our people's torturous history during that period for me to understand how anyone with a shred of humanity could attach themselves to that side of the political spectrum for which inhuman cruelty is its logical extension.
The Holocaust shaped who I am, what I believe, and shaped even what side of the political spectrum I was to sit. It is hard for me to see how any Jew can feel comfortable taking a seat on the American right with its racist saturated thought even prevalent today in one of our nation's major Parties and the cruel brutality of it in its extreme. For those of us who must and will remember until we ourselves die it is mandatory that we who can only account for what we do never forget our own people's experience at the hands of man's inhumanity to man lest it be repeated over and over again. We the living must tell of it through the ages, always to remember and never to forget.
http://townhall.com/
The sight of human remains pilled like refuse one on top of the other so that those Allies who liberated the camps could do so quickly with bulldozers lest the stench and disease dead bodies could spread would threaten the living was more than a 10 year old child could bear. I became literally nauseated and nearly threw up especially because I, a Jew, was looking at something that could have befallen me. On some level I knew that one of those bodies could have been my relatives had they not had the foresight to leave Eastern Europe for America at the turn of the 20th century. The Russian pogroms against the Jews of the late 19th century from which they fled in a strange way saved my grandparents from an even worse fate that would have befallen them forty years later.
A relative visited Yad Vashem Memorial in Israel and looked up the statistics of my grandparents' small village of Shepatovka, Ukraine from where they emigrated. 50,000 souls perished there. Luckily they were not among them but they surely could have been.
There is no other single event in history that did more to shape my liberal left of center politics than the Shoa as later after considerable thought I knew the extremist right wing spelled fascist inhumanity. I discerned then the difference between leftist politics and those of the right. It is hard, in view of our people's torturous history during that period for me to understand how anyone with a shred of humanity could attach themselves to that side of the political spectrum for which inhuman cruelty is its logical extension.
The Holocaust shaped who I am, what I believe, and shaped even what side of the political spectrum I was to sit. It is hard for me to see how any Jew can feel comfortable taking a seat on the American right with its racist saturated thought even prevalent today in one of our nation's major Parties and the cruel brutality of it in its extreme. For those of us who must and will remember until we ourselves die it is mandatory that we who can only account for what we do never forget our own people's experience at the hands of man's inhumanity to man lest it be repeated over and over again. We the living must tell of it through the ages, always to remember and never to forget.
http://townhall.com/
Friday, April 29, 2016
Hope Amid a Sea of Violence
The news is, of course, distressing; violence and hate seem to be all around us. Electorally we have never, I think, been as divided since the Civil War but nothing, no political system and, certainly, no one person is perfect. George Orwell knew that dystopia is the usual reality and utopia a fantasy which is why he wrote "Animal Farm." Nearly all revolutions ultimately fail. It is why the French Revolution had its Robespierre, the Russian Revolution had its Stalin, China its Mao, and North Korea its brutal Kim Jong-Un. It is why Cambodia had its slaughter by the Khmer Rouge of Pol Pot, why the Shah of Iran fell and why a brutal religious dictatorship of the humorless Ayatollah Khomenini took hold. Free speech for so many is a quiet dream of those who dare not speak its possibility. There are, of course, dozens more examples of revolutions that sour. Hope in the beginning of a revolutionary political movement feels so good and all things seem possible but as humans are prone to do they often take a wrecking ball to it.
I am going out on a limb to say it is why the American Revolution of 1776 looks so good to me, a fervent criticizer of American power. Have we had our wrecking balls throughout our short nearly 250 year history? Absolutely, we have. Still, the ideals for which the colonials fought are, I believe, still very much alive and its goals for which we strive are still possible because we have a process. Persons of color were freed by that process, a Civil Rights and a Voting Rights Act passed, a Depression overcome, two Word Wars won with a little help from our friends and later adversaries. Women got the vote and women's rights are expanding with every decade. People with a different sexual orientation can now love and marry whom they choose, the disabled obtained rights and our nation licked polio. Most importantly a black man became president and a woman just may (I hope) take the presidency as well. At the very least she will win the nomination of one of the two main political Parties of this huge nation. Is our nation perfect yet? No, of course not and with our competing interests it never will be but we strive and hope the demagogues and religious fanatics are not given power. Well, I can hope they are not.
In the end it is amazing that a nation of 350 million human beings is still alive and stuck together with an invisible glue. There are many good things to save about this nation and many bad things we must throw out. But there is a process to do so and I want to see this nation, no matter who it elects, live understanding one cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Indeed, it is why I devote my years now to try to be an advocate for causes that are humane, fair and just whether for humans, animals, or the planet which gives all of us life. I live since the late 1960's in hope that, as Martin Luther King said, we will overcome one day. We must, I think, at least try. There is hope amid this sea of violence and Lady Liberty still shines her light in that sea beckoning others to light their own lamp with her torch!
I am going out on a limb to say it is why the American Revolution of 1776 looks so good to me, a fervent criticizer of American power. Have we had our wrecking balls throughout our short nearly 250 year history? Absolutely, we have. Still, the ideals for which the colonials fought are, I believe, still very much alive and its goals for which we strive are still possible because we have a process. Persons of color were freed by that process, a Civil Rights and a Voting Rights Act passed, a Depression overcome, two Word Wars won with a little help from our friends and later adversaries. Women got the vote and women's rights are expanding with every decade. People with a different sexual orientation can now love and marry whom they choose, the disabled obtained rights and our nation licked polio. Most importantly a black man became president and a woman just may (I hope) take the presidency as well. At the very least she will win the nomination of one of the two main political Parties of this huge nation. Is our nation perfect yet? No, of course not and with our competing interests it never will be but we strive and hope the demagogues and religious fanatics are not given power. Well, I can hope they are not.
In the end it is amazing that a nation of 350 million human beings is still alive and stuck together with an invisible glue. There are many good things to save about this nation and many bad things we must throw out. But there is a process to do so and I want to see this nation, no matter who it elects, live understanding one cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Indeed, it is why I devote my years now to try to be an advocate for causes that are humane, fair and just whether for humans, animals, or the planet which gives all of us life. I live since the late 1960's in hope that, as Martin Luther King said, we will overcome one day. We must, I think, at least try. There is hope amid this sea of violence and Lady Liberty still shines her light in that sea beckoning others to light their own lamp with her torch!
My Letter to Rachel Maddow -- Murder in Flint
Rachel, I just heard on Amy Goodman’s "Democracy Now" broadcast (linked below) about the murder of two young mothers in Flint, Michigan one of whom was at the center of the legal action she brought against the City of Flint for the lead poisoning of their children. One of the first to file suit and murdered at her town house was Sasha Avonna Bell. I do not know the name of the other murdered woman. I had to replay the story again to see if I heard it correctly. I did. See video below of Amy Goodman's broadcast.
Only you, Rachel, can expose the Flint lead-poisoning-in-water issue you revealed against the noxious Republican Snyder administration and his self-appointed Emergency Managers answerable only to him. They have produced this water-in-lead poisoning crisis impacting thousands of children (as well as adults) into eternity stealing their future if not, ultimately, their lives. It now involves the alleged murder of a woman or women seeking damages for the injustice the Snyder administration has perpetrated.
We need the truth. This cannot and must not be swept under the rug. Who murdered Sasha Avonna Bell? Perhaps you can pull back the opaque curtain of hidden things to reveal those things to the light of transparency on Snyder and the actions of his deceitful administration.
http://www.democracynow.org/
Only you, Rachel, can expose the Flint lead-poisoning-in-water issue you revealed against the noxious Republican Snyder administration and his self-appointed Emergency Managers answerable only to him. They have produced this water-in-lead poisoning crisis impacting thousands of children (as well as adults) into eternity stealing their future if not, ultimately, their lives. It now involves the alleged murder of a woman or women seeking damages for the injustice the Snyder administration has perpetrated.
We need the truth. This cannot and must not be swept under the rug. Who murdered Sasha Avonna Bell? Perhaps you can pull back the opaque curtain of hidden things to reveal those things to the light of transparency on Snyder and the actions of his deceitful administration.
http://www.democracynow.org/
Why the Presidency needs to be kept in Democratic hands: The House Just Voted To Give Wall Street Billions From Americans’ Retirement Savings
Enforcement of the Fiduciary Rule
This article attached here or below is not long but it behooves you to read the link. I also provided a summary of it below to know why the Presidency MUST be kept in Democratic hands. This bill has been lobbied by the Wall Street immorals and will overturn the Obama administration's proposed "fiduciary rule." Luckily, for those who rely and will rely on their 401Ks and retirement accounts the House vote will ultimately get a presidential veto by the DEMOCRATIC President Obama. In short, if it passed it means Wall Street can continue to sell you any investment it wants no matter the risk without telling you of the risk and without telling you the fees associated with it, legally. The Obama proposed "fiduciary rule" would ensure they must tell you about the risk and their fees but Republicons want to undo it.
A Republicon presidential signature would allow investment banks to continue to NOT tell you the risk and the fees associated with an investment so retirees and those who will become retirees could and do lose billions. It would ensure Wall Street can continue to make huge profits legally at your expense through your investments no matter the risk of which you probably now may not know or even know the fees it attaches (sometimes through the back door) because they do not have to tell you. What Wall Street wants to continue to do and does do is wrong, it is immoral and it is what Republicans -- the hypocrite usurious good religious Fundamentalists they SAY they are -- will ensure. Read the short summary I have cut and pasted and then go to the link below it and read the rest of the short article. Also read about the "fiduciary rule" by clicking on the link within the article. READ and HEED!!!!!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
This article attached here or below is not long but it behooves you to read the link. I also provided a summary of it below to know why the Presidency MUST be kept in Democratic hands. This bill has been lobbied by the Wall Street immorals and will overturn the Obama administration's proposed "fiduciary rule." Luckily, for those who rely and will rely on their 401Ks and retirement accounts the House vote will ultimately get a presidential veto by the DEMOCRATIC President Obama. In short, if it passed it means Wall Street can continue to sell you any investment it wants no matter the risk without telling you of the risk and without telling you the fees associated with it, legally. The Obama proposed "fiduciary rule" would ensure they must tell you about the risk and their fees but Republicons want to undo it.
A Republicon presidential signature would allow investment banks to continue to NOT tell you the risk and the fees associated with an investment so retirees and those who will become retirees could and do lose billions. It would ensure Wall Street can continue to make huge profits legally at your expense through your investments no matter the risk of which you probably now may not know or even know the fees it attaches (sometimes through the back door) because they do not have to tell you. What Wall Street wants to continue to do and does do is wrong, it is immoral and it is what Republicans -- the hypocrite usurious good religious Fundamentalists they SAY they are -- will ensure. Read the short summary I have cut and pasted and then go to the link below it and read the rest of the short article. Also read about the "fiduciary rule" by clicking on the link within the article. READ and HEED!!!!!
The House voted 234 to 188 Thursday to undo a rule proposed by the Labor Department earlier this month that would require anyone getting paid to provide retirement investment advice to act in the best interest of retirees. Many people think that’s already how things work, but it isn’t.To remedy the situation, the Obama administration proposed a fiduciary rule to keep Wall Street from taking so much money in fees from retirement accounts. The financial industry has opposed the rule from the start.
The way things work right now is that brokers who oversee retirement savings accounts can be paid extra to steer their clients into unnecessarily expensive funds or excessively risky investments, without disclosing that fact to their clients. That sort of conflicted investment advice costs Americans saving for retirement $17 billion a year, according to the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
Thursday, April 28, 2016
"If I Lose Friends Over Trump, So Be It"
Donald Trump’s candidacy isn’t really about politics, which is why it divides people so deeply. It’s about revenge.
By Tom Nichols
I have been thinking about Peter Wehner’s piece in the New York Times yesterday, in which he talks about the sadness of losing friends over Donald Trump’s candidacy. I have not—yet—lost any friends over Trump, but it’s possible. Unlike Wehner, I am less concerned about it. The Trump campaign is a test of character, and many Americans are failing it.
Put another way, if my opposition to Trump is going to cost me friends, then all I can say is: So be it.
I know people who are voting for Trump, including members of my family. I do not immediately find myself opposed to anyone who would vote for Trump; to the contrary, I find a lot of fertile ground for discussion and argument with conservative friends who disagree with me only about the lengths to which the “never Trump” movement should go. They might not be comfortable with Trump, but they will do anything to stop Hillary Clinton, and I understand that position.
By Now, You Know What You’re Getting
But I find almost nothing to say to people who are full-throated, enthusiastic Trump supporters, especially now. Back in August, I could console myself that most Trump supporters just didn’t know what they were getting into, and that they would return to their senses and regain their decency once they got a look at the unhinged huckster onto whom they’d signed.
All these months later, however, the pretense has to stop.
As Jonathan Last noted recently, an attorney and blogger who calls himself “Thomas Crown” summed up this kind of voter in a recent article. Crown discussed one of his clients, a pseudonymous “Mrs. Martin” who was supporting a Trump she mostly knew through bits and pieces of information, none of them too close to the truth about the actual man. “Mrs. Martin” seems a decent sort, even if I’m having a bit of trouble believing that she’s as untouched by Trump’s reality as she claims.
All these months later, however, the pretense has to stop. Trump’s supporters are voracious consumers of his public and television appearances, and they now know what kind of man he is. With my friends and family who still cling to Trump, I never waver from my insistence, directly and firmly, that they are making a terrible mistake, and that Trump is making them worse people for being involved in his message. I still love them, and they still love me. (I think.)
Friendship With Political Opponents Is Possible
In a lifetime spent in and around politics, I actually haven’t lost many friends over political disagreements. In my academic life, I have always been part of a political minority; I once did a campus radio show with a colleague who admitted happily that during the 1960s he had denounced his father as a class enemy on national television. (He settled into being somewhat more of a conventional liberal 30 years later.) I doubt that being a conservative helped my early career, but few of the people I knew in those days broke even a casual friendship with me.
Trump and his views are ghastly in a way that goes beyond politics.
I also have liberal friends from my days working in politics. We stayed friends even as they and I worked for opposite sides, and while I wrote articles (and speeches for a GOP senator) excoriating their ideas and their party. Much like the sheepdog and the coyote in the old Warner Brothers’ cartoon, we would fight each other during the day, punch the clock, then go out and enjoy a friendship based in a common interest in politics, even if from different sides of the field.
But Trump’s candidacy isn’t really about politics, which is why it divides people so deeply. Trump and his views are ghastly in a way that goes beyond politics. They challenge our human decency and patriotism. That’s why they test not only our political associations but our friendships.
A Rant Is Not a Policy
Yes, fellow conservatives: Trump is worse than Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Their policies are liberal, even leftist, often motivated by cheap politics, ego, and political grandstanding. But they are policies, understandable as such and opposable by political means.
There are no real principles on the table here, only Trump’s demagogic stoking of incoherent and even paranoid rage.
Trump’s various rants, by contrast, do not amount to policies. They are ignorant tone poems, bad haikus, streams of words whose content has no real meaning. They’re not positions available either to the GOP or Democrats, because they do not contain a vision of the future over which those parties can fight.
In fact, Trump’s policies are not policies. They’re just feverish revenge fantasies. Trump, a scam artist whose entire career has been based on victimizing the working class, should be the target of that anger. Instead, he is encouraging Americans to turn their hostility away from him and against their fellow citizens, inviting us into a war of all against all over which he will preside as an amused dictator.
The division between Trump’s supporters and the rest of us is not about reconciling our political differences. It is not about opposing policies we hate. (Most of Trump’s policies are actually quite liberal, but that is irrelevant.) There are no real principles on the table here, only Trump’s demagogic stoking of incoherent and even paranoid rage.
Revenge Destroys Friendships
This is what destroys friendships. Trump’s supporters are now like roaring drunks in a bar fight, people who you might have tried to reason with five drinks earlier but now are just lashing out at everyone in every direction. Pumped up on talk radio conspiracies, overdosing on the venom of Sean Hannity and Judge Jeannine, comatose with irrational fury, they are no longer part of any sensible political debate in America.
Trump’s supporters are now like roaring drunks in a bar fight, people who you might have tried to reason with five drinks earlier.
This blind madness puts both political and emotional distance between Trump supporters and the rest of us. Most conservatives have already told Trump that we will not sell our character as Americans, and indeed our very souls, just to feel the pleasure of resentful anger for a few months. All we can do is to keep trying to talk our friends out of making that very mistake, or at best to hope that buyer’s remorse will set in.
Still, if anyone who knows me really believes I am now a traitor to my country because of the way I’m going to vote, then I can do without their friendship. If they end their relationship with me because Donald Trump has identified people like me as the source of their problems, then maybe we were not that close in the first place.
In the end, I can only say it again: if I lose a friend only because I am opposed to man who is, in my view, a mortal enemy of everything American, then so be it.
Tom Nichols is a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College and an adjunct professor in the Harvard Extension School. Views expressed here are his own. Follow him on Twitter, @RadioFreeTom.
By Tom Nichols
I have been thinking about Peter Wehner’s piece in the New York Times yesterday, in which he talks about the sadness of losing friends over Donald Trump’s candidacy. I have not—yet—lost any friends over Trump, but it’s possible. Unlike Wehner, I am less concerned about it. The Trump campaign is a test of character, and many Americans are failing it.
Put another way, if my opposition to Trump is going to cost me friends, then all I can say is: So be it.
I know people who are voting for Trump, including members of my family. I do not immediately find myself opposed to anyone who would vote for Trump; to the contrary, I find a lot of fertile ground for discussion and argument with conservative friends who disagree with me only about the lengths to which the “never Trump” movement should go. They might not be comfortable with Trump, but they will do anything to stop Hillary Clinton, and I understand that position.
By Now, You Know What You’re Getting
But I find almost nothing to say to people who are full-throated, enthusiastic Trump supporters, especially now. Back in August, I could console myself that most Trump supporters just didn’t know what they were getting into, and that they would return to their senses and regain their decency once they got a look at the unhinged huckster onto whom they’d signed.
All these months later, however, the pretense has to stop.
As Jonathan Last noted recently, an attorney and blogger who calls himself “Thomas Crown” summed up this kind of voter in a recent article. Crown discussed one of his clients, a pseudonymous “Mrs. Martin” who was supporting a Trump she mostly knew through bits and pieces of information, none of them too close to the truth about the actual man. “Mrs. Martin” seems a decent sort, even if I’m having a bit of trouble believing that she’s as untouched by Trump’s reality as she claims.
All these months later, however, the pretense has to stop. Trump’s supporters are voracious consumers of his public and television appearances, and they now know what kind of man he is. With my friends and family who still cling to Trump, I never waver from my insistence, directly and firmly, that they are making a terrible mistake, and that Trump is making them worse people for being involved in his message. I still love them, and they still love me. (I think.)
Friendship With Political Opponents Is Possible
In a lifetime spent in and around politics, I actually haven’t lost many friends over political disagreements. In my academic life, I have always been part of a political minority; I once did a campus radio show with a colleague who admitted happily that during the 1960s he had denounced his father as a class enemy on national television. (He settled into being somewhat more of a conventional liberal 30 years later.) I doubt that being a conservative helped my early career, but few of the people I knew in those days broke even a casual friendship with me.
Trump and his views are ghastly in a way that goes beyond politics.
I also have liberal friends from my days working in politics. We stayed friends even as they and I worked for opposite sides, and while I wrote articles (and speeches for a GOP senator) excoriating their ideas and their party. Much like the sheepdog and the coyote in the old Warner Brothers’ cartoon, we would fight each other during the day, punch the clock, then go out and enjoy a friendship based in a common interest in politics, even if from different sides of the field.
But Trump’s candidacy isn’t really about politics, which is why it divides people so deeply. Trump and his views are ghastly in a way that goes beyond politics. They challenge our human decency and patriotism. That’s why they test not only our political associations but our friendships.
A Rant Is Not a Policy
Yes, fellow conservatives: Trump is worse than Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Their policies are liberal, even leftist, often motivated by cheap politics, ego, and political grandstanding. But they are policies, understandable as such and opposable by political means.
There are no real principles on the table here, only Trump’s demagogic stoking of incoherent and even paranoid rage.
Trump’s various rants, by contrast, do not amount to policies. They are ignorant tone poems, bad haikus, streams of words whose content has no real meaning. They’re not positions available either to the GOP or Democrats, because they do not contain a vision of the future over which those parties can fight.
In fact, Trump’s policies are not policies. They’re just feverish revenge fantasies. Trump, a scam artist whose entire career has been based on victimizing the working class, should be the target of that anger. Instead, he is encouraging Americans to turn their hostility away from him and against their fellow citizens, inviting us into a war of all against all over which he will preside as an amused dictator.
The division between Trump’s supporters and the rest of us is not about reconciling our political differences. It is not about opposing policies we hate. (Most of Trump’s policies are actually quite liberal, but that is irrelevant.) There are no real principles on the table here, only Trump’s demagogic stoking of incoherent and even paranoid rage.
Revenge Destroys Friendships
This is what destroys friendships. Trump’s supporters are now like roaring drunks in a bar fight, people who you might have tried to reason with five drinks earlier but now are just lashing out at everyone in every direction. Pumped up on talk radio conspiracies, overdosing on the venom of Sean Hannity and Judge Jeannine, comatose with irrational fury, they are no longer part of any sensible political debate in America.
Trump’s supporters are now like roaring drunks in a bar fight, people who you might have tried to reason with five drinks earlier.
This blind madness puts both political and emotional distance between Trump supporters and the rest of us. Most conservatives have already told Trump that we will not sell our character as Americans, and indeed our very souls, just to feel the pleasure of resentful anger for a few months. All we can do is to keep trying to talk our friends out of making that very mistake, or at best to hope that buyer’s remorse will set in.
Still, if anyone who knows me really believes I am now a traitor to my country because of the way I’m going to vote, then I can do without their friendship. If they end their relationship with me because Donald Trump has identified people like me as the source of their problems, then maybe we were not that close in the first place.
In the end, I can only say it again: if I lose a friend only because I am opposed to man who is, in my view, a mortal enemy of everything American, then so be it.
Tom Nichols is a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College and an adjunct professor in the Harvard Extension School. Views expressed here are his own. Follow him on Twitter, @RadioFreeTom.
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Preliminary Thoughts -- Primary April, 26, 2016
Hillary did well. She is, in my eye, the Democratic presumptive nominee. BUT ALL Democrats must UNITE lest the enthusiasm Trump engenders, god forbid, wins the presidency for him. A few of Sanders's supporters incredulously even have said they might vote for Trump. That, if true is, yes, hard to believe.
Sanders's supporters, whose hearts are in the right place, must embrace the rest of those in the Democratic Party who supported Hillary. We are ALL in one Party -- the Democratic Party. Either we rise with Hillary Clinton or sink to the depths of an explosive perhaps even nuclear swamp with unqualified Trump.
Reality speaks. I loved much of what Sanders said but thought him too old. He now, after the grueling primary pace, looks even older. The arduously demanding job of the presidency significantly ages even the youngest who occupy it. More importantly, though, I thought Sanders's rant was ear numbing preachy, sermonizing, didactic and a one track record. He was, to a large degree, a one issue candidate, most importantly, with little foreign policy experience and no plan as to how he would get that for which he advocated done.
I do, though, understand why he engendered the support he did. He speaks truth on the issue of economic inequality and the 1% usurpers of our national wealth. We must embrace that truth, be our own citizens united and elect the Democratic Party's soon to be nominee, Hillary Clinton. She has experience in all venues and will not eviscerate the sacred Constitutional and Bill of Rights principles of our nation -- liberty and justice for all men, for all women, for all minorities, immigrants, the disabled and those LGBT citizens of this nation who have fought so long and so hard for those rights that should be increased and not taken away!
NOW GO OUT, WORK FOR HER AND ALL DOWN TICKET DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES. LET'S TAKE THE PRESIDENCY, TAKE BACK THE SENATE AND MAKE GAINS OR EVEN TAKE BACK THE HOUSE. WE CAN DO ALL OF THAT IF WE STICK TOGETHER AND GET OUT THE DEMOCRATIC VOTE!
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
FABULOUS READING--"The GOP's Eve of Destruction" by Robert North Patterson
This is such an insightful article it is my required reading here or below!
After you read it GET OUT THE DEMOCRATIC VOTE!
After you read it GET OUT THE DEMOCRATIC VOTE!
Monday, April 25, 2016
Charles Koch Compares Donald Trump To A Nazi
Yeah sure. Don't TRUST anyone who has been a rightwing extremist killer of the environment and promoter of climate change to come out and say he may support Hillary Clinton. OH SURE, believe that one and I have a George Washington Bridge I'd like to sell you.
Get one of the most DESPISED rightwing extremist Koch Brother John Birch Society aficionado to come out in support of a progressive. Good way to turn off Sanders's and other progressive voters? DO NOT TAKE THE BATE, progressives. Get out to vote en masse for whomever the Democratic nominee is and tell Koch to .......[fill in the blank]
GET OUT THE DEMOCRATIC VOTE AND UNITE!
Get one of the most DESPISED rightwing extremist Koch Brother John Birch Society aficionado to come out in support of a progressive. Good way to turn off Sanders's and other progressive voters? DO NOT TAKE THE BATE, progressives. Get out to vote en masse for whomever the Democratic nominee is and tell Koch to .......[fill in the blank]
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