I am writing this before the first presidential debate. I don't plan to watch. Too much brain damage. Nothing that would be said could change my vote for Hillary Clinton. The alternative is national suicide.
So far, the election is playing out pretty much as I suspected. Republicans, even the #NeverTrump crowd such as Sen. Ted Cruz, will dutifully line up and vote for Trump. If the GOP candidate were Dwight Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, or George H.W. Bush, I would give him a hearing. But one of our two great mass political parties has gone insane. Donald Trump is not an anomaly. He is the natural outcome of the paranoid style in American politics that long ago took over the Republicans. Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater could not win a GOP school-board primary today.
It doesn't matter that Trump is a serial liar, totally unqualified for national office, temperamentally unfit on a frightening level, the most dangerous candidate ever put forward by a major party. They will vote for him.
I don't want to hear about how things would have been different with Bernie. Had he won the nomination and been subjected to months of SOCIALIST!, he would be losing badly in the polls already. To me, your protest votes for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson are just short of treason. And if Trump wins, which he may well do, Mencken's quote that "democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard" will offer no comfort.
We recently passed the 220th anniversary of George Washington's farewell address. He warned against faction and sectionalism. Wise words that did not prevent the Civil War. Now our Cold Civil War is exposing flaws in the Constitution that Madison, Hamilton, Jay, Franklin, and the other framers could not have foreseen. They were deeply versed in history, of course, and pessimistic about earlier experiments in self-government ("A republic," Franklin answered the woman outside the constitutional convention, "if you can keep it.). But they didn't anticipate reality television, mass ignorance, the "post fact" society, faces in devices. All the checks and balances they put in place will be put to an unprecedented test is Trump wins.
The Electoral College and the Senate were specifically intended to act as buffers against the passions of the mob, something the framers especially feared. Yet the Cold Civil War is exposing their flaws — especially if the Trump electors actually vote for him. And they will. The indirect democracy of the Electoral College was put in place so that sober electors would stop a Trump, even if he won the election.
Meanwhile, consider that California's population is larger than 22 other states. Yet California gets two U.S. Senators. Those smaller states, mostly in the New Confederacy, get 44 U.S. Senators. No wonder GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell has been able to stymie so much of President Obama's agenda and appointees, usually ignoring the popular will. As America has sorted into red and blue states, the latter are not numerous enough to control the Congress. Even a blue state such as Washington is deep red outside of metropolitan Seattle.
If Republicans retain control of Congress, which they likely would in the event of a Trump victory, they would not "control" him. He's not controllable and the modern presidency has enormous power — power that has not even begun to be pushed to its full dangerous potential. Instead, every Kook law and measure imaginable would sail through as America repeals the Nixon administration, Great Society, New Deal, Progressive Era, Enlightenment, and even Bush 41's American's with Disabilities Act. And all the liberal protests and vigils would not make the slightest difference — ask the Moral Monday people after Republicans took over all of North Carolina's statewide offices and the Legislature, enacting a far-right agenda.
"The worse, the better," some say, anticipating a 2018 and 2020 progressive landslide in reaction. Again, to me this is close to treason. But anyway, don't hold your breath. As we saw with Stalin, every disastrous consequence of the party line is blamed, not on the party line, but on shadowy "wreckers," and used to further radicalize the strongman's power and the ideology's correctness. This may seem an extreme analogy (is there a Godwin's Law for this?), but Bolshevism was a madness that took decades to burn out. The Trumpism that is in control of the Republican Party is similar insanity. Facts don't matter. Indeed, they are seditious.
The stakes could not be higher. Climate change. The composition of the Supreme Court. Whether we will have any social safety net or a privatized hustle that makes the Gilded Age look like Denmark by comparison. Women's reproductive rights. A constructive vs. a destructive future. Trump himself, with his aggressive ignorance and casual talk of using nuclear weapons. I can't believe we've landed in this fix. It's disgraceful. I suppose it will come down to turnout. I hope sane voters show up — because you can bet the Trump legions will do so in numbers that are, well, huge.
This could pass for this country’s obituary. I don’t disagree with any of it.
This nation is flirting with a psychopath because it’s been relentlessly dumbed down over the decades by cable-TV news, talk radio, and e-mails from our Uncle Charlies. The real question for us here is why the left wants to split its coalition one more time in order to make a statement. If Trump wins, that statement could read like a obituary for any hope that there’s a mainstream alternative to madness.
I made a hopeful remark late last winter that said Hillary Clinton would “mop the floor with that fraud”. Sadly, it turns out I misjudged not only what ought to be national revulsion with that orange horror of a human being but the left-wing purists who cannot imagine compromising with their own coalition or its centrist candidate. I think this points out the problem with young people who do not read history or appreciate the complexity of the world we live in. Instead, they collapsed the core meaning of center-left politics itself, which involves not utopianism but the idea of progress itself.
There is no majority for progressive values that does not include millions who self-identify as moderate. That’s why the party cannot afford to be a church. Coalitions must necessarily accept people who fall outside the precincts of certitude and ideology. The Green Party fills that human need on the left to be right rather than effective. A mainstream political party, however, cannot afford to be so righteous.
For us, the coalition has to be the message. We who are willing to preserve the safety net, fight climate change, expand health-care coverage, take the claims of women and minorities seriously, and maintain fiscal sanity are a near majority. When we split our coalition for the sake of imaginary purity, we also erode the possibility that there is any political solution possible. We are the message. Please, if you want to make a statement, don’t do so by sabotaging this coalition and electing Donald Trump.
Jon,
I don’t disagree with anything you have written here.
But I do think you should watch the debate.
My two cents.
I never watch political debates. Have many better things to do.
Pero, mi Amiga esta mirando.
Excellent column Jon. Salient points. However I am troubled by your use of the word Treason. I guess if I write in Karl Marx I am guilty of Treason. Does that sound like América? Of course the election of Trump might make us Amerika. Whatever your decesion, don’t forget to exercise your right to vote. To vote for who ever you choose.
Cal, a vote for Jill Stein is a vote Trump.
Well, that was a solid and commanding performance by Hillary Clinton. Trump was energetic but he couldn’t disguise his virtually complete ignorance on pretty much everything. His body language, smirking, and interrupting made him appear almost deranged. The contrast was so stark that it was, at times, almost painful to watch.
I was nervous going into this debate. I feel much better afterwards.
To take this a step further, is anything but a vote for HRC a vote forTrump? Would this include not voting? I’m with her, I guess, but expect that many will hold their noses and not cast a vote for POTUS.
Dawgzy, if the effect of voting third party or not at all is to elect Trump, then you are responsible.
Thanks, I feel so powerful. BTW I’ m planning on voting HRC.
Soleri, I know that.
My point is its not Treason (maybe stupid)to vote for someone besides Hillary.
Donnie lied 16 times per Huffington.
Cal, Rogue’s viewpoint, which I share, is that this is not simply an exercise in self-expression, that there is a stark moral choice here to either support or oppose evil. I haven’t used the word “treason” myself but given the stakes of this election, I can understand why he might want to use a high-impact word. Donald Trump is a clear and present danger to the survival of this republic and possibly the planet, too.
Just to be clear, I would never have made this remark about any major-party candidate prior to this year.
Soleri, Agreed.
I understand the need for strong emphasis
I just have a problem with what treason is?
It gets used indiscriminately against folks like, Ellsberg and Snowden. They may have committed violations of criminal statues but in my book they are not traitors.
Kinda like I have trouble with the word “Patriot”.
We need people that point out “evil.”
like many on this list.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_whistleblowers
If exercising voting options other than the hand picked hack the Democratic establishment crammed down the nations throat is treason or stupid then how far we have fallen.
Rather than abusing those who refuse to play along year after year hoping for a change maybe it would be more productive to take a breath and examine the system.
If Trump wins the election it won’t be because of those who will no longer allow a criminal political system paint them into the corner of shitty choices. The blame for this disaster will lie squarely with those who manipulate the Democratic Party and all those hand wringers who year after year hold their nose and vote for the sorry excuses placed before them by a fatally flawed political system.
A criminal and person dumber than Bush who didn’t learn from endless wars or a lunatic? Let’s see. Guess I’ll stand for trial under AG Talton in the Clintoon regime and vote for Jill Stein.
https://www.unz.com/article/les-deplorables/
Many Bernie supporters warned that Hillary is a weak candidate – and this has turned out correct. For reasons I don’t fully understand, many people simply hate her – which is one of the reasons the polls are so tight.
I do agree that a protest vote would not only be childish, but dangerous. Nader gave us W, the worst President in our nation’s history.
Hopefully, Nader also gave us a warning
The objectively pro-Trump purists have manifested the heavenly ideal of absolute certitude and purity. As always, only they know the real score. Other people do not matter. Politics to them is about being right and fuck everyone else.
Jill Stein will get around 2% of the vote from these pathological narcissists. Not even Bernie will join their self-pleasuring cult. Karl Rove sends his regards and best wishes.
Captures the national hysteria nicely. The a few deep breaths.
Two important items that you mentioned that I wish more Americans considered (especially outside of election season):
(1) “He’s not controllable and the modern presidency has enormous power — power that has not even begun to be pushed to its full dangerous potential.”
The President has taken (often without sincere fight from a spineless Congress) powers that do not belong in the hands of the chief executive. The Iraq Resolution being a perfect example — it is Congress job to declare war. Period. That they’ve given the President the authority to run pseudo-wars anywhere around the globe (while Congress funds such activities but) so they can go back to their districts and say, “Well I didn’t vote for that war — but I need to fund the troops that the President chose to send over there!” shows how broken Congress is. They cannot take a stance on any issues and only come together for bipartisan support when the issue is a huge handout to the most powerful lobbies. We are at a point now where, by design, Congress cannot effectively check the President.
(2) There is inadequate representation in Congress. In addition to term limits, we need to address the Apportionment Act that has changed our representative to citizen ratio from 1 rep per 30,000 citizens to 1 rep per 720,000 citizens! We do not need to return to 1:30k but, 1 gerrymandered lobbied Congressman per 700k citizens — the individual has no voice here, they cannot. And the representative can’t reach their constituents so, yeah, they take care of whoever will pay for the PR and television ads that get them re-elected.
We talk about how Trump is a consequence of what the GOP has come to embrace but I think we need to realize that the THREAT of what a President Trump could be should also be addressed. Get back to restricting the powers of the President (regardless of which party he is), forcing Congress to do their jobs, and have an electorate that has a shot at being heard and being able to hold their Congressmen accountable. Until then, yeah, we’re paralyzed by “the lesser of two evils” which, in the long run, is a death sentence for the middle class.
Amen, Jon.
Soleri made my case well re those of you offended by my statement that “protest votes for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson are just short of treason.” The stakes are too high this time for the self-indulgence of purity.
And I fear this will be a recurring crisis even if Hillary wins. Trump is the GOP now. We may see news stories about yet more soul-searching after defeat. But the Republicans will return more extreme, more dangerous, than ever.
Look, if I were young and strong, I would move to Scandinavia. I would prefer to live in a “we” society, not merely a market — and get high-speed trains. If I were all-powerful, I would allow a peaceful breakup of the now unworkable union. No more mooching off the independent blue states by the red ones. Cascadia keeps its nuclear weapons at Bangor, Wash., just to be safe.
But I have to live in the United States as it is. Every bit of progress has been made by imperfect political leaders working with unsavory coalitions. Don’t think that the language of the academy regarding gender and race breaking into the mainstream will change this.
In addition, while a president seeking to do harm and use the military has great leeway, he or she is very constrained on the homefront. This was another of my frustrations with Bernie Sanders. Want real change? You have to win the Congress — and the state legislatures and governorships. How would Jill Stein govern with no Green majorities in Congress? Basic civics aren’t so basic, apparently.
My day job compelled me to live tweet the debate. My take: Hillary was prepared, poised and presidential. She won. But did she change any minds?
My fellow Millennials also need to understand that Johnson is just as crazy as Trump. He just hums to a slightly different tune.
For one, he wants to ignore Climate Change science. Second, a serious presidential candidate should also know what things like Aleppo are without having them explained to him.
“The stakes are too high this time for the self-indulgence of purity.”
Jon, I get that Trump as president would be dangerous to the world but with all due respect, Treason is punishable by death. Are you and Soleri suggesting thats OK? If so please shoot me as I am opposed to hanging.
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Voltarie: “Monsieur l’abbé, je déteste ce que vous écrivez, mais je donnerai ma vie pour que vous puissiez continuer à écrire.
Here is one rendering in English:
Monsieur l’abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.”
IMHO: Given Trumps performance to date, he is a loser. He is a legend in his own mind, ONLY.
PS, PURITY: I cant think of a sentence I would use the word Purity In. There is likely no such thing in all the galaxies.
In support of Jon and Soleri:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/i-am-incredibly-enthusiastic-about-voting-for-hillary_us_57e9be5ce4b095bd8969fdd8?section=&
Jon,
Thanks for the comments although your view of treason and mine are far apart.
Perhaps it would be useful to examine how it is that the likes of Trump is doing so well. In fact, it is looking to me like he has a fair chance of taking the election. While both of these candidates are deeply flawed experts at working the system Trump’s advantage is that he has gained his privilege working the system from the private sector side and is willing to call a rigged and corrupt political system what it is, not that he would want to fix it. Trump is a showman. He is giving the rubes what they want to hear. People are angry with the status quo and want change.
You will never hear Clinton say the system is rigged. She is a product and beneficiary of the corrupt system she and her husband have done so much to put in place.
I have spent a lifetime as a blue collar worker. Never have I seen the economy so unfair. Millions cannot find decent employment, housing, daycare, healthcare etc. Trump calls the system rigged. Many agree and see that Clinton won’t say so. That is all many need to know.
How I read it is that treason is used more emotionally than literally (pathos vs logos). I don’t want to put words in anyone’s mouth but that’s how I understood it.
Ross, if that is true I those voters and blue collar workers need to review Trump’s economic/tax policy. He is rigging it to benefit the wealthy. Clinton’s plan would do the opposite.
phxSUNSfan reads it correctly. Plus, I wrote “just short of.”
He shouted at her in classic abusive style. I hope every woman in Red America was paying attention.
He WILL rig it to benefit the wealthy.
She HAS rigged it to benefit the wealthy.
PSF, how did you come up with these being OPPOSITE?
Phxsunfan, was obvious it was emotional! But I felt a need to stoke the fire.
But in the end I give a pass to the almost always “logos” Jon Talton. That said this has been a very enjoyable blog. I like it when Soleri gets worked up. His symbolic usage and poetic rythum improve.
Jon, I prefer Uruguay. Ocean and Sand. A few cactus and they seem to elect humble presidents, Vote for Jose Mujica.
ross, electing a Republican president would be disaster for the middle class. Tax rates for the rich would be slashed, Obamacare would be overturned (and 20 million Americans would lose their coverage), women would lose autonomy over their own bodies, the EPA would be sharply circumscribed, allowing unfettered carbon emissions, thus accelerating the climate crisis into a full-blown catastrophe.
Saying the system is rigged and blaming the Democrat is so painfully stupid it makes my head ache just to type these words. Only Democrats fight for fairer taxes, campaign finance reform, a tighter safety net, environmental sanity, and labor protections. Republicans do the opposite. Yet, you’re suggesting Trump is an effective critic of the system that has made him obscenely – and unjustifiably – rich. The cognitive dissonance here is overwhelming.
Trump doesn’t care about your issues. He says these things precisely because he knows how to yank people’s chains. He’s a demagogue first and last. He won’t build that wall, he won’t tear up trade agreements, he won’t ban corporations from offshoring jobs. He’s a complete and total fraud leveraging faux-populism to convince low-information voters to substitute emotion for reason. He’s succeeded all-too well, as your capitulation to this madness shows.
Trump bragged last night about NOT paying taxes. If you’re in the working class, you’re likely making up the difference. What makes you think Trump gives a fuck about you? Does he have any track record of helping other people? Is he identified with any public causes designed to make life fairer and less cruel? No. Donald Trump is and always has been about Donald Trump. He’s a showman like PT Barnum knowing a sucker is born every minute. When struggling people vote Republican, there’s probably one overarching reason why: race.
Trump is not an anomaly in the Republican party but the culmination of 40+ years of race baiting, bigotry, cruelty, and pandering to the most primitive and detestable elements in American society. I have no idea who you are. Maybe you’re real. Or maybe you’re simply a troll. Whatever you are, you’re trying to split the only force in American life for progressive values. The coalition is all we have. When useful idiots like you try to damage this coalition, I perk up and pay attention.
You are a tool.
See whatI meant !
soleri,
Your name calling reminds me of Trump. Go back and read again what I wrote. I am not singling out the D’s as deck-stackers. Both parties are equally opportunistic. Both are out to create conditions they are poised to exploit at the expense of the common well being. Just because I am a critic of both parties don’t paint me as a Republican.
Do you really think wealthy D’s are doing less to avoid taxes than Trump? Why do you suppose so much of the Clinton Foundation’s money is overseas? Have you noticed that the heart and core of the Repub. neo-con establishment is supporting Clinton? Why is that? Birds of a feather?
I would hope you could respond without condescension and labeling. The country is in one hell of a mess and belittling differing opinions isn’t going to get us anywhere.
Care to talk?
ross, please. You’re either a troll trying to split apart the progressive coalition, or you’re utterly delusional. There is no change possible without a viable coalition of progressives, moderates, minorities, and enviros. When you attack the ONLY alternative to Donald Trump, it’s clear what you’re doing. You want Donald Trump to win. This makes you an asshole.
Why should anyone believe you? Do you have any special insights how to somehow damage the Democrats without helping Republicans? This is not rocket science. Politics in this country is binary. Every low-information Bernie Bro who comes in here promising a revolution if we only do things his way needs to show how and where. What are your examples? Where has your cult succeeded in changing the political paradigm? Extra points if it happened in a complex political unit and not a college town.
I’m sorry if I condescend to people who propagate nonsense. People like you are killing this country. You subscribe to inane conspiracy theories hatched in the fever swamps of the alt-left. You know with absolute certitude that you are right. The left’s epistemic closure is every bit as ironclad as that on the right.
WOW solari you sure have the secret of how to change opinions through reason. Tell me more about the progressive coalition you are so proud of. Why would any thinking person imagine that voting out of fear election after election is going to cause any worthwhile change. The corporatists have you and the system by the balls and you just keep on playing the same loosing game. Good luck.
I think Bertran Russell said something like, :Every man wants to be god and few are able to think it’s immpossible”.
Let the word war rage on! Please check your guns with the Hat and Cloak girl.
It’s nice to pretend that all it would take for the American public to rise up and throw out the “corporatists” is a fair hearing and level playing field for our third (and fourth) parties.
However, revolutions are messy, unpredictable things and the vast majority of Americans aren’t really the revolutionary type. They are more the couch potato, what’s on the TV, type.
So I suppose the question is, which Party is more likely to attempt to rein in the worst excesses of the corporations? The Party of Elizabeth Warren or the Party of Mitch McConnell?
Also, if opinions could be changed through reason, Trump would only have the votes of the certifiably insane. Say 10-15%, tops. And not the 40-45% he currently has. I guess the lesson is that there are many people with whom it just isn’t possible to reason.
Oh, they might seem like nice, normal folks on the surface. But scratch off the veneer of polite society and you find a rich vein of crazy, misguided, outdated, just plain wrong, ideas. Ideas that they refuse to give up.
B Franklin,
I agree with your hope for which party has the best hope for redemption. Unfortunately the D’s are not the party of Elizabeth Warren, the D’s are the party of Clinton. Look back at how Bubba moved the party away from the working class and delivered it to Wall Street. Does anyone really expect a different result from Hillary?
I heard Clinton on the radio today saying she expects the largest voter turn out in years. Really? A large turnout for the two worst offerings ever paraded before the American people for their approval?
If there is any hope for the D’s to re grow some spine it will not come from electing Hillary. Voting for either of these two sends the message that you are not ready to demand change. Your vote in this case only gives the winner a degree of cover to claim a mandate. Better to spoil your ballot and send them a message about how you really feel. That is unless you are happy with the choices offered.
IMHO,I believe Trumpism has given the racists and misogynists an excuse to come out of the closet.We had hoped that the disease was limited to a majority of the Republican party,but the latest polls show that it is much more insidious than we feared.Trump’s 30 years remark framed her for allowing Bill’s peccadillos and the racists remarks were used throughout the Republican primaries.All we had to do was call out the evil,but instead the American voter has embraced it.I have never felt so depressed about our country since Viet Nam and Nixon.
ross, are you old enough to vote? Have you ever lived outside a college town without trust fund money?
I thought naive fools like you became extinct in the 1970s.
Trust fund babies, what a breed.
ross, that progressive coalition is what wins elections. You don’t win elections, or has that escaped your attention? So, you comment on internet blogs to bleat your ineffectuality as if it were a clarion call to the virtue of being a loser. The vanity of the political fringes is always amazing to behold.
Let’s be clear: you’re not that smart, so freelancing your own political movement is rather daft. One reason why we have coalitions/parties is to identify the broader movement we identify with and sign up with that team. So, in America, people who support the idea of social democracy, humanism, environmental stewardship, and social justice coalesce under one banner, usually called the Democratic Party. People who support hierarchy, racial privilege, cultural reaction, and greed will coalesce under the Republican Party banner. This also illustrates a basic split in human consciousness, so politics is almost like a Rorschach test now.
The Greens can’t win elections but they can sabotage the progressive coalition out of spite, which they did in 2000. Did you learn anything from that? Probably not. George W Bush was perhaps the worst president in modern American history. He picked two ideological zealots for the Supreme Court, which then overturned Citizens United. He misled the nation to a disastrous war in Iraq, the worst foreign policy debacle since Vietnam. He cut taxes on the rich, greenlighted a housing bubble, presided over an epic crash on Wall Street, and radicalized the Republican Party to a point that no longer has any real moral agency. It’s only program over the past seven years has been nihilistic rage at government and empiricism.
Think about what you’re doing. There are some really smart people who read this blog but as the Bernie Bubble showed, a lot of them are also really childish. They think all you need for a “revolution” is their own good intentions and self-righteousness. They tried to initiate a purification ritual in the Democratic Party despite having no loyalty to or even membership in it. They then decided a passive-aggressive campaign against the mainstream nominee would teach all of us a lesson. Here’s the lesson I learned from your tribe: it’s ALL about you and your vanity. Screw everyone else.
I’m a bore on this subject because I don’t see much point in losing elections or throwing them to Republicans. You only win if you can get to 50+1. You have yet to show how the pious left can get beyond 3%. But, once again, in close elections you can preen your narcissism at the expense of genuine progressives (aka: people who live in the real world) and let Republicans win so they might better rape and pillage at everyone’s expense. That’s your real platform. Fuck the world! I’m right!
True confession: I’m not that smart either. I can’t even begin to understand the daunting complexities of public policy let alone figure it out on my own. This is why political parties are so vitally important, including their deep benches in business, academe, think tanks, and foundations. This is how you can craft policy and advance the national project (think of Elizabeth Warren who emerged from this culture to political prominence). You can’t do this with your rag-tag team of conspiracy theorists and sanctimonious twits.
Politics that divorces itself from expertise, institutional memory, and pragmatism is a civic disaster. The most obvious example is the current Republican Party, now a relic of a once functional coalition that has descended into the muck of racism, xenophobia, and a cult of personality. The Greens are scarcely any better, catering to chemtrail nutters, anti-vaxxers, and hysterical Luddites.
This nation is having an existential moment of truth right now. Do we elect as president a competent if uninspiring woman, or a psychopathic blowhard who promises to shake things up? Decisions, decisions! No, there is no decision except to grow up and respect reality. That’s it. Your program like your rad-left jargon is just garbage. It’s not serious and it’s not anything an informed citizen would choose. You can type, however, so there’s that faint hope you can confound reality and triumph in some small corner of this vast and unthinking maelstrom that is our discourse.
Last three lines of Soleri’s post;
Pure exquisite Poetry.
soleri,
Your problem, besides your frequent name calling is your blind faith that the D’s are good and the R’s are bad. They are both answering to the same master I guess you don’t see it yet. Just keep drinking that kool-aid. It keeps you regular.
Worth a mention…
https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/editorial/2016/09/27/hillary-clinton-endorsement/91198668/
It’s impossible to have a conversation with an ignorant child. You don’t know enough to understand this. It’s easy to understand how you think you have all the answers for this reason. I’m just telling you that politics is much more complicated than you know. Thanks for the discussion.
Jon, the Trump camp makes a very similar party-unity argument to the one you have made. They use it to try to convince those of us in the “NeverTrump” camp about how we’re destroying the Supreme Court, risking the future of the country, etc., if we don’t vote for Trump.
The implication is that we’re being big babies just because we find his positions and statements morally objectionable or his behavior pathologically dangerous.
So, philosophically, if all liberals should vote for Clinton, then your argument would also imply that all conservatives should vote for Trump.
The Trumpers’ argument is we have to hold our nose and vote for Trump because of the Supreme Court, etc. That’s basically all Ted Cruz’s endorsement letter was about.
I do believe in voting every time so I will not be sitting this one out; assuming there are no changes in the field, I’ll be voting for Johnson, so maybe that balances things out and we can all give our blessing for Cal to write in Jose Mujica or Karl Marx. 🙂
I do personally believe there are lessons learned when third-party voting costs major parties elections. One great example are the original Progressives of the turn of the 20th century.
I have a right to vote my conscience, as does every American.
Mark:
No, you don’t.
Cause Soleri says so.
Mark,
Nothing about Trump is conservative. Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan would be supporting Hillary. So don’t be fooled.
Trump’s proposed Supreme Court nominees are clearly in the conservative column:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/09/trump-puts-out-new-list-of-potential-supreme-court-nominees.php
https://dailysignal.com/2016/09/23/a-conservative-take-on-trumps-new-supreme-court-nominee-list/
INPHX, just a note: anyone who would vote for Trump is beyond the pale. Go look in the mirror. You are a moral cretin.
IHPHX, the last time I checked, the KKK, assorted other white supremacists, climate change deniers, flat earthers, and a whole passel of homophobes, xenophobes, and misogynists were in the conservative column, too.
Y’all must be very proud of the company you keep.
Soleri:
You were off these blogs for quite some time; I can only assume that the um,… well,… errr,… uhhh, well, let’s just say the “facility” perhaps did not have Internet access or that maybe Nurse Ratchet (wisely) revoked your privileges.
In any case, I posted quite some time ago that I’m no fan of Trump and it would be very hard for me to vote for him. My rationale is a little saner than your obvious distaste (not that it’s difficult to be saner than you). His temperament and his complete lack of consistency on issues important to conservatives make it difficult for me to support him. And for deficit hawks like me, it gets almost impossible.
i think the difference is that I get it. The millions in this country who have been left behind are looking for change. Not a career politician/ bureaucrat who has a shot at the White House primarily because she picked the right guy to marry who also has more baggage than the 3:10 to Yuma.
My posting of his SCOTUS picks was simply to point out that contrary to Rogue’s post, he has SOME conservative traits. There’s others (immigration, crime, a few more) but I find him very difficult to brand as a conservative. And the temperament matters- not because he has his finger on the nuclear triggers (that’s silly), but because I find it very difficult to believe he can sit down with Congress and and implement solutions. You know, like the last 6 years or so.
You know what I think both sides lament? If Bernie (or someone that far left)ever had a shot, it would be against a candidate as damaged as Trump. And the same on the GOP- I think Rubio, Jeb, Kasich, and maybe even Cruz would be way ahead of a candidate as damaged as HRC.
INPHX, you are a flagrant hypocrite. You’re supporting someone who will explode the deficit, restrict trade, kowtow to Russia, deport millions who happen to have unacceptably brown skin along with Spanish accents, and establish a religious test for people who would enter the US and trash talks the most dynamic economy in the world.
What would Reagan do?
Roll over in his grave.
But it’s all good because Trump, the least conservative nominee for the GOP in modern times comes with a magic R by his name. That’s all that really matters to you. Because you have the principles, morals, and standards of a streetwalker.
Donald Trump is toxic racist. You supported his racist Birther lie because……well…..let’s just say toxic types relate well to each other. I have screamed to you about the devolution of the Republican Party for years on this blog. You are the proof. You and your party have finally arrived at the metaphysical low point that is the Trump candidacy. You can’t sink any lower.
Wow. Just…wow.
The “millions in this country who have been left behind” were left behind in large part by Republican policies, Republican indifference, and Republican stonewalling.
The fact that many of them have been, and continue to be, fooled by these same Republicans playing up cultural issues, and blaming minorities, women, gays, whatever, for all of our problems, is the only reason that the Republican Party continues to exist.
Trump is the logical culmination of 38 years of Republican hate and fear based policy.
You should revel in that–you’ve earned it.
Hello INPHX,
Welcome to the club. I was feeling rather superior to the pitiful “moral cretin” label you earned from the bard of the blog a couple posts ago but you are advancing rapidly. You made it clear to streetwalker in only one additional post. You still have a way to go to catch up but don’t despair.
I hear what you are saying about the mood of the general public, especially those who have seen their jobs off shored and their mandated 401-K’s pillaged by the combined efforts of the political elite of both color codes.
The nation is starving for change and the established power structure offers 2 shit sandwiches. I guess the one wit D on it tastes fine to the bard.
Well gotta run, I need to find my secret decoder ring and check in with Moscow.
Good on you, IMPHX & Ross. Perhaps you can get Solly-Baby to explode tonight.
So, you deny that Trump is a toxic racist?
Or you just don’t care?
And you deny that Republican economic policies–going back to Saint Reagan’s trickle down voodoo–caused most, if not all, of our systemic economic problems?
And you deny that the Republican Party has managed to play a shell game with abortion, gay rights, religious “freedom”, and gun rights to rile up the rubes and distract them from the real damage Republican policies have done, and continue to do?
Hmmm.
Is this willful ignorance or just deep rooted stupidity?
I Googled Solly Baby-it looks like a white mans version of an American Indian baby carrier, worn backwards?
Franklin, did U mean shallow rooted?
When you normalize and mainstream racism like INPHX, Teri Dudas, and root do, it’s for a reason. As B Franklin notes, it’s the only way a party of grifters and plutocrats can win. As I’ve already noted, Donald Trump is not an anomaly in this toxic arrangement. He’s merely the culmination of 40+ years of Southern Strategy. Divert the white working class with racial grievance while you pick their pockets.
Which side are you on? This is a crossroads election. America is flirting with disaster not because the economy is struggling, or that terrorism is rampant or that everything is going to hell. No. This game is as old as time itself. Frighten the old and uneducated with tribal division. It’s the only way the grifters can win now . They’ll do anything they can to preserve their economic arrangements, including nominating the most spectacularly unqualified person ever to be president.
At the risk of earning yet another label let me once again state an opinion that many in this country share. The game is rigged and both corporations posing as political parties are in on the fix. Sure corp R is crooked, on the take and out to screw the public out of what ever it can to please the owners, the D’s are not far behind and closing fast. Didn’t you notice when Bubba took a hard right and out flanked even Reagan? Do I have to spell it out? NAFTA, GAT, welfare reform, the criminalizing of the bulk of young black society. These asults on the poor and working class didn’t go down without the support of corp D. Do I need to get into the wars and bombings this country has been waging non stop since WWII at least? Do I need to point out how each party attempts to out do the other on how big their weapons are as the economy circles the drain and innocents around the globe are vaporized? The supreme court? What besides a lack of spine is stopping corp D from using the same tactics corp R uses?
The problem with people like you solari is that you refuse to see that the political corporation you despise is not all that much different from the one you love when it comes down to the matters that count. The problem is systemic.
Pull the cord and the Chatty Cathy(s) spew.
Racism and it’s all the GOP’s fault. See, that’s why Obama is a lousy President. Not because he had absolutely no leadership success in his history. Because of the Southern Strategy.
Somehow you guys missed the misogyny accusation- does anyone need to edit?
And Soleri asks the rhetorical what would Reagan do.
He’d lead. And he’d win.Just like always.
And Soleri shows again his fairly weak reading skills. Did you miss the part where I wrote
“In any case, I posted quite some time ago that I’m no fan of Trump and it would be very hard for me to vote for him. My rationale is a little saner than your obvious distaste (not that it’s difficult to be saner than you). His temperament and his complete lack of consistency on issues important to conservatives make it difficult for me to support him. And for deficit hawks like me, it gets almost impossible.”
Trey reading before you respond. It helps.
ross, I’m sorry everything is so horrible that the only solution is just to pull the trigger – metaphorically speaking – and let Trump win. Still, for people who not as hysterical as you are, the stakes are much higher. Corporations, of course, have too much power. You don’t limit their power by helping Republicans since this is the entire point of their politics – helping the rich and powerful. Democrats have traditionally been a countervailing force to this. It’s why Dodd-Frank passed almost exclusively with Democratic support while Republicans were almost unanimously opposed. Now, in a better world, we would have had something even more stringent. Democrats can no longer leverage their support among workers alone since the decline of labor unions. They troll for donations in the only places they can find them, including Wall Street and corporations. But that’s the system, thanks with an able assist from our delusional Green Party that decided to help George W Bush defeat Al Gore, leading to Citizens United being overturned.
A revolution is not going to happen, and if it did, it would result in such bloodshed and chaos that a military dictatorship would fill the void. Nor will the Greens and purists levitate the Pentagon and usher in a new Age of Aquarius. This is fantasy. Power politics remains our best strategy. We can’t – and won’t – win everything we want all at once but we can push back hard against the plutocracy if we band together. This means a mobilized citizenry who will vote for our issues. That necessitates a strong and viable coalition. It means something like the Democratic Party, ineffectual as it often is. There is no other way.
I asked you upthread how the pious left can somehow persuade a majority of Americans to vote for them. The sorry truth is that your tribe doesn’t have the legions and armies you think you do. That’s why you’re commenting here and not on some obscure left-wing website. You need organization, volunteers, money, and the ability to compromise. In other words, the very qualities that characterize the Democratic Party.
You can’t get to the Promised Land on the wings of unicorns. Your jargon and certitude do not translate to a functional majority for systemic change. Yes, incrementalism is frustrating and slow. Short of violent revolution, there is no other way.
INPHX, you will vote for Trump. That’s why you’re already WHITEwashing him with his “conservative” SCOTUS picks. It’s why Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and the vast majority of registered Republicans are voting for him. This is your Faustian bargain exacting its payment in what used to count as conscience.
You’ve been all over the map this season with nonsense choices for president, from the catatonic Ben Carson, to that shrill virago of corporate failure, Carly Fiorina. You were even suggesting, in your nice ratfucking way, that you might vote for Bernie Sanders. What you won’t do is vote for person who is actually qualified to be president. Or do you think Gary Johnson somehow fills that description? A guy who can’t even name a single foreign leader.
You’re a Republican troll excusing your party’s racism with the diehard intensity of a white nationalist. It’s why you excuse your – and Trump’s – racist Birther lie. You can’t even manage an insincere apology for your obvious bigotry. Your Goebbels-like deflections aside, you understand there is no functional Republican majority without appeals to racists. Why else do Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage, Laura Ingraham, and Matt Drudge count as your party’s intelligentsia? Even George Will changed his party registration! When you lose that dork, the end is nigh (and not a minute too soon if you love this country). What a joke you are.
Soleri:
You display the moral certainty of the KKK.
This is great,
someone run a google poll.
Soleri or Inphx?
no fair for write ins for Ross or Dudas
Solari,
Let me set the record straight. I have voted in every election since I was allowed by law. I became of voting age in 1970. I had been old enough to be sent by a Democratic president and congress to kill or die for democracy in Viet Nam but not old enough to vote for 3 years at that time.
In my entire voting career I have never once voted for a Republican candidate for federal office. I have been a corp D precinct committee officer. I have served as an appointee on a number of county and state advisory and management groups. I have played the game within the system and have earned my right to my opinion.
My opinion is this. You and your dogmatic approach to hating all things R and loving all things D is the problem that will make it near impossible to resolve the morbid sickness our political system suffers from.
Of course corp R is rolling in dirty money. But don’t excuse corp D for doing the same exact thing. What do you think the Clinton Foundation is if not a giant machine to hoover up as much cash as it can from every possible source no matter how dirty or bloody.
Why do you think corp D went to so much trouble to insure HRC got the nomination? Could it have anything to do with the fact that the Clinton’s are the gate keepers to a huge pile of dirty money? I think it is. Bernie saw and said that and a whole lot of potential corp D voters agerrd and responded. Being forced to show the whip is what has cost corp D dearly. That power play will haunt corp D for generations. Thank you Bernie for exposing the rot at the core of corp D. It is lucky for Clinton that Trump is the corp R offering because I doubt she would have a snowball’s chance in hell of beating any of the other corp R hopefuls.
You try to brow beat others into the idea that not voting for Clinton is a vote for Trump. Bull shit! If Clinton can’t convince a voter of her worth then she deserves to lose that vote. Not voting for an unpalatable candidate is a right you would deny if you could. Those of us who do not share your paranoid perspective are, to use a few of your words, ignorant children, streetwalkers, cretins, flagrant hypocrites, assholes etc,
Is this how you think Trump will be defeated?
Speaking only about the front-runner, what is the response when Clinton gets into office and continues the status quo? When it’s bipartisanship for Wall Street handouts, war contracts, monopolistic mergers, and “evolving” to embrace the TPP?
My biggest ‘fear’ is that Trump has pulled the Democrats to an inelastic right where candidates like Clinton are heralded as ‘progressives’. People point out that Reagan and Goldwater would not have supported Trump — what does it say that a former Goldwater Girl is now the Democratic standard? That, as hard as progressives railed against former GOP Presidents like Reagan and George W Bush, they’re enthusiastic about the opportunity to sweep in someone from much of the same cloth because she is not Trump?
Unless the true progressives are careful, they’re going to lose their party to the right as the Tea Party and the Trump Right pull the GOP platform deeper red and the Democratic Party follows the trend in order to pick off the moderates. Give it 12 years and it’s possible to see a hard-right GOP and a right-center Democratic Party, one that reminds true progressives that a vote against the right-center candidate is a vote for the hard-right candidate.
Then again, if the Democrats can actually pull a couple presidential nominees from their own ranks, as oppose to anointing whoever is next in line (Kaine will probably want to be President after HC), they may have a shot at staying true to themselves while still looking like the sane party.
Harry Reid is a democrat and the last of the liberal Mormons. As he fades away, He said in the following that the Republicans “OWN FRANKENSTEIN”
WASHINGTON — With Congress set to flee town until after the November elections, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) took to the Senate floor Thursday to mark a milestone of sorts: eight years of obstructing and insulting the nation’s first black president.
“As this Republican Congress heads for yet another un-earned recess, I feel compelled to comment on how Republicans have treated the president of the United States,” Reid said.
“History will look back and note that Republicans in Congress treated President Obama with unprecedented disrespect,” Reid said, arguing that soon after Obama was elected, the GOP set out to make him a one-term president and obstruct anything he did.
Reid checked off a list that included Obama also being the first president to be denied a hearing on a Supreme Court nominee, the first to be denied a hearing on his budget, and the first to be asked to show his birth certificate. Obama faced more than 500 filibusters in the Senate, Reid added.
“No one expected them to agree with everything he did ― but America deserved better than the way Republicans behaved toward President Obama,” Reid said.
The soon-to-retire Democratic leader also argued that the shabby treatment of Obama is part of why the GOP is saddled with Donald Trump as its presidential nominee.
“The only thing Republicans have truly done this year was to prove that they are the party of Trump,” Reid said. “Republicans would have us all believe that Trump just fell out of the sky, and somehow mysteriously became the nominee of their party.
“But that is not how it is,” Reid said. “Trump is no anomaly. He is the monster that Republicans built. He is their Frankenstein’s monster. They own him.”
OK Ross is in the google poll.
Ross, What Jon and Soleri have been saying for two years now is the country can’t afford to have any of the GOP candidates as president. At least that’s my take. And now they are saying the country will or should break apart if Trump is elected. As I have posted I have been a Bernie supporter all along. However despite all the rhetoric, name calling, prose and poetry on this blog, I have to agree that a vote outside the two candidates, while a right, is probably not logical. Where I differ on who to vote for is that I believe that both candidates will be a complete disaster for the US. So I must decide which disaster to vote for. It will not be John Birch or Ayn Rand or Karl Marx or Albert Camus. But only I will know how I make my mark come November (but Putin). Nothing that has been posted here offends me, some things I disagree with but take no offense. This particular blog has been the reason I visit here, so let’s keep it up. “Make my Day”.
Cal lash from the Great Sonoran desert, what’s left of it.
Cal:
The duty of an elected official is to protect the interest of his or her constituents.
Not to bow down for the President.
As someone once said, elections have consequences. And starting with the 2010 mid terms, a lot of America said no thanks to Obama and his minions.
Didn’t Reid used to be majority leader?
U R Absolutely Right.
I just thought it was factually interesting?
How about cute, try this.
The latest Republican to endorse Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton over GOP nominee Donald Trump is a longtime friend of Clinton’s opponent in the primaries, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Tony Pomerleau, a prominent Republican businessman and developer in Sanders’ hometown of Burlington, Vermont, endorsed Clinton in a charmingly brief letter to the Clinton campaign that was provided to The Huffington Post.
“I am a loyal Republican born in 1917 and the first time a woman could vote was in 1919,” the letter reads. “I will be most happy to cast my vote to the first woman president of the United States of America. I am a loyal friend of Bernie Sanders and in Vermont they call us the ‘Odd Couple.’”
I dont watch political debates but from what I understand the following has not come up.
And maybe it should have been the most important issue to be debated.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/carbon-dioxide-400ppm-permanent_us_57eb7636e4b082aad9b7e9ab?section=&
INPHX, how about this:
As many New York Times readers have noticed, Kakutani’s synopsis of Volker Ullrich’s Hitler: Ascent 1889–1939 instead makes it impossible not to draw your own chilling parallels between the rise of the Nazi dictator and the current ascendancy of Trump.
More to the point:
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/09/28/books/hitler-ascent-volker-ullrich.html?_r=2&referer=https://t.co/hI2dLByHXH
If you want a muscular liberal to be president, you absolutely need to do a few things. One is to get your friends in the white working class to stop voting Republican. Another, is to get some of our natural allies to start voting in much greater numbers: single women, Latinos, and Millenials. One more is to get everyone to vote in off-year elections. You also need to elect your people to state legislatures, school boards, and other low-profile offices. The right’s coup started at the local level. One more thing: you can’t be expected to know everything, so do yourself a favor: never vote Republican. Never. Obviously, some Republicans are better choices than a specific Democrat. But unless they get busted across the chops, they’ll never reform. And America will remain paralyzed.
I know this isn’t sexy. It’s not like being a hipster at a Bernie rally where you get to preen your superiority by spouting jargon like “neo-liberal”. But if you’re truly serious (and most of you aren’t), it will simply be a long slow slog as you wait for all the elderly racists like INPHX to die off. I’m an old man myself, so I don’t have to worry that much about the future. All I can do is keep screaming at people to stop sabotaging their own coalition. You’re not going to win by being a priggish judge about your own side. You want better candidates? Do something. Otherwise, just shut the hell up. Helping Republicans does no one any good except the Koch brothers, polluters, plutocrats, and all the racists and bigots who hide out in that cesspool. Ross, I hope you’re listening.
Cal:
Thanks- but not going to waste my time with comparisons of Hitler and Trump.
Just more hyperbole bullshit pseudo science/history/psychology from a side that ought to know better.
Almost as odd as suggesting that a vote for any Presidential candidate is “just short of treason”
“Just more hyperbole bullshit pseudo science/history/psychology from a side that ought to know better.”
MAYBE? MAYBE NOT!
Cal:
Maybe you’re right.
Maybe they just don’t know any better.
They?
Or did U mean THOU?
“Phoenix is a Dante-esque hellscape enjoyed only by octogenarians and the mentally insane”.
I think he meant “The Valley of the Sun”.
from the article:
Why D, Stu will not vote for Narcissist Trump.
https://medium.com/@purepolka/make-trump-great-again-72a9b11df017#.i5nmdrljb
It’s wrong to compare Trump to Hitler.
Let’s compare him to George W. Bush instead.
Donald J. Trump doesn’t have the charm or attention span of George W. Bush.
They’re tied in rhetorical skills. Both have only a passing acquaintance with the English language.
General knowledge I’m afraid I’d have to go with W. He’s no Gary Johnson, though.
Practical skills? That’s a tough one. Trump is pretty good at bankruptcy. In fact, he wrote the book. W could fly his own plane–when he wasn’t AWOL.
So, it’s neck and neck. Of course we know how Simple W’s Presidency turned out…and, at this point, we can only imagine Trump’s.
“It’s wrong to compare Trump to Hitler.”
says who?
Does Trump really want to Lose?
https://medium.com/@davepell/hes-trying-to-lose-9f0c174fb9aa#.gan0aoxar
Fate of the World, Tired of politics how about a perspective on your, life:
https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/was-earth-born-with-life-already-on-it-62b527cb8d09#.mna62xx08
Cal, I think you’re being kind of rough on Hitler.
Oh, okay.
Selling Hitler,
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-hitler-book-my-new-order_us_57ed36c9e4b082aad9b9a2d3?section=&
This is what happens when narcissist-ism takes over your brain.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/usa-today-endorsement-
trump_us_57eda6a2e4b082aad9ba81ae
https://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/donald-trump-dallas-morning-
news_us_57cebaf3e4b078581f13d342
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-cincinnati-enquirer_us_57e55796e4b08d73b830ea6e
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/arizona-republic-hillary-clinton-endorsement_us_57eb284fe4b024a52d2b7437
Wonderful comments. Ross gets an A+
I did watch the debate . . . like a slow motion car crash. Looked like “2 sh*t sandwiches” to me, too. I don’t plan to vote for either one of them.
I guess refusing to vote for HRC puts me in the “self-pleasuring cult.” OOoooo! It makes me tingle and shiver just a little! All the excitement . . . let me know when the ol’ treason bus rolls into town.
Rogue: “Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan would be supporting Hillary.” Yeah, well, that’s sorta my point: HRC is a Republocrat through and through.
It occurs to me that the problem with some people “getting what they deserve”, i.e. a Trump presidency, is all the damage that it would do to the rest of us. I think they call it collateral damage.
God knows, from the standpoint of pure entertainment, I ‘d like to see the mayhem unleashed on those clueless Libertarians, feckless Bernie Bros, and all those other disaffected “low information” Angry White voters who worship the Orange Sun God.
Cuz Il Trumpo doesn’t give a damn about the working class, the poor, the economically left behind, all those millions that INPHX is fond of referring to. All Donald J. Trump cares about, all he has ever cared about, is feeding his insatiable ego. His every action confirms that daily.
I suppose that sort of thing can be fun to watch from a distance. Maybe on a coarse, reality TV show, aimed at the lowest common denominator. Something you can quickly change the channel from.
But imagining it happening to our country should give a sentient person pause.
sj, “a self-pleasuring cult” describes people who don’t read history, who don’t honor the necessary complexity of civic and economic reality, and don’t know enough to understand just how ignorant they are. You know, Bernie Bros, jargon-deploying airheads who think they’ve got everything figured out because they can regurgitate words like “neo-liberal”. This is an election of keen interest to people who are not so smug to assume that their narcissistic self-regard is more important than the lives of other people. Do everyone a favor and go play with your poop.
There are two things that you can just about count on the looney left to bring up when debating issues:
1. Racism where there is none, and I think I’ve gone into this enough.
2. The whole “serious” deal, as witnessed by Soleri’s most recent post. See, you can’t possibly know anything about history, economics, reality, nuance, civics, or, quite honestly anything else and not be a devout member of the progressive cult.
Soleri:
Oh, my! The very first time I had the temerity to comment on this blog site, you called me a troll!
Now, you’ve advised me to “go play with [my] poop.” Was that more of the Soleri poetry and wise commentary?
Oh, c’mon! Some of us just don’t agree with you. Surely you can handle some push-back without the middle school bile.
sj, I have no problem with you posting, or for that matter, any troll. But this is a rough sport. You spout right-wing propaganda from a left-wing position. So does Ross (see: Clinton Foundation garbage). You’re also adhering to a Total Explanation theory of politics that is a) oversimplified, b) uninformed, and c) helpful to the very people who have made this situation so dire.
You think this is all a game where it doesn’t matter if Trump wins because purists like you are so hip you can dismiss all the obvious differences between a competent liberal and a racist demagogue. Your sangfroid is unnerving and obscene. Tilting this election to a hard-right winger didn’t work out well in 2000 and it will be doubly disastrous this year. Please: grow up. It’s not all about you and how you figured everything out through the magic of jargon. Doubt is your friend here. If nothing else, take a cue from Bernie. He says voting third party is not a moral option anymore. Too much is at stake for such vanity.
Heather Parton writes about the rise of bigotry in the modern Republican Party and its triumph under Donald Trump:
https://www.salon.com/2016/09/30/hate-unleashed-for-decades-the-gop-kept-right-wing-bigots-under-control-trump-has-snapped-the-tether/
INPHX cannot fathom why anyone would think he’s a racist, let alone Donald Trump, or much of the Republican Party. But what about Trump’s racist Birther lie that INPHX defended? Hmmm? He’s oddly silent about that even though I’m always bringing it up. He disappears the aura of racism with a wave of his hand and rhetorical devices like “neener, neener, neener.”. Maybe that’s because right-wing narratives depend on selective amnesia.Southern Strategy? Never heard of it! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
Hmmm. Well, Soleri, I must confess that I am not familiar with your Total Explanation theory. Link?
That’s really the first time anyone has accused me of being a right-winger. I just don’t agree with you, or your incrementalist world-view.
As for blog comments being a “rough sport,” it occurs to me if one uses the word poop in a comment, it can’t be a really world-class, tough-minded political commentary.
“Looney troll poop”? Then there are words like purity, that resemble no one I know. And
“Rough sport”, Thats the American way, political football from the Roman gladiators. No softball pitchers allowed on the blog. Makes one want to move to Norway.
Sorting thru all the rough talk here, (reminds me of a cop thing, “Rough men ride through the nite to keep you safe”) I support the position that its a logical position to NOT vote for a third party or write in. Even though I fit into the definition of an overly emotional “purist”.
To understand Soleri, you should know he grew up in a sorta bipolar world. He comes from a family of intellectual curiosity and brilliance but his surroundings out side the homestead were populated by many ignorant poor kids that were more interested in food, a pair of Levis and a t-shirt and playing marbles and tether ball at SUNNYSLOPE schools. Hence language peppered by street language is not surprising and quite frankly coming from the streets of Slope I rather enjoy the rough but excellent rhythmic poetry.
Since Soleri posted a piece from Salon, I give him one back from Salon.
TO WIN:
“A Democratic operative I’ve known since the Bill Clinton administration told me “now that she’s won the nomination, Hillary is moving to the middle.
Does Hillary Clinton understand that the biggest divide in American politics is no longer between the right and the left, but between the anti-establishment and the establishment?”
I worry she doesn’t — at least not yet.
https://www.salon.com/2016/07/25/hillary_doesnt_get_it_she_doesnt_need_to_move_toward_the_middle_she_needs_to_move_toward_the_anti_establishment_partner/
Soleri:
Politics is rough business. I submit that if there is a President wherein there might be an issue as to their actual birthplace, it’s game on.
Whether that President is black or white.
That’s where (as I pointed out) your logic is typically faulty. It’s not that he was a black man; it’s that he was an opponent.
You see racial motives where there are none.
Constantly.
New Times honored Rogue Columnist in its latest “Best of Phoenix.” It writes:
“Former Arizona Republic columnist Jon Talton now lives in Washington state and writes about economics for the Seattle Times, but the Grand Canyon State remains very much on his mind. His David Mapstone mysteries are set in Arizona, and he maintains a regular blog on all things Phoenix, entitled “Rogue Columnist,” where he opines on everything from Phoenix’s lost (or about to be lost) architectural gems, to the unsolved and unresolved Don Bolles case, to the Republican’s misplaced faith in tax cuts, and so on. Consider this: He writes the blog pro bono publica, despite having to churn out several columns a week for the Seattle paper. Now that’s love, baby. True love. Because it’s obvious from Talton’s blogs that he cares deeply about Phoenix and Arizona and the quality of life here, and so expends a terrific amount of intellectual energy on serious discussions of Phoenix’s past, present, and future. We hope Talton never grows tired of writing about Arizona, because we know we’ll never grow tired of reading him.”
https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/best-of/2016/megalopolitan-life/best-blog-about-phoenix-by-someone-who-doesnt-live-here-anymore-8689401
I give some of the credit to you intelligent commenters.
Hey, Jon! Congrats on the Best of Phoenix nod. You’ve earned it.
Thanks for the insightful commentary.
JON, My Hats of to you, keep scribbling.
Comon, INPHX, even a blithering idiot knows that a huge issue with the bigots and kooks in this world is they would do anything to keep a black man from the WHITE house. (maybe it should be renamed something like the Presidents abode.
Every day I encounter poor to wealthy WHITE folks that say things like, “my daddy said never let a nigger be in charge”.
Not in my neighborhood.
A few days ago I got an email from a well off white 80 year old that wants to have segregation and wants separate countries for non-white people. What ever that is.
Congrats Jon.
Don’t believe cal. If he took off his hat, no one would recgnize him.
I imagine you’ll also place first in the category of – best blog about Phoenix by someone who no longer lives here but still owns a place here and visits regularly and pays taxes here.
I love all the categories that have been added over the years.
Were back to 1877 to the 1960’s. Trump encourages bringing back lynching. Even of his white opponents.
https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/Trump-s-Mississippi-miscalculation_72056
But U can believe Ruben, a wealthy indigenous american ( a white north European dude took his grandmothers scalp) living in White LDS country, where the Weed grows tall.
Culled from the collected wisdom of INPHX:
The “looney left” believes in knowledge and facts.
That’s certainly a damning accusation.
(I say better that than the looney right’s belief in bile, an imaginary past, and a disassociation from history and reality.)
And racism doesn’t exist–except in the fever dreams of the “looney left”. What looks like racism on the right is simply a deep respect for law and order, and the rights of property owners.
Does that about cover it?
As far as I can find this probably a factual story.
Nine cops and one hungry black kid.
Or Murder by White cop.
Cover up by White corner in White Georgia!
https://extranewsfeed.com/one-youve-never-heard-of-perry-jones-19-killed-by-the-police-4f129a3ac29#.5f61um30n
INPHX, there was never any reason to doubt Obama’s birthplace. Never one. So pursuing this absurd allegation as a legitimate issue reveals the underlying racist motive: delegitimize Obama by painting him as the “other”. That you subscribed to the racist Trump strategy tells me where you heart really is: among white nationalists and those who condone racism as a political tactic.
People who don’t stand up to evil (look in the mirror) are as responsible for this evil as those as those who actively undertake it (see: the guy you’re voting for). There’s no reason to pretend you ever had justifiable motives here. You didn’t except legitimizing a racist trope to further Republican goals. Even here you can’t tell the truth. The moral squalor of the modern GOP is not merely a convenience for the right’s power elite. It discloses the perennial darkness that is core Republican message. Racism works. Trump proves it.
Soleri, even if there was a reason to doubt, no le hace,
even if he was from Mars
Americans voted him in twice by big margins.
And now its history.
And twenty years from now if Obama wrote a bio and said he was born in Kenya, I would find it hilarious, particularly since regardless of the bigots attempts to make him a do nothing president, historians will rank him in the top twelve (12) of the best presidents. Right up their with Teddy Rossevewlt and Abe Lincoln. ( Interesting many of the older white folks I encounter today Hate Lincoln)
The man that would bang your granddaughter.
(as long as she was white?).
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-paris-hilton_us_57ee9373e4b024a52d2ea629?section=&
Soleri:
Thanks for making my point; seeing racism where there is none.
The GOP impeached Bill Clinton. Was it because he was white? Were Hillary’s attacks on Bernie because he was Jewish? Old? This country is littered with stories of hard ball politics at all levels over the years. Did Trump attack Ben Carson?
Widely predicted on the right, by the way. Any issues related to Obama are driven by racism.
It’s just confirmation bias for your rarely well functioning brain. Just like Trayvon Martin. Or Chicago crime. Or to dream that taxes are already too high. Racist, racist, racist.
It’s also the ultimate out for simpletons like you. Question Obamacare?– racist; discussion over.
I guess it’s a nice rock to crawl under
sj, I use the phrase Total Explanation to describe a way of people demanding a shorthand way of describing impossibly complex reality. It’s not a theory, just a construction I came up with (I capitalize it to suggest it may already have one among political scientists). It’s akin, I suppose, to glittering generalizations or conspiracy theories. For example, many if not most Bernie Bros know that Hillary Clinton is “evil” not because there’s any evidence for such a metaphysical slander but because it’s a convenient way of saying you don’t like her and this is the reason. Which turns out to be an unreason but it works just as well.
I didn’t call you a right-winger. I said you employ right-wing propaganda from a left-wing position. I noticed this phenomenon first on Facebook last spring where those most caught up in demonizing her where calling her Killary and Shrillary. Then they called her a “corporatist” and “corrupt”. Once again, there’s really not much evidence beyond merely being human here but where you’re living in a closed echo chamber there is no demand for accuracy, just identifying yourself tribally.
I asked Cal around this time what Hillary’s lies were since he believed the meme she is a liar. He couldn’t name one but that he’d get back to me. Politifact rated her as the most honest candidate out there during the primaries (Bernie was right behind her). Trump was the least truthful by a mile. This explains why right-wingers love him so much: “telling it like it is” means lying pathologically.
Not everyone loves my comments, of course, although I appreciate all the attention they generate. We all want to break the spell, as it were. There is so much collective hypnosis in our politics that it’s easy to just get lost in the consensus reality of other peoples’ opinions. I would encourage you to think more critically about your suppositions for this reason. For example, how do you create a politics that isn’t incremental? I was a history major in college and one lesson I finally grokked was that there really is no short cut to paradise, be it a worker’s or the peace that passeth all understanding. As Robinson Jeffers once put it, history passes like falling rocks. Revolutions rarely accomplish what they intend to. Youthful idealism is great buy you need a program, discipline, compromise, and patience to achieve something on this earthly plane. You need more than jargon and certitude. How to get from point A to point B may be the greatest lesson you’ll ever learn.
Your incoherent response to my comment (Bill Clinton was white! Bernie Sanders is Jewish! Etc, etc.) seems to suggest that a not-so-subtle attack on the Americanism of a sitting US president is okay because lies are just hardball politics.
Yes, YOUR hardball, right-wing politics where lying is perfectly acceptable. And why would a majority of Republicans find these transparent lies credible. let me think……
Donald Trump is not an accident. He’s the logical culmination of 40+ years of the Southern Strategy where xenophobia, racism, and moral squalor occupy positions of honor in the GOP playbook.
Everyone knew at the time Trump was lying. Trump himself knew it, too. He excused his lie this: “it seems to be popular among many people”. That’s your excuse as well: it’s okay to despicably lie about a US president not being an American because…..it’s popular!
Really, you people have the morals of a biker gang.
Cal, I did read the Salon piece from Robert Reich. I don’t disagree with it, but it begs another question about Hillary’s sincerity as a candidate. Even if it’s smart politics, is it wise to fundamentally blame our political decline on the “elites” and “establishment”? We get what we pay for in American political life, and most Americans seem fine with voting for Republican congressmen who vote to cut the taxes of the rich, deny people health care, vote for trade deals like TPP, and not raise the minimum wage. This isn’t the “establishment” or “elites” doing this to us. We’re the fucking morons doing this.
One reason why Hillary won’t take Reich’s advice is that she is necessarily having to reach out to Republican women. Millenials, sad to say, think voting is mostly an act of self-expression rather than conscious choosing. Ergo, they are seriously considering a libertarian stoner for president who has no idea how the world works except weed should be legal. Then, there’s the attractive option of an utterly unqualified Green Party doctor with no political track record but plenty of simplistic solutions for what ails the imaginary body politic.
I do think Reich is an extraordinarily decent man but he’s never run for office. Hillary has and while she’s not a great political talent, she is undeniably brilliant. I’ll have to trust her on this.
Sorry to keep filibustering this thread but I want to respond to Cal’s description of Sunnyslope as a key to understanding me. I never used salty language growing up and only learned it in the military. Not too long after, I began reading people like Hunter Thompson, Charles Bukowski, and Philip Roth. I’ve been contaminated by that virus ever since.
But the Sunnyslope meme does explain something germane here. My father wanted to be the King of Sunnyslope and he sort of fulfilled that pathetic ambition by building the most outlandish house in that hardscrabble community. He then built an even more outlandish hospital, and finally topped himself by building a white elephant so bizarre that it still has people slowing down on north 19th Avenue and muttering “what the hell…..”
My father presaged Donald Trump. He was obsessive, grandiose, charismatic, and narcissistic. By age 50, his inner gyroscope had a pronounced wobble. By 60, he was virtually delusional with paranoia. He self-medicated with vodka and amphetamines. Through a fortuitous chain of events, he managed to sell the white elephant and spent the remainder of his life in comfort while remodeling the family house into possibly the most palatial hovel in America.
I totally get Donald Trump for this reason. He could have been my father. You don’t elect either of them president unless you enjoy things going boom unexpectedly. It’s okay to think that colorful people rather than boring wonks should be on TV. You could argue that “authenticity” matters more than knowledge and pedigree. But you don’t put people like them anywhere near real power unless you think driving with your eyes closed is really exciting.
soleri:
Without sounding too touchy . . . did you just gently pat me on the head and tell me that I will grow up, and understand all of these complex matters, one of these days?
Just so you know, I’m not a whippersnapper. I’m a limping grey old dog. Any youthful idealism that I had was brutally excised many moons ago.
You have an interesting theory (Total Explanation), but the use of generalities and jargon has been the common language of humans for quite a while. It allows us to engage in conversation; skip preliminaries; cut out extraneous explanations; hit the high points. Granted, sometimes we all need to back up a pace or two and clarify. However, I’m not generally given to the offensive “glittering generalities.”
I’ve never called HRC evil. That’s going a bit far. I do believe she is a corporate shill, and she is in the pocket of Wall Street. Glass-Stegall anyone?
I’ve never called HRC a liar. I don’t think she is particularly trustworthy, though. She is not a leader, she is a political chameleon; she is always testing which way the wind is blowing and adjusting accordingly (i.e., gay marriage, minimum wage; Black Lives Matter; college debt). I don’t have any confidence that she will follow through on the promises of the Dem platform.
I’m not caught up in social media; I don’t do Facebook. I’m not lost in a haze of other people’s opinions. I’m a reasonably well-educated citizen, an adult (eligible for my senior discount, thank you), a life-long voter, and I’m just not drinking the 2-party kool-aid this election season. I know this whole politics thing is complex, but, shucks, I’ll just have to muddle my way through.
sj, thanks for all those clarifications. I apologize for assuming you were young and naive.
I don’t want to reprise all the arguments I made with Ross. I’ll just reiterate my core argument that politically our only power is one another. The leader, in that respect, is less important than the coalition itself. We either exercise our collective power or we splinter into factions. If we do the latter, we lose and the reactionaries win.
I learned all this the hard way. There is no change without power. We have to win. In 1996, I was so fed up with Bill Clinton’s triangulation that I wouldn’t vote for him. When impeachment happened, I woke up. Republicans were so rabidly divisive that they attacked a president who could easily have been one of their own. I realized that the Republican Party has marinated so deeply pathology of racism and cruelty that it was no longer civil or humane or pragmatic. It’s governing spirit was embodied by the loathsome Newt Gingrich, a vector for total political war.
It’s only gotten worse since then. White nationalism is now its only operational principle. Greed is its only virtue. The love of Aryan Jesus is its only poetry. We can speculate how all this came to be. My own theory is that its Southern Strategy bore toxic fruit in the electronic media where inflammatory rhetoric and ugly imagery thrive.
If we were a parliamentary system, then the binary party system could be abandoned. But we’re not and the Constitutional framework is the reason. If we do factionalize, we still have to invent a way for third parties to thrive where coalitions rather than ideologies dominate. We have yet to solve this puzzle. In 2000, the left collapsed all meaningful distinctions and helped elect George W Bush. A similar disaster is within the realm of possibility this year. There is no guarantee that disaster will midwife revolution. Rather, it will empower the worst elements in American life to impose their damaging values on everyone else.
I want the Bernie Bros to consider these consequences. Incrementalism is necessary. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s the way our system works. And if we abandon this system either from impatience or anger, we help the reactionaries. Bernie Sanders understands this. I hope you will,at the very least, consider that he might be right.
soleri,
I must say that I agree with virtually your entire post, barring some of your conclusions.
I don’t choose to disengage with this election because of impatience or anger, but rather despair.
I am completely fed up, and I won’t be fooled again. A pox on both their houses.
Both the Democrats and the Republicans have screwed us all over for decades. I think it may be you, friend, who has a bit of youthful idealism left.
Bernie said from the beginning that the revolution was not about him, but about mobilizing the people. I’ll be sure to go to the polls and vote for all the down-ballot races.
I’m assuming you’re in Arizona. The Arizona down ballot races won’t feature any socialists, or Green Party candidates…
So, you’re stuck with choosing from Democrats, Republicans, or the occasional Space Cadet Libertarian.
Some Revolution, huh?
There is no third/fourth party coalition just waiting to rise up and “fix” things.
What ya gonna do then?
Wait until 2020? 2024? 2026?
Yes, I am in Arizona. There is a Green Party candidate (Trujillo) on the ballot for the House in my district. There are several very progressive Democrats also running for State House (Blanc & Salman). Another for State Senate (Mendez). I plan to go listen to all of them at our local clean elections debate.
Also, a progressive is running for County Recorder (Fortes).
And we should all be voting Arpaio out of office! Vote Penzone!
sj, in this instance, the moral import of not voting is voting for Trump. There is no escape from your own moral agency. You either exercise it consciously or you abdicate responsibility.
What concerns me most about people who put their own moral vanity above the lives of other people is what they’re really saying. Essentially, it’s I don’t care! I have good “reasons” such as “despair”, therefore let a dangerous demagogue win the presidency. Let climate change go unaddressed. Freeze the minimum wage at poverty levels. Let the rich walk away from their responsibilities for society. Let the sociopaths and pirates of the financial sector triumph. Let systemic racism flourish. I don’t care anymore. Because “reasons”.
None of us is in this boat alone. We all row together or we collapse the effort and the boat eventually sinks from neglect and cynicism. This, in fact, is the Republican intention. Divide people against one another, foster contempt and fear, preach “personal responsibility” instead of shared responsibility. You see this ethic triumphing in states like Arizona and Kansas and the damage it has done. But instead of beseeching others to join with you to fight this cancer, you posit a false equivalence between the two political parties, damning all those people who are your allies in a fit of pique. Your “despair” is a very expensive affectation. It has rendered you ineffective.
Human beings are not perfect. We’re often pigheaded, uninformed, unconcerned with others, self-involved, and even cruel. All you can do is fight this cancer of selfishness with your own resolve. But you need to stop damning the good for being imperfect. Work with others, set an example, organize a “revolution” in your neighborhood. Don’t give up.
We’re sustained by a vast web of interdependence, by the good acts of other people, by unseen angels and millions who lived anonymously but kept the faith that life matters more than riches, righteousness and social status. These people are your allies. Don’t abandon them.
Well I hate to jump in now since it has really gone well while I was out on top of South mountain with my lady friend.
Recently Some really good stuff by all those above. Thanks for sharing.
Now Soleri I really have been avoiding this crappola and now it really doesn’t matter since, Trump the worlds most insane bipolar psychopath has given the world the worst and most dangerous bullshit ever.
But here you go U can sort it out.
https://www.snopes.com/politics/clintons/hillary.asp
https://www.snopes.com/politics/clintons/clintons.asp
https://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/08/opinion/essay-blizzard-of-lies.html?_r=0
https://byteboy.wordpress.com/2008/04/06/list-of-ten-hillary-clinton-lies/
PS, I think Gary Johnson’s running mate just endorsed Clinton, well sorta.
Soleri, looks like a tie to me?
Politifact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact checking website, looked at on the record statements by the candidates since 2007, and found the following:
Candidate % of statements found mostly false, false, or Pants on Fire:
Trump 76%
Cruz 66%
Sanders 28%
Clinton 28%
Obama 26%
and then there’s this poll??
https://dailycaller.com/2016/02/17/poll-hillary-clinton-least-honest-and-trustworthy-of-all-presidential-candidates/
Cal, I looked at your links and finally understood how you can believe Hillary is a liar. The meme really got started with William Safire’s column in 1996. It became right-wing chapter and verse of the entire smear campaign. Safire himself was scarcely an authority on truth since he himself was a ardent partisan. I remember this piece fairly well and Safire’s role in the Clinton Wars that rage to this day.
Hillary is more than honest enough. Yes, she’s lawyerly and obscure when it suits her purposes. Still, she’s vastly more truthful than the average Republican, elected or no. The proof is the political class who vet her, who have to rely on her word, and not merely the hatchet men who endeavor to shape public opinion. If she wasn’t, then the system wouldn’t function and you would hear examples of her mendacity from her peers.
To a certain extent, another pol’s word is his – or her – bond. Hillary has been a very effective player, which mean the ones she works with trust her. Ulitmately, that’s all that matters.
The inane – and yes I mean INANE – preoccupation about one’s personal relationship to political candidates results in hopelessly naive judgments about them. “I’m not sure I can trust her!” is meaningless twaddle. We’re not electing her to be your spouse, girlfriend, or mother confessor. The hoi polloi loved and trusted Ronald Reagan who actually did some fairly serious lying in areas like foreign policy (Iran-Contra), his successor (the same), and Bill Clinton (sexual relationship with “that woman”), and George W Bush (WMD as a pretext for war). I suspect their veracity was of less concern to you than Hillary supposedly being this evil witch. You probably didn’t waste much time feeling betrayed after voting for them.
You’re only as smart as your media. Since I’m forever receiving your links from far-left websites that suggest Hillary is Voldemort in a pant-suit, I can understand your aversion to her. It’s pretty much confirmation bias. Let me suggest to you one way to winnow the flood of crapola you swim in: don’t believe everything you read. Either that, or read so widely so you can account for the complexity of a human being and not simply the cartoon version. There’s one other way: find a guide and trust that person to do the winnowing for you. How about the New Times’ Blog of the Year, for example? Talton provides excellent links but more importantly, you can trust his perspective. Have you ever been curious why your friend doesn’t have the same qualms you do? Ask him someday.
My only opinion – and that’s all it is – remains that misogyny is an extremely potent way of sliming powerful women. There’s something about Hillary I don’t like easily becomes I don’t trust her and she’s a liar. I would contend that our real complaint about Hillary is not that she’s a liar but that she doesn’t lie well. She’s not an intuitive politician. You can see the wheels turning in her head before she answers questions, etc. We loved Reagan and W because they were actually very good liars (when Reagan won the 1980 debate with that “there you go again!” remark against Jimmy Carter, few stopped to consider that Carter had actually been completely honest in that debate. It was Reagan who……well……was lying. People didn’t care because he was so congenial and charming.
I understand political theater is important and it doesn’t redound to Hillary’s credit that she’s a mediocre political performer on stage. If she somehow loses to the most pathologically lying candidate ever in American history, that will be the reason why. It’s amazing to think the public trusts that scam artist more than her. But what they really trust is their faith in bullshit. We live in an idiocracy but we can rise above it. One way is to be skeptical of popular memes.
From another point of view (an article in New York Times Magazine), George Will’s take on not voting for either Trump or HRC:
“I haven’t decided,” [Will] said. “You can imagine — I get tons of emails: ‘I, too, have left the Republican Party. What should I do?’ Well, there are a number of legitimate options. Not voting is a legitimate expression of opinion.”
Just sayin’.
Full article: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/how-donald-trump-set-off-a-civil-war-within-the-right-wing-media/ar-BBwM4oB?li=BBnb2gg&ocid=edgsp
sj, to George Will, democracy itself is a questionable concept. He’s a Tory who believes in hierarchy and a class system. Why you want to join hands with these people strikes me as strange. You really trust George Will? You’re not quite the revolutionary you think you are.
One more time: this election is less about D vs R than good vs evil. You don’t compromise with evil unless you are so nihilistic and “despairing” that you no longer care about your fellow citizens or the future. George Will, like Donald Trump, thinks global warming is a hoax, so I can easily understand he wouldn’t worry his aristocratic noggin about unimportant things like the survival of several billion people. Your mileage may vary! Let’s pray it does.
Soleri said, “Hillary is more than honest enough.” (I say we all lie, even ole Harry even told a whopper once in a while).
Soleri said, “The hoi polloi loved and trusted Ronald Reagan who actually did some fairly serious lying in areas like foreign policy (Iran-Contra), his successor (the same), and Bill Clinton (sexual relationship with “that woman”), and George W Bush (WMD as a pretext for war). I suspect their veracity was of less concern to you than Hillary supposedly being this evil witch. You probably didn’t waste much time feeling betrayed after voting for them.”
I say, George Bush Jr was the worst president ever and a coward and mentally defective. Ronnie R was a liar big time. (Although I am a republican even back in Reagans days I thought he was a wind bag that had been a small pond lifeguard and a third rate movie star, his greatest acting was pretending (like Bush) to be president. Economics brought down the Berlin wall, Ronnie just happened to be around. Billy Clinton has to have been the creepiest president we ever had and he is still trying to be trailer park slick willy, a consummate sex addicted lying piece of shit. I wouldn’t walk across the street to say hello to him.
Probably even my Hero presidents lied a bit. George the Cherry tree chopper and Abe, T.R. Ike and Humble Harry.
Soleri said, “You’re only as smart as your media.”
I say, I am as smart as the Media I read and EXPERIENCE. I read everything from Aljazeera to Zephyr news. (But Talton is my favorite place to go). AND I got about 8 years on you pal. I went to work at nine (9) and by ten (10) was in your neighborhood selling doughnuts and desert tortoises and chuckwallas along with a paper route. At 14 (Jack) I was on the road by thumb and bus, throwing hay and milking cows. All while you being pampered with silver spoons and fed tons of intellectual chit and living in a palace with a fish pond that came into the house from outside. And you got to have large monkeys as pets. Sorry my police partner shot one of them. He got fired later for stealing from Goodwill boxes. And I was the Tetherball champ at Sunnyslope grade school and had a good marble collection taken from sniveling fellow classmates. Consequently I had to fight my way home to that very small house at 9822 N 3rd street more than once, but it took at least five (5) kids to get me down.
Soleri said, “Since I’m forever receiving your links from far-left websites that suggest Hillary is Voldemort in a pant-suit” and “My only opinion – and that’s all it is – remains that misogyny is an extremely potent way of sliming powerful women”
I say, I think you’re implying here that I think women should be home in the kitchen brewing recipes from Hogwarts School of witchcraft and wizardry. Could be no further from the fact. And the second statement is somewhat insulting. I am a complete fan of Elizabeth Warren, a small liar. I thought she was a much better choice than Bernie or Hillary and I think she is smarter than Bernie or Hillary. I have always sought out strong smart women in my 76 years. My current brilliant and artistic lady friend was chosen by the Kerry bumper sticker on her ancient Volvo with 260000 miles on its body. One of the strongest women I knew was a stanch conservative republican and she and I and the two Marxists from our philosophy classes spent many a day at the Wineburger next to Mary Coyle Ice cream on 19th Avenue and Bethany Home road, drinking wine, arguing politics and writing poetry in circles on napkins. Somehow she got away and I now not where to this day.
Soleri said, “One way is to be skeptical of popular memes.”
Of course and I am sure you have figured out by now that a lot of what I share is to stoke the flames, to watch the responses. I like to see the words afire late into the nite to keep the goblins from eating us all.
Thanks for sharing. Thanks everyone on this blog for hanging in there and Thank you Jon for allowing us to comment on your brilliant and challenging essays.
Soleri, speaking of Smart Honest Women, I just picked up at Changing Hands, Tempe, the book “Citizen Scientist”, by Mary Ellen Hannibal.
And also a copy of “A beautiful Question” by Frank Wilczek. Be happy to ship these off to you in the near future?
Of note, at least to me, is the fact that one of the communists I drank wine with went on to become president of a postal workers union while this republican went on to become president of a police union.
I am sure Ruben will be able to comment on such.
Good stuff cal, you make me proud to know you.
Cal, FWIW, I don’t think you’re a misogynist, and I wasn’t aiming that at you. I was struggling to come with an explanation why Clinton’s lawyerly equivocations excite such fury while no one really hates Trump for being a world-class liar. I do agree that we’re all liars to one degree or another. It’s one of those gray areas we all live in when it comes to friends and family. People have fragile egos as Eugene O’Neil noted in The Iceman Cometh. We occasionally tell ourselves stories to keep the pain at bay. And we’re very defensive about our own tribe and its failings since they reflect back on us. All that said, it’s really not the lies that infuriate us. I think it’s more the sense of being vulnerable, flawed, and unworthy of respect. My sense of Clinton is that she struggles to find the balance here in a marketplace that rewards chutzpah and delights in tearing down people. I don’t think Trump struggles at all in this way. He’s simply too unconscious and identified with his own ego. There’s no crack there to let the light in. Hillary’s dignity, I think, derives from a crack just wide enough in her ego so that she is recognizably decent to other people. That’s all any of us can ask for in a leader on a human level.
A note: for the future, and keep coming back.
“Doc would listen to any kind of nonsense and change it for you into a kind of wisdom. His mind had no horizon-and his sympathy had no warp”.
John Steinbeck, Cannery Row.
I quoted George Will earlier, to provide another perspective. I didn’t jump in bed with him.
Yeah, but George Will has always been kind of a dick, so…not really sure what his perspective is worth.
Oh, I know we’re supposed to value all sides of the debate; but honestly, some sides are completely worthless.
“some sides are completely worthless”.
I take it thats your subjective humble ass opinion?
Personally I prefer my Kuluha on the side,
of my coffee. And I prefer the left side of the bed but the right side (and window seat) of the airplane.
Well, then…
I agree with you on the left side of the bed, but I prefer Irish Whiskey in my coffee. And the aisle seat. Because I’d rather be disturbed by someone than disturb someone.
And the sides that are “completely worthless” include Ann Coulter’s, Peggy Noonan’s, Pat Buchanan’s, Maureen Dowd’s, and Rush Limbaugh’s, in addition to the forementioned George Will’s–in my “humble ass opinion”.
But would it be Amerika without them?
Is it just me, or does anyone else notice that Rudy
Giuliani may have contracted rabies and is in the late stage of the disease?
Is he kept in a kennel in between interviews?
Ruben he has gone back to his hero, Mussolini.
AND
In defense of, El Loco, Fuhrer Trump.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/finally-someone-who-thinks-like-me/2016/10/01/c9b6f334-7f68-11e6-9070-5c4905bf40dc_story.html
sj, I don’t object to Will as a counterweight or point of view. But as long as you’re rejecting Bernie Sanders’ opinion and using Bernie’s opposite to prop up your really bad decision – morally and politically – I’ll note the irony.
Irony is the overriding theme of this election.
On the one hand, you’ve got a guy who vows to be the friend and savior of the working classes, whose almost every action has been to the detriment of the working classes. He “supports” American workers by outsourcing to China, importing non-union labor from Poland, and screwing any subcontractor he can. He’d rather sue than pay what he owes.
He uses his charity to collect baubles for himself.
He’s shown himself to be incapable of learning from or listening to anyone else. He thinks he’s too smart for that kind of thing.
Oh, and by the way, apparently he doesn’t pay any Federal taxes. Because, in keeping with the immortal words of Leona Helmsley, “only the little people pay taxes.”
And yet, the white working class males roar with approval at his every word.
Because he’s going to make them great again.
Sure he is.
And on the other hand, you’ve got a woman who has been tarred and feathered for 24 years. Whitewater, Travelgate, Vince Foster, Benghazi, emails–millions of tax payer dollars spent investigating, countless hours of talk radio heavy breathing, and what crimes have been proven? None. Nada. Zip.
Yet she’s the one millions of “low information voters” call “crooked”.
Ironic, ain’t it?
I think it’s safe to say that Trump voters are pre-rational, at best. They don’t think logically or skeptically as adults would. They think tribally. So, some guy promises to govern like a blowhard on talk radio, and they roar their approval. Finally, someone who’s telling it like is!
During the RNC convention, Trump said only he can fix the system because he knows so well how to scam it. Normally, a red flag might go up among sentient types; maybe a self-confesseed con artist is not the person you would trust with such an endeavor. But all things are possible to those who believe.
During the debate, he complained about American infrastructure and how he would fix it. This was before proclaiming himself “smart” for not paying taxes. Normally, a red flag might go up among nominal adults. Do you really trust someone to undertake massive public works’ projects while not paying taxes himself and promising to slash taxes on the very wealthiest taxpayers at the same time? Oh, ye of little faith.
Trump is a man-child appealing to children in search of a rich uncle who will wave his magic wand and make America white again. When he sings his anthem, they feel like it’s completely possible because the melody is so catchy. Granted, the lyrics are sort of jumbled and don’t really rhyme. But that’s not the issue. Finally, someone is singing directly to them: you’re the real victims!
It’s probably wrong to call Trump a liar since he probably believes a good part of his own bullshit. But there’s something desperate about him nonetheless. Intelligence officials worry he could be easily played by someone like Vladimir Putin who recognizes a needy narcissist with no inner life as an easy mark. But what can you say about a nation where nearly half the citizens are so lacking in common sense that they can’t even see the obvious?
Let’s call them Trumped Nation.
Irony? You find it ironic that an arch-conservative pundit and a lefty/pinko Arizona voter are both so disgusted by the major political parties (not to mention the candidates put forward by each of those parties) that not voting seems a viable option?
It’s something, but not irony.
OK.
Don’t vote.
That’ll show ’em!
That would be a big F-U to The Man.
That’ll solve everything.
Of course, you could vote for Gary Johnson, who seems, uh, what’s the current acceptable term? Intellectually challenged?
Or Jill Stein, who seems like an extremely nice person, but whose only experience in government is a Town Meeting seat in Lexington, Massachusetts, and who has no possible coalition in Congress. Oh, and no conceivable chance of winning, either.
But voting for her would be a statement, that’s for sure.
So I guess we’re back to Don’t Vote.
https://rall.com/comic/bend-over
Okay, ross, I give up. We should vote against an imminently sane and cautious politician because…..er……jargon!
The left-wing analog of the Tea Party may not have enough panache to wear tricorn hats but they more than make up for it with their flying unicorns shitting idiocies on the internet.
IMHO,
VOTE.
DON’T MATTER WHO
JUST
VOTE.
I’m not persuaded that an uninformed vote is better than none at all. Read a newspaper. Read quality journalism. Read history, especially what makes you uncomfortable. Then vote.
Cal sent me this link about a Trump supporter in Pennsylvania: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/finally-someone-who-thinks-like-me/2016/10/01/c9b6f334-7f68-11e6-9070-5c4905bf40dc_story.html
It’s probably not a coincidence that an unhinged candidate attracts unhinged supporters. That said, there’s always going to be a heavy burden of projection in politics. A skilled politician understands this, trying on the one hand to make himself or herself a vessel for some of the more hopeful and positive elements in the American psyche. This was the core Obama strategy in 2008, for example. Trump’s candidacy, by contrast, plumbs the depths of American fear and loathing. Making American Great Again is not hopeful since it’s predicated on loss and disinheritance. There’s a compulsive need in all of us to explain why bad things happened, and Trump is more than willing to provide toxic conspiracy theories to people impatient with process and complexity.
I would submit that part of our core responsibility as somewhat sentient adults is to keep the project of politics clear of this detritus. If we don’t, there’s diminished capacity for any real debate let alone accommodation to different viewpoints. Politics only works when we agree to disagree about actual policy proposals and legislation. When it decides instead to demonize other people, whether they be black, Latino, Muslim, or gays, you get something that looks like democracy’s demolition derby. Politics isn’t beanbag, of course. It will always be rough around the edges. But insofar as we have any collective future, you need to call out the vandals who wantonly chip away at the foundations of democracy itself. Most of these vandals are on the far right: Senator Joe McCarthy was one. The John Birch Society was another. Militia groups, the KKK, the alt-right, and Donald Trump are others.
The Bernie or Busters belong to this group as well. Positing a false equivalence between the practictioners of politics and the vandals is their favorite method. They don’t merely damn incremental progress, they undermine the very possibility of it. Paul Krugman writes this morning:
Finally, it’s dismaying to see the fecklessness of those on the left supporting third-party candidates. A few seem to believe in the old doctrine of social fascism — better to see the center-left defeated by the hard right, because that sets the stage for a true progressive revolution. That worked out wonderfully in 1930s Germany.
But for most it seems to be about politics as personal expression: they dislike Mrs. Clinton — partly because they’ve bought into a misleading media image — and plan to express that dislike by staying at home or voting for someone like Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate. If polls are to be believed, something like a third of young voters intend to, in effect, opt out of this election. If they do, Mr. Trump might yet win.
Please, do vote. But don’t pretend your vote to undermine democracy itself is high-minded. No. You need to exercise more responsibility than you would when it comes to buying a pair of jeans or a bag of potato chips. You need to honor this process with adult discernment and leave the spiteful pique where it belongs in the bathroom commode.
Jon,
Let me get this straight. We live in a Democratic Republic where we are allowed to vote for who ever we choose but a vote for Trump is treason and a vote for a minor party is a waste and not voting is apostasy.
Why don’t you just say what you mean
SHUT UP AND VOTE FOR WHO I SAY!
Earth to Ross: this is a political blog. We talk about stuff like this not to upset you but because this is what blogs do. If you feel you’re here against your will, you can always troll other blogs. Freedom: what a concept!
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/sanders-donors-havent-opened-wallets-to-clinton/
Ross:
Welcome to Soleri- land, where those who run against the cult are encouraged to leave.
How much arrogance does someone have to exhibit when they tell someone, with complete certainty, who to vote for and why?
Wait a minute.
Soleri is telling U who he THINKS U should vote for. I agree that he is entitled to his opinion. However I see no reason for anyone to leave the blog. KEEP COMING BACK.
TAX RECORDS: I do not think anyone’s tax records should be public knowledge except when they are made available in a criminal court case.
So far I think the only people influenced negatively by Trumps tax history are folks that were not going to vote for him to begin with?
Probably a large number of wealthy Republicans that are NOT going to vote for Trump would just as soon not care that you know they also “legally” take advantage of the current tax and bankruptcy laws.
What do U all think?
INPHX, how many racists lies can Donald Trump tell before you feel a tad squeamish?
That’s right. None.
Clara Jones of Mother Jones on Millennials:
https://medium.com/@girlziplocked/on-the-millennial-strawvoter-3ea28a34d419#.gjtbfwxpf
FATE OF THE WORLD?
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/10/02/obama-warned-to-defuse-tensions-with-russia/
GOP for HILLARY:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/michael-chertoff-hillary-clinton_us_57f24e9be4b024a52d2f9a48?section=&
INPHX, I think you are confusing a sane, rational, knowledgeable examination of the facts with “arrogance”.
Oh, wait…to a conservative Republican that is arrogance.
Sorry. My bad.
Cal, I’m tempted to agree with you on tax records, except…
Every other candidate has released theirs for the last 40 years or so…
And, more importantly, one party in particular whines constantly about how “overtaxed” we are, and what a burden that puts on the economy, and yet, when we finally see their taxes, we find that, despite their greater wealth, and their incessant complaints, they are usually paying at a much lower rate than the typical voter.
So, whatever its flaws, it can serve a very useful purpose.
Ben writes:
when we finally see their taxes, we find that, despite their greater wealth, and their incessant complaints, they are usually paying at a much lower rate than the typical voter.
How many have you seen?
The current Time Magazine has two must-read articles. One is on the Russian hacking of the American voting systems alone with private e-mails targeting Democrats and Hillary Clinton. The other is on the secretive hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer who funds far-right campaigns. His pro-Ted Cruz PACs eventually became the brains and voice behind the Trump campaign (his gift to America is Kellyanne Conway).
It’s clear Vladimir Putin has a stake in undermining liberal democracies, particularly ours and those in Europe. In this light, it’s disturbing to think Donald Trump has some as-yet undisclosed relationship to Russian interests (tax returns might illuminate how deeply in hock Trump is to Russian oligarchs). Trump’s anti-NATO talking points could have been written in the Kremlin. For the faux patriots supporting Trump, all that matters is that Trump is an inspiring contrast to our “weak” leader, Obama. Of course, it helps that he’s also white.
The far-left site Wikileaks appears to be working with the Russians, too. For those of you who tend to romanticize people like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, it might help to put in perspective how your hysterical idealism contains a bit of useful idiocy.
Trump, it goes without say, is an authoritarian. His followers, too, are classic rubes who would prefer to be ruled than governed. One reason why this election is so vital to our democracy is the stunning example of hostility to open societies you see on the right. There is no democracy in America that doesn’t also have dramatically less income inequality and more social justice. Things simply begin to crack up once these social and political tensions become acute. In whose interest is it to exacerbate these tensions? I would suggest it’s in the interests of Putin and his tool, Donald Trump.
B. I don’t disagree with what U said but personally I am opposed to publicly revealing “anyones” tax records except where so ordered by an official court order.
Just because “everyone” else did something for 40 years (something about a mythical flood?), doesn’t make it OK.
I think that’s what Bernie Burn Millineals are yelling about.
“Fifty percent of people don’t vote. And fifty percent don’t read newspapers. I hope it’s the same fifty percent.” — Gore Vidal
INPHX, as I recall Mr. 47% paid 12% Federal and Mr. Make America Great Again apparently paid no Federal…
Now, I expect you to supply links to articles about every other candidate for President for the last 40 years (to prove just how wrong I am) AND links showing how our onerous corporate tax rates are just killing the economy. (That would be the onerous corporate tax rate that no large corporation ever pays.)
Don’t disappoint me.
But Cal, a candidate for President of the richest, most powerful nation on the face of the earth isn’t just “anyone.”
And if they claim to be a great, fantastic businessman, we should have access to some verifiable, unbiased proof of that, shouldn’t we?
And if they claim to be holier than thou, as many seem to these days, I’m afraid that their personal life becomes fair game too.
You give up a certain amount of privacy when you enter public life. However, no one is forced run for President. They choose to.
Ben:
That’s two.
Think you need to edit your broad, vapid sweeping, generalization?
Come to think of it, no need.
Not on this blog.
Two isn’t enough? Even when it’s the most recent two? Isn’t that a trend? As in 100% of the recent GOP candidates for President have been tax weasels?
And the one before that has lived off his wife’s family money–and influence–since he entered politics. And her family’s money came from a connection with a Kemper Marley. Who was more or less a criminal.
Oh, and the Bush family made part of their fortune from dealing with the Nazi’s. Though that probably wouldn’t show up on their taxes.
And still no links?
Gosh I miss the links…
B,
U made your points about politicians being “fair game” but for taxes I am
sticking with this.
“personally I am opposed to publicly revealing “ANYONE’S” tax records except where so ordered by an official court order”.
Will Hillary like St. Janet fly to Salt Lake shortly after her election to convert?
And what does Donald have in common with FLDS thoughts on Sex and girls.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rA9779Rdi8k
https://www.snopes.com/2016/06/23/donald-trump-rape-lawsuit/
Ben:
You wrote:
And, more importantly, one party in particular whines constantly about how “overtaxed” we are, and what a burden that puts on the economy, and yet, when we finally see their taxes, we find that, despite their greater wealth, and their incessant complaints, they are usually paying at a much lower rate than the typical voter.
In order for that to be meaningful (not that your posts ever are), you have to have seen the tax rates for “their” (which I think refers to the entire GOP) taxes and the tax rates for the typical voter. So, you either have that information or you’re just spewing nonsense on what pretends to be a reality based blog.
You also have to define which taxes you’re evaluating- federal, state, real property, gas, personal property, utility, sales, FICA, Medicare, excise–it’s a long, long list.
So go ahead. Impress us with your vast knowledge and access to data.
I don’t need any links; I didn’t make the stupid assertion.
comon INPHX, not necessary.
“In order for that to be meaningful (not that your posts ever are)”
And yet, INPHX, you feel the need to respond to my meaningless posts.
Slow day?
Simply put, Mitt Romney (remember him?) paid an approximately 12% Federal income tax rate. And Donald J. Trump doesn’t seem to pay any Federal income tax.
You seem pretty typical. Is your Federal tax rate higher than theirs?
As far as all those other taxes you listed to dissemble and confuse the issue, you know what you can do with those, right?
B. Franklin,
Your second rate imitation of soleri is pretty sad.
To quote your mentor, why don’t you just shut up.
Ruben, out of courtesy for your long patronage here I am not taking down your post. If it were someone new, I would. Commenters need to add value — as B. Franklin does — and not tell others to shut up (when Soleri has done this, it was a rhetorical device as part of a larger argument).
Just for the official record, while I usually agree with Soleri’s politics, I certainly don’t consider him to be a mentor (old men like me don’t have mentors); and if I were ever to attempt a written imitation of anyone, I would lean more toward Gore Vidal, Charles Pierce, Groucho Marx, or Monty Python.
PS: my original point about Republican Presidential candidates and their taxes remains valid, whatever INPHX says.
B why is making public anyone’s taxes that has not been convicted of tax fraud, VALID?
Ok I looked up rhetorical (it came up in google even though i misspelled it, retorecal)
and I’m not “empressed” by “shut up” no matter who uses it. Some of the audience here is not educated in the use of rather complicated language devices. But I’m learning even at this late stage in life.
Cal, my point was that when, for instance, we do find out about Romney and/or Trump’s taxes, all of their whining about high tax rates, and how unfair it is to regular citizens and corporations and therefore destructive to our nation’s economic welfare, is shown to be just that–whining. Now it may be entirely legal that they ultimately pay a lower rate than a typical middle class family, but is it fair and just? And their pretending to be champions of fairness for all while constantly gaming the system for every advantage strikes me as the definition of hypocrisy.
As far as “valid”, as someone said way back at the beginning of this thread, “politics is a rough game.”
Why the Clintons concern me? Hope Hillary sees better.
NAFTA,
and Immigration by Bill.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_Immigration_Reform_and_Immigrant_Responsibility_Act_of_1996
20 years ago today, one of the worst laws you’ve never heard of was signed by President Bill Clinton. IIRIRA, also known on Wikipedia as the Mexican Exclusionary Act of 1996, is a major reason that our immigration system is broken. It laid the groundwork for millions of families to be ripped apart. Unless these laws are changed in some way, millions more will be deported regardless of who is elected the next President.1
There are many parts of IIRIRA that need to be repealed or fixed, but Bill Clinton can start with a simple step: he can support the campaign to #BringJoseBack being led by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, the Long Beach Immigrant Rights Coalition, and the Greater Long Beach Interfaith Community Organization.2
Yes, he should.
I noticed that it passed the House by 278-176 and the Senate by 72-27, which makes me think a Clinton veto would have been overturned, even if he was predisposed to do so.
Seeing as how he was running for re-election that year this was probably another case of Clinton calculated tri-angulation.
That House count can’t be correct. I should know better than to trust Wikipedia’s numbers.
Anyway, the point is it passed both Houses easily.
Apology to B. Franklin. Firewater got the best of me.
cal, no side comment needed.
Appreciate this long thread and all the comments. And Congrats to Jon on the New Times award.
Whether I agree or disagree I always respect the passion and the honest commitment to wanting to foster improvements.
I really appreciate everyone who cares about this metro region and this state, regardless of how much I agree or disagree with their politics or proposed solutions. That mindset leads to solutions; a selfish or disengaged mindset leads to entropy/atrophy/people taking advantage of the situation for personal gain, etc.
Mr. Talton:
“The worse, the better,” some say…
Of all the damnable moral rationalizations this is the most evil. To voice it you have to believe at least 2 things:
1) You know the only true correct political path for the country.
2) You hope to see people suffer in large numbers so that they’ll finally see the truth you see too.
Mr. Talton likens this rationalization to that of a traitor. That’s too kind. It’s the morality of the terrorist who expects bombs to birth a paradise here on earth.
Koreyel, I think I get what you posted but Im not sure as I am not very smart as are a lot of us out thar.
So I appear to be a treasonous terrorist.
So have why have a place for write in votes, Oh I know for stupid people.
So Rogue.
What do you make of this weeks fodder, I mean news.
How about the arrest of all those unarmed Americans defending their lands and waters? Gassed, beaten, bitten, and strip searched by a militarized police force paid to defend the rights of a soulless corporation out to pump as much C02 into the atmosphere as possible before it gets declared a Planetary bio-toxin. On the same day we are shocked to hear of the letting off, Scot free, of a basket of deplorable welfare cowboys and wanabees who staged an armed invasion of a Federal Wildlife Refuge?
Whata country!
Now we got the head of the FBI apparently giving the Attorney General the finger and letting out the State Secret that there are more emails to be looked at and maybe there could be a problem. With so many emails still unaccounted for that isn’t as surprising as the timing.
Am I just a conspiracy theorist or does it look like there may be a little strife within the security state?
Ross,
I answered your post on the most recent column (“Brewer tells the truth”). It’s where the traffic is now.