'Republican' strategist and Florida-based terrorism sponsor Mac Stipanovich thinks it's OK to vote for Hillary after he spent a couple good decades as a Republican. Stiples insists that Trump supporters are "literally face-down in the Kool-Aid."
And I'm bothered - to say the least - about the comments Donald Trump made about women and sexual assault eleven years ago. But then Donald Trump did something that Donald Trump almost never does. He apologized.
I don't think he spent long enough apologizing. I don't think he's genuinely contrite about the comments, and he kept saying it was "locker room talk" as if that excuses it somehow. It's clear that The Donald needs, or at least needed, a complete overhaul in his view of women, and, frankly, human decency. But at least it was something.
There are a lot of things that we would change about Donald Trump, and four or eight years in the White House are likely to magnify, not paper over, his many, many character defects.
And in truth, some intellectual part of me would love to be able to throw in the towel here and just say, "you know what, this is the last straw, I'm voting for Hillary."
When I consider the courageous men who died fighting a terrorist mob at Benghazi on September 11 and 12, 2011, I can't do it. When I consider the 49 people killed in Orlando's Pulse nightclub on June 12 of this year, I can't do it. The San Bernardino attacks last December. The Fort Hood massacre in November of 2009. All committed by radical Islamic terrorists.
And the Barak/Hillary establishment regularly refuses to even dignify the safety of the American people by naming our enemies for what they are. It's impossible to win a struggle against an enemy you won't even name. To say nothing of the deep antipathy Hillary has shown for national security concerns, as exemplified by her atrocious handling of her private email server.
To wit. I have a different standard for people like William Kristol and Mac Stipulations than the American people in general. Conservative leaders and strategists should be hard-boiled pro-American defenders of the Constitution and the nation-state that produced it. The American people in general are victims of a brainwashing educational process and a fuel-to-the-fire media that presents liberals as the only reasonable alternative. I don't blame most of them for the views they hold, but I hope to be able to educate and reveal the real, powerful, and genuinely good America I believe exists beneath negative liberal propaganda.
I can now see beyond those things to the truth - with my original university education and traditional media as obstacles in the way of, not aides in the search for, truth.
If I, a borderline newly minted conservative, can figure this after only a few years on the firing line, then Kristol, Stipanovich, and the rest of the turncoat brigade have a lot more to answer for.
When leaders fail to lead, nations fail.
I am now beginning to see the scope of the vacuum that Donald Trump has stepped into. If Republican leaders are turning their backs on him because of juvenile October Surprise comments that he's actually willing to apologize for, then the commitment to the cause amongst these leaders must have been growing hollow for some time.
I haven't failed to notice that Donald Trump doesn't paint by the numbers when it comes to his policy positions. But people are sick of normal. They're sick of losing jobs to foreign countries that don't have entitlement support, labor, environmental standards, and a commitment to defending global freedom. Because of his willingness to speak out against NAFTA and MFN, his riotous popularity amongst average working men should come as no surprise.
And yes, I'm aware there's a race divide - and rightfully so. Donald Trump is a bigot who faced lawsuits over his racist housing policies. He should apologize to black people as he apologized about his grotesque 2005 comments - in fact, he should apologize and actually live differently, rather than hiding behind the fact that other developers were sued as well.
It would be great to have a tough candidate who is right on the issues, popular, and with higher integrity than Trump. But the Republican farm team never produced such a candidate. I didn't see Jeb Bush or John Kasich out there loudly pushing for a better trade regime with Mexico, and daring to suggest that maybe allowing an unlimited influx of potential Islamic terrorists was a bad idea.
So consider me drowning in Kool-Aid, Mr. Stipanovich. I find it's bright red hue and thin sugary froth a delicious alternative to the toxic, burbling witch's brew concocted by those who can't see the good in America.
I can't speak for all the lefties out there, but the big difficulty we have with Trump is that there is an insidious double standard at work, and finally we're actually getting some people to understand it (like Mormons!). He's cheated on his many wives, yet decries Hillary's husband for doing it, or having Hillary allow it. Trump believes in the American dream yet was set up by his father with a multi-million dollar loan with his daddy's connections. We don't have any hard policy statements except 'yeah I did this, but Hillary is far worse, she did that'. Yeah there's the wall, and those slippery ISIS leaders etc. but he's terrible at deal making with congress that's just frightened by him(despite his ghostwritten book). We on the left really just don't understand how this flies with the conservative movement, especially the religious right that says "everyone sins" when explaining Trump but somehow Hillary is more than a sinner, she's a baby killer that takes guns away....but everyone is a sinner. These outweigh adultery but are character flaws conservatives rail against. More than that lying and bringing fear and hate to the masses (but I'd argue both sides have that one to blame) but for now I'll move on.
ReplyDeleteIt's difficult, as Roe v Wade has been out there for a while, and Republicans and Democrats haven't touched it, and just kinda let it sit there except yell at it like an empty chair that it is. No one R or D touches it, because it's just useful to bring up and bring out the votes for both sides and shake your fist in rage. But indeed it's a wedge issue, and for Trump it's a way for people to forgive his huge errors in judgement and character, but for us lefties, he still lacks character and frankly isn't a person I'd want to have as a friend, even more as a president. From my and many who agree with me, how do we reconcile that? As well as Limbaugh, Ailes, Gingrich, and the list goes on for both sides, but it's certainly the conservatives that really get upset by it and forgive themselves in the same sentence.
By kool-aid, as the reference goes, it's suicide, final, and somehow to a better life after the present one. I'm not ready for the apocalypse yet, and for me I'm a big fan of fixing problems, not just throwing them away. Call it my conservation tendencies. No I won't go to Canada, but the optimist in me says that tomorrow is better than today and I'm willing to fight for that. Mark my words, whatever happens in 4 to 8 years we'll be talking about Roe V Wade again, and no progress or 'con'gress will do anything about it. (get it?)
Good comments Cameron, and glad you are here. Let me address these things in turn.
DeleteI don't think that Trump or Hillary has the moral standing to be President. To take pages from the Narnia books, it's a bit like we are Susan and Edmond being asked to choose between King Miraz and the White Witch. Both are awful and not what was intended for the country. In Narnia, there is always a better choice and a heroic struggle, which points the needle of the compass of morality inward so we can learn about ourselves. While there is no better choice here, we can still trust a belief in existential truth and use this scenario. In this case, it is not so much the choice but why we are making it.
Roe v. Wade a wedge issue as you say. I would argue, though, that since the status quo favors the traditional Democratic position, it is Republicans who have been ineffectually 'yelling at the chair' for four decades now. I think it is insightful though - and typical of the hollow moralism of "I'm right because I'm right" attitude of any 'morally superior' position such as being pro-life, that you can't just be pro-life, and being pro-life in and of itself does not necessarily make you a good person. Trump is a good demonstration of the limits of, and indeed, with his infidelities, the hypocrisy of, mere moralism.
Trump's policy statements are probably the weakest and least substantial of any modern major party candidate, and yet, (although I doubt Trump knows it) this could actually be a strength of his. The Constitution was put in place to strike a balance between the anarchy brought about by an weak confederation of near-autonomous states, with Maryland taxing Delaware and Rhode Island threatening to join the Dutch, and the spectre of an authoritarian central government too powerful to be trusted. Trump - almost in spite of himself - actually hews closer, in my opinion, to the Founder's version of defined, delineated Federal authority. Why? Because the five big proposals we can nail down for him - repeal NAFTA, repeal ACA, enforce the law at the border, appoint anti- Roe v. Wade justices, and lower taxes - are actually limits on Federal power in four cases, and, in the fifth- enforcement of the law at the border - and appropriate exercise of Federal power. Weird, right - that a notorious, unfaithful gasbag would be closer to the Constitution than the alternative! The Founders would scarcely have delighted in this, and, at some point, if they were around, Trump probably would have been shot in a duel against Alexander Hamilton or something. But I don't think the Founders have thrown in the towel just yet.
I know the Kool-Aid thing is a reference to willing suicide of a brainwashed masses. However. What I'm saying is that this Kool-Aid - while certainly not what I'd choose to drink - is perhaps not toxic in and of itself, and preferable to the only alternative offered.