I Guess I'm Not Allowed to Get Tired of Denouncing Fake Republicans

Dear William Cristol:

Thanks for wadding up your credibility, and your decades of otherwise qualified service to America, into a small, compact ball, and then setting that ball on fire in your bathroom and flushing the blackened, ashy mass down the toilet.  Are you... offended by this?  You should be - but America should be even more offended by you because you have the insane, putrefying hubris to suggest running a third-party candidate to syphon votes away from the legitimate Republican nominee, Donald Trump.   I'm sorry you don't like his Twitter feed.  But there are a lot of worse ones out there.  Like the ISIS, Al-Queda, and Hamas Twitter feeds, which you might as well be re-tweeting for, given all Hillary Clinton's track record for protecting this country from terrorists.  Like I've said, why not just create a triune political alliance of moderate Republicans, Hillary Democrats, and Islamic terrorists?  Just admit where you effectively stand and we can have an up-and-down debate on the subject, rather than pretend that this is about Trump's supposed lack of qualifications.

Again, it doesn't matter what Trump is like, as long as he's better than Hillary!  Even if it's only by 0.1%, *we are morally obligated to vote for him.*

You know what, I remember when I was a 20 year old college kid and I voted for Ralph Nader because I couldn't tell the difference between George Bush and Al Gore.  Oh, wait, I don't remember that because I voted for a candidate who could actually win, the way anyone with even a flyspeck's of understanding or concern for the American political process would.

As a disclosure, I voted for Al Gore in 2000 because I was an raised by hippie parents into an insane, brainwashed college kid on an ultra-liberal campus.  Still no excuse, and I own my mistake.  I considered voting for Bush on a pro-life mindset, and that's what I should've done.  But the past is the past.  I made my mistakes and I am transparent about them.  In my defense, see the above paragraph where I explain that I was an insane, brainwashed college kid wielding a ballot I had been handed by a drunk Benjamin Franklin when he argued against property rights as a qualification for voting.  I'm sorry and I own it - and by the way, I wasn't a 63 year old editor of a major, albeit poorly formatted news blog and national magazine who is allegedly an old Conservative standby!

So who's crazy now, Bill?  Who's crazy now?

I hope Trump wins and appoints you Dishonorary Secretary of Misplaced Be-Clownery.

Black People Suffered 345 Years for Freedom Because the Founding Fathers Were Bad at Getting It Done

Let's take the number 1964 and subtract it from the number 1619.  The result is 345, and that's the number of years that people from Africa were legally oppressed or enslaved in America.

With all due respect to the Founding Fathers, love is an action word.  If they’d wanted to end slavery, they would have just ended slavery.    I’ve had it with conservatives who say that the Founding Fathers somehow had a glint in their eye and really, really just wanted to end slavery but were so afraid of dividing the country that they just couldn't.  High-flown theories about a civil war in the 1790's or other disunity are merely a papering over of the truth about the Founders: many of them were deeply compromised by their economic interest in keeping slavery going.  

And yet, liberals would have us believe that, because many of the Founders owned slaves - Madison, Jefferson, and Washington spring to mind - that we can never admire them, that naming elementary schools after them is racist, and that they have to be carefully boxed off and all but purged from history, other than as cardboard cutouts who are manipulated in a shadow play about the glories of the collectivist State, used to demonstrate "how far we've come."

The truth is far more complicated, interesting, and invigorating.  The Founding Fathers were great men who risked everything to bring liberty and the principles thereof to an entire nation, and the effects of their weaknesses in not ending slavery were multiplied. They held power, and yet, essentially wrung their hands in ineffectual concern for the institution they'd carried from the colonies into what was supposed to be free Republic where all men were created equal.  Paradoxical?  Of course it is.  This is America - have you met us?  And the even deeper paradox is that the Founding Fathers - even the ones who enslaved people really did pave the way with both words and actions for eventual freedom.  I think history books say that, sort of, but we should shout it out and restore the Founding Fathers to their proper place of respect and admiration while living in and indeed loving the intellectual tension created by the fact that they *weren't* perfect.  Sort of like, "love the sinner, hate the sin": Hate the enslavement, love the ideas that led to eventual freedom.

Abraham Lincoln was a cool-handed dictator who had a tidy, Victorian moral disgust with slavery and yet little love for the actual liberation of enslaved black people.  Just look at his actions:  proposing an end to the expansion of slavery so that it would slowly wither - and what's a few decades under the Confederate lash, anyway?  You're up for that, right Malcom X's grandfather?  Another action: The Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that slavery was ended in places that were rebelling against the United States *because they were rebelling*.  Hey Confederacy, just trade in your muskets for ballots, and we'll allow you to commit a Holocaust for another 43 years or so?  Great deal, right? What, you still want to be your own nation-state?  Aww, maaaan!  Or passing the 13th Amendment under duress - I don't care what Spielberg and Daniel Day Lewis cooked up, good movie guys, but a tad idealistic - simply so that Radical Republicans would not embarrass him politically while he was trying to craft Reconstruction.

Look, I don't hate Lincoln.  His relative-to-the-times political courage was off the charts, A+, good job, stovepipe hats for everybody.  But his absolute political courage when held against a defined standard of All Men Created Equal is a C- at best - we'll let you graduate to twelfth grade, Abe, but you're lucky Common Core watered down the curriculum so much!

The irony, of course, is that Lincoln is recognized as a martyr for a cause he only sort-of believed in - black people's freedom.  But Lincoln's true passion, the idea of United States as a unified republic - survived as well.

Leaders whose real passion for abolition - the active, positive destruction of slavery and the liberation of our fellow humans - had such names as Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison.  These men and those they inspired organized others by the thousands and then the millions, nurturing the political culture that empowered Lincoln and other Republicans to at least say they were against the expansion of slavery. In relatively bright moments in 1863 (Emancipation Proclomation) 1865 (Thirteenth Amendment and abolition of slavery nationwide) and 1868 ("Radical", i.e. popular Reconstruction - as in 'you mean, there were so many Radical, true-and-blue anti-oppression Republicans that they overrode a moderate President and ran the entire Federal government out of Thaddeus Steven's boarding-house parlor?  Why, what were they, a majority that represented America's genuine mass political culture against stodgy 'regular' politicians?  No way!'), the whole system came crashing down in 1877 after a brokered Presidential election, and black American suffered under Jim Crow for 87 years.

Finally, we got the Voting Rights Act in 1964.  And if you want to talk about a politician who couldn't crowd surf - who was squished to the front of the room by passionate civil rights activists when they locked arms, singing and marching, and who forced this politician to then, pop - sweaty, stumbling, and disoriented - out the front door, where he would then have the temerity to claim to have led us there, why, that politician would be America's single worst President, Lyndon Baines "how many kids have you killed today" Johnson.  Yup, Mr. "we lost the South for a generation" Johnson - and why would enfranchising black people lose the South for a generation, which it didn't?

That, my friends, is a story for another blog.

Because it's been a big sarcastic night for this history major and it's time to go to bed.

Maybe the Benghazi Terrorists Will Join #NeverTrump Because They're Big Hillary Supporters

Today, whiny "conservatives" everywhere are pretending that they can't tell the difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.  So, what I think they should do, is grow up, put on their big boy pants, and vote for the candidate who is running against the candidate who allowed four Americans to be murdered at the hands of Islamic terrorists.  It's pretty simple.  You think you can do that for me, guys?  Because, I mean, it doesn't seem that hard.  Or maybe just vote for the candidate who, be it ever so small a possibility, is less likely to appoint a Supreme Court justice or six who will sanction the murder of millions and millions of children.  I mean, I can't believe we're even having this conversation.  If Trump has stepped on your toes, get some steel toed boots.  I would rather have a candidate who is at least nominally opposed to terrorism, child murder, and an incessant flood of illegal immigrants, however offensive he may seem, than a candidate whose actions demonstrate she has no problem with any of those things at all.

I guess what's really funny is that, as far as I can tell, I'm the most conservative person I know on a lot of topics, and I don't find Trump offensive at all (although I can see how other people do find him offensive, because he certainly does not sound like most politicians.)  I am in favor of gun rights, up to and including the infamous 100 round clip.  I am opposed to the murder of children, period (it's often given the sanitized, 'medical' name of "abortion", a term I suggest we all stop using as it tends to cloud one's reasoning on the subject.)  I am against illegal immigration, period.  I think, in fact, that the U.S. should put in place an immigration moratorium for five years while we figure this out.  I am pro-military - whatever that means - but it's important to point out these days, because generally liberals seem like they want America to lose every war.  I am in favor of free market economics within a context of reasonable trade policies, especially with third-world, developing economies and I don't think the government should simply tax and spend.  I'm aware that Donald Trump isn't a perfect, by-the-numbers conservative.  I'm aware that his political views hewed liberal for a lot of his life.  Well, so did mine.  People can change, and I'd like to think Trump has.

Still, I carry no illusions.  From my archly conservative perspective, Donald Trump, if elected - and I strongly hope he is - will probably be an annoying, centrist, dishwater President on most important policies other than immigration, and candidly, the voice of experience tells me he's likely to waffle on that.

But politics is the art of choosing the lesser of two evils.  And Donald Trump is vastly preferable to a lifelong feminist radical who sat back and did nothing while Americans were murdered, and who, without question, will go on supporting the murder of millions of children.

Four years of Hillary.  Four million children murdered.

Think about that.

So come on, guys.  Get rid of the hashtags, swallow your hubris, and do the right thing for America.  I'm sorry Trump didn't stroke your egos.

But this one is a no-brainer.

Any Midwesterner Could've Told You Free Trade was Bad, you idiots

Dear Third Way centrist Clinton-school lawmakers who voted for NAFTA and MFN status for China,

     
       You are staggering idiots.  I hope the rust that haunts every hard-working, honest town in the Midwest attaches itself to your hands and your foreheads like a Biblical plague.

       That is all.

       Your nemesis,

       Ben Phenicie

P.S. I now have evidence from your precious academic think tanks.  Don't you dare bother driving around our ruined towns to take an actual look.  Just read this, it's safer.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-01-26/free-trade-with-china-wasn-t-such-a-great-idea

Stop Bashing Trump, You Fake Republicans

 In a weirdly suicidal move, Republicans are now attacking their one great hope, Donald Trump.

 I'm aware that Donald Trump is not perfect.  In his frankness he can be abrasive.  And lately, his campaign has not been at its most disciplined.  Grouchy, sour grapes "Republicans" have emerged from the woodwork to attack him.  The liberals who control the government propaganda apparatus, education, and most of the media, have come to pile on, distorting Trump's statements and making him appear foolish.

 Donald Trump is under attack because he is not part of the traditional Republican Party political establishment.  However, the traditional Republican Party political establishment has been ineffective at combating Democratic ideas for over a century, and does not deserve to continue steering the party. Trump, by speaking his mind and actually formulating policies designed to benefit the majority of Americans, is a breath of fresh air.  He far more genuinely represents the party's base, and election results, before the Brutus-like knife Trump has gotten in the back in Wisconsin, have proven it. Republicans, like pharisee priests, hate him for it.

I don't want to vote for Ted Cruz, whose campaign lied and said that Trump's and Ben Carson's campaigns had been suspended on the day of the Iowa caucuses.  Kasich seems like an honorable man, but has not done the heavy lifting of generating the name recognition and national exposure needed to take on Hillary Clinton.  Of the remaining Republicans, Trump has the best chance of winning - but Republicans it seems have a bizarre desire to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by trying to either force a Cruz nomination through a - no doubt legal - machination of the delegate selection and convention process, or by running an oddball candidate like William Cristol or Paul Ryan after a brokered convention.  However, Cruz, Cristol, and the rest of the establishment have overseen a regime that brought about the disastrous Affordable Care Act, vast welfare dependency, and the oncoming end of education as we know it with the advent of Common Core.

"Wait," you say, "those are mostly Democratic policies."  Precisely.  The Republican establishment made an Obama presidency possible by foisting ideas that drove George W. Bush's approval ratings below 30%.  In this environment, it was impossible for Republicans to win.  Those same steersmen are still at the helm, although the struggle to regain control continues.

I urge anyone reading this to vote for Donald Trump.  I am aware of his faults. The political process is not always pretty, but our nation is at stake.  Four or eight years of Hillary Clinton will continue our slide into mediocrity, dependency, irrelevancy, malaise, and ultimately, subjugation.

Minimum Wage is as Ludicrous as Taxing the People Who Make It

        Today, millions of people will punch in for work at honest, simple, yet often-times challenging jobs in retail, restaurants, industry, and other places around the economy.  They will be paid at least $7.40 per hour, as the Federal government mandates.  They will be taxed at what the talking heads tell us is a reasonable rate.  They will then, through a Rube Golberg morass of paperwork, "file their taxes" sometime next year, probably in February, March, or April, after the Internal Revenue Service mails them their W-2 forms.  In the meantime, the Federal government will have held their money for the better part of a year - to say nothing of the taxes they paid in January, February and March, which will have been held for even longer.  Even a bank would pay a tiny fraction of a percent of interest.  Many investments pay even more.  The Federal government will pay no interest whatsoever, and indeed, will deny these people, who work for a living, the use of their money.  The Federal government will use this money for purposes ranging from the legitimate - the public defense and the several Constitutional things the government still does - to the ludicrous. This is a travesty and this practice, which denies an individual the use of their money that the government has no need of, and indeed, is planning to simply refund them, should be abolished.

     A related evil is minimum wage, a grossly unconstitutional limit to what an employer can pay an employee.  Minimum wage creates generational poverty by systematically locking inexperienced workers out of the best possible source of practical education - a job.  The reckless and dangerous argument that minimum wage should be increased will only compound this problem.  All work has dignity, and individual people should have the chance to work at whatever the best rate they can negotiate is.  If it is below $7.40 an hour, then it is better for someone to get a job and work their way up then to languish on the patchwork of public assistance programs that the liberal establishment has cobbled together.

Republicans Play Checkers, Democrats Play Chess

 The Republican Party, despite having better policy ideas 97.4% of the time, has been losing ground politically to the Democrats for a hundred years because the Democrats have developed more sophisticated approaches to politics both intellectually and culturally. This refinement has been especially noticeable over the past 50 years, since the advent of the Civil Rights legislation of 1964 - the time when the Democrats, having murdered, maimed, and oppressed black Americans throughout their entire history as a political party, suddenly decided that they were the thought-children of Fredrick Douglass and Harriet Tubman.

(This specific switch will be explored more in the future, but read Ann Coulter's Mugged for the eye-opening truth.)

 Do not kid yourself by looking at which party has controlled Congress and the Presidency. Democrats have far more effectively shaped the political culture and have defined the terms of the debate, especially since Franklin Roosevelt positioned unconstitutional actions that have drained America of its strength as being a benefit to individual people. Many of these programs now see their fullest expression today, and include food stamps, social security disability and the Department of Education.

 Republican presidents like Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and both George Bushes have simply been allowed to move about a landscape shaped, delineated, and populated by Democratic paradigms. Only Ronald Reagan truly re-shaped the debate, and, while his efforts were admirable, even he only slowed the decay that the Democratic party has subjected the country to since that party's inception.

 Democrats control education, the media, and the government welfare apparatus. Through these implements, they have shaped the public perception to their whims, and so fostered a public that is partially or wholly dependent on them. This is their plan - to create an endless cycle of dependency and mediocrity. Individual ambition, expression, liberty and indeed, life itself, are secondary to these goals. It is a mundane version of what Aldous Huxley imagined in the Brave New World.

 But the Democrats lack metacognition.  While perhaps dimly aware that they are driving the country over a cliff - you can see it occasionally in President Obama's posture and deep sighs - he is too intelligent to fully believe himself - they carry on with an apres moi, le deluge mentality - "after me, the downfall - but I don't need to worry about it.  It won't be on my watch.  I'm a decent fellow who sticks up for the working poor."

These paradigms which have come to dominate American thought must be shattered. If they are not, our country will likely fall into ruin or subjugation within five to eight decades.