CNN's Fareed Zakaria
On this past Sunday's (5/29/16) show, CNN’s Fareed
Zakaria asked the question made popular by a young Washington Post reporter, “Trump claims he wants to ‘Make America
Great...AGAIN,’ so what period of time is he referring too?”
That inanity posits that Trump is referring to
history, when, in fact, he’s referring to the size of the American bureaucracy.
One could claim it’s the 80s that he's referring to, although Trump doesn’t say
that, as the 80s were a period two decades past the most explosive growth in
the American government, in the wake of the JFK assassination.
BUT
the 80s were merely the last period when “smaller government” seemed to be in
fashion, politically and philosophically. In actuality, it hasn’t REALLY been in effect since before FDR!
A far better critique of Donald Trump is that he’s
been “short on specifics,” and Trump has often been "short on
specifics" in a variety of areas.
However, the idea some people have that those who'd
vote for Trump see him as some sort of "savior," is wrong.
Donald J. Trump started out as a much deserved
"thumb in the eye" of the GOPe (who’d wantonly ignored their own base
at their peril), but has become a thumb in the eye of the entire political
establishment AND our corrupt,
incompetent media.
Bernie Sanders is a nice, albeit naive old man, once
thrown out of a Commune for "lack of work." Bernie Sanders is that
nice guy, whom it’s often said about, “It's just too bad he's such a horse’s
ass.”
STILL,
"The kids" LOVE Bernie's
message of "more and better free stuff." Most of those dopey kids
will, of course, become Conservatives when they eventually start working and
paying their own bills...and taxes.
Hillary Clinton is Jeb Bush, dualing Corporatists.
Once Jeb and Rubio were out, all that Koch brother money went to...yup,
Hillary. They know a bought & paid for career politician when they see one.
Funny how the media doesn't have a problem with "the evil Koch
brothers" when they're funding their guy...or gal.
Obama is the same, as well. I was actually worried
that Barry Sotoero was going to be a daffy Bernie Sanders type at the start,
nationalizing the banks, the auto industry, etc., but NOPE, he cozied right up to the billionaire bankers who run BOTH political Parties, the media and
fund Academia. Smart move.
Turns out that what Barry, Hillary & Jeb all
know that Sanders apparently doesn't, is that Corporatism WORKS, while the
Command (government-run) economy DOESN’T.
Trump knows this too, but he also knows how corrupt
and broken this entire political system really is AND he knows that if the tax system can be meaningfully reformed,
to a Fair Tax, or Flat Tax, a major way pols reward BIG DONORS (via tax loopholes, etc.) will be gone.
A Trump COULD
do far more to fix a broken system than anyone else running, short of the
Libertarian nominee, but NONE of the
other major candidates really want to fix the system...well, maybe Bernie, but
he's unfortunately clueless.
That's why, right now, I'm probably voting for
"the thumb in the eye," UNLESS
somehow Libertarian candidate and former governor of New Mexico, Gary Johnson,
can persuade me that another LP vote won’t be a wasted one.
The anti-Free Speech Left ("Progressives")
has been a gift from the political/media class and ironically enough, a boon to
Trump. It’s a naive, misguided and dangerous movement and it’s been that for
awhile now. The Black Lives Matter Movement is an outgrowth of that, which has
also been promoted and financed by BIG Corporate donors and gleefully embraced
by the political/media class, together they make for an effective bogey man for
Trump to play off.
AND
it’s not that hard to play off such movements, as they’re virtually entirely
based on lies. For instance, in 2015 police in the USA killed 987 civilians,
virtually all of them were attacking police (assailing a cop with your hands
amounts to "attempted murder of a police officer" because you're
assumed to be going for that cop's gun) at the time...50% of those killed by
cops were WHITE, 26% were BLACK. As Heather Mac Donald has noted that violent
crime rates would indicate that far more than 26% of those killed being black.
40% of all cop killers have been black, but the BLM movement has sought to make
black thugs sympathetic. That serves the existing prevailing political agenda
of further alienating various ethnic/racial groups and polarizing people along
non-ideological/political lines.
One of the saddest things about our current
political climate is that successful, hard-working blacks are often encouraged
to see the travails of dysfunctional blacks as leverage for themselves. The
black middle class gets “preferences” and other “set-asides” that everyone
knows poor, dysfunctional blacks can’t take advantage of, so the poor suffer,
so that the more well off, get even more freebies. That's sad.
Fact is, little IS,
or even CAN be done to save
dysfunctional people, black, white, or other from THEMSELVES.
Mike Brown and Eric Garner were dysfunctional
people. Decent blacks have no more in common with them, than I do with Jeffrey
Dahmer and Bill Ayers.
