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British Kowtow, Trump Panders to Ignorant
—The British people joined Donald Trump in proving that the framers of the U.S. Constitution enjoy well-justified plaudits for having designed an almost perfect form of democratic government. Their design could be our ultimate protection.
Foolishly, British Prime Minister John Cameron created a ballot initiative giving the masses a chance to vote up or down on remaining in the European Union. The mostly ignorant masses voted to leave, and are about to suffer greatly for that decision.
Similarly, the Republican Party allowed Trump to hijack it by not having the gates in place to ensure that an ignorant electorate would not choose a narcissistic demagogue as a presidential candidate.
The eponymous subject of the most popular play on Broadway, Hamilton, wrote in the first Federalist Paper that the Constitution he helped design denied direct elections for the very reasons the British and Trumpsters were triumphant. The general public is and will be ignorant. Today, we have cable TV earnestly making them more so.
Alexander Hamilton wrote that a pure democracy was rejected because of the danger of demagogue influencing an uninformed electorate. Everybody was racist in those days, most of the world is today, so his words were not directed at the xenophobia and racism that characterize the ignorant, just their ignorance.
Thus, the authors of the Constitution created a democratic government with a series of gates, including the electoral college and other steps designed to dilute the impact of an easily influenced voting population doing stupid things.
Ironically, Cameron launched the referendum to show his EU colleagues his country’s solidarity with the EU. He miscalculated the depth of British xenophobia, the same affliction of the part of the U.S. electorate that handed a major political party over to a demagogue who not only is amazing ignorant, he is potentially dangerous.
States and municipalities that allow voter initiatives should think twice before allowing such direct voting. California has had all sorts of voter referenda, called propositions, that turned out badly, some later overturned. An excellent was the three-strikes-you’re-out proposition.
Let’s keep the constitutional filters in place. The GOP would be well-advised to create a gate and slam it on an ignorant demagogue who would become its presidential nominee, and political jurisdictions at all levels would be well-advised to avoid voter initiatives.
Those who wrote the Constitution knew what they were doing.
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House Speaker Says He Supports a Racist
Logic can be as simple as a link from one thing to another. Or from one to another and another: Triangles have three sides. The drawing has three sides. The drawing is a triangle.
Logic also can be inferred, safely inferred, by a subject’s refusal to answer a question as asked. Logic also can be inferred by linking two sentences. House Speaker Paul Ryan called Donald Trump’s comments about a judge “the textbook definition of a racist comment.” But, he would not renounce his support of Trump as presidential candidate. Ergo, Ryan supports a racist.
Journalists are not allowed to make connections such as that. It would be subjective and therefore considered unethical. But, we know the logic and we know how to infer.
Poet Alexander Pope said this in a sort of poetic eulogy about a friend while he was still alive early in the 18th century, a pre-eulogy, if you will (the entire poem, An Epistle to Arbuthnot, reads as if he were referring to Trump. Keep Trump in mind as you read this snippet—and his would-be supporters).
“Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;
Alike reserv’d to blame, or to commend,
A tim’rous foe, and a suspicious friend;
Dreading ev’n fools, by flatterers besieg’d,
And so obliging, that he ne’er oblig’d;
Like Cato, give his little Senate laws,
And sit attentive to his own applause;
While Wits and Templers ev’ry sentence raise,
And wonder with a foolish face of praise.
Who but must laugh, if such a man there be?
Who would not weep, if Atticus were he?”
Pope gives you a way to infer what Mitch McConnell thinks of Donald Trump’s candidacy, as gleaned from a PBS interview that tried to pin him down, he avoiding a straight answer.
We don’t even have to explain the inference. Just read the words and understand what he did not answer. If someone asks you of someone is a racist and you did not believe that the person, the elected leader of your group, to be a racist, of course you would say no, he is not a racist, your emphasis depending on the amount of passion you wish to project.
McConnell reveals all by not doing so.
In reference to his celebrity book about himself, supposedly its promotion the reason he submitted to the interview, he was asked about people to had an influence on him, including two former senators he mentioned in his book.
“When you think about these people and their influence in your life, how does Donald Trump compare?“
McConnell: Well, he’s certainly a different kind of person in politics, totally different. The Republican voters wanted somebody from outside, and they picked somebody from outside…. They don’t seem to be happy with either candidate. They don’t care for Hillary Clinton and they don’t care for Donald Trump, but the American people, at least in the Republican primaries and caucuses, clearly wanted somebody totally different. And that’s who they nominated.”
“(Hillary Clinton) You know her. What do you think of her?”
McConnell: “Well, Hillary Clinton is a very, very experienced insider. So, you’re going to have a race between the ultimate outsider and a long-term insider. And the American people, I think, are going to have to make a big decision about whether they’re satisfied where the country is now. If they are, then I think Hillary Clinton would get another four years, and it would be very similar to the last eight. If, on the other hand, the country wants to dramatically go in a different direction, they’re certainly going to have the opportunity by voting for Donald Trump.”
“You have been asked in the last few days about what Donald Trump said about the judge, federal judge of Mexican heritage, and his denouncing him. You have said you don’t in any way accept what Donald Trump has said, but when you were asked if it was racist, you didn’t answer. Now that you have had some time to think….“
McConnell: “Well, what he said was — it was outrageous and inappropriate. And I couldn’t more strongly condemn that. The implication here is that those who came to America legally over the years are somehow second-class citizens. My wife came here at age 8 not speaking a word of English and ended up in the president’s Cabinet. We all got here from somewhere else going back in our lineage. And I think these gratuitous attacks on Americans who got here recently or whose parents got here recently need to stop.” Well-stated condemnation, but none for he who spoke it.
“At this point, Donald Trump is doubling down on that statement. He is not backing off of it. If he doesn’t back off, what are the implications?“
McConnell: “Well, he needs to back off. This is a time he ought to be reaching out and talking about things that the American people are consumed with, like the slow growth in the country, the lack of opportunity for all of us, the fact that they’re falling behind. There are plenty of things he ought to be talking about, rather than taking shots at Americans because of their ethnicity.” Another dodge.
“And, again, if he doesn’t back off of this and say that it was a mistake, what are the implications?“
McConnell: “Well, he needs to. He needs to quit doing this. This is not the way to bring America together. It’s not the way to unify the Republican Party, and it’s not the way to win the fall election.” What he needs to do, not what he should do, let alone what he must do to keep McConnell’s support.
“And what if he doesn’t?“
McConnell: “It’s not the way to win the fall election by doing what he’s been doing. It needs to stop.” A non-answer. Another dodge. No threat of a withdrawal of support, whatever that would mean. And here, the big tell:
“The Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson wrote today that you don’t believe Donald Trump is fit to be president. Do you believe he’s fit to be president?“
McConnell: “The American people are going to make that decision. And they’re in the process of determining who the next president is going to be. And I think, you know, it’s been pretty clear that, in the right-of-center world, that is, the primaries and caucuses, conducted among Republicans, they wanted to do something different, and that’s our nominee, and in the fall, we will see what the American people decide.”
“Do you think he’s fit to be president?“
McConnell: “I think we need to respect the wishes of voters. They have been busily at work making these decisions in primary after primary after primary. We will find out in the fall.” Super-duper dodge. What person who believed someone was fit to be president would dodge that question?
“Do you believe, Senator, there’s any chance the Republicans could choose another nominee at the convention in Cleveland?” A lame softball questions, yet it elicits not condemnation or criticism, but advice to the candidate.
McConnell: “I think the nomination fight is over, and our nominee ought to accept that graciously and begin to reach out to other members of our party who didn’t support him and pull them together and discontinue these attacks on citizens based on their ethnicity.” Pull them together. By what? He’s already revealed his fear and loathing of the candidate.
“What has his nomination done to the Republican Party?”
McConnell: “Well, right now, we’re in great shape. We have a record number of U.S. House members, 54 senators, 31 governors, more legislators and control of legislatures, too, that at any time since the ’20s. So, we’d like the keep it that way. The way to finish changing America is to win the White House. And I hope we can do it this fall.” Really? The way to keep those down-candidate majorities is to elect their antipathy candidate?
“Senator, people are looking at the character of their two choices this fall, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. What do they see? What should they see?“
McConnell: “Well, we’re going the find out this fall. The American people have a big decision to make. We couldn’t have two more different candidates than these two. Neither one of them are very popular, so it’s going to be for many Americans a difficult choice.” They should not see someone I am anxious to support, he failed to say. Damn him. Not with faint praise, but no praise, whatsoever.
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Ryan, McCain Choose Party Over Nation
It’s over. The last two Republicans standing, the two who supposedly stood for the conscience of their party, have capitulated. However they and others want to spin it, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Arizona Sen. John McCain capitulated and sold out their country to save the party they still call the GOP.
In effect, they said, “We are sacrificing the good of the country for the good of the GOP. Let the nation be damned.”
Both men know what a disaster Trump would be as president, putting at risk everything the country went through from the time it was founded to its position today as the world’s strongest, its nanny and its teacher by example.
Perhaps Ryan, McCain and whoever the others of their ilk are counting on (particularly McCain) the United States emerging from the ashes of a Trump-destroyed nation like the phoenix from the ashes, perhaps even literally. The clown is that dangerous.
He is so dangerous, some of his rhetoric has been criticized by one of America’s most evil men, the one who destroyed the U.S. Congress, Newt Gingrich. Trump is that much a threat.
In recent years, there have been so many unjust comparisons with the Nazies of Germany, the fascism of it and Italy, that it has become unfashionable for the legitimate media to use the term.
In Trump’s case, however, he continually evokes the comparison by his behavior, his words, his demeanor, venality, unbridled narcissism and childlike efforts to bully and get even with others. Unfortunately, those opinions are not that different from the average GOP voter, which suggests why he is the party’s candidate. Hell, he even looks like Mussolini.
Since Trump entered the presidential race, he has been the very definition of demagogue: someone who seeks to be a leader by appealing to the basest instincts and prejudices of would-be supporters: xenophobia, racism, pettiness, retribution, anti-authoritarian.
Perhaps Ryan and McCain think Trump would be constrained or blocked, if necessary, by Congress with the help of Republicans, either in the majority or minority. But, as we have learned in the last days of the Obama administration and in much of the Franklin Roosevelt administration, the president has a great deal of power Congress, or even the courts, cannot restrain.
If comparing Trump with Mussolini, or Hitler, who rose to power as a demagogue raging against everyone not a white German, seems a bit too much for readers to accept, consider an American, Sen. Joseph McCarthy of the early 1950s.
Is it not enough that Trump is the Republican Party’s presidential candidate in 2016 and, if things turn out well, could serve as a long-term albatross against it’s collective neck? How could any sane person consider accepting him by not opposing him or endorsing him, much less plumping for him, or (cough, choke) voting for him.
We can only hope that 2016 serves as the nadir of American politics.
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Is Obama About to Apologize for the A-bombing of Japan?
President Obama may be planning to issue a long-delayed apology to Japan for his country’s infamous status as the only nation to use atomic bombs on humans—accounting for at least 200,000 deaths, 95 percent of them from burning, in just the first five months, and countless thousands who have died as a result since.
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Obama is scheduled to attend the annual G7 economic conference on an island at Shima, Japan, May 26 and 27.
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He would be the first by U.S. president to visit either city since the Aug. 6 and 9, 1945 bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively.
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He said months ago that he wanted to visit Hiroshima on that trip.
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Secretary of State John Kerry paid he called a “gut-wrenching” visit to the Hiroshima near-ground-zero memorial in mid-April along with his cohorts at a ministerial-level G7 meeting. In answer to a question about whether he thought Obama should visit, said, “Everyone should visit Hiroshima,” a phrase that includes Obama as one of the every.
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Obama’s style has been to issue U.S. apologies when the need for one is morally obvious.
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Obama has warned repeatedly about the proliferation of nuclear weapons. In 2009, he noted that the U.S. was “the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon; the U.S. has a moral responsibility to act.” That position helped win him the Nobel Prize for peace.
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The Japanese press reports arrangements for Obama to visit at the end of the conference on May 27, but not officially confirmed for security reasons.
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The lack of an apology or any acknowledgement by the U.S. has been a long-standing thorn in the side of relations with Japan.