By Manifesto Joe
The mogul of Atlantic City is doing some high-stakes gambling these days. And if he wins, the country is likely to lose -- BIG.
I didn't consider Donald (T)rump to be all that dangerous, even amid the comparisons to Hitler and such -- until last Thursday night. I thought of him in terms of a corrupt buffoon, akin to Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian prime minister and media mogul. But after his dark acceptance of the Republican Party nomination for the presidency, I had second thoughts.
Trump has supporters who resemble Nazis in their pugnaciousness and not-so-subtle white supremacy, and he does nothing to discourage them. He actually said he doesn't know enough about the KKK to refute David Duke's endorsement of him. Describing himself as the "law-and-order" candidate, he's taking many pages out of the campaign playbook of the late Alabama Gov. George Wallace, and he's proving much more successful than Wallace was. He's put together a coalition of bigots, rednecks, gun nuts and other assorted psychos, and if he can get them to the polling places (some perhaps for the first time) in November, he could very well be elected president. After his convention speech, he was leading in the polls.
The Republican Party, the establishment of which seems a bit stunned by Trump's success, brought this on themselves. As far back as the Goldwater bid for the presidency in 1964, the GOP has catered to Southern bigots. Nixon extended the party's "Southern strategy" in 1968 and 1972, and by the time Reagan was the nominee in 1980, the South was solidly in the hands of the GOP. The Republicans have done all they could to court this type of voter -- working-class right-wingers who embrace a single issue, whether it be abortion, gun rights, or something else.
Now they've taken control of the party, like a Frankenstein monster, and the Republican Old Guard -- the economic royalists who used to call all the shots -- had no one on hand to back Donald Trump down.
If he ends up losing and destroying the Republican Party "coalition" of rednecks, the party moguls have no one to blame but themselves.
But what if he wins? Polls indicate that it's possible. And this fellow isn't merely stupid, like Il Doofus (Bush 43) appeared to be. This is a cunning megalomaniac with no apparent regard for the facts. Media observers pointed out that his bloviation on crime was false, with statistics showing that violent crime has declined since Obama became president. Yet he stands by everything, as usual.
One saving grace for the country may be his inexperience. As a political amateur, his mishandling of the GOP convention and of his own campaign may indicate that a Trump administration wouldn't go the distance. Politics is a contact sport not played well by amateurs, especially at the national and international levels.
But how much damage could he do in the meantime? As distasteful as I sometimes find Hillary Clinton, she's probably got my vote, because I don't care to find out how much damage Trump can do.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Tuesday, July 26, 2016
Sunday, July 17, 2016
From Joe's Vault, November 2012: Does Donald Trump Belong In Jail For Suggesting 'Revolution'?
By Manifesto Joe
I'm pretty much of a First Amendment purist. No matter how contemptible the speech is, in the good ol' U.S. of A., it's supposed to be free, and protected by law.
But a question now nags me. If Romney had won the presidential election, and someone with the background of, say, Bill Ayres, tweeted something suggesting "revolution," do you think he would be getting a visit from the Department of Homeland Security before long? I think it's quite possible that he would.
Donald Trump has a long history of being hostile to President Obama. He was one of the main instigators of the "birther controversy," and he persists in this behavior even after Obama won re-election.
And a recent tweet from him was reported this way in examiner.com:
Donald Trump has no regrets when it comes to his so-called Election Day Twitter rant in which he claimed the United States was not a democracy and called the election "a sham and a travesty." He later went on to say "More votes equals a loss...revolution!" and "The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy."
Trump says he has no regrets about this. Here's a link to the complete story.
Was Trump genuinely advocating a violent revolution to overthrow the U.S. government, because the election didn't go the way he wanted? Only "The Donald" could tell you for sure what was going through that privilege-numbed skull of his. I'm just judging by what he said on Twitter, and he's standing by it.
If he's not backing down, perhaps he ought to be put under Homeland Security surveillance. I wouldn't advocate that he go to jail, at least not now. That would just make a "martyr" of him.
If Romney had won, and it were Bill Ayres tweeting such things, I think there'd be agents staking out his house.
But Trump, being a right-wing billionaire, probably isn't going to have to answer to anyone for his reckless remarks. Stay tuned.
Postscript: Rock guitar has-been Ted Nugent tweeted that Obama's supporters were "pimps whores & welfare brats." Wow. Are there really over 61 million of us? Check out the cartoon at the link.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
I'm pretty much of a First Amendment purist. No matter how contemptible the speech is, in the good ol' U.S. of A., it's supposed to be free, and protected by law.
But a question now nags me. If Romney had won the presidential election, and someone with the background of, say, Bill Ayres, tweeted something suggesting "revolution," do you think he would be getting a visit from the Department of Homeland Security before long? I think it's quite possible that he would.
Donald Trump has a long history of being hostile to President Obama. He was one of the main instigators of the "birther controversy," and he persists in this behavior even after Obama won re-election.
And a recent tweet from him was reported this way in examiner.com:
Donald Trump has no regrets when it comes to his so-called Election Day Twitter rant in which he claimed the United States was not a democracy and called the election "a sham and a travesty." He later went on to say "More votes equals a loss...revolution!" and "The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy."
Trump says he has no regrets about this. Here's a link to the complete story.
Was Trump genuinely advocating a violent revolution to overthrow the U.S. government, because the election didn't go the way he wanted? Only "The Donald" could tell you for sure what was going through that privilege-numbed skull of his. I'm just judging by what he said on Twitter, and he's standing by it.
If he's not backing down, perhaps he ought to be put under Homeland Security surveillance. I wouldn't advocate that he go to jail, at least not now. That would just make a "martyr" of him.
If Romney had won, and it were Bill Ayres tweeting such things, I think there'd be agents staking out his house.
But Trump, being a right-wing billionaire, probably isn't going to have to answer to anyone for his reckless remarks. Stay tuned.
Postscript: Rock guitar has-been Ted Nugent tweeted that Obama's supporters were "pimps whores & welfare brats." Wow. Are there really over 61 million of us? Check out the cartoon at the link.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Friday, July 15, 2016
From Joe's Vault, May 2011: Bin Laden Isn't Qualified To Be Dead Until Donald Trump Sees The Death Certificate
By Manifesto Joe
This May 2, 2011, blog post came to mind recently, as Republicans prepare to anoint birther-in-chief Donald Rump (er, Trump) as their presidential nominee. The question I would ask is: With so much horror happening in the world now, can the U.S. afford to have a neo-fascist buffoon like this man as president? Oh well, here goes, from over five years ago:
The problem is, how would we know that it wasn't a fake?
I guess that means that "The Donald" and all the rest of us will have to see the bullet-riddled body. But if the face has been shot to pieces, how would we know that Special Forces didn't just dredge up some 6-foot-4, skinny Arab for target practice? How would we know that Osama isn't actually still alive, scarfing hummus and falafel and advising that closet Muslim in the White House?
Well, by now I suspect you get the point of this sarcasm.
Any credit here for Obama?
Barack Obama seemed downright presidential Sunday night while announcing this big score of scores. But will he get any credit? If you watch Fox "News" during the next week, I'll bet that Il Doofus gets much more credit than Obama will. And Bush 43 couldn't get this guy for over seven years -- in fact, Bush diverted U.S. attention away from bin Laden and the Afghanistan-Pakistan region with his rogue-nation invasion of Iraq. That cost this country countless billions, some of which should have been focused on a terrorist network that actually attacked us. And according to some estimates, it cost over a million Iraqi lives.
I hope that the American people have sense enough to know that this day should have come much sooner, and likely would have, if the country's priorities hadn't been grotesquely and viciously distorted by ruthless, self-serving people.
This post is going to strike some people as irreverent and brutal. Sometimes honesty has an unfortunate way of sounding like that.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
This May 2, 2011, blog post came to mind recently, as Republicans prepare to anoint birther-in-chief Donald Rump (er, Trump) as their presidential nominee. The question I would ask is: With so much horror happening in the world now, can the U.S. afford to have a neo-fascist buffoon like this man as president? Oh well, here goes, from over five years ago:
The problem is, how would we know that it wasn't a fake?
I guess that means that "The Donald" and all the rest of us will have to see the bullet-riddled body. But if the face has been shot to pieces, how would we know that Special Forces didn't just dredge up some 6-foot-4, skinny Arab for target practice? How would we know that Osama isn't actually still alive, scarfing hummus and falafel and advising that closet Muslim in the White House?
Well, by now I suspect you get the point of this sarcasm.
Any credit here for Obama?
Barack Obama seemed downright presidential Sunday night while announcing this big score of scores. But will he get any credit? If you watch Fox "News" during the next week, I'll bet that Il Doofus gets much more credit than Obama will. And Bush 43 couldn't get this guy for over seven years -- in fact, Bush diverted U.S. attention away from bin Laden and the Afghanistan-Pakistan region with his rogue-nation invasion of Iraq. That cost this country countless billions, some of which should have been focused on a terrorist network that actually attacked us. And according to some estimates, it cost over a million Iraqi lives.
I hope that the American people have sense enough to know that this day should have come much sooner, and likely would have, if the country's priorities hadn't been grotesquely and viciously distorted by ruthless, self-serving people.
This post is going to strike some people as irreverent and brutal. Sometimes honesty has an unfortunate way of sounding like that.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
