Sunday 16 October 2016

The world is being rewritten as pulp fiction

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It's like a very bad novel, isn't it? Donald Trump might be POTUS depending on what Julian Assange leaks, from the bedroom where he is effectively imprisoned in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

Not that the emails are having any effect so far. Partly because they are not written by or even to Hillary. Americans, and everyone else, are far too riveted by stories of Trump putting his hand up diverse skirts. Following on from the tape in which Trump boasts about groping fans.

I'm not even sure the groping is having that much effect either. Hillary is ahead in one poll by much the same 4% margin as she was before the tape was found. Another shows her way ahead, another even shows Trump leading. 

79% of Republicans are enthusiastic about their candidate, which compares with 81% of Democrats who enthuse about theirs. 

Mitt aroused much more enthusiasm than either of these two.

I don't blame anyone who thinks Trump is preferable to Hillary, but for me the groping, on top of all the man's other defects, was too much. 

Above all, because were Donald Trump to win he would make America seem ridiculous, a joke in bad taste. And that would reduce America's moral authority, soft power and dignity. It would thereby make the world even more dangerous.

And, yes, I know very well that he is the peace candidate and Hillary likely to start wars.

It's like Henry Kissinger said of the Iran-Iraq War.
What a shame they can't both lose.
(It was reported weeks ago, by the way, that Dr. Kissinger and George Schulz would jointly endorse Hillary, but instead they said that they will not endorse either candidate.)

I hope Trump loses narrowly and the GOP controls both House and Senate, meaning gridlock. I think gridlock is a very good thing. The fewer new laws that are made and the less power a president has the better. And I hope many of the ideas Donald Trump has expressed are taken up by a successful anti-globalist Republican candidate in four years' time.

Hillary may not have groped anyone (she seemed to look lecherously at Christina Aguilera's cleavage, but that's allowed), but we know from Assange that she did say, 
My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere.
So I certainly do not blame those who are going to vote for Trump. 

H.H. Asquith could not safely be left alone with young girls, but he was a pretty good Prime Minister on the whole, though a Liberal. He also drank too much and gave us the word 'squiffy'. Trump is a teetotaler. Still I feel Trump just won't do.

18 comments:

  1. "So this week, when we could be having frenzied outrages about the racism of Clinton staffers, the conspiratorial anti-Catholicism of Clinton staffers, the crony capitalism of the frontrunner, and her ties to foreign governments, we are instead continuing to learn that the man who has bragged for decades about being a lecherous womanizer is that. It’s good for accomplishing the goal of electing Hillary Clinton and maintaining the status quo. But it might not be good for a media already distrusted by millions, or for institutions on the brink of crumbling."
    More here:
    http://thefederalist.com/2016/10/13/lockstep-partnership-clintons-media-bad-america/

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  2. Hillary Clinton is a realist. I don't think she really believes in a borderless global utopia. More likely she was probably trying to say something inspiring to spice up one of her often dull speeches.
    I will be very surprised if Mr Assange has anything important to share at this point. He's done a lot of fan dances with little leg to show -- his latest "bombshell" was a deflating request for money. We'll see.

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    1. Of course she wants a borderless world as a dream. Did you read this where Bill said he wanted the same thing? http://pvewood.blogspot.ro/2015/11/the-clintons-and-angela-merkel-believe.html

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  3. Mitt aroused much more enthusiasm than either of these two.

    You're very wrong on Trump.

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    1. Yes Trump does arouse much more enthusiasm than Mitt. Trump has found the g-spot of many millions of Americans. But he alienates more of his party's supporters than Mitt.

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  4. Paul much as I love you, you are bonkers. I hope Krusty the clown stands in the next American democratic chirade.

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    1. Gary Johnson and Bernie Sanders are even worse than these two, which you'd think was impossible.

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    2. Here we agree. Bernie and Gary are useless backseat drivers with no real plans and no talent for actually running things.

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    3. I'm no Gary Johnson aficionado, but it is a little pseudo-intellectual to claim the guy is worthless. He expanded from a one-man company, to one employing over one thousand workers. After his success in business, he was a successful two-term Republican governor in a Democrat-leaning state. He climbed the highest mountains in the world (including Mount Everest). He might run a crappy campaign, but he has run some things with a high degree of success - I would wager a lot more than most of us commenting on this blog.

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    4. Useless was the word he used and though none of us have achieved nearly as much as Johnson I can criticise a table or a film without being able to make one. He'd be fine if he were the sort of Republican who appealed to the right but he seems to want even easier immigration. And Aleppo?

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    5. They support him because they fear political correctness is making vital discussions about the country impossible—and conclude that any candidate who’s going to take this on is not going to be Miss Manners. They support him because they know what they will get if Mrs. Clinton wins, as now looks likely.

      They support him because they get the contempt dripping from Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton whenever the subject is the things they cherish: faith, patriotism, the decency of ordinary citizens, and so on. Above all, they support him because they also get that the elite contempt for Donald Trump is a proxy contempt for them.

      http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-cheap-moralizing-of-never-trump-1476745922

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    6. Regarding Johnson, Pius X claimed that he had no real plans or talent for running things, which is flat out wrong. As for his immigration plan, he wants to make the legal immigration process easier - which reduces the black market in immigration, so to speak. Just like legalizing drugs will reduce the illegal drug trade and all its ugly aspects, his approach is to simplify the immigration (and expand the guest worker program) in order to disincentivize foreigners from coming to the country illegally, or coming to work in the US without being able to leave easily (since most illegal immigrants are trapped in the US, in the sense that they would get in trouble if they tried to leave). A robust guest worker program works very well in the Gulf nations - although cultures and attitudes there are very different, and I am not sure if the same policies would have the same result in the US. I'm not necessarily in agreement with Johnson (disclaimer: I was rooting for McAfee in the primaries) but that doesn't mean he doesn't have a well thought out plan.

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  5. America keeps wishing itself humble. 'Guess the "peace candidate" will accomplish as much. In a sense, both are loosing - old bids for leadership in the ME and SE Asia. Donald would loose Europe too, unless it makes good of the latest claim that "we can talk with everybody" (Federica Mogherini). Of course, the world is larger - everyone has friends. Fingers crossed !

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  6. Alleged groping by discredited accusers?

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  7. Although it now seems a matter of stomping out fires that no longer threaten the house, the cheap (no skin in the game) cynicism that equites Trump to Secretary Clinton deserves to be stomped upon nonetheless. Trump started as a Berlusconi-like clown of a candidate who's morphed into a genuine monster--and that was before his public humiliation of his taped lechery. The most threatening demagogue in American history since Joe McCarthy, any sane person who thinks the American experiment worth continuing--with all its flaws--can not support this imposture. And as to Secretary Clinton, she brings to the table experience, pragmatism, and the savvy of a seasoned politician--all desirable qualities, popular opinion notwithstanding. Her greatest liability is that she remains at heart a Methodist do-gooder (and certainly not the Anti-Christ that the alt-right wants to impose upon her.) Will she go all Margaret Thatcher into a war? I doubt it. We do know that Trump would be too unstable to make any prediction. And, best of all, there's now a chance that the Democrats will gain control of Congress, thereby (one must hope), forcing the Republican Party to return from its regression back to the Know Nothing Party. Imagine if Obama had faced a Republican Congress at the beginning of his tenure: no stimulus. My goodness, the U.S. would have ended up like GB or Europe! A frightening thought--then we might really have gotten a Republican president.

    The trope of "a plague on both your houses" has been around about as long as I've been following American politics (about 50 years now), but never--even with Goldwater vs. Johnson--has the choice been so stark or so important. It's time to leave the cynicism at the door and woman-up.

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    1. I am not cynical. With hindsight I think Goldwater might have been better than LBJ - when I was younger I thought the Welfare State that LBJ created was a good thing but I am no longer sure. Goldwater begat Reagan. I hope that someone much better than Trump will champion the anti-globalist ides that Trump does.

      I agree that Trump won’t do.

      Yes he is comparable to Berlusconi but Berlusconi had his good points and helped create a sort of 2 party system in Italy. And I liked some of his policies, for example on immigration, civil partnerships. He made a big mistake sending troops to Iraq.

      Yes the comparison with McCarthy is apt.

      I don't care for McCarthy at all, but many (most?) of the people he exposed were Communists. You could even say that the far left was surprisingly influential in the USA except in the 1950s and early 1960s. With the Civil Rights movement and late 60s social revolution Marxists and left-wing democratic socialists became influential again, especially in universities.

      I think seasoned politician is a slight exaggeration - Hillary was given her seat in Senate because of her marriage and was then Secretary of State, a job most reasonably intelligent people could do - but few could do well. She was not one of those few, obviously. Look at Libya.

      Trump understands that politicians have a duty to serve the interests of the people of their country, which is why he attracts so much support. Even Sanders knows this. With Hillary you get the impression that she is half way to being a citizen of the world. This is why so many hate herYou see this with the Syrian refugee issue and much else. She reminds me of Angela Merkel except that Mrs M is a very canny politician who got where she because of her (ruthless) political skills.

      Had it not been for her marriage would Hillary have reached a state legislature?


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    2. And there are Hillary's lies and the Clinton Foundation.

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