Tag: DonaldTrump

Chickens Come Home to Roost

img_0563Throughout this fetid garbage bag of an election season, republicans have been clutching the proverbial pearls over the odious brand of populism offered by their presidential election standard-bearer, Donald Trump. Indeed, dozens of republicans who truly believe in putting America first have decided either to sit out the presidential race, vote for a third-party candidate or vote for Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton. If traditional democratic voters go to the polls in numbers that even approach those reached in 2012, their votes, combined with those of republicans who actually give a damn about America’s future, could send Secretary Clinton into the White House by a landslide in spite of the FBI Director’s blatant attempt to swing the election to Trump. But regardless of whether or not Secretary Clinton is victorious next week, republican leaders would do well to engage in some serious introspection regarding their role in getting us to where we are today. A full 40% of American voters are drinking Donald Trump’s toxic cocktail of bigotry and fear mongering. Though they would not admit it, such a combination highlights both the core of republican political appeals over the last half century and the abject failure of their plutocratic, special interest policy agenda in improving the lot of America’s working class.

President Obama argues that eight years of mindless, reflexive obstruction, reckless brinksmanship and tolerance if not encouragement of vituperative political rhetoric helped to create the Trump candidacy. We here at WokeCitizen believe that the unprecedented treatment of America’s first president of color represents merely the crescendo of cynical, Southern Strategy-style politics and that the chickens of ignorance and bigotry now roosting in the GOP have been on their way home for quite some time. From President Nixon’s initiation of the horribly failed “War on Drugs”, to President Reagan’s states’ rights speech in the county where civil rights workers were murdered and buried in an earthen dam, to President George H.W. Bush’s “Willie Horton” ads, to Mitt Romney’s assertion that delegates at the NAACP were looking for “free stuff”, to dozens if not hundreds of well-documented demonstrations of racially hostile rhetoric and policy actions in between, republican candidates have sought ballot-box success through cynical appeals to resentment of the proverbial “other”. Much of the time, such highlighting of unattractive otherness has been based on race. Is it any wonder that the current republican nominee seeks office in part through the vilification of Muslims and Mexican immigrants and the promise to protect white people from them?

Throughout this history, republicans have advanced an economic ideology that victimized working class people of all races even as working class whites continued to harken to their siren song of racial animus. As company after company decided that it was in the best interest of the shareholder to move jobs from the industrial midwest to far-away lands, republicans told white working class Americans that affirmative action was the source of their problems finding well-paying work. When people of color sought unemployment, retraining and other support to recover from devastating plant closures in urban areas, republicans told white working class Americans that those lazy people were looking for handouts, that they should stop having babies out of wedlock, get off their backsides and get to work. White working class Americans bought into this blame game and dutifully voted republicans who would protect them from the predatory other.

While in power, republicans pursued a policy agenda that had little to nothing to do with strengthening America’s working class and many of the most vulnerable members of that working class went right along with it. As investments in technology resulted in an explosion of productivity, the benefits of which rose to the shareholder class as wages stagnated, republicans told white working class Americans that more tax cuts for the wealthy would accelerate business formation and thus jobs. As businesses consolidated into ever-larger corporate behemoths and extracted synergies from “rationalization” of the labor force, republicans told working class white Americans that more deregulation and more privatization would remove the yoke of government from their lives and that the private sector would respond with more jobs at ever-increasing pay. In addition to protecting them from the “others”, white working class American bought into republican promises that the economic benefits of tax cuts, deregulation and government restraint would trickle down to them. Of course the trickle that most working class Americans are feeling on their heads is not the economic benefits of republican policies and after decades of uncritical support, white working class Americans are in full revolt.

Into this mix steps Donald Trump, who gives them the latest set of “others” to resent and who offers a simplistic and simpleminded policy agenda that he has no ability to execute even if he were inclined to do so once in office – except, of course for giving himself and those like him more tax cuts. He has derided trade and economic policies that supposedly drive manufacturing overseas as if the exodus of manufacturing jobs wasn’t already a half-century in the making. What’s more, trump hasn’t demonstrated a single scintilla of concern for working class people of any race for any of his 70 years on earth. He uses foreign-made products in each and every one of his businesses. In short, he is once again playing working class white people for chumps as have every republican candidate before him. The only difference? Trump is making overt appeals to the resentments, the fears, the insecurities and the bigotries of working class whites where many republican candidates before him were only slightly more subtle.

One cannot deny that a huge percentage of the republican base now rejects republican economic policy prescriptions and have embraced a populism that runs completely counter to entrenched republican ideology. As well, one might reasonably argue that if not for a half century of appeals to racial animosity and other flavors of bigotry, much of the current republican base wouldn’t actually be republican. Donald Trump has exposed both how deeply that bigotry has infested the once grand old party and how decidedly out of touch republican policy priorities are with the needs of working class people of all races.

Too Many Reasons To List

We’ve seen enough, haven’t you? Though we will be treated to one more inane spectacle on Wednesday, we can’t imagine hearing anything from any presidential candidate – democrat, republican, libertarian, green, whatever – that would compel me to vote for someone other than Hillary Rodham Clinton. To be frank, we haven’t been undecided about this election since the likelihood of the republican and democratic nominees became apparent. As the Libertarian and Green Party nominees have absolutely zero chance of becoming president and have not proven themselves to be serious candidates, they aren’t worthy of serious consideration in my opinion. This leaves Secretary Clinton, who fortunately is the most qualified candidate by several orders of magnitude, and Donald Trump, for whom the description of less worthy is a euphemism. Actually, any remotely aware people of basic human decency blessed with a requisite compliment of properly-firing brain synapses can be forgiven for considering the possibility of a Trump presidency to be an existential threat to this republic. As we go into the home stretch of this campaign season, I think it important to consider the reasons that a vote for anyone but Hillary Rodham Clinton is a vote for a more precarious American future. Frankly, we have a hundred reasons why the republican nominee should not be allowed anywhere near the White House unescorted. We think that the top 20img_0554 are as follows:

20 – His political coalition consists of a significant number of people who are rightly and correctly considered “deplorable” in both perspective and in behavior.

19 – From his attacks on former President Clinton’s infidelity, to his impugning of Secretary Clinton’s veracity, to his agitations over US trade policy, his hypocrisy and duplicity is nothing short of breathtaking.

18 – So many times, in so many ways, he confirms that his quest for the presidency is far more about confirming his greatness than it is about making America great again.

17 – He is proven to be an alarmingly consistent liar, which we cannot expect for him to reform once he takes the oath of office. Indeed, there is an over 70% chance that taking the oath of office would be an act of perfidy on his part given his track record.

16 – His obsessive need to personally attack any and all critics through social media indicates a psychological malady that could impair his ability to function and comport himself properly as president, particularly in foreign policy.

15 – In his attacks on military veterans and their families, he confirms a debilitating lack of understanding of what constitutes strength, heroism and patriotism.

14 – His refusal to make public his income tax returns indicates a high likelihood of significant conflict between his personal interests and those of the majority of Americans.

13 – Contrary to his criticism of foreign-made products and the impact of imported goods on American jobs, he has time and time again purchased and sold foreign-made products in his own business activities.

12 – He has a documented track record of stiffing small businesses.

11 – We can imagine what someone who loses almost a billion dollars of his own money in one year could do to our economy in four years.

10 – His campaign seeks voter support through appeals to fear, resentment and bigotry.

9 – The last time republicans were in control of all three branches of government, they set the stage for a total vapor-lock of global capital markets and the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

8 – As evidenced by his intention to incarcerate a political opponent as would a third world dictator, he either has no working knowledge of the Constitution of the United States of America, or has no intention of acting within its requirements.

7 – His obsequious behavior toward authoritarian foreign “leaders” like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un indicate a dangerous nescience about their threat to global security and attests to his own authoritarian proclivities.

6 – Even if one were to completely discount the allegations of sexual abuse brought to light so far, his well-documented history of misogyny and sexism renders him unfit to propose, assess, implement or advance policies related to the health and well-being of American women.

5 – His disparagement of America’s generals and his claim to know more about ISIS than those generals are indicative of a dangerous combination of profound ignorance and virulent megalomania.

4 – We’ve seen no evidence that he has ever given a tinker’s damn about working people in his 70 years on this earth. Only a galactic moron believes that he will care about working people on November 9th regardless of whether he wins or loses on November 8th.

3 – While advantageous for him personally, economic policy based on tax cuts for America’s most wealthy citizens has already proven to be a failure.

2 – Whether it is management of the legislative process, the formulation and execution of foreign policy, the development, execution and management of fiscal policy, or any other executive branch activity, he not only has no experience whatsoever, he hasn’t bothered to develop a remotely credible understanding of such essential activities. We cannot think of a major party candidate who is, and who proves himself to be, so profoundly unqualified for the office of President of the United States – in modern American history.

1 – The next president will nominate at least two and potentially up to four Supreme Court justices. He already has said that he would select Supreme Court justice nominees in the mold of Antonin Scalia. We want to see the next president select nominees who are closer in judicial perspective to Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

You may have 20 different reasons for doing everything in your power to keep the republican nominee from becoming President of the United States of America and we doubt that we could argue against any of them even if we wanted to. But the fact that you have 20 reasons – or even one really, really good one – should compel you to get yourself to your designated polling place as soon as possible.