What Was Russia Up To?

The WaPo article, "Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House" is plainly a cover-up of Barack's fickleness.

First, it is impossible to take the article at face value.  Not only does the WaPo give no plausible reason why Russia should favor Trump over Clinton, recent history suggests otherwise.  Recall the open-mic whisper of Obama's, in March 2012, in which he assured then Russian president Medvedev "After my election I will have more flexibility".  To what end, one wonders?  And previously there was the famous "Reset Button" affair between Hillary and then Russian foreign minister, Lavrov.

And it was under Obama/Clinton that Russia returned to the world stage in a really big way.  Absorbing Crimea, starting a fight in Ukraine, and becoming hegemon in Syria.  What's not to love?  If you are a Russian.

So, it has been under Obama/Clinton that Russia has been able to advance its interests prodigiously, most especially undermining the EU, which the Russians hate and against which the Americans have done exactly...oh, let me see now, hmmm... nothing.  If there is a reason to suppose anything would be different in a Clinton administration, I have not heard it.

Second, suppose the Russians were trying to influence the 2016 elections.  What did they do?  In point of fact, all the Russians did was to reveal to us the real Hillary Clinton.  Absolutely, positively nobody has claimed the Hillary emails are false, that the leaks are a disinformation campaign.  To the contrary, the depressing fact is that the Wikileaked emails really are from Hillary and her creature, John Podesta.   How depressing is that?  So the Russians have done us a huge favor and we owe them a debt of gratitude.

Now, that I think about it, I am reminded of the Vietnamese incursion into Cambodia, around 1978-79.  Let me remind you, first, that by the late 1970's, the Vietnamese were really tough motherfuckers.  They had been in a state of constant war from 1946 until 1975, first kicking French butt, then kicking American butt.  They had endured real hardhsip, witnessed real carnage, for a generation and they were not to be trifled with.

Now, in 1975 Pol Pot, as leader of the Kmer Rouge, took over Cambodia.  Although Hitler, Stalin, and Mao killed vastly more people, in absolute numbers, pound-for-pound Pol Pot (always "Pol Pot", never "Mr. Pot", for some reason) was the worst human being who had ever lived, if he was a human being, at all. Through sheer brutality, oppression, degradation, and insensate violence, Pol Pot murdered fully 1/4 of the entire Cambodian population, as documented in the famous movie, "The Killing Fields", based on the reportage of NY Times correspondent Sidney Schanberg (from when the NY Times still practiced journalism).

The Khmer Rouge were so awful that even the battle-hardened Vietnamese could not stomach them.  The Vietnamese were compelled, by human decency and nothing else, to march into Cambodia and put an end to the Khmer Rouge, finally.  G-d bless them.

As with Vietnam in Cambodia, so with Russia in the American elections of 2016.  The Russians are no pussycats.  They are as corrupt and as venal as they come.  And yet, even they could not stand the blatant deceit, mendacity, and corruption of the Clinton Crime Family---even as that corruption served their own interests.

Compelled by sheer human decency and nothing else, or so it seems to me, the Russians drew back the heavy curtains and let sterilizing rays of daylight shine onto the undead Hillary Clinton, who then burst into flames.

Only towards the very end do we get a true sense of what this story may really be about.

The reluctance of the Obama White House to respond to the alleged Russian intrusions before Election Day upset Democrats on the Hill as well as members of the Clinton campaign.
...
“The lack of an administration response on the Russian hacking cannot be attributed to Congress,” said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, who was at the September meeting. “The administration has all the tools it needs to respond. They have the ability to impose sanctions. They have the ability to take clandestine means. The administration has decided not to utilize them in a way that would deter the Russians, and I think that’s a problem.”

And so, Barack Obama, a man incapable of action, failed to act.  Yet again.

Donald Trump is Barack Obama

I am working on the theory that Barack Obama and Donald Trump are the same person, politically speaking.

If you get your information mainly from the MSM, the votes for Barack are one of the great mysteries of the 21st century.  Whatever you may think of the man as an individual, he had no resume going into the 2008 presidential elections.  His only evident attributes are that he is a socialist and---I hesitate say it, since political correctness has been described as the "war on noticing"---he is black.

The MSM made much of both.  They were euphoric about the prospect of having the first Black president, and they were industrious in portraying the man as a political centrist, so as not to frighten the horses.  But, secretly, we all know he is a socialist.

<<<nudge, nudge, wink, wink>>> 

Either way, he was not the kind of man we normally imagine mid-western Whites would turn out for, in large numbers.

Ah, but he was also something else.  Barack was an Outsider.  Or, so it seemed, at the time.  During the Democratic primaries of 2008, the man came out of nowhere to defeat the Establishment candidate, the anointed Democratic standard bearer, the notorious, HRH HRC.  (That's a little British lingo for you.  "HRH" is "Her Royal Highness".)  And he went on to defeat the other Establishment candidates, first John McCain in 2008 then Mittens Romney in 2012.

Looked at in this way, the political life of Barack Obama is not so strange or unexpected.  There have been plenty of signs, for years, that the American people have grown restless with the Established Order.  You may recall the 1992 elections and the peculiar candidacy of Ross Perot.  For all his quirkiness and suspiciously little commitment to his own cause, he garnered nearly 20% of the popular vote in the general election.  Lots of people commented at the time, and then Perot was forgotten because he did not persist, because no other capable independent candidate came forward, and because the Established Order wanted to forget.

So, when an apparent outside candidate materialize again in 2008, he got everybody's attention.  That outside candidate was Barack Obama.

The MSM, being ideologically motivated entirely by race and class and race and class and race and class, saw in Barack a candidate of race and class.  That is how they spoke of him, they assumed everybody else saw him just the same way, and that is how I saw him, too.

Look, when it comes to skepticism about the MSM, I take my hat off to no one.  But you can't be vigilant every moment of every day.  It's not as if I have gone out to lunch with Barack, regularly or ever, so I don’t know the man.  The MSM talk of Barack in terms of race and class, and I thought of Barack in terms of race and class.

But, here's the thing.  In 2008, not only did a whole lot of people vote for Barack whom you might not have expected would vote in that way, but a lot of those same people voted for Donald Trump in 2016.  Now, this is an odd thing, and you really have to think about that for a bit. 

If you think exclusively in terms of race and class, it's impossible to square this circle.  But, if you start to think in terms of the Outsider, if you remember Ross Perot and remember that Americans are becoming, are already, fed up with the Established Order, things start to make more sense.

It makes sense to think that the people who voted for Barack in 2008, because he was the Outsider, might very well vote for Trump in 2016, because he is the Outsider.  And poor Hillary lost to Donald Trump in the 2016 general elections for exactly the same reason she lost to Barack Obama in the 2008 primaries:  she was the Establishment candidate, each time, in a time when voters were rejecting Establishment candidates.

So, in 2016 as in 2008, HRH HRC was the same Establishment candidate losing to the same Outsider in the age of the Outsider.  Barack Obama of 2016 is not the Barack Obama of 2008.  In the 2016, Barack is just another Establishment figure.  In 2016, Donald Trump is the Barack Obama of 2008.

Finally, a word about the MSM.  They are certainly important, but maybe not as important as they think of themselves.  In 2008, the MSM was in the tank for Barack and they appear to have succeeded in putting him into the White House.  But, in 2008 the MSM was working with the zeitgeist.  I.e., they favored the Outsider at a time when Americans favored the Outsider. 

In 2016, the MSM, for reasons best known to themselves, favored the Establishment candidate.  They worked against the zeitgeist, and America’s ears were closed to them.  No doubt, by their efforts the MSM made the race closer than it might otherwise have been, but working against the zeitgeist is always going to be very heavy lifting.  In the end, it was the zeitgeist that won in 2016 just as it won in 2008.  It was the zeitgeist each time, not the MSM.

The Rodney King Election

Let me try another argument for why it is wrong to make much of Hillary's lead in the popular vote.

As of 12:30 pm, 12/13/2016, Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump by 630,877 votes.  It sounds like a lot.  In any state-wide race, like for the U.S. Senate, this kind of lead would be decisive if not overwhelming.  After all, the lead, itself, is larger than the entire populations of Wyoming (586,107) and Vermont (626,042) and nearly the population of Alaska (738,432).  But, in a nation of 324,720,797 people, who cast 127,203,552 votes, Hillary leads Trump by 0.5%---one half of one percent. Think of it this way.

Imagine the U.S. Senate is split exactly 50/50:  50 Democratic senators and 50 Republican senators.  Now, imagine that one senator changes his party affiliation from Democratic to Republican.  Now the split is 49 Democrats and 51 Republicans.  This creates a two vote difference in favor of the Republicans or a 2% advantage.  So, one senator crossing the aisle gives the Republicans a 2% advantage.

Hillary has a 0.5% advantage over Trump.  Her popular advantage is 1/4 the size of the Republican advantage in the example I just gave.  In other words, Hillary's advantage does not even rise to the level of one senator crossing the aisle.

Friends, there is no ground swell of popular support for Hillary Clinton.  Judging by the presidential vote, alone, we are one seriously divided nation.  That's all.

Furthermore, if you look at the larger political landscape, as I have argued in my blog essay, "Humility",  the reasonable assumption is that the American people have rejected the Democratic Party, and they have rejected Hillary Clinton with it.

The strange problem in the 2016 election is that the rejection of one candidate does not proportionately translate into the acceptance of the other.  The two candidates are structurally different.  Hillary Clinton was the leader of the Democratic Party.  If you reject the party you reject Hillary.  One clear result of the 2016 elections is that the American people have rejected the Democratic Party.

Donald Trump was not the leader of the Republican Party.  He may be that, now, but if he is that leader (and I am not sure that is true), he became their leader by beating them to a pulp with a spiked club.  I have in mind the grisly images of the annual fur seal hunt on the ice floes off Newfoundland.  (Look up those images only if you have a strong stomach.)  Thus, where rejecting the Democratic Party implies rejecting Hillary, favoring the Republican Party, as Americans clearly have done, does not instantly translate into accepting Donald Trump.

So, the result of the 2016 presidential election, alone, is unclear.  The only way to make sense of it, I think, is to put it into the context of all the elections:  state and national.  In that context, the American people rejected Hillary, and we are left with Trump by default.

It's a hell of a thing.  I desperately hope we will have greater clarity next time.  But that's where we are, today.  We have to accept Donald Trump, and all I can do is quote the notorious Rodney King:  "Can't we all just get along?"

Humility

The election of November 8, 2016 was a grinding experience for everyone.  A lot of people think Hillary is an awful person but Trump is worse, and voted accordingly.  A lot of other people think Trump is an awful person but Hillary is worse, and voted accordingly.  I don't see anyone actually celebrating the outcome.  At best, some people are feeling relieved.  Others are feeling an impending dread.  None of this is good. 

Worst of all, there are some vicious, malicious people rubbing salt into the national wound.  They are advancing their hatred of the American people by promoting the idea that Donald Trump stole the election and is, therefore, an illegitimate president.  It is important to understand why they are wrong.

Looked at narrowly, there appears to be an injustice done.  If you look only at the votes cast for Trump and Clinton, it appears that Hillary won the popular vote but the presidency is unjustly awarded to Trump.  There are several ways to think about this.

As of 10 am, 11/12/2016, four days after the election, the NY Times reports that Hillary leads Trump by 574,000 votes.  This does sound like a lot.  The entire state of Wyoming has a population of only 586,000 people, and a lead of 574,000 votes in any state-wide election, in any state, would be decisive.  But, in a country of 323 million people, in a national election that saw 127 million votes cast, a lead of 574,000 votes is about 0.46% of all votes cast.  It is far more meaningful to say that our nation is divided, than to suggest that the election was thrown to the undeserving candidate.

Another measure of the popular resistance to the blandishments of Hillary Clinton is campaign spending.  For many years people, especially on the political Left, have bemoaned the connection between money and politics.  The idea is that money too easily influences the weak minded.  This connection is still valid.  And yet, Hillary spent actually twice the money of Trump, to produce her 0.46% lead in the popular vote.  And her vaunted "ground game" came to nothing.  Well, not exactly nothing;  imagine the election outcome if the spending pattern were reversed or, at least, more even.  There is the distinct possibility that Trump would have garnered a dramatic advantage over Hillary.

Along this line, you must also consider that Donald Trump ran into unprecedented head winds.  He ran against the ENTIRE political establishment.  Obviously, he ran against the Democrats.  He also ran against the Republicans.  And he ran against the pundit class and against the entire Fourth Estate.  That the entire political establishment worked against him, and still he won, has to tell you something about the deep well of support that Donald Trump enjoys among the American people.

Finally, a broader view of the political landscape suggests there is no injustice, in the first place.  While votes for the presidency suggest an exactly divided nation, the results of elections for the  House of Representatives, for the U.S. Senate, and for state governments, reveal a more coherent electorate.  The American people have clearly rejected the Democratic Party.  As Vox.com reports, eight years of Barack Obama have reduced the Democratic party to “a smoking pile of rubble.”  We can reasonably infer that the American people also rejected Hillary Clinton.

To believe otherwise is to believe that the same people who installed so many Republican state legislators, governors, congressmen, and senators, would have looked upon the standard bearer of the Democratic Party that they had just roundly rejected and exclaimed, "Yeah!  That's our gal." 

I don't think so.  The American people rejected Hillary Clinton. Period.  Their acceptance of Donald Trump is another, more complicated, matter. 

People on my side of the political divide are entitled to feel some relief at the outcome of November 8.  People on the other side of the political divide should be feeling some humility.  Nobody has anything to celebrate.  Introspection, on all sides, should be the order of the day.  And what certainly should not be tolerated, is this small, vicious, malicious element in our society already working diligently to “rub raw the resentments of the people.”

No Vendetta Against Hillary Clinton

There is growing chatter about Rudi Giuliani becoming President Trump's Attorney General.  We should be so lucky.  Rudi Giuliani is a brilliant man with a spectacular record of accomplishments.  Seventeen years after he left the mayoralty, NYC still benefits from his enlightened leadership, whose effects are far larger than crime control, important as that is.

If Barack does not pardon her, one of the first questions that AG Giuliani must consider is what to do about the unindicted co-conspirator, Hillary Rodham Clinton.  This is not a simple question.  Even though she is, at this moment, officially a private person, even though putting her in jail may be the right thing to do, HRC was almost our president.  She was the vessel for the hopes and aspirations of fully half the American people.  And if President Trump is to have any hope of uniting this deeply divided country, this fact is not to be lightly dismissed.  I think AG Giuliani has a careful choice to make.

Of course, if Barack pardons Hillary, then the case is closed on her.  If Barack does not pardon Hillary, Giuliani must serious consider simply closing the case against her, anyway.  He should definitely purse, with vigor, the case against the Clinton Foundation, but not with the intention of jailing HRC, herself.  Of course, if HRC obstructs justice, lies to FBI agents, or commits new crimes, that is another matter, entirely.  But the case against the foundation should not assume HRC as a target.

The alternative is to investigate Hillary, along with her Foundation.  In that case, however, the investigation must be exquisitely punctilious and exhaustive.  The case against HRC cannot be probabilistic, it must be made beyond all reasonable doubt or it has be thrown out.  And, if it can be made beyond all reasonable doubt, it must be laid out before the public in a totally transparent manner.

There can be no hint of vendetta about the case against Hillary.  She must be seen, unambiguously as a criminal.  In the end, even her most ardent supporters must agree she is a criminal who deserves to go to jail.

I know that many on my end of the political spectrum would be deeply gratified to see HRC in jail.  But, as gratifying as that would be and, believe me, it would be "soooo good", to quote Michael Moore, HRC is not important any more (thank G-d).  Our country is more important.  And if letting her go free will help in the healing, then we must seriously consider that option.

Dayenu: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Donald Trump

At Passover, Jews sing the traditional song, "Dayenu".  The title is the Hebrew word meaning, roughly, "It would have been enough for us," and the lyrics go something like this,

If He had brought us out of Egypt, dayenu.
If He had executed justice upon the Egyptians, dayenu.
If He had executed justice upon their gods, dayenu.
If He had slain their first-born, dayenu.
If He had given to us their health and wealth, dayenu.

And so on for about ten more stanzas.  It is an expression of gratitude to G-d for all that He has done for the Jewish people.

Please forgive me if I sound a tad sacreligous, but even though Donald Trump was not my first choice, and he is certainly no one's idea of the ideal president, dayenu is sort of how I feel towards him.  Please let me explain.

I had the premonition some years ago, and in this political cycle I am thoroughly convinced, that issues are irrelevant to our political discourse.  We are in a post-issues political regime.

Debating issues, e.g., education policy, is merely a distraction.  Debate conveys the notion that education policy is maleable.  This has not been true for a very long time.  The Vested Interests (whom I call "The Education Mafia") have grown very large, very powerful, their roots run very deep in our society and in our politics, their ideology is ossified, and education policy will not change, now or ever, as it has not changed for the last thirty years, despite the evident fact of its abject failure.  Education policy is what the Education Mafia want, and nothing will change so long as the Existing Order remains intact.

In other words, policy is no longer the problem.  Policy has long since stopped being the problem.  The problem is the Existing Order of ossified special interests.

You can repeat this idea many times.  Large parts of the population want to restrict immigration, but restriction will not happen.  Large parts of the population are horrified by abortion-on-demand, but abortion-on-demand will continue.  Nobody cares, one way or another, about the statistically non-existent transgender "community", and people certainly do not want to re-organize their lives to accommodate it, but "they" will make you care.  And so on. I am not arguing whether any one element of public policy is right or wrong, I am just observing that things are as they are, whether you like it or not, and that is how it's going to be until something radical happens.

Always, there is bound to be some wiggle room between what people want and what public policy is.  In a democracy, however, when public policy becomes sufficiently disconnect from the will of the people, when that divergence becomes too great, we have a very serious problem.

We have a very serious problem.

The only solution I can imagine is that somebody, somehow has to break the back of the Existing Order.  And, until that happens, please don't bore me with policy discussions.  Such discussion are irrelevant and as pure a waste of time as one can imagine.

Enter Donald Trump.

In the 2015 presidential primaries, the Republicans had a number of hacks, like Jeb Bush and Lindsey Graham, and several exciting candidates like Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, and Scott Walker, men of real substance and accomplishments who held out the possiblity of real reform.  I would have been happy with any one of them.  My man was Ted Cruz.

However, what was of overarching importance was the defeat of the Establishment Republicans.  I'm sorry that Cruz, Walker and Jindall lost in the process, but Donald Trump did not merely defeat the Karl Rove/Jeb Bush wing of the Republican Party, he humiliated them.  Rove/Bush spent $130 Million and never got above 7% of the popular vote.  This was deeply gratifying and, for this reason alone, I am grateful to Donald Trump.

If Donald Trump had only defeated the Rove/Bush wing of the Republican Party, dayenu.
If the Republican Party is destroyed or radically reformed because of Trump, dayenu.

And now, if Donald Trump can do the same with Hillary Clinton and the criminal front group that is the Democratic Party, dayenu.

African Levels of Corruption

Many years ago, maybe 25 or so, I read an article in "The Economist" newspaper about public corruption in Africa.  "The Economist" tried to convey the staggering level of corruption with a joke.  I have not been able to find this joke anywhere on the internet, so I write it down here, from memory.

First, you have to know that the London School of Economics is an astonishingly influential institution.  Many young people, who go on to positions of power and influence in their home countries, are educated at the LSE and develop personal friendships there with young people from other countries.  Indeed, the LSE has educated more than a few prime ministers and dictators.  The story:

Two young students at the LSE, an African and an Asian, became fast friends and stayed in touch after they returned to their home countries.  Both developed influential careers in the service of their respective governments.

It came to pass, after some years, that the African had an opportunity to travel to East Asia.  His Asian friend from the LSE was delighted to receive him into is large and beautiful home, where they ate an elegant dinner.

Enjoying their after-dinner cigars and cocktails, on the balcony with a lovely view, the African could not help asking, "I am delighted at your success, but how can you afford all this on a government salary?"

The Asian pointed out into the distance and asked, "Do you see all that development?"  The African looked out and saw earth moving equipment, construction cranes, and all the obvious signs of a great deal of work happening.  He nodded.  The Asian then proudly tapped himself on the chest and explained, "10%".  Meaning, of course, that in bribes and kick-backs, he had skimmed into his own pocket 10% of the expenditures on the development.

The African nodded in understanding.

A couple of years later, the Asian had the opportunity to travel in Africa.  His African friend from the LSE was delighted to receive him.  Upon arriving, the Asian drove up to a palatial estate where he was received by liveried servants and they enjoyed a sumptious meal.

Enjoying their after-dinner cigars and cocktails, on a balcoy with a spectacular view, the Asian could not help asking, "I am delighted at your success, but how can you possibly afford all this on a government salary?"

The African pointed out into the distance and asked, "Do you see all that development?"  The Asian looked and looked and could see nothing but virgin wilderness.  He turned to his friend with a curious look on his face.  The African then proudly tapped himself on the chest and explained, "100%".

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is African levels of corruption.

The Most Qualified Something-or-other

For the Nth time, recently, I have heard that Hillary Rodham Clinton is the most qualified presidential candidate in history.  And I'm wondering, what on earth can that mean.

So far as I know, there are exactly three qualifications for the presidency.  The candidate must:

1. Be a natural born citizen,
2. Be at least 35 yrs of age, and
3. Have won the election.

The brother-in-law who has been sleeping on your couch for the last six months would be qualified for the presidency, if he won the election.  Of course, we tend to look for some more qualities in our presidents and that, I think, is the key to making sense of the Left's assertion.

Keep in mind, the Left are saying Hillary is the most qualified candidate "In History"!  More qualified than George Washington?  More qualified than Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight David Eisenhower?  Really?!  Obviously, their meaning of "qualified" is rather different from what you and I mean by it.

The presidency is an executive office.  More, the president is the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces.  Historically, we looked to men with a track record of getting things done, and we have had a strong bias towards men with military experience.  Two thirds of all presidents have had some kind of military experience.

Dwight David Eisenhower, 34th President of the U.S., General of The Army, was Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe during the greatest war in human history.  George Washington created the U.S. by leading men in battle under desperate circumstances, and then declined the crown that was offered him (I still can't get over that).

But, Washington did not lie about a non-existent rape culture.  Eisenhower did not lie about gender pay equity.  Evidently, in the minds of the Leftists, lying about gender pay equity makes Hillary Rodham Clinton more qualified than Dwight David Eisenhower.

You should come to your own conclusions about that.

Political Anaphylaxis

Is it worth saying that Trump and Clinton are not, themselves, the problem?  They are mere symptoms of the problem.  It's not as if everything has been peachy all along with American politics and then, all of a sudden, two monsters appear out of nowhere.  Rather, American politics have been corrupt, and getting more corrupt, certainly since the first Clinton administration, if not before.  I would say the rot started in 1942 (under a Democratic administration, unsurprisingly) with the Wickard v Filburn decision of the SCOTUS.

Roscoe Filburn, an Ohio farmer, grew wheat entirely for his own use, to feed his animals, selling none of it on the open market.  And yet, the SCOTUS decided that Filburn, by minding his own business on his own property, was violating the **Interstate** Commerce Clause.  So, the federal government wanted to regulate the actions of a private citizen on his own property, and the Supreme Court agreed, using a legal argument indistinguishable from Jabberwocky.

With the Wickard decision in mind, how can you be surprised with the 2005 SCOTUS decision, Kelo v City of New London?  In that decision, the state expropriated one private citizen's private property to give it to another private citizen.  From Wickard to Kelo, the Constitution had come to mean nothing.  So, in 2010 when then Speaker of The House, Nancy Pelosi was asked by what Constitutional authority did Congress enact the Affordable Care Act, she responded, "Are you serious?"  It was perfectly clear that Pelosi could not give an answer because she did not care about the question.  The Constitution had become irrelevant to the the most powerful member of the People's House, the person third in line to the presidency of the U.S.

As Angelo Codevilla has observed, as Mark Levin has observed, as has been observed by more than a few people who pay the least attention, we have been living in a lawless society for more than a while, already.  No wonder Hillary Clinton feels she can do whatever she likes.  If the Constitution does not mean what it says it means then, in the notorious words of Al Gore (March, 1997), "There is no controlling legal authority."

How has it come to this?  How do we get two of the most despised people in the country contending for the presidency?  I think the answer is self-evident.  As our politics have become more and more corrupt, good people have declined to dive into the political cesspool.  Criminals and weirdos are all we have left.  Or, as Edmund Burke would have it, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

I can say only this in defense of the repugnant Donald Trump (I have thought him repugnant long before he entered politics).  A vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for the status quo, for continuing and worsening public corruption.  Donald Trump, however distasteful, however inadequate, is a reaction to the corruption.  Donald Trump is the incarnation of "Throw the bums out."  He is the anaphylactic shock in the body politic. And that, friends, is as good a reason as any to reject Hillary Clinton and vote for Donald Trump.

Oh, do *I* sound like a crackpot?  Then let me remind you that come Jan 20, 2017 one of Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will be our next president.  And if you have not yet absorbed that kick in the nuts, then you are the crackpot.

After the Republic

Marxists make much of the "contradictions" in capitalism.  Turns out their notion of contradiction is trivial, if not vacuous.  However, in his long-ish but fascinating, and depressing article, After the Republic, Professor Angelo Codevilla makes me think of the real contradiction in American democracy.

The foundational idea of the American experiment is that individuals should mind their own business and government should mainly stay out of the way.  If this idea was ever valid, it was valid for only a fairly narrow slice of the population that existed at the time of the American Revolution.

Please remember that the American Revolution was really the first American civil war.  Fully half the population remained loyal to the English crown, there was considerable internecine fighting, and a significant portion of the population decamped to Canada, mainly southern Ontario, where the Loyalist heritage is still remembered.

In other words, lots of people, maybe most people, want to be slaves.  For example, there is an entire civilization, of some 1 1/2 billion people, predicated on the notion of abject submission.  Now, it is one thing to be born into Islam, quite another to see Westerners voluntarily converting to a religion in which they are promised slavery, most especially women.

The will to slavery reveals itself in many other ways.  Socialism is nothing but a cri de coeur of the large mass of the people who want somebody else, the government, to run their lives for them.

Conversely, there are a few people with a "will to power", which brings up the other part of the American contradiction.  One can imagine a government of limited power, but it is harder to think of individuals who voluntarily decline power.  George Washington, the towering figure of the American Revolution, did something that, if not unique, most certainly is very rare in the human experience.

After the victory over the British, Washington was offered the crown.  He was, actually, invited to become king of the United States.  A lesser man would have accepted.  Washington replied something like, "Thanks, but I'd rather go fishing."  And for nearly 100 years, the U.S. was true to its ideal of private property, limited government, and rule of law.

But George Washington was exceptional in almost every way imaginable.  What you have to imagine now is a POTUS who wants less power not more, senators who want less power not more, congressmen and judges who want less power not more, etc.  Friends, this is not the way of the world.  And that is the American contradiction:  the powerful few want power and most people want to be slaves.  The mystery is that the American Experiment lasted as long as it did.

I am glad to have lived in it for a time.  I am very sorry to see it wither away.  And I am very sorry for the America our children will inherit.  If Donald Trump is elected president, it may wither slower;  if Hillary Clinton, then faster.  But the withering seems inevitable.  I suspected this in 2008 with the election of the fatuous and vacuous Barack Obama.  President Hillary Clinton would bring certainty.

Donna Shalala and the Clinton Foundation

How interesting that Donna Shalala is president of the Clinton Foundation.

Shalala made a big impression on me some years ago when she was president of the University of Miami.  At that time, she made a big deal of how women in the sciences are not treated fairly Bias Is Hurting Women in Science.  How odd, I thought, that she was in a position to actually do something about that, but did nothing.

If it is true that women are not treated fairly in the sciences, this implies there is a large, untapped pool of scientific talent, out there.  Shalala said as much.  So, why not tap that talent?

The main business of university presidents is raising money.  Shalala could have raised some money and created, say, the Department of Female Chemistry.  Bring in some of that top scientific talent, run the department on principles favorable to women, and watch all that prolific research come rolling in.  They could even found their own "Journal of Female Chemistry".

Does that sound unusual to you?  It shouldn't.  That is exactly what many universities have done with women's studies, ethnic studies, "Africana" studies, and urban anthropology.  The feminists could not find a home in an existing department, so the made their own.  The ethnologists could not find a home in an existing department so they made their own, and so on.  I completely respect that.  They raised their own money, they funded their own departments, they publish their own journals.  What's the problem?

Donna Shalala did none of that.  All she did was monger grievances.  And now she is president of the Clinton Foundation.  I wonder what that says about the Clinton Foundation.

It's The Martians, Stupid

Every once in a while a curtain parts, a mask falls, a slip shows, and you catch a glimpse of inner works.

I remember one such moment, many years ago at the dawn of "Nightline", the then innovative late evening news show on the ABC TV network.  Ted Koppel was trying to get his guest to explain some technical point in a certain way but was getting no satisfaction.  The guest simply did not understand how he was to answer.  Finally, an exasperated Koppel blurted out, "How would you explain this to an 8th grader?"  A revealing comment.

Most public discourse works at a very low intellectual level.  For example, during my childhood, The New York Times was famously written at the 8th grade reading level, and this self-styled newspaper of record is supposed to be for educated adults.  It is a mark of our degenerate age that these days the NY Times is said to be written at the 10th grade reading level.  This is consonant with other measures of school effectiveness that document a two grade level decline from approximately 1985 to 2000 (I tremble to think what has transpired since then).

And if you still think I overstate my case, I invite you to read some of the ethnic papers, like the "NY Post" or---brace yourself---"The Amsterdam News".  During the Tawana Brawley Hoax, circa 1990, I made a point of regularly reading both "The Amsterdam News" and the now defunct "City Sun" (not to be confused with the "NY Sun" newspaper).  Try a newspaper like those, for a bit, and you will understand everything there is to understand about my pessimism regarding American democracy.

So, last night I heard a snippet of a radio broadcast in which David Brooks, the putative conservative commentator for the NY Times, was remarking upon the Democratic Party convention.  If a Martian had observed both Democratic and Republican conventions, Brooks was saying, he would suppose that the Democrats are the more patriotic party.

What an odd comment, I thought.  Why a Martian?  The only sense I can make of this observation is that Brooks is assuming that a Martian does not bring with him any intellectual baggage.  Put another way, a Martian, if such a creature existed, would not actually know anything about the political parties or, indeed, anything about American society or American history.

And that, I think, reveals much.  Modern American politics is a Theater of The Absurd for an ignorant electorate.  If you have a better explanation for how we have come to this:  Donald Trump leading the Republican Party and---it's hard to write this---Hillary Clinton leading the Democratic Party, I would dearly love to hear it.

And if you do not have a better explanation, then you must accept Brooks's comment as yet more evidence for the end of democracy as we have known it.

Donald Trump, A Bill Cooperberg For Our Time

Bill, if you are out there, I love ya, man.

Many years ago, upon starting a new job, my supervisor introduced me to the senior team member, the man who would help acclimate me to my new responsibilities.  Bill Cooperberg made such a poor first impression that I seriously wondered if I had made a terrible mistake taking that job.  He spoke with a thick Bronx accent, including all the usual, grating grammatical mistakes, he wore a cheap, badly fitting suit, and he smoked---a marker, in the minds of many, of reduced moral character.  What had I gotten myself into?

As the days and weeks passed, Bill would comment on some issue and I would think, with surprise, "well, he is certainly right about that."  Bill would say something about another matter and I would again be surprised by his trenchant insight.  One of his most common refrains, upon being informed of one thing or another was, "It don't make no sense."  Dusting the grammar off my coat I would think, "Well, it don't."

In the end, the shabby ignorance was all mine, and I am proud to tell you that I was able to overcome it, eventually.  Once I got past Bill's admittedly rough exterior, I discovered a brilliant, kind, self-effacing person of uncommon insight into the human exprience. "Don't judge a book by its cover" was a cosmic lesson taught by the person of Bill Cooperberg.

And so it seems to be with Donald Trump.  Donald Trump is nobody's idea of the ideal president.  Certainly, not mine.  But, while he makes mistakes (orders of magnitude less significant than the reptilian Hillary Clinton's), time and again he is right.  Case in point:  Donald Trump's advisor's response to the achingly dim-witted Union for Reform Judaism
David Friedman's letter to the URJ
A response that thrills even the brilliant Caroline Glick.

Friends, how many times does Trump have to be right, before you look past his admittedly weird hair and rough manners, and finally realize we don't have to accept the criminally incompetent Hillary Clinton?