Election 2016 As A Turning Point

Update 11-15-16:

Well,  it's over,  and what I had considered the slightly-greater evil won.  Now the GOP has to put up or shut up.  I rather doubt they have any viable replacements yet,  for the things they want to repeal,  they've been barely competent just being obstructive.

You can always tell when a politician of either party is lying to you:  their lips are moving.  They do not work for us,  they work for whoever bought their jobs for them.  And that's the real root of all this evil.  Political agendas are largely irrelevant in the face of that ugly fact.

Meanwhile,  it does finally seem to be dawning on some other folks that I was right about angry folks left behind economically.  My prescription for how to fix that still stands,  no matter who is in the White House or controls the houses of Congress.

It's "find a way to end the giant corporate welfare state" or get voted out next election.  Now get on with it.  --  GW

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There are other related articles on this site,  as listed.  In particular,  see the trade study matrix I did on Clinton versus Trump in “Evaluation of Choices for 2016”,  and the descriptions of where the corporate welfare state comes from in “Stuff You Do Not Normally Think About”.   All share the search keyword “idiocy in politics”.  Here’s the list:

8-4-16….Evaluation of Choices for 2016

7-29-16…..Stuff You Normally Do Not Think About

6-5-16…….Trump?  NO!!

4-24-16….Better Choices in November

12-21-15..Facts Must Trump Politics

The Candidates

Donald Trump has proven over and over that he cannot control himself when he talks.  The very serious risk here is that he cannot control himself when he acts,  especially in a pressure situation.  Many who cannot control their speech also cannot control their actions.  We’ve all seen this.

Therefore,  that risk is completely intolerable for a commander-in-chief with his finger on the nuclear trigger.  So,  in my opinion,  no one with two working brain cells to rub together can vote for Trump for president,  regardless of their politics.  The nuclear extinction risk precludes it.  Extremist politics does have a way of killing brain cells,  doesn’t it?

Hillary Clinton may well be an un-indicted felon.  If 30-40 years ago I had done with classified information what she did at the State Department,  I would still be in jail today,  in a windowless cell.  Which also proves that there really is a double standard of justice,  one for the rich and powerful versus another for the rest of us.   Remember that point about two standards of justice,  I’ll get back to it further below.

She is an integral part of the “political establishment” that has left behind us ordinary folks for 6 decades now.  Given a better choice,  I would not vote for her,  either.

But there is not a better choice.  In her favor,  she knows well the job and all the background associated with it.  And she is stable and well-adjusted and (most importantly) self-controlled enough,  not to go off half-cocked on the nuclear trigger.  She is therefore just barely minimally acceptable to vote for,  as the lesser of the two evils.

The Parties

When I was young,  I tended to vote more Republican than Democrat,  although I am actually a fierce independent.  In those days,  both parties were more “mainstream” in their proposals.  I thought that the Democrats gave away too many tax dollars too easily,  and I did not then know that the Republican approach of “trickle-down economics” was a lie (and well-proven to be so,  ever since Reagan’s time). 

Since then,  the Republicans have extremized their economics and their social policies,  driven there by the “right wing” extremists among them,  and the religious extremists with which they allied.  I personally detest extremism,  whether political or religious.  That way lies the path that has led to war and suffering all these centuries. 

“Detest” may be too weak a word:  such deserve death upon detection.

With Trump bringing in the very-numerous blue-collar “left-behinds”,  there has also been a huge recent influx of racism and bigotry within the party,  although this actually started some years earlier.  Most of the email hit-piece forwards I get are sourced from Republican operatives,  not Democrat operatives,  at least since Bill Clinton’s time.  In some of these,  the racism and bigotry are quite overt,  and I find it very disturbing that friends and neighbors forward this crap to me as if it were true. 

The Democrats have drifted toward the center during those same years.  There are very few “flaming liberals” left in that party,  although there are still some notable exceptions,  such as Bernie Sanders.  Their social agenda is generally more to my liking,  except for their gun control ideas (more on that below).

Historically,  Democrats have been viewed as weak in foreign policy,  but I no longer believe that propaganda.  Democrat President Obama has killed more people with drone strikes than his Republican predecessor ever thought about.  That’s not exactly being “weak”.  FDR and Truman were Democrats,  and so was Teddy Roosevelt,  so that record speaks for itself. 

Actually,  when you get right down to it,  what my grandparents used to say about Republicans is still true:  they favor the rich big businesses over the common man.  It’s just worse now than it was then (more about that below).  What my grandparents used to say about Democrats is no longer true:  instead of favoring the common man,  they,  too,  are now also minions of the giant corporations. 

Libertarians?  Nope.  They want to out-Republican the extremist-Republicans economically.  Which means privatizing or destroying things we really need,  like the public schools.  They want to out-Democrat the Democrats socially,  which is no longer hard to do,  since the Democrats have mostly drifted centrist.  As I said,  I detest extremism.  That is not an agenda I can stomach.

Greens?  No way in hell would I vote for a crackpot anti-vacciner.  With a belief like that,  all other initiatives are also equally suspect.  That’s not “green”,  that’s simply insane.

In summary,  there is little today to recommend any of the parties,  including the two big ones.  Although they are still sort-of better than the two little ones.

Bread and Circuses

Back to two standards of justice.  Or two standards of just about anything.  There’s the rich giants,  and then there’s the rest of us.  Didn’t you ever notice that?  Most of us have been left behind,  as the giants prospered.  And you cannot fight them one-on-one:  they can hire lawyers we cannot afford. 

I’m sorry,  but you no longer live free in a representative democracy anymore.  You haven’t in quite a while.  You are living in a giant corporate welfare state,  in which government now does little but pick your pockets to keep the giants rich.  Your politicians do not work for you who elected them,  they work for these giants who bought their jobs for them.  That’s true for a lot of key appointed officials,  too. 

This has been creeping upon us,  step by slow step,  since World War 2.  The takeover became complete only 20 or 30 years ago,  about the time our party politics extremized into the comic-opera buffoonery we have today.  Take a good hard look at the officials you elect:  are they not clownish buffoons,  by and large?  Did you never wonder why?

My friends and neighbors,  these buffoons and idiotic politics are the bread-and-circuses by which those who rule us hope to keep our attentions diverted,  away from what they have actually done to us.  They have no interest in how badly these clowns govern,  they only care about getting lots of tax money fed to them as this-or-that contract,  while not paying any taxes. 

Have you not noticed that the last air force bomber that actually worked right was the B-52,  first flown in 1952,  and whose very last production example rolled off the assembly line in 1961?  That we now build warships without any guns on them?  That none of the high dollar defense programs produces anything that works right anymore?  And hasn’t for some decades now? 

So where did all your federal gasoline tax dollars go?  Certainly not into keeping the highways and bridges up to par!  Somebody’s pockets somewhere,  that’s for sure!  And not any of us common folk. 

It got this way because of an uncorrected mistake made by the writers of our Constitution:  they allowed lobbyists and their money to roam the halls of government,  without making it the crime of bribery that it actually is.  I guess for them our experiment-in-democracy was experimental enough,  without trying to correct that evil,  too.  They didn’t correct slavery either.  Fallible,  like all of us.

Correcting evils is precisely what the amendment process was for.  At least they got that part right. 

You have to take private money out of the campaigns,  too,  or you never will get anyone worth voting “for”,  only “against”.  That’s even true at the primary level.  This will have to be a sweeping change to be effective. 

It’s way past time to fix all this. 

Making Changes

To me,  it appears there are only 3 options:  (1) voting out all the corrupt officeholders,  so that all lobbyist monies actually can be outlawed by new officials,  at all levels and phases of government,  (2) a grassroots Constitutional amendment to outlaw all lobbyist monies anywhere in any governmental process,  or (3) do armed revolution in the streets and just start over. 

Item (1) voting the crooks out doesn’t seem very feasible,  because a majority of the electorate seems to actually believe the idiotic political propaganda.  I guess they’ve heard it too many times,  and so believe it to be true.  Which is exactly how the Nazis and Communists obtained and retained power.  And how the jihadists do it today.  It’s called the “big lie” technique;  somewhere you’ve heard of that!

There’s enough Trump supporters and Bernie Sanders supporters to actually do this,  if they could but get together.  But they will not.  Idiotic politics gets in the way.  They believe the “big lies”.

Item (2) amending the Constitution to make buying politicians and appointed officials a crime would indeed throw the giant corporations out of power.  But getting everyone to actually agree on one (or more)specific amendment(s) will be more difficult than it would seem at first sight.  This is for precisely the very same reason that we can’t just throw the crooked bums out at the ballot box:  people actually believe in the idiocies that are their politics. 

Item (3) armed revolution is the only one the giant corporations actually fear could really happen.  That is why they have made gun control / creeping gun confiscation a part of the Democratic platform agenda.  So they can use the Democrats to disarm us.  Unarmed populations are easy to dominate:  just ask the Germans and the Russians.  Or many of the peoples of the third world. 

Never forget that the purpose of the Second Amendment was to make the threat of armed revolution credible,  so that government would behave itself.  The Founding Fathers did a pretty good job with that one,  because it could still work today,  even with the de facto takeover by the giant corporations already in place! 

The federal government has been quietly equipping all sorts of non-military,  non-police agencies with machine guns,  body armor,  tactical vehicles,  and immense quantities of ammunition.  Agencies like the EPA and IRS.  What do they need such battle equipment for?  Not for their jobs.  Unless,  they are to be employed as adjunct troops to help quell the armed rebellion.  Think about that!

Don’t get me wrong:  I’d much rather do this at the ballot box in one way or another.  There’s a whole lot less mess to clean up afterwards.  But the prudent and patriotic person simply must be prepared to face the possibility that revolution becomes the only option.

Why Do Anything At All?

What if we do nothing?  Well,  the giant corporations’ policies will eventually lead to the destruction of the middle class.  That’s where the bulk of the tax revenues are coming from.  Certainly not the poor,  they pay none,  and could not pay even if levied.  As for the giants,  paying nothing is exactly why they own the politicians and officials.  The smaller corporations and small businesses are less of a revenue source than the middle class. 

Point is,  the money gravy train ends when the middle class dies.

So,  long term,  this system is not sustainable,  and it will fall.  And utter chaos will result.  We may not recover before getting opportunistically invaded by some other country.  Just like Rome.

Why am I certain this will eventually happen if we do not correct it?  Because money is more addictive than heroin.  All addicts become self-destructive.  Even giant corporations. 

It is in your best self-interest to put an end to this giant corporate welfare state,  before its ultimate fall puts an end to you. 

I recommend we try the two ballot box options before resorting to revolution.  But we need to be prepared,  even for revolution.  Keep your guns and ammo hidden.   We who still own guns still outnumber “them”,  and in city-street fighting house-to-house,  that’s all that really matters.