Some Parting Thoughts on the Future of Our Republic

Now that we live in Donald Trump's America - Trumpistan, you like - it's worth taking a moment to consider how much of our public conversation pivots on the question of just which groups we're allowed to disparage based purely on the misdeeds of a small minority. For example, demonizing just the 1% of "the 1%" who improperly use the system to enrich themselves (even though so much is already stacked in the wealthy's favor) is typically shouted down as "class warfare". However, any suggestion that government run social welfare programs do more good than harm despite a tiny amount of actual fraud will regularly be called "un-American". Seriously, we're getting to the point where the only people we're allowed to dismiss based on their occupation and/or economic status are the poor, government employees and prostitutes. To be honest, even that last group get a lot of credit for their skills at draining the balls of "happily married" politicians who like to spout off (so to speak) about "family values" and "self-sufficiency). If we can't get past this nonsense as a nation, maybe it is time to do a hard day reboot after all. Hiroshima, mon amour?

There Has to Be a Morning After

Dear Friends,

I hope you'll all indulge me in taking a few moments of your time to offer an encouraging thought about the now concrete prospect of President Trump. As all but his most delusional supporters surely realize, Donald Trump is not a great business man. Don't worry, I'm not going to rehash Atlantic City hotels or Trump University. No, the real indictment of his incompetence can be summarized with two words - Trump Steaks. Trump Steaks failed. Yes, Donald Trump was unable to sell beef successfully to a nation whose relationship with beef borders on co-dependence. 

So, having established that Donald Trump is a walking dumpster fire as a businessman, you may be wondering how that benefits America. The truth is that the President really has relatively little impact on the broader economy. Presidents are like NFL quarterbacks if NFL quarterbacks didn't actually impact the game -  they get too much credit when the economy is good and too much criticism when it goes bad (unless, of course, you're Barack Obama in the first case and George W. Bush in the second). In other words, Donald Trump will be sitting in the Oval Office not tending to his businesses and not really doing anything to affect the American economy. With someone other than himself running his businesses, the chances of those businesses prospering and creating jobs is significantly increased. Combining that increase with the lack of effect his actions will have means that President Trump will end up improving the US economy more as President than he would have had he remained (scratch that, ever been) an actual businessman.

On top of that, it's widely documented that Donald Trump does not like to pay people. This seems to be one area where his business experience could be brought to bear on the economy in a positive light. By not paying those to whom America owes money, a Trump Administration will be able to keep the national debt from rising. 

Clearly we live in an age of wonders. What's more, we live in an age where we can learn much if those around us are willing to teach. The lesson today - courtesy of "The Real Donald Trump" is that in America, all things are possible. Anyone - yes anyone - can grow up t become President, provided they're not an older woman who made some bad decisions in decades of highly scrutinized public life.

At the end of the day, we got into this mess together and we're going to get through it together one way or another. My way involves somewhat inappropriate humor and a daily haiku taking aim at President Trump. To one and all I say, follow your path, the way is love.

Love to All (even those of you who voted for Trump

Meet the Propro

No one who's fascinated by American politics would have wanted to miss this week's interview with Donald Trump on Meet the Press. Fitting that description, I even watched it on live TV. It's a testament to our fragmented media environment that a program being compelling enough to watch as it broadcasts is something of a status symbol just as Trump's candidacy is a testament to how dysfunctional politics have become since the last time a Clinton, a Bush and a billionaire were all presidential candidates.

As you might imagine, Trump's responses were perversely fascinating, particularly on questions about the Iran nuclear weapons deal. On the one hand, he was far more realistic than other candidates, acknowledging that a new President can't simply "rip up" the agreement on day one of their administration. On the other, he compensated with a different sort of bluster, insisting that he could have a far better job than the "incompetent" people who negotiated the agreement and vowing that he would go through every part of the agreement - as he claimed to have done with many other bad deals he took over - presumably to find loopholes to be used to his advantage. 

What fascinates me about this approach is that it calls to mind two of the only groups it's socially acceptable to mock, lawyers and federal employees. By my reckoning, the only group (of non felons, at least) that's more acceptable to mock is prostitutes. As an aside, this strikes me as even more perverse because prostitutes provide an unambiguous benefit to society in the form of blow-jobs. If we're all being honest, this in itself is sufficient reason why they shouldn't be mocked.

If The Clash Released An Album Today, It Might Be Called Sandernista

It seems increasingly fashionable in liberal circles to lament the treatment of Bernie Sanders by the media. The general script is that the "mainstream media" (where have I heard that pejorative before?) ignores both the large crowds he draws and the serious issues he talks about in favor of Donald Trump and - especially- Hilary Clinton. Even if you agree with his views and share the (equally laudable) desire to have serious issues widely discussed, there's a worrisome streak of naïveté within the crusade for Sanders. 

It has nothing to do with whether he's "electable" and everything to do with misunderstanding how mass media works just as thoroughly as the most ardent FoxNews zealot does. The "mainstream media" in America, of which FoxNews is as much a part as NBC or the New York Times, isn't liberal or conservative - it's commercial the same way a Marvel comics movie is commercial. 

Like most commercially-minded movies, the media isn't particularly well-suited to handle serious issues and deep thoughts. Where it excels is plot and external conflict. Consequently, politics is inevitably packaged in terms of conflict - winners and losers or protagonists and antagonists. Even when reporters and pundits purport to talk about serious issues, it's in reductive terms and typically in hindsight - as we saw eight years ago with the sparring between Clinton and Obama about whether going to war in Iraq was a mistake and as we see this year with Jeb Bush about whether the Iraq war was a mistake. 

Those who believe that Senator Sanders' campaign should get more coverage are probably right, but in the effort to spread that view it's essential to keep in mind that the reasons why he isn't getting it are far less about his stance on issues (or even his chances of winning an election) than they are about Clinton and Trump being far more entertaining and thus easier to package for the nightly news. Failure to understand that risks sounding an awful lot like the people on "the other side" that we tell ourselves we're smarter than, and we wouldn't want that.

The Path to a Better World

Some people look at the world the way it is and say "Why?" I prefer to look at the world the way it should be, devise ways of making that happen, then use those plans as a means to get the aforementioned group of people to invest. At this point, I pocket the money I've raised from those rubes and head for the Cayman Islands or some other locality without an extradition treaty. After all, no one said it had to be a better world for everybody.

A Blessed Event?

Were he alive today, Mark Twain might say of our media culture that it consists of "lies, damn lies and Fox News". With that in mind, it will be interesting to see what Fox News and similar "news" outlets will be saying in the weeks ahead about the release of President Obama's birth certificate from Hawaii earlier today (link to story on yahoo.com). Personally, I don't believe for a second that this will convince hard-core "birthers", including Donald Trump, that the issue is settled. The best we can hope for is that this release of records will move the issue to the furthest fringes of the debate and banish whatever little vestige of credibility their argument ever had. Sadly, we live in a world where the oft-discredited Jerome Corsi's yet-to-be-released book on the subject Where's the Birth Certificate is still among the top selling items on Amazon, so maybe even that modest hope is a bit too much. Even being a pragmatic idealist is hard work these days.

Trumped Up Nonsense

When even Karl Rove has decided the GOP should drop something as a method of attacking President Obama, that seems a pretty good barometer that something has run its course. The latest case in point is the infamous (and ridiculous) "birther" accusations implying that Barack Obama's presidency is illegitimate based on him allegedly having been born in Kenya (or heaven knows where else). Of course, potential 2012 candidate Donald Trump won't be told anything by anyone and so he continues to pander to the extreme right by demanding that the President produce his birth certificate.

What's so striking about Trump's approach is not that he's chosen an issue that is so clearly played out politically, it's that he actually seems to think it will endear him to the far right and by extension help him with primary voters. Those voters have seen this movie before, when it was called Rudolph Giuliani, and decided they didn't care for it enough to want to see it for four years. Like Trump, Giuliani offered a combination of strong name recognition and mixed record on conservative social issues. He couldn't even manage a second-place finish in any of the GOP primaries, let alone win one of them.

To that stew, Trump adds the special ingredient of having donated to numerous Democratic candidates over the years (http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011/02/donald-trumps-donations-to-democrats.html). Were this limited to New York politicians, like Senator Charles Rangel and Charles Schumer, that might be somewhat excusable. When that list includes current Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, then-Senator Joe Biden and the late Senator Edward Kennedy, it's hard to imagine the same kind of partisan voters who traditionally vote in primaries forgiving that sort of aisle-crossing and embracing "The Donald".

Some writers have suggested that Trump's behavior may be some sort of publicity stunt related to the current season of Celebrity Apprentice. Even if that's true, though, it really doesn't make it any better. He's still poisoning the political dialogue with a non-issue that's beyond irrelevant. He should be ashamed, but if there's one thing his public life has demonstrated Trump has none.