Joe McCarthy, McCarthyism, World War II, Viet-Nam, Anti-Communist Witch Hunts, Army-McCarthy hearings, Islamic Jihadist terrorism, Soviet Union, Red China

APPEALING TO THE WORST OF US

Posted on October 18, 2016 by halviv

I have often wondered what it is in the human psyche that results in millions, or tens of millions, of people to enthusiastically and slavishly support some one as vile, vulgar and reprehensible as a Donald Trump. Some one who has openly put on daily display an astonishing array of non-stop mendacity, pathological narcissism, a bullying persona, a profound ignorance of world affairs, the most disgustingly lewd remarks affecting women, and a total dearth of anything resembling human compassion and empathy. The conclusion I’ve come to (which isn’t a pretty one), is that a large number of people out there cannot accept responsibility for the failings in their lives. If they’ve made some really bad choices in life it has to be the fault of others. If they can’t achieve a decent job or career, it’s because of those illegal Mexicans taking away their job opportunities. It couldn’t possibly be that they have failed to put in the time and effort necessary to attain marketable job skills. It has to be the illegals who comprise less than 3.5% of the U.S. populations and are usually employed in jobs most Americans won’t accept. Like performing gardening chores in blazingly hot 110 degree summers that we’re so familiar with in Las Vegas.

When you combine blaming others for the feelings of inadequacy one possesses, one has a bullying-type persona in the making. Nothing like searching for some one weaker to beat up on, in order to alleviate those nagging feelings of self-loathing. This creates the perfect world for the demagogue to step into and rile up the masses to his benefit. We all know how effectively and destructively demagoguery was used in the 20th century by the likes of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao, Saddam Hussein, and others. Now we have our own, home-grown demagogue on the threshold of achieving absolute power. Besides all the inane, mendacious comments Trump has previously made, which I’ve chronicled in previous pieces, his latest ones show a cynical appetite for unprecedented recklessness. Send Hillary to jail because of her email fiasco, presumably without her Constitutional right to due process, is one of his more recent pronouncements. The Trumpinistas at his rallies cry “Hillary for prison.” Blind, unthinking demagoguery. His latest rant is that the election is “rigged.” This gives Trump the best of two worlds. If he wins, he can say that he’s so magnificent that despite a rigged election system he was able to overcome. If he loses, he will say that he would have won but for the way the Democrats and the media conspired to deprive him of his earned victory. This will allow him grounds to challenge the election results well after November 8. Remember that the election really isn’t over until the Electoral College casts its vote.

One has to go back 60 years in American history, to the 1950s, to find another demagogue who built his fame by destroying others through a reckless disregard for truth and honesty. I’m talking about Joe McCarthy, affectionately called Tail-Gunner Joe, and the era of anti-communist hysteria the gripped America at that time. McCarthy’s fame and potential rise to dictatorship came from declaring that the U.S. government and many powerful institutions such as Hollywood, major corporations, and others were riddled with Communists whose loyalty was solely to the old Soviet Union. He called hundreds of witnesses before his Senate committee, often declaring they were Communist spies or sympathizers, usually without a shred of evidence. Dozens of innocent lives were destroyed by McCarthy’s unfounded allegations in hearings before his Senate committee. Some committed suicide. McCarthy declared that if you disagreed with him you were obviously a Communist, a Commie sympathizer or a “Pinko.” He had an almost identical belligerent, bullying personality as Trump has today. But McCarthy traveled a bridge too far when he assailed the U.S.Army as being loaded with Communists. That led to the famous Army-McCarthy televised hearings, where, in response to McCarthy’s unfounded allegations, the Army’s counsel shouted out- “Have you no shame sir. Have you no shame.” Finally exposed for the fraud that he was, McCarthy began losing followers and started drinking heavily. By the late 1950s, McCarthy had drank himself to death.

So what would it take to expose today’s demagogue for the fraud he really is. Perhaps the knowledge of who’s behind the scene fueling his campaign. Trump has put this Kellyanne person with a pretty face on TV news channels as his campaign spokeswoman. But the real power behind the throne is a man named Steve Bannon, who definitely does not have a pretty face, but rather a sordid background. Bannon comes from a far right-wing fringe group known as Breitbart News that likes to dabble in extremist causes with overtones of fascism. His ex-wife has called him out for spousal abuse, and uttering anti-semitic statements. Its Bannon’s input that has led to Trump statements that “she has to go to jail.” Presumably, this would happen without a trial or due process were Trump allowed to achieve his ultimate goal. Another power figure behind the scenes is Corey Lewandowski, who managed Trump’s 2012 campaign which based on being a “Birther,” i.e. claiming Barack Obama was really born in Kenya, and thus, was not a U.S. citizen. The fraudulence of that effort was exposed early on, and Trump had to call it quits. The fraudulence of Trump’s 2016 campaign, however, is still seeing the light of day.

The election is 3 weeks from today. Nothing less is at stake than whether the U.S. continues to function as a democratic republic, or becomes a fascist-type dictatorship. After all, appealing to the worst of society has paid off for ruthless tyrants many times in the past.

Categories: Brexit, Donald Trump, Alan Greenspan, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, presidential polls,, Economics, Huey Long, Franklin Roosevelt, Great Depression, The Kingfish,Donald Trump, Joe McCarthy, McCarthyism, World War II, Viet-Nam, Anti-Communist Witch Hunts, Army-McCarthy hearings, Islamic Jihadist terrorism, Soviet Union, Red China | Leave a comment

FOREIGN POLICY DISARRAY

Posted on August 8, 2016 by halviv

George Washington, the first president of the United States, was also the last president to preside over a fairly unified country. Washington ruled for two complete terms during an era of general goodwill, but when he left office fierce bickering and character assassinations began occurring among the rest of our founding fathers, such as John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and others. The attacks on John Adams, our second president, became so virulent that Adams pushed through Congress a series of anti-sedition laws that were in direct violation of the freedom of speech and press provisions of the Bill of Rights. These laws made criticism of the presidency an act of treason with severe penalties attached. Thomas Jefferson, our third president, who co-wrote the Declaration of Independence with Adams, became a fierce critic of Adams and his anti-sedition laws, and to Jefferson’s credit, he managed to have them repealed during his term in the White house. He accomplished little else after that, however. But amid all the back-biting going on among our leaders in those early days of the Republic, there was one concept that they apparently all agreed upon. And that was George Washington’s admonition that the U.S. should not become entangled in the affairs of foreign nations. In other words the U.S. should follow a policy of isolationism.

Protected by huge oceans to our east and west, and mostly friendly countries to our north and south, the U.S. with a few exceptions during the 19th and early 20th centuries adhered fairly strictly to to the Washingtonian concept of non-interference with other nations internal affairs. After all, it wasn’t as if foreign countries could launch bomber or missile attacks on U.S. soil. This policy of isolationism received a severe setback however, as the U.S. became militarily involved in WWI shortly after the election of 1916. With U.S. allies including Britain, France and Russia bogged down in a trench warfare stalemate with Germany that neither side seemed capable of breaking, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson deemed that it was necessary for U.S. intervention to break that stand-off. As a side note, more soldiers on both sides died from disease caused by the filthy, disgusting conditions of the trenches they occupied, than from the opposing side’s bullets. In any event, U.S. involvement quickly broke the stalemate, and, of course, the Allies went on to defeat Germany and end the war. To help change the American mindset from isolationism to intervention, composers such as George M. Cohan wrote patriotic songs in support of the war effort. You can still hear theses tunes, such as “Over There” on YouTube.

With WWI, “the war to end all wars” concluded, the U.S. populace believed it was safe, once again, to retreat back into a comfy, cozy state of isolationism. But the 20 year respite between the conclusion of WWI and the outbreak of WWII showed otherwise. The U.S. was so militarily unprepared for war in 1941 because of isolationist policies, that if Japan could had invaded our West Coast right after bombing Pearl Harbor, the Roosevelt Administration was prepared to cede all U.S. land west of Chicago before attempting to take a military stand. With the unbelievable horrors, atrocities and just pure evil emanating from WWII, and with new threats to world peace on the horizon from Communist Russia and China, a policy of non-intervention in world affairs seemed unthinkable to the American public. Isolationism appeared to be dead as a doornail, (as Ebenezer Scrooge might have put it.) Of course, a subsequent policy of global interventionism has not turned out to be all that terrific either.

It led to the Korean War in which we only able to save half of the Korean peninsula from tyrannical despotism, and then to that fiasco known as Viet-Nam where nearly 60 thousand American lives perished as well as hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, in a jungle war we eventually lost anyhow. And then on to the first Gulf War which let tyrant dictator Saddam Hussein remain in power, and then to the second gulf war which removed him from power at considerable cost in lives and treasure, and which also left chaos in its place. Also along the way during the 50 years after WWII, an anti-communist, “better dead than red” mentality sprung up in the U.S which cost us needless trillions of dollars that were spent beefing up our military-industrial complex in preparation for war against the old USSR which then collapsed under the weight of its own despotism.

Hence when Barack Obama moved into the Oval office in January 2009, people were generally fed up with globalism and ready to return back to a more isolationist policy. Obama appeared to comply with these sentiments by proclaiming that “America will lead from behind” when it came to military initiatives on the world stage. In other words, the U.S. would considerably lower its profile in world events. But there were serious consequences to that position. The U.S. is apparently the one indispensable nation in world affairs, and when it retreats, evil despotism seems to move into the vacuum. And so it has, as Islamic-Jihadist barbarianism has taken hold in the Mid-East countries of Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen, as well as launching terror attacks in Europe, and even in the U.S. The token bombing raids that we’ve launched against these terrorists have hardly seemed to make a dent in their operations. And let us not forget the despotic tyrant of Russia, Vladimir Putin, who has launched unprovoked military action against the Ukraine, which has led to the deaths of thousands, while we’ve stood by and again did nothing. As far as foreign policy goes, “leading from behind” seems to be pretty much failure.

To top it all off, neither of our two presidential candidates, one of which will be in the Oval Office next January, seems to be offering up any new initiatives to offset Obama’s mostly failed foreign policy. Maybe the U.S. is just too worn out, too burdened by debt and fatigue, to launch any new meaningful action on the world stage. As I’ve written many times before, perhaps it’s the inevitable destiny of powerful empires like Rome before us, to reach the zenith of its strength, and then watch that strength slowly dissipate into dust.

WHITE PRIVILEGE

Posted on August 1, 2016 by halviv

When Richard Nixon ran for presidency for the second time, 1968 had already become one of the most turbulent periods in American history. The assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy had brutally inflamed both white and minority citizens across the country. Although the walls of Jim Crow segregation had finally began to crumble, blacks and other minorities, for the most part, still found themselves confined to the rat infested ghettoes of the inner cities that were riddled with crime, drugs prostitution and other horrors. During protests over the MLK killing, these slums in most cities were set afire in protest over the horrible living conditions that blacks still had to endure after 250 years of slavery in America, followed by another 100 years of of Jim Crow semi-slavery. There were also massive marches and protests over the growing unpopularity of the Viet-Nam war which had already claimed tens of thousands of American lives in addition to the hundreds of thousands Viet-Nam dead. To say that for most Americans, the world had been turned upside down would be an understatement. But for Richard Nixon, a golden opportunity had presented itself.

During the election that year, Nixon developed two strategies that would propel him to the White House. The first was his Southern Strategy. Ever since Republican Abe Lincoln had set the slaves free during the Civil War, the South had voted solidly Democratic in election after election. Even though Southern Democrats were usually highly conservative and generally racist, especially compared to their more liberal Northern counterparts, Southerners kept pulling the levers for for the Democratic Party through Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and into the 1940s. That began to change in 1948 when a young Democratic Senator named Hubert Humphrey induced his party to begin championing the civil rights of blacks and other minorities. (Humphrey would eventually become his Party’s nominee in 1968 and lose to Nixon.) While the black population in most southern states was significant, and would generally vote Democratic, they were no match for the white majority in these states that began to vote as a bloc for Republicans. This would give Nixon and his party an assured 200 or so electoral college votes in all future presidential elections, in a system where it takes 270 to win. Today, in the 2016 election, Nixon’s Southern Strategy is still in full blossom.

Nixon’s second strategy was to appeal to the nation’s “Silent Majority” which was primarily comprised of older white people that had become fed-up with massive anti-war demonstrations and the arson being committed in most inner city slums. Sound familiar? Today at almost all the GOP rallies, you’ll see people holding signs saying “The Silent Majority Stands With Trump.” As the song goes- “everything old is new again.” And, of course, this so-called silent majority is almost exclusively white. And why shouldn’t the majority of whites favor the GOP. It’s not whites, for the most part, that have to inhabit inner-city ghettoes. It isn’t whites that still face residual racism and discrimination in housing, employment, wages, social mobility and other areas. Hence, it’s primarily older whites that are propelling the Trump candidacy and placing a highly deranged, vulgar, obnoxious snake oil salesman peddling a neo-fascist and xenophobic elixir, within hailing distance of the Oval Office. The GOP is betting that the white majority in this country is still large enough to get The Donald the 270 electoral college votes he needs to be the next president. Even with hardly any support from minorities or younger white people. And since the Democrats have such a damaged candidate in Hillary Clinton, the Republicans are probably right.

As for Richard Nixon, he won 2 landslide elections and had many accomplishments; but his volatile and narcissistic personality, similar to Trumps, eventually did him in. He did end the Viet-Nam war to a great sigh of relief from the American public. He initiated diplomatic relations with China, which was a huge foreign policy initiative. Probably one of the top five foreign policy achievements of the 20th century. He significantly raised spending levels for health, education, and welfare. He even tried to legislate for universal health care; but, ironically, it was the Democrats that foiled him in that attempt. It didn’t go far enough, they said. But like Trump, Nixon had a fragile personality disorder. He kept an “enemies list” of people he thought were out to get him or do him in. If you were on Nixon’s enemies list, you were likely to receive a visit from an IRS agent seeking to audit your tax returns. He got involved and sought to cover up a break-in by some GOP low-level thugs of of Democratic Headquarters in the Watergate apartment complex in D.C. Nixon was re-elected in 1972 in a massive landslide, winning 49 out of 50 states. However, the Watergate scandal, as it came to be known, seemed to mushroom from petty larceny by some Republican hacks to presidential felony cover-up.

Two reporters from the Washington Post, Woodward and Bernstein, gained huge reputations for themselves by uncovering the sleazy details of the Watergate cover-up, and Nixon’s involvement. The air was steadily seeping out of the Nixon presidential balloon until, one day, Congressional members of his own party came to the White House and told him he had to resign the presidency or face impeachment. Nixon thus became the first president to resign from the Oval Office and lived out the remainder of his days in disgrace and humiliation.

Today, thanks to a majority of white voters, we’re on the verge of putting into the White House, a man that has an almost exact replica of Nixon’s personality disorder. As Yogi Berra might have put it, it’s like deja vu all over again.

Categories: A malfunctioning psche, Brexit, Donald Trump, Alan Greenspan, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, presidential polls,, Economics, human affairs, Isis terrorist attack in Paris,, Joe McCarthy, McCarthyism, World War II, Viet-Nam, Anti-Communist Witch Hunts, Army-McCarthy hearings, Islamic Jihadist terrorism, Soviet Union, Red China, John Kennedy, Redstone Arsenal, NASA, Black Lives Matter, Recent Cop Killings, Ronald Reagan, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

IN MY LIFETIME….

Posted on June 20, 2016 by halviv

Although this planet is billions of years old, and life on this planet is measured in at least hundreds of millions of years, what is considered the beginnings of civilized society goes back a mere 10-12 thousand years. Barely a thimble of water in oceans of time. Therefore, the way I figure it, we’re still pretty far down on the evolutionary totem pole. Which explains why those 12 thousand years of of recorded society have been replete with bad behavior, mass killings, barbaric practices, evil despots and tyrants ruling over kingdoms built by using slavery, and, of course, ever-ongoing brutal, savage war-mongering. Although there were undoubtedly armed conflicts during the entire history of man on this planet, the first recorded war occurred just under 5000 years ago. It took place in Mesopotamia, (today’s Iraq, Syria and Kuwait), and the carnage has being going strong ever since.

So, just to pass the time of day, I was thinking about all that has transpired just in my lifetime. I was just a tot when a supremely gifted demagogue used his immense powers of preaching hatred to the populace to rise to power in Germany and eventually launch what came to be known as World War II. Which was really just a continuation of WWI with a couple of decades of respite. Before that confrontation was over, 60 million people would lose their lives throughout Europe, including millions of Americans. Several million more would die in the Pacific at the hands of Imperial Japan, Germany’s ally. Also, for the first time, the mass extermination of an entire ethnic group was just about successfully accomplished through the use of gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps. About 6 million Jews, and other opponents of Hitler’s Nazi empire, lost their lives in what came to be known as the Holocaust. In a history replete with evil savagery and barbarity, the Holocaust was probably the single most evil act of all time. And it wasn’t just Hitler and the Nazi’s that made the Holocaust work. It took hundreds of thousands of European bureaucrats to establish the network of railroads bringing prisoners to the death camps, and to provide the immense amount of logistics it took to make the camps functional. Hitler’s willing accomplices as one writer called it.

Toward the end of WWII, the Nazis had supposedly developed rockets that were capable of hitting the U.S. East Coast. As a child growing up in New York, I remember being subject to air raid alarms and warnings which required everyone to turn off all lighting. During these air raid drills my parents would bring chairs into my bedroom as we sat there silently in the dark until the all clear sign was given. Most people aren’t aware that Hitler was just days or weeks away at the most before he fell, from developing atomic bomb capabilities that could be employed on rockets that could reach U.S. soil. Or that if Japan had invaded our West Coast immediately after Pearl Harbor, it could have gobbled up at least two-thirds of the U.S. before the Roosevelt Administration was prepared to take a military stand around Chicago. Such was the precarious nature of the freedoms we take for granted today.

After the war, the U.S. quickly demobilized as it appeared that peace would be on the horizon for decades. In the meantime, the most advanced electronics in everyone’s home was a radio and a land-line telephone. When television started coming on the market shortly after the war, it was like the 8th wonder of the world. Our first black-and-white TV had an immense 13 inch screen, and only 3 stations which broadcast only during certain parts of the day and night. But to actually view what one could only hear on the radio, was considered beyond the pale. Also some kind of contraptions they started calling “computers” entered the American vocabulary. But as people learned, they were about as big as a Sherman tank and could be used only for business purposes. The thought of having this contraption in one’s home was considered ridiculous. Until suddenly, something called the “internet” became a hot topic of conversation and they figured out how to downsize computers so they fit comfortably in people’s residences. But telephones always had to be hooked up to a cord, didn’t they? Until they further figured out a way to get rid of the cord and turn the phone into a mini-computer. And thus, on-and -on marches the electronics revolution. All in my lifetime.

In the meantime, the peace-in-our-lifetime dreams that Americans had with the conclusion of WWII evaporated as quickly as the morning mist. With the rise of Communist Russia and China, Americans became highly fearful of the “Red Menace.” When both countries acquired nuclear bomb capabilities deep fears and anxieties spread throughout the land. After a mere 5 or 6 years since the end of WWII, the U.S. was back on war-footing; this time fighting Communists on the Korean peninsula. More death and destruction. Meanwhile a Senator from Wisconsin named Joe McCarthy saw a huge opportunity to demagogue the “soft-on-communism” issue. He was sort of like the Donald Trump of his day. He claimed that the U.S. government, as well as Hollywood and other institutions were riddled with Communist spies working for Russia. To be labeled a Communist by the McCarthy committee was equivalent to seeing ones life turned to ashes. McCarthy eventually went down in flames but not before he had destroyed countless lives.

The Communist scare, known as the better-dead-than-red mentality, eventually led from the stalemate in Korea to the huge loss of life in the Viet-Nam fiasco. Almost 60,000 Americans died in the hell-hole jungles of Viet-Nam before we lost the war and called it quits. To say nothing of the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese that died during that fracas. And it wasn’t all that much later, that a new barbarism had come upon the landscape in the form of Islamic-Jihadism. Which has us militarily bogged down once more, this time in the Mid-East. It seems as if evil is like wild-fires. You douse one, and two more crop up somewhere else. In the meantime, in mid-2016, it’s as if the re-incarnation of Joe McCarthy has rose to power and he is now one step away from the White House. All of this, in my lifetime.

To say that I’ve lived through a fascinating panorama of events during my life would be a considerable understatement. But I’m not so sure that’s a good thing.

Categories: A malfunctioning psche, Ben Franklin, The Constitution, Monarchies, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, presidential polls,, Economics, Huey Long, Franklin Roosevelt, Great Depression, The Kingfish,Donald Trump, human affairs, Isis terrorist attack in Paris,, Joe McCarthy, McCarthyism, World War II, Viet-Nam, Anti-Communist Witch Hunts, Army-McCarthy hearings, Islamic Jihadist terrorism, Soviet Union, Red China, John Kennedy, John Kennedy, foreign policy,terrorism, lack of U.S. response to terrorism,, politics, Ronald Reagan, the Depression, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

TRICKLE-DOWN HATRED

Posted on June 13, 2016 by halviv

The latest massacre in Orlando, with about 50 dead and the same number wounded, is just the latest in what has become an ever-growing list of atrocities being committed with greater frequency in the United States. It follows the recent slaughter of innocents in San Bernardino by lone-wolf Islamic Jihadists; the butchering of 20 innocent children in Connecticut by a young man who just couldn’t cope with life; the killing of black church-goers in South Carolina by another deranged individual seeking vengeance for the South’s loss of the Civil War 150 years ago; the murder of about 30 people at Fort Hood, Louisiana by another Jihadist lunatic; the murder of movie-goers in Colorado by another mentally-ill delusionist; and ultimately back to 9/11/01 where almost 3000 lives were lost thanks to fanatical Jihadism; and finally all the way back to Columbine where modern day mass murder in the U.S. seemed to originate. Whether committed by religious fanatics or loners seemingly rejected by society, all these events had the same thing in common. Namely, a deep-seated hatred by the perpetrators toward their victims.

Lets start with the Islamic-Jihad brand of murder, as seems to be the case now in the Orlando slayings. There are about 1.3 billion Moslems currently living on this planet. The vast, overwhelming majority are peaceful human beings, going about their business every day of trying to earn a living, raising a family, taking care of the bills, etc. The problem is, however, that a small minority of Islamic fanatics would like to turn the clock back to the seventh century, when, (in their minds) Islam was untarnished by Western values and modern culture. Fanatical Imams preach a violent interpretation of the Quran which translates into a non-stop hatred toward anything Western, and urge young Moslems to martyr themselves by killing infidels and blowing-up Western society. While most Moslems reject this spewing hatred, there are always those lost souls looking for meaning in their worthless lives, and hence, only to eager to follow the dictates of Islamic-Jihadism. There are no easy answers toward resolving this condition, since there seems to be an endless supply of down-and-out, usually poverty-stricken, mostly young men who feel that sacrificing their lives for a cause, no matter how deranged, is preferable to the way they currently live. It would take world leadership in the Moslem community, as well as high-ranking Imams to denounce this spewing hatred of anything Western. This might, perhaps begin to turn the tide of Islamic-Jihadist vitriol. Thus far, however, this type of moderate leadership is not showing up on the horizon.

Of course, speaking of spewing hatred, the U.S. has its own long, rich history of violent hate-mongering. From its earliest days as a series of colonies in the 1600s, Americans believed what a neat idea it would be to enslave an entire race of people based on their skin color. Slavery lasted in the U.S. for about 250 years before it took a costly and deadly Civil War to end this barbaric practice. When the 13th and 14th amendments to the Constitution gave black people the same rights as everyone else-it proved to be a bridge too far for most whites in this country, especially in the South. A series of Jim Crow segregation laws were quickly enacted through the entire South which forced black people back into a state of semi-slavery. To make matters worse, whites in the South, after the Civil War, formed an organization that came to be known as the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, to deal with those blacks they felt had become “uppity.” Those that had actually sought to exercise their full rights as a U.S. citizen. The Klan dressed themselves in white hoods and costumes and rode through and intimidated black communities. They engaged in cross-burnings, whippings or lynching of blacks based on the perceived severity of their transgressions. Even as late as the 1920s, the KKK had a huge following in the tens or hundreds of thousands, throughout the entire country. The murderous lynchings of blacks in the South continued as late as the 1970s.

Today, despite the belief by many Americans that the Klan has just about disappeared, the KKK is indeed still active throughout most of the U.S. They may not wear white hoods anymore, but they still spew forth a message of deep hatred for blacks and Jews, or for that matter, anyone whose skin-color isn’t pinkish beige. The former Grand Dragon of the KKK, a fellow named David Duke, has come out and publicly stated that any white person that doesn’t support Donald Trump for president is a traitor to his race. The current KKK leadership has formally endorsed Trump’s candidacy, stating that the Donald is their kind of guy. And, as for David Duke, he currently has a radio program based in Louisiana, where he gets to spew his racial, religious, and ethnic hatreds to a large audience, 5 days a week.

When Trump was recently attacking by racial bias, the judge who had the temerity to release the papers involved in the law-suit against that crooked, sham enterprise known as Trump University, he was finally called out by many that had previously stood on the political sidelines throughout Trump’s prior bigoted tirades. Even the Republican Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, stated that Trump’s attack against the judge because of his Mexican heritage, was “a classic case of trickle-down racial bigotry.” Nevertheless, Speaker Ryan stated that he would continue to support Trump for president because they were of the same party. Sort of like selling one’s soul to the company store. Aren’t politics wonderful? Meanwhile, because of all this hatred, more atrocities will likely be coming our way and at a faster pace.

Categories: A malfunctioning psche, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, presidential polls,, Economics, Joe McCarthy, McCarthyism, World War II, Viet-Nam, Anti-Communist Witch Hunts, Army-McCarthy hearings, Islamic Jihadist terrorism, Soviet Union, Red China, politics, Ronald Reagan, the Depression, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

VICTIMOLOGY

Posted on May 9, 2016 by halviv

There appears to be a near universal psychology that impels most people to play the role of victimhood. The desire to be a victim is like bathing in a shower of self-absolution. As I’ve written before, when events take a wrong turn in a person’s life, it can’t possibly be their fault. External forces or other people are to blame for the misfortunes of their personal existences. Living a crappy lifestyle, stuck in a dead end job that pays very little, having nothing but grief in your relationships with the opposite sex or even with so-called friends? It can all be blamed on other people, on devious, selfish individuals, on dishonest commercial enterprises, on the universe, or best of all on foreigners. The theme of foreign exploitation as the cause of personal victimhood has been propelled with great success by many tyrants seeking dictatorial power throughout the 20th century, and is now in full throttle in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.

To say that Donald Trump’s entire campaign has been based on a narrative of victimology would be a considerable understatement. According to Trump, the U.S. has become a victim of unscrupulous entrepreneurs that have moved their businesses to Mexico or China in order to take advantage of cheaper labor rates and hence, reduced manufacturing costs. It has nothing to do with the fact that these businesses are merely following the rules of basic capitalism, which, by the way, has made Trump a billionaire. The U.S. has become a victim of our neighbor to the south, because those dastardly Mexicans have not only deceitfully lured U.S. businesses to its country, but they have also dumped about 11 million illegal aliens into the U.S., many of whom are”rapists and murderers.” It’s a miracle that we’ve been able to survive, thus far, from this onslaught of illegals, who comprise a terrifying 3% of the U.S. population. And we’re a victim of China’s currency manipulations which results in significantly more imports that we receive from China, than we export to that country. Imports, I might add, that considerably benefit lower income citizens through cheaper prices on clothing and other consumer goods.

Even our supposed allies are causing us to be victims. It’s NATO countries such as Britain, France and Germany that are failing to contribute their fair share of military forces to this joint enterprise, causing the U.S. to make up the difference in additional military expenditures. Left unsaid, of course, is the fact that European countries are allowing U.S. military bases to occupy their lands, thus making it far easier for the U.S. to engage in military forays in the many Mid-East countries that we’re currently involved with. It’s a lot easier and less expensive to carry out bombing raids against ISIS and other Jihadists using planes stationed in Europe, than if our planes had to take off from bases in the U.S. So, is there any country left in the world that isn’t causing us to be victims within our own borders? Perhaps Belize or Trinidad, although even that’s questionable.

This narrative of the U.S. being a victim of dishonest foreigners took a curious turn last week when Trump stated that it was time to “put America first.” Whether he realized it or not, the term “America First” has an unsavory fascist history. It was used by supposedly isolationist politicians to advocate that the U.S not become involved in WWII. Stay neutral and don’t become entangled, was their imperative. However behind this veneer of isolationism, many of those advocating “America First” were actually Nazi sympathizers rooting for Hitler and his fascism to win the war. Charles Lindberg, the famous aviator, was one of the most prominent America Firsters. Their main argument was that because the U.S. was surrounded by 2 large bodies of water to the East and West, and by 2 friendly countries to the North and South, there was no need to join a fracas that involved nothing but foreigners killing each other. The bombing of Pearl Harbor, of course, proved how absurd that line of reasoning was. It was later discovered that Lindberg and other prominent America Firsters were actually Nazi sympathizers.

Trump, with his message of American victimhood, is now just one step away from the presidency. He has the Republican nomination all but locked up, and just has to get by a weak and damaged Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee. Thus far, Trump’s victimhood snake oil elixir seems to be selling with great success among the American populace. He has talk radio and Fox News shilling for him to a greater extent than they have for any previous GOP candidate. Clinton, with about 30 years of previous scandals, to say nothing of her current e-mail fiasco, has a very difficult road to travel in her quest for the White House. While current polls show her in the lead, Trump is unquestionably the better snake-oil salesman.

To get an idea of what a Trump presidency would mean for America, and for the rest of the world, go back and read some of my more recent entries. Add to them the fact that a President Trump will get to put at least two, and probably more, justices on the Supreme Court, that will be strongly anti-abortion. Roe V. Wade will become history, as will legalized abortion throughout almost all of the U.S. Then, many women in America, seeking to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, will be able to legitimately claim that they ARE being made victims of our political system.

Categories: A malfunctioning psche, Ben Franklin, The Constitution, Monarchies, Economics, Joe McCarthy, McCarthyism, World War II, Viet-Nam, Anti-Communist Witch Hunts, Army-McCarthy hearings, Islamic Jihadist terrorism, Soviet Union, Red China, politics, the Depression, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

THE RABBLE AND THE RIFF-RAFF

Posted on May 2, 2016 by halviv

July 4th will mark 240 years since 1776 when the United States declared its independence from England. The way the election of 2016 is going, however, perhaps we should re-apply to join the British Commonwealth. Our founding fathers fears that the rabble in our citizenry would eventually come to dominate the election process, and put someone wholly unfit into a position of power, is on the cusp of becoming a reality. When the Constitutional Convention of 1787 finished its work, a woman asked Ben Franklin, one of the key players in formulating the Constitution, whether the Convention had given us a monarchy or a republic. “A republic, if you can keep it,” replied Franklin. Now, after more than 200 years, we may very well find that the American people can no longer keep it together as a republic.

Our f0unding fathers were highly skeptical about giving the “common man” the right to directly elect those that would govern them. Founders such as John Adams, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton (currently of Broadway musical fame), and others,believed that those they considered the riff-raff of society could not be trusted to vote intelligently, i.e. to not be beguiled into electing a demagogue that would appeal to their basest instincts. Hence, instead of the people directly electing our president, the founders concocted a system called the electoral college which has the sole power of putting a candidate into the Oval Office. To this day, that Constitutional provision has never been amended. It reared its ugly head in the 2000 presidential election, when Democrat Al Gore received a majority of the popular vote, but Republican George W. Bush won a plurality of the electoral college, and hence, the presidency.

A lot of really bad stuff ensued from that nasty 2000 election. Bush decided to invade Iraq on the pretense that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, which he did not. Al Gore would have never made that decision. As a result of that invasion, over the years, Iraq has degenerated into a multi-split territory, with barbaric Islamic Jihadists such as ISIS, unfortunately controlling a significant portion of this territory. Yes, Saddam Hussein was pure evil, and the world is a lot better off without him sucking in oxygen. But he held his country together and prevented the Jihadist terrorists from gaining a foothold. I guess the lesson to be learned is that when faced with nothing but bad choices, the least worst choice is your best option. In any event, the electoral college continues to exist, ever ready to inflict further damage.

Another example of our founders distrust of the average citizen’s wisdom during the election process, was the method of electing someone to the Senate. Many founders believed that only those citizens that owned property, or were otherwise well financially endowed, should be allowed to vote. Other founders were in favor of allowing everyone to cast a ballot. (Everyone, of course, that wasn’t a woman or a Negro.) So a compromise was reached whereby the House of Representatives would be directly elected by popular vote, but it would be only state legislatures that could put Senators into office. It took until 1913 for a constitutional amendment to pass that allowed the people to directly elect its Senators. Women were finally allowed at the ballot box in 1920, after another amendment gave them the right to vote.

The point to all of this is that many of our founding fathers had a deep mistrust of allowing the average citizen to participate in the balloting process. They believed that those that were basically penniless with nothing to lose, the riff-raff as they were called, would put any smooth-talking con artist or snake-oil salesmen into positions of power, if sold the right bill of goods. Whereas land-owners or people of wealth had too much to lose to be so beguiled. Where they right? We’ll find out in a few months when the republic that Ben Franklin and the other founders labored so hard to give us might no longer be keepable. When the rabble of today, although usually not penniless, nevertheless, seem to be mostly ignorant of relevant issues, and susceptible to being sold the elixir of a smooth-talking snake-oil salesman. Ironic, isn’t it, when there’s a wealth of information at everyones finger tips to be obtained on each candidate, in this computer age.

That the general election in November will come down to a choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, is now a foregone conclusion. That Trump has a huge, enthusiastic fan base is also a given. This base is built on Trump’s snake oil salesmanship of a neo-fascist, xenophobic vision of America that basically demonizes all foreigners, and throws all undocumented Hispanics out of the country. And builds a near 2000 mile long wall to keep them out. Also, not to allow any of the 1.6 billion Moslems that populate this planet into the country. So fierce is the rabble’s enthusiasm to demonize all things foreign, that Trump is correct about one thing he said. He could stand on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and shoot someone dead, and there would, nevertheless, be no diminishment of his followers. Which is tragically true.

Of course, Clinton and the Democrats are not exactly great prizes either. The Democrats have become so pathetic that their only hope to retain the White House rests on the shoulders of an aging woman who has been involved in a multitude of scandals over the past 30 years or so. Like the recklessness of using a personal server in her home to send and receive classified government e-mails. An unprotected server that could have been easily hacked by any foreign power. To say nothing of Bill’s sexual proclivities from the 1990s that the GOP will blame Hillary for.

So there you have it folks. The choice comes down to highly unpopular candidates from each party. The difference is, however, that if Clinton wins, the the Constitution, and the republic that the founders strove to give us, will likely stand. But if Trump wins, we can kiss our Constitutional freedoms goodbye, and devolve into a tyrannical dictatorship. And you can thank the rabble and the riff-raff amongst us for that delightful end result.

Categories: A malfunctioning psche, Ben Franklin, The Constitution, Monarchies, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, presidential polls,, Economics, ELVIS PRESLY, MARILYN MONROE, MICHAEL JACKSON, WHITNEY HOUSTON, THE STATE OF HAPPINESS VS. UNHAPPINESS, human affairs, Joe McCarthy, McCarthyism, World War II, Viet-Nam, Anti-Communist Witch Hunts, Army-McCarthy hearings, Islamic Jihadist terrorism, Soviet Union, Red China, politics, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

A MALFUNCTIONING PSYCHE

Posted on April 25, 2016 by halviv

It is often a reality of human nature, that when things are going badly in ones life, that person finds it too painful to accept personal responsibility. If a person’s life has degenerated into a day-to-day crawl thru chaos, or even worse, into a total disaster area, they frequently cannot accept that the fault is theirs. Surely, some one else is to blame. Surely, it’s the Wall Street bankers or hedge fund managers that have robbed them out of their ability to earn a decent salary. Surely, it’s the illegal Mexicans that have taken all the good jobs away and have thereby made it virtually impossible for them to earn enough to afford a quality standard of living. Surely, it’s the government that has placed too harsh rules and regulations on them, and thus, they cannot live the life that was really meant to be. It never has anything to to with the fact that they didn’t, for example, make the effort to study electronics, or medicine, or engineering, or chemistry, etc. which would have given them the necessary tools to earn enough to afford at least an upper middle class lifestyle. It would have been too exhausting to pursue such endeavors. Their psychic reality is that some other party is always the one to blame.

The poet, Edward Arlington Robinson, summed it up best in his poem called “Miniver Cheevy.” “Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn, grew lean while he assailed the seasons” is the opening line of this poem which describes how Miniver blamed the whole world for his failures and his alcoholism, and ends with -“Miniver coughed and called it fate, and kept on drinking.” The problem for society is, however, that when large numbers of people are psychologically invested in blaming others for their shortcomings and failures, it provides fertile ground for the demagogue to move in and seize power. I’ve written many times before about how Hitler demonized the Jews and others in 1920s Germany on his path toward total dictatorship. Hitler would practice in front of mirrors, with crony consultants advising him on how to fire up the German populace to believe that the many economic problems facing Germany at the time were not their fault. They didn’t have to take responsibility for existing conditions. He would strive for the most inflammatory speech patterns, inflections and hand gestures while demonizing a small, peaceful segment of the German population, who were primarily tailors and shopkeepers. Germans were suffering because of the Jews, was the message of the day. At first most Germans disregarded Hitler’s ravings. After all, they were well educated and had a rich culture of philosophy, art, literature, and music. But in the end demagoguery prevailed over common sense and personal responsibility, and 60 million people lost their lives.

Someone once said that all of life is politics. If this is true that it must be pointed out that all of politics is a game of salesmanship, and this has never been more evident than in 2016 America. Whoever can deliver the best sales job in describing his or her vision for the future of the U.S. will invariably win the majority vote and the election to become the most powerful person in the world. One path in this game of salesmanship is to take the demagogic route the way Hitler and Mussolini and others did so successfully. After all, isn’t it the Hispanic illegals that are destroying this country, (the way the the Jews were destroying 1920s Germany.) So what if undocumented Hispanics comprise less than 3.5% of the U.S. population and that their numbers are actually decreasing. They’re still the ones at fault for everything that’s gone wrong in my life. It couldn’t possibly be me. To say nothing of those shysters on Wall Street that have literally taken the bread out of my mouth.

The more one thinks about it, the more one must conclude that winning an election is not unlike selling cars. A car is basically a vehicle to get you from here to there. Yes, the more expensive cars may look prettier and give a smoother ride and have more bells and whistles on it. But its purpose is still to get you from here to there. If you never left your house, you would likely never buy a car. Yet, from the salesmanship that goes into advertising cars, especially on TV, one would think they are anything but a means of transportation. Recently, there was an ad on TV for Cadillac, that featured a very sophisticated, and pretty young woman behind the wheel of one of their models, stating: “The question you have to ask yourself is this. When you turn your car on….does it do the same for you?” So now Cadillac products are not there to provide a mode of transportation, but rather should be used as a means of sexual stimulation. Perhaps even sexual climax. Who knew?

So in the end, winning at the ballot box depends on who has the best salesmanship. Not unlike selling new or used cars on TV. For some candidates, their sales pitch is to take the demagogic route, i.e. assure the populace that all their personal failures in life are the fault of others, usually a small defenseless minority. It has worked well in the past, and is likely to succeed this time around too.

Well, at least I’ve written an entire piece without mentioning Donald Trump’s name, even once. Oops.

Categories: A malfunctioning psche, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, presidential polls,, Economics, ELVIS PRESLY, MARILYN MONROE, MICHAEL JACKSON, WHITNEY HOUSTON, THE STATE OF HAPPINESS VS. UNHAPPINESS, Huey Long, Franklin Roosevelt, Great Depression, The Kingfish,Donald Trump, Joe McCarthy, McCarthyism, World War II, Viet-Nam, Anti-Communist Witch Hunts, Army-McCarthy hearings, Islamic Jihadist terrorism, Soviet Union, Red China, John Kennedy, John Kennedy, foreign policy,terrorism, lack of U.S. response to terrorism,, politics, the Depression, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

MAKING AMERICA HATE AGAIN

Posted on March 21, 2016 by halviv

The title is taken from some of the signs held up at various Trump campaign rallies. There has recently been outbreaks of violence at these rallies between protesters and Trump supporters. Of course, such violence plays right into Trump’s strategy of appearing to be the injured party, or the victim. Even thought Trump has openly espoused the use of violence against those protesting his neo-fascist proclamations, and has often applauded those of his adherents for committing violent acts. This includes his own campaign manager who threw a female reporter to the ground. It also includes Trump’s threat of instigating riots throughout the U.S. should the GOP have the temerity of denying him the Republican presidential nomination. But it also begs the question of why there are apparently millions of Americans that are so in sync with with his fascist agenda and so eager for violent retribution against those that are opposed. I know that I have written about this several times before, but one has to go back to the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany in the 1920s to understand the mechanics of the groundswell for a fascist candidate in 21st century America.

Benito Mussolini began the fascist imperative in Italy before 1920 through a nativist, xenophobic campaign against all foreigners. Originally a socialist, he soon rejected socialism and founded the first fascist party in Europe. The attainment of power became an all-consuming quest as Mussolini employed organized thugs known as the “black shirts” to quell and silence all those in opposition to his ambitions. He was appointed Prime Minister of Italy in 1923, through what constituted the democratic process, but soon destroyed all vestiges of democracy, and declared himself dictator for life. He became an ally of Hitler, and it wasn’t until near the end of WWII that he was removed from office and executed by Italian partisans. It should be noted, however, that Mussolini’s popularity among Italians remained high until Italy’s fortunes began to plummet as WWII dragged on, and the Axis powers began losing their conquests.

In Germany, a down-and-out former WWI corporeal named Adolph Hitler became a keen observer of Mussolini’s exploits in Italy. He was desperate to obtain a government job as a means of supporting himself. Finally a German bureaucrat hired Hitler to sit in on a small troublesome outfit known as the German Workers Party and report back if this group constituted any kind of threat to the government. When Hitler came to the first meeting there were maybe 20 people in attendance, and their speeches were dull as dishwater. Hitler then finally spoke at this gathering, with fiery, demagogic rhetoric, as he blamed the Allied powers and a small minority of Jews for all of Germany’s many problems. More and more people began listening to Hitler’s thunderous demagoguery as the crowds at his speeches quickly swelled. Along the way, Hitler found an ancient tribal symbol, and fashioned it in what became known as the swastika, or a new symbol embroidered into flags and armbands for his growing movement. A truly brilliant stroke for any budding demagogue. He changed the name of his party to the German National Socialist, or Nazi party. Like Mussolini, he organized his own band of goon squads known as the “brown shirts” that roamed through German cities and beat-up or otherwise terrorized any and all opposition. And like Mussolini, he rose to become Chancellor largely through the democratic process, but then destroyed all remnants of democracy once in office. The rest as they say, is history.

So, the interesting question is not the reason for Trump’s ascendency on the national scene, but, rather, why people in such large numbers are drawn to this fascist imperative. After all, Trump merely saw an opening and exploited it like Hitler and Mussolini before him. But why is such a large chunk of the so-called Republican base buying his snake-oil, or drinking his Kool-aid, or any other metaphor one can use. One reason, as I previously pointed out, is the hate-based vitriol that’s been leeched into the American mainstream over the past 25-30 years by talk radio stars such as Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter. The poisonous seeds that have been planted into the American psyche by these xenophobic, nativist, hate-preaching polluters are finally taking root and are beginning to grow. Their efforts have not been in vain.

Another primary reason is that a good portion of the American populace really isn’t paying much attention to the political scene. Trump is a TV celebrity businessman with a lot of name recognition who gets tons of free publicity. People tend to gravitate toward a known brand such as Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. The other candidates are lesser known and too many people are too focused on the next American Idol, and can’t be bothered by researching out what the other candidates stand for. After all, what’s more important- keeping up with the Kardashians, or who the next president will be. The irony is that Americans were generally better informed about the political scene in the 19th and early 20th centuries when all they had were newspapers, than they are today when a wealth of information is right at their finger tips through Google. Thus, a lying huckster like Trump who speaks out of both sides of his mouth, can make all kinds outrageous claims and falsehoods to an uninformed electorate and get away with it. Until the day will come, as it did in Italy and Germany, when it will be too late to do anything about it, without fear of horrific retribution.

Well, I promised myself I wouldn’t write about Trump again; but when I saw that sign about making America hate again, I guess it got political my juices flowing.

Categories: Economics, ELVIS PRESLY, MARILYN MONROE, MICHAEL JACKSON, WHITNEY HOUSTON, THE STATE OF HAPPINESS VS. UNHAPPINESS, Huey Long, Franklin Roosevelt, Great Depression, The Kingfish,Donald Trump, human affairs, Isis terrorist attack in Paris,, Joe McCarthy, McCarthyism, World War II, Viet-Nam, Anti-Communist Witch Hunts, Army-McCarthy hearings, Islamic Jihadist terrorism, Soviet Union, Red China, politics, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

CHAOS IN AMERICA

Posted on March 7, 2016 by halviv

It’s January 20, 2017, and newly elected President Donald Trump enters the Oval Office in the White House for the first time. He is eager to show the American public that he’s a dynamic man of action by quickly implementing the agenda he ran on during the campaign. There has recently been a spate of terrorist bombings in Europe committed by ISIS and other Islamic-Jihadist barbarians. So, as the first order of business, Trump commands the military to start bombing ISIS barracks and employing torture methods to any captured Jihadists. The barracks have never been attacked before because they are primarily populated by the wives and kids of ISIS fighters. Some Generals and Admirals balk at these commands, pointing out that they would be in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions, and that they could thus be prosecuted for committing war crimes. Trump calls them “pansies” and fires them immediately for failing to comply with direct orders from their Commander-in-Chief. New officers are appointed who are far more amenable to carrying out Trumps orders.

The bombing of ISIS barracks by U.S. forces begins for the first time with the resultant deaths of hundreds if not thousands of casualties, comprised mainly of women and children. Not only the Arab world, but most of Europe is outraged including our closest allies. Britain, France, Germany, and Italy, among others, threaten to pull out of NATO but, in the end, are pretty much impotent to stop these bombings. ISIS, however, seizes on these actions as the gift of an invaluable recruiting tool. ISIS goes on-line and states that such bombings demonstrate that America really is The Great Satan the world has been warned about. Thousands of new recruits join ISIS in the following months. We are now locked in competition with the Jihadists in a race to the bottom of the mud pit. American credibility sinks to an all-time low.

Next up is building that gigantic wall on the Mexican border, nearly 2000 miles long, that Trump promised during his campaign. The Mexican Government is nearly doubled over in stitches when Trump asks them to pay for the construction. But Trump can always rely on the U.S. Treasury for funding so construction begins. At a cost of multi-billions in new deficits added to the $20 trillion of debt the U.S. owed when Obama left office. The Trump Wall, with all its grotesqueness, as it becomes referred to, now replaces Lady Liberty in New York harbor as the symbol of America. At the same time, Trump orders the process of rounding up nearly 11 million undocumented Hispanics for deportation to Latin America. These include children (of illegal-alien parents) that were born in the U.S., and who are thus supposedly American citizens according to the Constitution. But Trump calls them “anchor babies” and insists that lawyers (whom he’s paid for) have advised him that deportation of such children is perfectly legal. Although denounced by such media outlets as the New York Times, the Los Angles Times, and the Washington Post, Trumps favorability ratings skyrocket, especially among the Republican base.

Next, Trump begins a trade war with Mexico, China and other countries. Trump slaps a 33%-45% tariff on most imported goods as he promised. This hits the lower middle class especially hard, since much of the clothing they buy at Wal-Mart or K-Mart or other such low end stores is imported from Asia. The person who is considering buying a $30,000 dollar Ford, which is the most he can afford, now finds that same car costs $45,000 because it’s manufactured in Mexico. China, which owns over a trillion dollars of U.S. debt, is outraged over these new tariffs on its exported products and begins retaliation. First it dumps a good portion of the U.S. bonds it owns, on the open market causing panic among U.S. stock and bond investors. Interest rates skyrocket which results in massive investment sell-offs on Wall Street. The stock and bond markets plunge. Next, retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports are established primarily by Asian countries and Mexico. The export industry in this country, which accounts for a large chunk of the U.S. economy, takes a huge hit. Export factories begin to shutter, laying off tens of thousands of mostly blue-collar workers who were the backbone of Trump’s supporters in the previous November election. One might call it ironic justice. The unemployment rate begins to significantly increase, causing the first dip in Trump’s poll numbers.

Through all the turmoil, David Duke, the former Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, reiterates his undiminished support for President Trump. Although Trump has supposedly dis-avowed him, Duke still insists that Trump is doing right by the white race, and continues to have the full support of the KKK. I could go on with more examples but I think you get the picture. It’s the same thing that happened in Venezuela which was a functioning democracy until an ego-driven, blustering bully named Hugo Chavez took the reigns of power. Venezuela had a reasonable economy fueled by its very large oil reserves until Chavez drove that economy into the ground. He refused to relinquish the presidency when his term was up until cancer finally killed him. But his thuggish cronies are still running the country and ruining its economy.

Sometimes, the utter hollowness and hypocrisy of the Trump campaign is tripped up by the tiniest but most meaningful of circumstances. Not long ago, Trump, the great biblical scholar, gave a speech at Liberty University which is a Christian school run by Jerry Falwell Jr. During his talk he quoted from a passage out of the New Testament called “Second Corinthians.” Only Trump referred to it as “Two Corinthians.” Twitter and Facebook lit up like a Roman candle. One person wrote on Twitter that-“Two Corinthians go into a bar…..” I think that simple posting says it all.

Categories: Economics, Huey Long, Franklin Roosevelt, Great Depression, The Kingfish,Donald Trump, human affairs, Joe McCarthy, McCarthyism, World War II, Viet-Nam, Anti-Communist Witch Hunts, Army-McCarthy hearings, Islamic Jihadist terrorism, Soviet Union, Red China, politics, Ronald Reagan, Uncategorized | Leave a comment