Why I May Vote For Trump

I was watching one of the political commentary shows and they had "a Trump surrogate" on. He made a point that I really couldn't disagree with.

He said Trump is a vote for change. Hillary is a vote for more of the same.

People in this country are fed up, hungry for change, they want to shake up the "business as usual" in Washington. Trump, although he's promised to return to Reagan-Bush-era trickle down economics -- which has proven disastrous -- everything else about a Trump presidency would be new territory.

Maybe putting Trump in the White House would finally kill the Republican Party and conservative politics.

The claim is bogus. Trump knows nothing about policy, and doesn't have the brains or the attention span to learn. As with Reagan, other people will be setting the agenda, while he sits on high as the figurehead. Those Republican operatives will give us a third term of Dubya (at best). It won't be anything new.

Bernie Sanders Makes a Powerful Case for Continuing the Revolution—Under a Clinton Administration

The lack of enthusiasm for Hillary is palpable.

I wish Bernie had won the nomination.

There are some ways that Hillary's campaign has missed glaring opportunities. It has focussed solely on Trump. She needed to cast her net a bit wider, and hammer the entire Republican party, especially Congress for being the laziest bunch of losers in US history, and the state operatives who gerrymandered the House so that it is completely un-representative. I think if people saw the election as broader than just two personalities, it could only help Hillary, and also make clear that people need to get out and vote on the down-ballot races. Trump is only getting supporters on force of personality: it can't be on policy, because he hasn't elucidated even one that is actually feasible. She shuld have made it clear that voting for Trump is voting for disaster.

Exactly.

Oh I agree 100%.  Thanks for putting it into words.

This particular election is about so much more than haircuts and teeth.  Yet the American public apparently can't see beyond the TV clown.

I also don't understand why the right-wingers have been allowed to continue their narratives which are false and misleading.

• Benghazi - no story here, move along
  
• Clinton Foundation - the Clintons do not draw a salary!
  
• e-mails - as I understand it the classified stuff was "classified" retroactively

So the Great American Experiment begins.

I predict by 2020 the country will be in (much) worse shape than in 2009, or 1929.

That IS a good article. Here's another.

Quote :

The Trumpers never expected their guy to actually win the thing, and that's their problem now. They only wanted to whoop and yell, boo at the H-word, wear profane T-shirts, maybe grab a crotch or two, jump in the RV with a couple six-packs and go out and shoot some spotted owls. It was pleasure enough for them just to know that they were driving us wild with dismay -- by "us," I mean librarians, children's authors, yoga practitioners, Unitarians, birdwatchers, people who make their own pasta, opera goers, the grammar police, people who keep books on their shelves, that bunch. The Trumpers exulted in knowing we were tearing our hair out. They had our number, like a bratty kid who knows exactly how to make you grit your teeth and froth at the mouth.

Alas for the Trump voters, the disasters he will bring on this country will fall more heavily on them than anyone else. The uneducated white males who elected him are the vulnerable ones and they will not like what happens next.

Is it a testament to Democrats' forebearance -- or a measure of our gullibility -- that nobody has questioned the legitimacy of this election?  How could the polls all be this wrong?  Well, one way is for the ballot boxes to be rigged.

NoCoPilot wrote:

How could the polls all be this wrong?  Well, one way is for the ballot boxes to be rigged.

I've said before that I think all the presidential elections from 2000 forward have been rigged, or attempted rigged, by the Republicans. Obama was so popular that they couldn't swing it. 2000 and 2004 they did, and I expect 2016 they did as well.

In a Facebook post, Reagan was mentioned. My reply on Facebook was:

Quote :

Reagan wasn't good. The kindest assessment rates him mediocre at best. And it shouldn't be overlooked that his election campaign leaned heavily on racism, that his administration was full of criminals, and that he was famous for falling asleep in meetings. Probably the Altzheimers was kicking in during his second term, as well. He was also the president who introduced us to the nonsensical "supply side economics", which has never worked (not even once), and is still the mantra of the Republicans (who don't actually care about reality). Trump is actually Reagan, taken to absurd extremes.

Thinking about it, this is very true, and should have been a warning, if we had considered the idea before the election. The same idiots who elected Reagan (and mostly still think he was the best president ever) were bound to vote for Trump, on the same fallacious reasoning, and with the same undercurrents (not very far under) of racism.

NoCoPilot wrote:

Some people certainly did.

My favorite line from that article: "Trump is a straight-talker".
I have heard people interviewew who say things such as, "He tells it like it is."
If "straight talking" and "telling it like it is" mean making shit up to pander to a bunch of idiots, then I will have to agree.

I have seen lists of things Trump has flip-flopped on, usually more than once.

If I wasn't on a Trump-free diet I'd dig one up and post it.

Trump didn't flip-flop. He just couldn't remember his previous lie.

Is South Park your new go-to for news analysis?

Beats Fox News.

The episode of South Park that aired a day after the election had their Trump-like character as the winner. They were obviously better prepared for the possibility than were the news programs. Of course, they surely had another episode ready if Clinton had won. I hope they air it some day.

NoCoPilot wrote:

So the Great American Experiment begins.

I predict by 2020 the country will be in (much) worse shape than in 2009, or 1929.

The guy promises huge expenditures on "infrastructure". This will probably be security walls, pipelines, and highways but, unlike luckless Obama who's been trying to encourage investment in infrastructure for two terms only to have his plans blocked by the Republicans, we could see a massive infusion of money into the economy. This would "look" very good to the average voter, although I doubt Trump has any realistic way to pay for it other than cutting taxes, which seems to be the GOP answer to everything.

In response to one of Trump's remarks about infrastructure spending, McConnell said that it was not high on their list of things to do. Trump may not get everything he wants from the Congress, but I'm not sure that he realizes he is not King of America and actually needs Congressional action.

NoCoPilot wrote:

Is South Park your new go-to for news analysis?

The Simpsons even had a comment about the election.

NoCoPilot wrote:

I predict by 2020 the country will be in (much) worse shape than in 2009, or 1929.

This guy made that prediction years ago. He says it's all science, not just opinion or guessing.

Here's another raging optimist:

Quote :

What Now?

Not to put too fine a point on it, America coughed up Hillary Clinton like a hairball last week — the catch being it then had to swallow the Cheeto-colored bolus called Donald Trump. It was worth it to see the fog of Hillary-smuggery lift across the cable TV networks since the “I’m With Her / It’s Her Turn” fog was a cover for the looting operation that the permanent Washington DC establishment had turned into, including the Clinton Foundation.

Obviously, the nation is reeling from this emetic, struggling to process the meaning of it all. The big “tell” for me came at a moment in last week’s Slate Political Gabfest, a leftish-oriented podcast, when moderator David Plotz asked his sidekicks John Dickerson (of CBS News) and Emily Bazelon (of The NY Times) what the Democratic Party might do to regain legitimacy after this electoral disaster. Dead silence on the air. Nothing came to mind.

Something came to my mind as a long-time disaffected (registered) Democrat: jettison the stupid identity politics and get back to reality. Alas, that may be too much to ask. For now, the party lies in ruins without a single figure of stature to represent a coherent set of ideas other than boosting the self-esteem of its favor-seeking constituent groups. Here’s my idea: how about forming a credible opposition to the so-called Deep State, the matrix of racketeering and empire-building that has drained the life out of this polity. That was impossible with the racketeer-in-chief leading the blue electoral ticket, but now the dynamic stands naked and obvious, answering the question: what to do next?

Another catch, of course, is that opposing the Deep State of Rackets is pretty much what Mr. Trump has promised to do, if “draining the swamp” means anything. He never quite articulated it clearly beyond that metaphor, but you can bet that’s what the DC establishment is so alarmed about. Trump’s behavior on the campaign trail is now being hailed in the media as a kind of genius. To me, it still seems oafish to an extreme, and it remains to be seen how such a blunderer might finesse our escape from the empire of rackets and the racket of empire. He begins to look like a man in a tunnel staring down the harsh light of the onrushing gravy train.

Mr. Trump might not know it yet, but his chief task will be managing contraction. It would appear to be problematic, since his chief promise — “to make America great again” — is based on restarting the epic expansions of the 19th and 20th centuries. Well, things have changed. This is no longer a virgin continent filled with motherlodes, untapped oil bonanzas, and fabulous soils begging to be exploited. In fact, we’re close to being played out where those resources are concerned. And the techno-industrial economy engineered out of those assets is wobbling badly.

There is a Great Wish that this system might be replaced just-in-time with some as-yet-unrealized Green Alt Economy of solar-charged driverless electric cars — but, of course, the unchallenged pathetic idiocy of the assumed car dependence at the center of this fantasy ought to tell you how exactly unreal it is. The contraction we face has mandates of its own, and it doesn’t include the continuation of Happy Motoring on any terms. I’m quite certain that the Trump forces haven’t even imagined it.

I would propose three meta-matters in consideration of how America might survive the disorders of the Long Emergency: the financialization of the economy, the burdens of empire, and the fiasco of our suburban living arrangement.

The financialization of the economy is already playing into its disastrous climax as I write, with bond markets tanking all over the planet. What this means is that the long-ignored chickens of risk associated with debt are coming home to roost. As they do, they are going to shit over everything on the financial landscape. Industrial societies have been borrowing from the future to a grotesque degree for decades, pretending that these debts were assets rather than liabilities. That perception is about to change, and with it an enormous amount of presumed notional wealth is going to disappear. That will manifest in rising bond yields (and falling bond values), cratering currencies, panicked capital flows, banking emergencies, and weird action in markets. If that seems too metaphysical, you can also think of it as contracting economies and the withering of global trade relations. There’s also the chance it will express itself in kinetic conflict, i.e. war.

My sense of things is that this meta-predicament alone could overwhelm the Trump government from the very start. We could have problems with money orders of magnitude worse than anything FDR faced in 1933, with bank closures, the seizing of accounts, and the paralysis of everyday business. That would easily lead to civil disorders, a breakdown in law, and the immiseration of most Americans. It could also lead to previously-unimagined political outcomes, such as a discontinuity of government. This is connected with the second meta-problem, the burdens of empire.

The USA is squandering its vitality trying to maintain a half-assed global empire of supposed interests, economic, ideological, and existential. Lately, this hapless project has only resulted in wars with no end in places we don’t belong. It includes reckless experiments such as the promotion of regime change (Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, Egypt, Syria), and senseless, provocative exercises such as the use of NATO forces to run war games near Russia’s border. The monetary cost of all this is off the hook, of course, redounding to the financial mess. Reigning in these imperial impulses could be on the Trump agenda, but his own gold-plated imperial pretensions suggest that he might actually make the situation worse by conflating a reduction of our empire with a loss of the very “greatness” he wants to reclaim. As it happens, America may be forced by economic circumstances to yield the burdens of empire. The world is about to become a bigger place again as globalism winds down and the larger nations establish more realistic spheres of influence. We better get with the program.

Thirdly comes the question of how Americans inhabit the terrain: the suburban fiasco and all its accessories and furnishings. You can just stick a fork in that. The great project awaiting this country is how we might redistribute our people into re-scaled walkable communities with re-localized economies, including re-scaled agriculture. It’s going to happen whether we like it or not. It’s only a matter of how disorderly the process may be. Obviously all the suburban crapola out there also represents a tremendous load of presumed wealth. The vested “value” in suburban houses alone is the underlayment of structured finance. There is almost no conscious political awareness in any party — including the Greens — as to how we might attempt to work this out.

But, for example, and for a start, Mr. Trump might consider the effect that national chain “Big Box” shopping has had on Main Street America. It literally destroyed local commercial economies all over the land, and with it numberless vocational niches and social roles in communities. He can’t sign an edict against the Big Box empire, but his people might start imagining the process of rebuilding local networks of commerce and actively de-incentivizing the Big Box business model. That model has many other ways to fail, incidentally, and already is failing to some degree between the impoverishment of its customers and the growing problems with global supply lines. But anything that might lubricate the transition would be better than the stark collapse of the current arrangement.

The chatter this week has been all about the upcoming “infrastructure” orgy that Trump will undertake. That depends first of all on how badly the financial sector cracks up. I hope we do not squander more of our dwindling capital on the accessories of car dependence, because that addiction is on the way out. One thing Mr. Trump might get behind is restoring the passenger railroads of America so that we can at least get around the continental nation when the Happy Motoring fiesta grinds to a halt. It would put an awful lot of people to work on something with real long-term benefit — it ties into the restoration of Main Street towns and their economies — and it is a do-able project that might give us the needed encouragement to get on with the many other necessary projects awaiting our attention.

In case you were wondering, I was not jumping up and down cheering the Trump victory, amazing as it was. I figured the good news was that Hillary lost and the bad news was that Trump won. Now, we just have to roll with it.

James Kunstler
Clusterfuck Nation

Your guy appears to be an asshole. My guy predicted instability peaking in the 2020s in 2010. That's pretty good.

Richard, your guy is making predictions based primarily on historical cycles. Under normal conditions, his predictions may be valid. Unfortunately, we find ourselves in a very not-normal situation, with a very not-normal president-elect.

The guy quoted by Kilo, although he made very good points, lost my respect with his opening sentence: "America coughed up Hillary Clinton like a hairball...". This hyperbolic statement is cropping up everywhere, even though Clinton received the majority of the votes: 1.5 million more as of the last count I read. Trump won the election, true, but statements like the above are just incorrect and do not display the desires of the majority of American voters.