Clinton V Trump

Jeremy Paxman said on the Late Late Show on Friday night that if he had a vote he would vote for Clinton but that both candidates were awful. He said that Clinton had failed to communicate her vision for America. She is a bore, certainly, like Michael Dukakis or Walter Mondale, but it is clear that she is the insider candidate, the candidate of Wall Street, the MI complex and the secret state. The elite know she is their woman – she has very successfully communicated that to them. She is also the candidate of sleaze and her presidency will be immersed in sleaze and scandal from day one, indeed even before she assumes office. What people haven’t realized is that sleaze doesn’t matter to the elite as long as their position is secured by every incoming president. The people don’t like it but they don’t matter unless of course we get another Brexit-type result. The extent to which the elite are drifting away from the people (and couldn’t care less about their obligations as an elite) is one of the emerging features of 21st century politics. The similarities with France in 1789 are there to be seen .... (We of course are an outlier when it comes to elites ignoring democracy with the results of the Nice 1 and Lisbon 1 referenda having been rejected by the State ....)

 

I listened to a very sane, calm, rational Irish-American called Michael Ryan talking to Sean O’Rourke on RTE on Thursday. Ryan is the editorial writer for an Atlanta newspaper, which is plumping for Trump. He started off by saying that Trump’s behaviour had been awful and had made it very difficult for decent people to vote for him, which is true. Then he went on to say that Trump had improved considerably in recent weeks, which is also true. (I watched part of the first presidential debate and all of the second and third debates. The improvement in Trump’s performance in the second debate over the first and in the third over the second was considerable.) He spoke about Trump displaying a measure of self-discipline in recent weeks. Indeed, if Trump had reached the stage of his political development in September that he has now reached he would be home and hosed. He said that Trump had made some important and well crafted speeches in recent weeks and was developing into a person of substance. True. Ryan’s newspaper has met Trump. The private man, it seems, is different from the public Trump. So Ryan said anyway. The general impression (spread by the media) is that only red necks from the Appalachian mountains and members of the Ku Klux Klan will vote for Trump but in point of fact tens of millions of people who can read and write will also vote for him. Most will hold their noises while doing so but America is electing a president not a marriage guidance counsellor.

 

On the other side, Ryan spoke about the sleaze that is the Clinton industry, as you might call it. (Tens of millions of people won’t vote for her because they can read and write.) It is sad that the dying days of the Obama administration are a reminder of the Nixon Presidency but I’m not surprised. Obama (who was described by an ex-CIA guy, who spoke at a public meeting in Dublin on Tuesday, as a man who lost his bxxls on Inauguration Day eight years ago somewhere between the Capitol and the WH except for the stand he took on Iran) threw in the towel on his presidency a long time ago.  You could see that listening to (as opposed to watching) the speech he made in N.Carolina the other day where he told the audience that he didn’t want to put pressure on them but that the future of the world depended on their vote. He was practically laughing and was not being in any way serious. Even RTE, strong supporters of Clinton, thought Obama was taking hyperbole to new heights or lows. The ex-CIA guy indicated (from something he had heard second hand) that Obama feared assassination. Maybe so, maybe not but Obama is smart enough to know that any president who seriously challenges the secret state is taking a risk. Having opted out a long time ago he probably couldn’t care less that HC’s behaviour at the State Department or that the efforts of the Justice Department to prevent the FBI bringing her to justice bear a striking similarity to the Nixon administration. There is a realistic chance of criminal charges being laid against HC unless Obama pardons her after 8th November, which I think he will. Whether he is worried about his reputation or not, he can’t have his successor doing the perp walk from the Oval Office to a court! Ryan said that there is civil war within the FBI over HC’s behaviour. She is still the favourite but Ryan thought that the ground was shifting beneath her feet. It is not that the opinion polls are lying but they are not keeping up with the pace of events. (Opinion polls are becoming less and less reliable anyway for all sorts of reasons mostly to do with the way society is changing.)

 

So, if there is any justice in this world Trump will win. The most important area is war and peace. Friday’s Irish Independent reported that a former chief of the imperial general staff in Britain thinks that the world would be safer under Trump than Clinton. Right again: that one is a no brainer. Trump, if elected, would be the first president in my lifetime who knew anything about business, something the WH needs. Trump’s understanding of the self-destructive nature of globalization for the developed world and the fact that it has gone too far is one of the best features of his campaign, and he has clearly succeeded in getting that view across. (Channel 4’s main evening news one day last week came from an empty factory in Detroit, the biggest empty factory in the world or some such. In spite of themselves, journalists with integrity can’t help picking up the good points in the Trump campaign.) Trump would also, I think, upend Roe V Wade and, as he said in the third debate, ensure that state legislatures did their duty and addressed the abortion issue. Given that there have been something like one billion abortions since, say, 1970 it is time that the slaughter of the innocents was stopped. I think his presidency could be a turning point on that issue, if he were to succeed in forcing the issue back to state legislatures. I’m not convinced that legislatures when confronted with the one billion figure will casually let that continue. Trump supports the Second Amendment but hasn't allowed himself to be trapped into a refusal to interpret it in a rational way.

 

I’m not suggesting that Trump would do all or anything that he says he would do, if elected, but if were to win, the vote would be what counts. If he seriously attempted to challenge the elite, the secret state would stop him (until eventually the crowd gathered around the Bastille) but might think twice before removing him as they did JFK. Kennedy was an Irish Catholic despised by millions of Americans (many of whom, or their descendants, will vote for Trump, it is true) plus the manner in which he won the election was questionable. So the secret state felt safe enough in removing him. If Trump, who is a WASP, were to win without having to go the chads route to the Supreme Court the secret state would certainly attempt to stop him but would hopefully think twice before going for the sudden removal option.