President Trump

Tags

election, nightmare, politics, trump, United States of America

 

Ouch!

 

I firmly believe that it doesn’t really matter who is president. The great machine runs on. The people who really make decisions are still there. Policies are still in place, and changing them takes time, as well as consensus. A mechanism as vast and complex as the United States cannot be rewired or rejigged by one man or one mere election. Yet the aftermath of last night’s dunces’ jamboree leaves a very sour taste in the mouth. The election and the man may not change anything, but they do indicate a national mood, a mass-proclivity. If immigration stats are accurate, this may have been the last US election in which the proclivity of white males has any decisive impact. A damn good thing that would be too – if yesterday’s vote is anything to go by. Presumably, people voted for Donald Trump’s media image, which was, of course, despicable. I say ‘was’ because we will see, and indeed we are already seeing, a different Trump. The belligerent divisive oaf becomes the gracious national healer, a President-Elect for all the people. If we accept the great I.F. Stone’s maxim, that all politicians lie about everything all the time, and if we accept that Trump is a politician (it is surely absurd to suggest that someone who runs a two-year campaign to snare the White House is not a politician), then we must accept the fact that we don’t really know Trump at all. It may even be possible that Trump doesn’t really know Trump at all. Gone forever is the publicity-hungry fat-cat businessman and beauty-show predator. Gone forever is the need for self-promotion. Gone too is the craving for financial success. Such desires, and many others, are more than adequately fulfilled by becoming the most powerful man on earth. The Trump Empire is probably already looking risibly puny to its erstwhile emperor. The insatiable yearnings that have fueled his life were all abruptly sated around 3 a.m. this morning. As life-changing experiences go, this one must be exceptional. It’s somewhat like me applying to be CEO of Procter & Gamble and getting the job. The learning-curve will be steep. We all know something about household cleaning-products, just as we all know something about politics, but running the Free World will be a little more tricky than bullying around wildly variegated aspects of the Trumpire. There is, of course, no reason to believe he cannot be a competent US President – or even a good one. As said, we don’t really know him – but now we hope he knows himself more than but slenderly. With Congress and the Senate stacked in his favour, President Trump will be able to further, if not his own agenda, at least the Republican one, without let or hindrance for two years — until the 2018 mid-terms.

I doubt if there will be a Wall – too complicated, too expensive, too silly – but I have little doubt that the modest advancements in social justice made under Obama will be on the scrap-heap inside a year. What does this say about the American electorate? The mentality of a populace able to elect George W. Bush for eight years, then Barrak Obama for eight years, and now Trump is baffling. As my wife said, it’s like a woman who has dated a crunchy-granola feminist organic gardener, doesn’t like it, and instead dates a dope-dealing biker who beats her. She won’t like that either, but will be too scared to leave the brute for four years, after which time she finds a black civil rights activist who writes poetry. The giddiness aside, what does such fickle capriciousness mean? Do most Americans not actually have any enduring values or principles? It has always been a puzzle why blue-collar workers consistently vote against their own best interests by favouring Republicans, yet perhaps this is just part of a greater and more general malaise? Or does a Trumpresidency signify something else? This could just as easily be a triumph of xenophobic, racist and divisive politics as it could be a more thoughtful, mature distaste for career politicians and vested interests. I will admit that the latter is mostly wishful thinking – but, as Miles Davis said, what’s wrong with that?.

However, one thing was painfully obvious and disgraceful last night. All the US media networks – even Fox – displayed a distinct Democrat bias, as did every pollster, with the notable exception of the Los Angeles Times. How else can one explain poll after poll over the past week claiming a victory for Hilary Clinton? Either polling methods are so inaccurate as to be worthless, or else they’re a function of wish-fulfillment. Every poll bar one was wrong? Unlikely. The performance of Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper on CNN was little short of embarrassing. Scurrying around the country for palatable interviewees, they followed news of each Trump victory with a thousand reasons why it didn’t constitute an election triumph. The calling of results in swing-states was delayed for an improbably long time, and even when it happened was palliated by increasingly arcane and complex explanations for why Trump couldn’t win. One felt sorry for the dolled-up hacks on Fox, who either could barely conceal their Clinton bias, or else really didn’t have a candidate running. Not absolutely everything Trump has said was nonsense. There is indeed a distinct media bias, and it ranges over many topics. There would be nothing wrong with this were it not for the oppressively limited ownership of all major media. And such bias is more repellent in CNN or the New York Times than it is in Fox or some tabloids. With the latter, you know where you stand – although no one on Fox last night seemed to have a floor beneath his feet. Trump’s relationship with the media will be interesting to follow. Now the great self-promoter has no more need to promote himself, will his PR skills stand him in good stead or be a liability?

Since no good result was possible for this egregious election, it is hard to feel that disappointed about it. I know my American friends are, though, and I offer them a box of Kleenex. But the sun still rose this morning, and the financial markets will survive their panic or take a Xanax. Nothing is ever as bad as we imagine it is, so the optimist in me looks forward to a pleasant surprise in the Oval Office. I couldn’t say what this surprise might be, but, my fellow Americans, you can all come to hide in my attic until the nightmare or the world ends.

 

Paul William Roberts

 

 

Oh America

Tags

election, politics, United States of America, voting

Do the right thing.

 

Love,

PWR

The Great Debate?

Tags

america, Donald Trump, election, Hilary Clinton, lies, politics, USA

Really. The Hilary versus the Donald. Has there ever been a more dispiriting spectacle than these two individuals presenting themselves before 100 million viewers as viable candidates for what is believed to be the world’s most important and powerful job? Well, yes – every previous election campaign for the last fifty years springs to mind. But this one still caps them in its stunning efflorescence of blabbering mediocrity. The Hilary started off with a remarkable appearance of competence that revealed her as another run-of-the-mill Democrat, ablaze with high ideals appealing to a vaunted ‘middle class’, yet no more certain of how these lofty goals were to be achieved than her opponent was of how his plans to aid the wealthy made it clear how the neo-trickle-down effect would work. For his part, the Donald began by assuring us he wanted ‘Secretary Clinton’ – as she now was – to be comfortable and happy. After all, she was just a woman. He was Trump the Proud – albeit with a nasal drip that sounded as if he’s just snorted a hefty line of cocaine. Unfortunately, and doubtless contrary to the advice of his advisers, he allowed the Hilary to press his well-known and easy buttons. And, equally unfortunately, she decided that pressing them was her objective in this so-called debate. Unsurprisingly, a free-for-all ensued, with both candidates displaying little more than how unsuited they each were for the world’s most important job. The Hilary avoided answering issues like why she had deleted 33,000 e-mails from her improper server – and largely because the Donald’s bullish responses to her taunts blinded him to questions worth pursuing. Pundits understandably excoriated him for bragging that his avoidance of income tax was ‘smart’, without taking into account the fact that everyone similarly burdened with taxes, no matter how slight, would agree that it was smart. The host, or beleaguered question-master, tied insinuating some relevant queries – ‘Why don’t you release your tax returns?’ – but the combatants had grown too belligerent to pay attention. The Donald tried to point out that the Secretary – no doubt a demeaning title in his world – had once raised the issue of where Obama had been born during her fight for the White House, yet he raised it in terms assuming viewers and listeners knew the names of principals involved. We did not, largely, but by then no one cared. It seemed clear that here were two thoroughly distasteful people, neither of whom ought to attain any prominent public position, less still the one they aspired to.

The question I most wanted answered, listening to the Donald’s oft-repeated slogan, was one of when exactly it was that America could have been considered ‘great’. Was it during the Korean War?  The coup d’etat in Iran overthrowing nascent democracy there? The Vietnam War? The invasions of Grenada, Panama et al? CIA coups in Chile, Nicaragua and elsewhere in the region? Afghanistan? Iraq? Libya? Or now the debacle in Syria? When was this greatness, and of what did it consist? The Donald’s answers to this question would have been as enlightening as the Hilary’s answers to why her new bold plans had not been at least partially implemented over the past thirty-odd years of her political career. Yet it was all the ringmaster could do to keep the slug-fest on its scheduled course to where the final issues weren’t dealt with either.

Ah, America, we aliens think. What became of your great idea? What are we to make of a nation that can only produce these two sad wretches as its potential leaders? Perhaps we should be frightened? As it is, though, we are merely bored by watching your decline and fall – as we were by watching that of every empire once so gripped by hubris and so willfully ignorant of which way the wind always blows.

The only undeniably true thing said last night was, uncharacteristically, by the Trump: no more dire and pressing an issue exists for this world than the existence and proliferation of atmomic eeapons. Unlike global warming, this is two buttons pressed and – zap! That’s all, folks. Like a thief in the nuclear night, all human aspirations vanish forever. What more pressing an issue could we want anyone posing as a world leader to face and solve?

 

Paul William Roberts

P.S. And talking about political liars, what of British foreign secretary Boris Johnston’s meeting with the Turkish leader, whom he recently called “a terrific wankerer very fond of goats…”?

Voting in Canada

Tags

election, harper

In Canada, as cannot be explained too often, it would seem, each electoral riding is voting for a representative in Parliament, and not for a leader or a party. How do we know who will work hard for the best interests of our area? If you have not met your particular representatives, even on a live telephone line, it may be an indication of how little they care about your specific needs and thus how little they will do for you in Ottawa that does not further their personal ambitions. If you dislike all candidates, you are perhaps ethically obliged to be the candidate yourself. One of a Canadian citizens major responsibilities is to exercise the privilege to vote. It is a foundation of democracy, one for which many principled men, and women, gave their lives over long centuries of slavery in many forms, and under conditions of backbreaking toil and grinding poverty. Only the dying or those on life-support have valid reasons for not voting on Monday Oct 19th. Anyone else can spare the few minutes taken up by dropping your ballot into a box never situated far away. If transport is a problem, every party HQ will be able to supply a driver or ten. Wasting a vote insults the tireless efforts of those who fought to create a true start for democracy. Aboriginals have the only plausible reasons for mistrusting a system responsible for atrocities of racism and determined to destroy their rich culture, reducing them to a sub-human status, violating treaties and disrespecting their traditional rights and lands. This is now changing dramatically, giving all First Nations a perfect opportunity to unite, demonstrate their power, and limitless potential in a future vastly different from any they have previously endured.On the 19th Oct, Idle No more will mean voting in unprecedented numbers, proving you are the only Old Stock on this continent, and recognize your primacy as spiritual fathers of Canada by revealing the force you can exert on any election with candidates of your own who will oblige Parliament to deal with all the grievances you rightly have, and all the lies told your people by those whose sole concern for the land was greed. Put the best man for you in Ottawa; he or she will ensure platform promises are kept. This vote is the most unpleasant of all electoral situations: one man, a Prime minister, so loathed for his deceit, corruption, scorn for the environment, and obscenely slavish attachment to big corporate business at the expense of our good society and its social and international values.  Vote with heart and purpose, but pick the right man because he or she is right, not because the current leader is wrong. Who would like to find this country branded Neo-Fascist in the excessive power handed to government? Sorry to say it, but we are in some nations now mistrusted for having a leader whose mode of communication is increasing the command; it used to be the sermon before addressing a majority government regarded as instruments of his will, not representatives of the voters who had no idea their vote would fill the House with lackeys, and pretend to to be serving a nation while really serving the oligarchs and plutocrats who own this shameful Prime Minister like an obedient poodle. Let no Canadian think his or her vote doesn’t count. It counts as much as if it were the only ballot cast. But never vote from hatred; it backfires, and will possibly lose your strongest supporter in Ottawa. Today, history itself depends on your vote, for a forked road offers no signposts. Your instinct and heart must act as guide.

Sincerely,

Paul William Roberts

Election Songs

Tags

Canada, election, harper, john lennon, justin trudeau, leonard cohen, politics, songs

Song with Apologies to Leonard Cohen

 

Everybody knows Harper’s sinking,

Everybody knows his truth is lies,

In his eyes there’s that awful feeling,

No one will mourn him when he dies.

Everybody knows defeat will kill him,

Everybody knows he scorned the House;

Where he was never asked the question if his tactics came from Leo Strauss.

But the neo-Fascist shows,

And everybody knows.

Everybody knows the man’s a racist,

Everybody knows he’s a corporate slave,

And the rich are who his base is;

The rest of us his knaves.

That’s how Harper’s vision goes, and everybody knows.

Everybody knows he’s bribing voters,

Everybody knows that greed works best;

Everybody knows he needs the floaters, but would exterminate the rest.

The Fascist shows, and everybody knows.

Everybody knows he rigs elections,

Everybody knows that to win’s his real goal,

But he cannot abide defections,

Over ethics or burning coal. They wreck his phony pose, and everybody knows.

Everybody knows he’s the one Prime Minister called ‘un-Canadian’ and even ‘sinister’;

No one cares where the hell he goes, but he’s gone, and everybody knows;

He’s now the stateless terrorist he dreamt up, the man in those media shows;

He caused the fear that crept up, and everybody knows.

Everybody knows the war is raging; everybody knows Mr. Harper’s fate is toast,

And nothing’s there to save him, not even the Holy Ghost;

It’s by fiction the cash pile grows,

And everybody knows.

Everybody knows he won’t play fair;

Everybody knows his dirty tricks;

Everybody knows that Justin Trudeau will be the one a voter picks.

That’s what honest polls show, and everybody knows.

Everybody knows his power is waning, everybody knows his platform’s fake;

Everybody knows his budget’s draining social programs into a filthy Tory lake.

That’s how corruption goes, and everybody knows.

Everybody knows he’d kill the planet, if his masters made a buck or two.

Everybody knows the way to end them is just a vote by me and you.

That’s what history shows, and everybody knows.

Everybody knows his business plan was just a one-trick sham;

The eggs were in a basket, without bread or even ham;

As a glance at The Dow Jones shows, and everybody knows.

Everybody knows the rich are richer, and we know where the money went;

Everybody knows the Middle Class is dwindling, the savings all now spent;

Everybody knows the banks are thriving, Thanks to Harper’s sly conniving, since that’s where our money goes, and everybody knows.

Everybody knows where the numbers never cease to grow, and no one can ever reap what they sow, as bank reports show, and everybody knows.

Spied upon, unfree, and over-taxed,

Poor even if we break our backs;

Such is the way our nation goes, and everybody knows.

Everybody thinks a vote for Harper is sure to make them rich,

As if cloth of gold could be fashioned by one single little stitch.

The deceiver in him shows, and everybody knows.

Everybody knows he sang Imagine, John Lennon’s utopian song,

Everybody knows this was pure cynicism, an almost sacrilegious wrong.

Everybody knows he can’t imagine, everybody knows his soul’s long gone; and inside is an empty feeling, a dull resounding gong, like the darkness he’s imposed; and everybody knows.

Everybody knows we’ll have that piano; everybody knows the song we’ll sing, with Yoko’s kind permission, as the bells of all faiths ring;

Everybody knows we’ll show compassion, as hard as it might be, and everybody knows we’ll sing Imagine, and what the words will be: as for the pose: everybody knows….

 

( Sudden change of tune, with thanks and love to Lennon)

 

Imagine there’s no Harper, it’s easy if you vote,

No tyrant’s vile agenda, an economy still afloat;

Imagine all Canadians living once again in peace,

No egotistic leader wishing wars will never cease.

Imagine wealth is shared, no poverty or crime; fair treatment for First Nations, and a mandate to be kind.

Imagine equality and decency accorded every race; and all who seek asylum with a smile on every face.

You can’t say that I’m a dreamer because most of us agree sending Harper off to nowhere will set this nation free.

Imagine there’s a vote card clasped in your hand, and that your vote would make life better for all living in this land;

Imagine you don’t use it, and have to live with that, live with a representative lazier than your very lazy cat;

Imagine that those not voting lose many other rights, returning what was fought for back to a medieval night, when the barons owned everything, including all your rights.

Imagine there’s no government to help you, would you want that vote again? Imagine you had broken something no one now can mend: a wasted vote is guilty of summoning such an End.

For Harper is a schemer, and he’s not the only one;

I hope that you will join us, for the worshippers of Mammon are already on the run.

Imagine there’s no Harper, you won’t need to imagine long; for the vote will go to Justin, then you’ll wish you’d helped him on.

Imagine trust and hope in Ottawa, it’s no easy thing to do, which is why the end of Harper is eight years overdue.

 

(Suggestion for Harper’s Farewell Song)

 

It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to, cry if I want to;

You would cry too if your party dumped you…

++++++++++++++++++

Remember, your vote not only counts but is your responsibility to use, not for any party, but for the person you feel cares and will do his or her utmost for your area when in Ottawa. If a candidate has not visited your house or home in person, it is a good sign that they care little about your needs and will do even less about lobbying for them. Think about the qualities of an individual, not the vain promises of party leaders, which will become increasingly desperate and fictional over the next two weeks. This is not the USA: we elect representatives not leaders. Think carefully about the representatives you know, and vote for the best one, regardless of his or her party. This is a system that has proven its worth over many centuries. Cherish your good fortune to have such a fine system and the glorious land smart enough to avoid adopting the unworkable chaos of Washington.

 

As always with love,

 

Paul William Roberts