- (december 2016)
Why Trump also means hope.
Trump's election has caused fears in many people, from Silicon Valley startups to immigrants (both legal and illegal ones), but at the same time it is (surprisingly) instilling hope in millions of people.
The US stock market has reacted to Trump's election with a stunning boom, adding $1 trillion to global equity valuations. It certainly helps that this exemplary crook has picked investment bankers for key economic positions; but there is also a more subtle reason that Trump's opponents refuse to face: Trump has come to represent hope, and not only for fellow crooks like him.
Most citizens of the USA are very annoyed by small and big things that never seem to change. Look back and you can see that Hillary Clinton was basically promising to the country that those annoying things would remain. Trump represents the hope that they will change.
Among ordinary people the main issue is probably the health-care mandate: you must get health care under the ironically called "Affordable Health Care Act" even if it is not affordable at all for you (for example, the cheapest plan available to me would cost me about 14% of my income and come with a huge deductible). Needless to say, millions of people were feeling desperate because Hillary Clinton had de facto promised to keep the "mandate" in place. Trump represents hope that he will indeed repeal the mandate on his first day in office, as he promised.
Another big one for ordinary people is the political correctedness on Islam. It really started with George W Bush, who kept insisting that Islam is "a religion of peace" hijacked by evil terrorists. It doesn't take a PhD in history to find out that Islam was founded by a warrior who personally killed a lot of people (besides marrying a child) and that Islam was founded with a war and that the whole point of that war was to expel all other religions. I very much appreciate the vast majority of Muslims who are peaceful and tolerant (more peaceful than US citizens who murder each other at the tune of 20,000 murders every year), but we can hardly credit Islam with making them peaceful and tolerant. I admire them for being peaceful "despite" Islam, not because of Islam. Calling Islam what it is (a violent, racist and intolerant ideology) may not solve the many problems of the Islamic world but at least it wouldn't insult our intelligence.
In general, ordinary people are fed up with their government wasting money and time on irrelevant issues. Trump gives people hope that Washington will stop wasting time and money on issues such as transgender bathrooms.
Business has other (and perhaps more pressing) reasons to hope in Trump. The corporate tax cut (the highest in the developed world) is widely considered the main reason that so many corporations export jobs and money. Small businesses are fed up with regulations that mainly help attorneys and accountants have a job that shouldn't exist. Both small and big business are fed up with the Chinese double-standard: China sabotages or bans US firms in order to help their Chinese rivals, while Chinese firms are welcome to sell their products and services to the USA; China curbs or outright blocks US media (including my humble website www.scaruffi.com ) while CCTV and other Chinese media are widely available in the USA; and so forth. Trump represents hope that the USA will demand equal opportunity for its firms in China.
Many of us who travel around the world (and blush when admiring the modern infrastructure of European and Asian countries) hope that Trump will indeed spend on modernizing the infrastructure of the USA: don't you wish you could travel by Japanese-style high-speed trains between San Francisco and Chicago instead of going through the grotesque and humiliating process of airport check-in and security and fasten your seat belts and place your luggage under your seat and don't bring drinks on board etc etc?
Finally, any citizen who takes a panoramic view of the situation can see that, since the financial crisis of 2008, the G7 economies have staged the weakest economic growth (about 0.8% yearly on average) and the biggest government debt (in some countries exceeding 100% of GDP) since the end of World War II; and Hillary Clinton was simply promising more of this. Trump represents hope that a shakeup of the international order will bring back the robust growth and surplus that young generations have never known.
The same person who has a positive opinion of Barack Obama may harbor hope in Trump: Obama did well in saving the country from economic collapse and in withdrawing from two unpopular wars in the Islamic world, and deserves praise (he basically fixed the damage caused by George W Bush); but this doesn't mean that his supporters want to live permanently in the "hey i saved you from economic collapse" economy and in the "hey i got you out of Iraq" mood.
Rationally, having an ignorant crook as president scares you to death; but, psychologically, you hope that, at the least, this ignorant crook will finally fix these problems precisely because his political capital will not be affected by calling things what they are. At least millions of US citizens can hope so, even the ones who voted against him.
(If you are not familiar with my opinions, see My thoughts after the election, My final thoughts on the 2016 presidential election, The three epic campaigns of Donald Trump, Let's make America Ridiculous like Never Before, and What Donald Trump represents before concluding that i am a Trump supporter. In this hyper-biased age people have trouble believing that someone might just be unbiased).
TM, ®, Copyright © 2016 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
Back to the world news
- (december 2016)
Protest and Boycott.
I live in California, which means that, after the election of Donald Trump to president of the USA, i am bombarded by emails that invite the population to protest against the results of the election and to defend the values of the USA from the tyrant who will seize power in 2017.
Anti-Trump rallies and demonstrations are already planned across the "blue states" on Inauguration Day, and further campaigns of protest and civil disobedience are certain to entertain us for the next four years.
The problem, of course, is that Trump was elected according to the rules set out
in the US constitution. While Trump (a serial crook and liar who hides his tax returns because they would reveal the extent of his criminal activities) blatantly violated the spirit of that constitution (and is basically the stooge of a foreign power), he complied with the letter of the constitution.
We should be wary of protests that tacitly encourage terrorist attacks against Trump and his family: he and his master Putin have played by the rules and won fair and square. Most of these protests are ineffective anyway
because they take place in the very regions that already voted against Trump.
Unless you are willing to travel to the barbaric "red states" and stage your protests there, it is not clear what you are trying to achieve in your own "blue" state that already voted against him. If you want to protest, target the "enemy".
Here are the legitimate targets:
- First and foremost, you have to protest the rule by which presidents are elected. Some of us have been writing this for decades (see for example Do not get over it that i wrote in 2012 when a Democratic president was elected), but you didn't pay attention until your candidate lost the presidency despite winning the election by a margin of almost three million votes. The USA is not a democracy because the person who wins the majority of votes does not always becomes the president. And, while you are at it, please also protest the way the Senate is elected: tiny Rhode Island gets two senators just like giant California, which means that a person in Rhode Island is represented thousands of times more than a person in California. California, in particular, which is by far the most populous state and the seventh economy in the world, should ponder carefully the fact that its votes never count: the winner is always declared before California's votes come in. If you live in California, your vote literally doesn't count. Denigrate the office of the presidency: a man who became president after losing the popular vote, and doesn't have the dignity to resign, deserves no respect from us. Wear tshirts that say "Lock him up!" and "Ban trumps from the USA".
- Secondly, you have to protest against the people who voted for Trump. Tens of millions of people decided to cast their vote for someone who represents values that have nothing to do with the values of the USA. Don't blame Trump for getting tens of millions of votes. Trump is not an idiot at all, but those who voted for him are. Punishing him is pointless: it would still leave the country with a virtually unlimited supply of idiots for the next demagogue who comes around sponsored by Russia or maybe China. Your real enemies are the idiots who voted him into power. And make no mistake: these idiots are jeopardizing not only your economy (by electing a crook) and your freedom (by electing a Russian stooge) but also your very life. The president of the USA is the man who has the power to order a nuclear strike that would start a nuclear war that would kill half of the nation and leave the rest contaminated for decades. Ideally, the president must NEVER be a short-tempered, impulsive, and ignorant man. Those idiots have decided to give that job to the most short-tempered, impulsive, and ignorant man on the ballot: they are jeopardizing your life. There is a simple way to protest against these fellow US citizens: boycott their products, just like you would do against any foreign country that violates human rights. Don't get gasoline from Chevron or Exxon. Don't buy cars made in Michigan. Germany and Japan are peaceful countries that elect peaceful leaders: support them, not Texas or Georgia. And buy A/C units made in Mexico, a peaceful and democratic country, not in Indiana.
- Thirdly, i am amazed that nobody has been blaming the media. Mussolini, Hitler, Lenin and other demagogues around the world owed much of their success to the people in the media who worked for them. The most famous case is that of Leni Riefenstahl, the German filmmaker who helped Hitler with documentary films such as "Triumph of the Will" (1935). Would Trump be president if Twitter had blocked his account? I am sure that Twitter would block my account if i used it for racist, sexist and violent remarks and to spread false news. Isn't Twitter the equivalent of Riefenstahl in the USA of 2016? Would Trump be president without all the fake news that spread thanks to Facebook? Isn't Facebook the equivalent of the German newspapers and magazines that spread grotesquely false news about the Jews? Aren't these media the equivalent of the Pravda that helped Communism stay in power in the Soviet Union? Fox News is obviously the main propaganda organ for the radical right-wing conspiracy, but the others are not any less guilty. CNN basically gave Trump nonstop full-time coverage for free. No filmmaker made "Triumph of the Will" for Trump but de facto the endless bombardment of Trump news (and false news) produced the same effect. Protest against Twitter and Facebook, and against CNN and CBS. Boycott all companies that advertise (and therefore support) Fox News.
- Last but not least, if you work in a "blue" state and you work in tech or science, think very carefully about you are doing: you are contributing to make Trump the most powerful and feared man in the world. If he were only the president of the red states, he would be little more than a banana republic caudillo. What makes him the most powerful man in the world is the tech and science that comes from California, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, Maryland, New Jersey and New York. It is Apple, Google, Facebook, Boeing, Microsoft, the MIT, Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Columbia University, IBM, the electronic industry, the biotech industry, and so that make the USA the world's superpower. All the German scientists and engineers who worked for the companies that made Germany powerful in the 1930s were co-responsible for making Hitler powerful: without them, Hitler would have been at best as dangerous as Mussolini and 40 million people would not have died in a senseless world war. If you are working in the high-tech industry or doing research in a university, think carefully about what the USA is going to do with the product of your work.
As for me, i am buying a laptop made in California and Taiwan, a smartphone made in California and South Korea, stereo equipment made in Boston and Germany, an e-reader made in Seattle, a car made in Japan, clothes made in India, shoes made in Indonesia, fruit from California and Latin America, a carpet from Iran, furniture from Sweden, gasoline made in California or Holland, magazines and newspapers from New York, i will spend my vacations in the European Union and in Arab countries, and i am certainly not buying A/C units made in the Midwest.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2016 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
Back to the world news
- (november 2016)
My thoughts after the election:
- Yet again the USA has a president who was not elected democratically. Donald Trump lost the election by almost three million votes (65,8 million votes to Hillary Clinton, 62.9 to Trump) but becomes president. Trump does NOT have a mandate from the people: the majority of people voted for his opponent. The USA has a number of undemocratic rules that have never been changed. See my old articles, for example: Reform the electoral system (2004) and Do not get over it (2012).
- The USA is the only country in the world in which tv stations decide who won the election before all the votes are counted. Millions of votes still had to be counted when all the tv stations announced that Trump had won. As of the 22nd of November (two weeks after the elections), only eight states out of 50 had certified their results. The gap in the "swing" states that decided the elections turned out to be less than 1%.
- Donald Trump did NOT win the election. He is the lawful president, but he lost the election to Hillary Clinton by a huge margin (by about three million votes) AND the vast majority of voters have a negative (>60%) opinion of him. He is probably the first president in history who is viscerally disliked by the majority of the country.
- In fact, Hillary Clinton got the exact same number of votes that Obama got in the previous election, but she got more votes in states that were already "blue" (so those votes don't count) and fewer votes in states that used to be "blue" (so those votes count a lot because they switch the state to "red").
- The headlines should be: "A stunning victory by Vladimir Putin in the US presidential election". Putin now controls not one but two world powers and is therefore the most powerful man in the world. The Russian media are thrilled by the results of this US election. It is probably the single biggest victory by Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and it follows Russian victories in eastern Ukraine and Syria.
Trumps' National Security Adviser Michael Flynn attending the 10th
anniversary RT gala at Moscow's Metropol Hotel with Putin.
Russia Television (RT) is Russia's main propaganda machine.
- The similarities with the USA's sister country, Britain, are too strong to be ignored: the majority of young people voted to remain in the European Union, but the majority of old people voted to leave; the majority of young people voted for Hillary Clinton, but the majority of old people voted for Donald Trump. Young people under 30 voted for Hillary Clinton (55%), old people over 45 voted for Trump (53%). Young Britons voted to remain in the European Union by a huge margin (about 60%), old Britons over 45 voted to leave the European Union by a huge margin (57%). Trump won in the countryside by a huge margin (62%) whereas Clinton won in the cities by an equally huge margin (59%). The "Leave" party won in the British countryside, whereas the "Remain" party won in the cities. 53% of men voted for Trump, 54% of women voted for Clinton. Most men voted for "Leave", most women voted for "Remain". Trump won 58% of the white vote, Clinton won 88% of the black vote and 65% of the Latino vote. A majority of white Britons voted for "Leave", whereas the majority of British minorities voted for "Remain".
- Trump was elected by the people who were hippies in the 1960s and punks in the 1970s. Those generations were famous for the civil rights movement and for anarchic rebellion against the (white) establishment. Now they have become grumpy old men who didn't get a college degree and are being left behind by the rest of the world. This picture titled "How the Future Voted" was posted by Cole Ledford and widely retweeted. I wonder if these young people 30-40 years from now will be voting for someone like Trump and maybe even worse.
(Disclaimer: Ledford did not specify the source and i have not been able to verify the data)
- Just like in 2001, the states that lost (California, Washington, New York, Massachussetts, Illinois) are the states that earn the USA its status as the world's superpower: all the science and technology that gives the USA the key advantage over other countries come from San Francisco, Seattle, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, New York, New Jersey, Boston and Chicago: Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, IBM, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, the biopharmaceutical industry... you name it. These states are increasingly aware that their scientific and engineering achievements are enabling a majority of ignorant people (who doesn't even believe in their science) to rule the world. It is a paradox that only happens in the USA because only in the USA is the disconnect between the educated minority (that makes the USA great) and the uneducated majority (that elects the government) so large. Silicon Valley and Boston literally empower the likes of Sarah Palin and Sean Hannity who don't even believe in science: without Silicon Valley and Boston these people would be humble peasants scavanging for food in primitive forests and valleys instead of being influential voices that decide who rules the country. Time to undo Lincoln? See my 12-year-old article What if the USA split in two?.
- The big losers are the "royal" families of US politics: the Clintons and the Bushes. One year ago this race was supposed to be a battle between Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. Subconsciously, the US electorate decided "no, thanks, we are a republic".
- This election was the worst possible publicity for democracy. It would be hard to find one Chinese or Russian citizen who envies the USA. Authoritarian regimes throughout the world are savoring the grotesque farce that took place in the USA: it will discourage their subject from even thinking of starting a democratic revolution. Do you really want to end up like the USA? What a reversal of international prestige from the past, when the people of every nation were envying the people of the USA.
- It was partially a referendum on Obamacare (obviously more unpopular than Democrats realize) and gay marriage (still opposed by large sections of the traditional families that constitute the silent majority), but above all on how government wastes its time on irrelevant issues. While the Democrats were busy discussing transgender bathrooms and blaming police officers for the violence caused by young black males, the white middle class was getting angrier and angrier that more important problems were not even being addressed. Black Lives Matter and anyone finding excuses for Muslim attitudes were huge recruitment tools for Trump.
- It was a stunning victory by the white majority (repeat: majority) of the USA, but not really difficult to predict. Hillary Clinton's "coalition" of Latinos, African-Americans, women, and young college educated white men never made a lot of sense because women don't necessarily vote for a woman (in fact, very few voted Hillary Clinton for that reason), and the other groups are relatively small. White voters made up 70% of the electorate, and Trump won 58% of their vote. Clinton only won 37% of the white vote. Clinton did win 88% of the black vote, but this is less than 10% of the electorate, and Hispanic voters (who are also less than 10% of the electorate) voted for her in smaller numbers than four years ago (29% of Hispanic voters voted for Trump versus 27% who voted for Romney in 2012, which means that Latinos actually rewarded Trump for his immigration policies). The coalition that makes sense is the coalition that is actually not a coalition at all but is centered upon one big monolithic group: white Christians. The USA is a white Christian country: if you win the votes of white Christians, you are likely to become president. If you lose their votes, you need to come up with this convoluted coalition. One also wonders if it is in the spirit of democracy that the Democratic Party tries to disenfranchise the largest group of voters by creating an anti-white coalition. The white Christian majority voted for Donald Trump and Mike Pence, two very white Christian men, and one reason could be precisely that they felt threatened by the coalition of African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims and college-educated whites.
- The biggest loser might be Barack Obama: all those states that voted for him in 2012 and voted against him in 2016 have given the Republicans a mandate to dismantle his entire legacy. My guess is that the single biggest factor in voting against his legacy was "Obamacare". In large parts of the country this was a referendum on "Obamacare". The middle class felt that Obama betrayed them and, instead of helping them regain what they lost in the recession, he further sabotaged them with Obamacare. People were exasperated that the Democrats were not talking about fixing its problems and decided that it is better to just repeal it and restart from scratch.
- Women keep blaming the system for the numbers that show males dominating in every corner of society, but maybe they have to start looking into the mirror. An impressive number of women voted for a sexist. White women, in particular, voted for him (53%). A whopping 62% of white women without college degree voted for Trump, and even among college-educated women Clinton won only by 1%. Stop blaming it on men.
- Liberals are supposed to oppose unbridled capitalism and stand with the poor exploited workers, but, ironically, they ended up voting for Hillary Clinton, who represents unbridled Wall Street capitalism, and voting against Donald Trump, who represents the proletariat (middle-class blue-collar workers). The share of poor people (those earning less than $30,000 a year) who voted Republican increased by 16 points from 2012. By contrast, the share of rich people (those earning more than $100,000 a year) who voted Democratic slightly increased.
- Trump de facto embraced old ideas of the Democratic Party: spend on infrastructure such as high-speed trains (Obama was criticized as a "big spender" and a "socialist" when he made the same proposal), renegotiate trade deals that hurt the manufacturing industry, close tax loopholes that favor multinational corporations, force US corporations to bring back jobs and money, limit immigrants (legal or illegal) who "steal" jobs. Many of these ideas are socialist slogans heard from leftist governments in Venezuela and Nicaragua. He even stole from the liberals the argument that the Iraqi war was a terrible idea. Trump and Hillary swapped ideologies: Hillary sounded like the conservative Wall Street politician, Trump sounded like the populist quasi-socialist politician. Trump won Democratic votes in blue-collar states for the simple reason that Trump, not the Democratic Party, now advocates those "socialist" ideas.
- The iconic image of this campaign should be Donald Trump alone on stage wearing a baseball hat, abandoned even by his own party. Compare that with the smiling Hillary Clinton, surrounded by the most powerful politicians of her party, flanked by pop stars and Hollywood celebrities. The Hillary Clinton campaign had a much bigger organization and spent much more money than the Trump campaign. Which one sounds like a popular hero to an ordinary family? Most people do not vote with their brain, they vote with their heart.
- Almost half of the country actually did not vote. If they had their own party, they would dwarf both the Republican and Democratic parties. Voter turnout was the lowest in a presidential election since 1996 (when Bill Clinton was reelected): 55% of voting-age citizens voted in 2016. For the record, Barack Obama was elected in 2008 in the election that had the highest turnout of all time: 64%.
- The FBI interfered (right before election day) by publicizing that it was still investigating Hillary Clinton, except for admitting a few days later that the investigation was closed again. Will the FBI investigate with the same clamor and determination the many scandals of Donald Trump's career? The Trump University? The Trump Foundation? His many shady deals with shady organizations? His countless bankruptcies? His relationship with Russia? Will we ever see his tax returns that obviously hide something very damaging for his reputation?
Richard Nixon had to resign, Bill Clinton was impeached and Hillary Clinton was demonized for much less than what Donald Trump has done in his life: ran an illegal charity, ran an illegal foundation, harassed women, violated the Cuban embargo, defamed other politicians including the president of the USA, not to mention that he took money and orders from Russia and whatever else is hidden in his tax returns. Impeaching Donald Trump would be easier than any other legal proceeding ever started against a politician.
- The radical right-wing media (Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, etc) were very efficient in demonizing Hillary Clinton (See this article on the lengthy campaign to demonize her). Her approval rating was actually quite high when she was secretary of state. The moment it became obvious that she was going to run for president the radical right-wing media started a coordinated campaign to demonize her that resulted in record-low approval ratings. Ten years from now people will not even be able to explain what the problem was with her email server and what exactly was the big deal with the Benghazi attack that killed four people. Ten years from now people will find it very difficult to articulate why they opposed her so strongly. The radical right-wing media have perfected the strategy of subliminal brain conditioning.
- Trump was perhaps better at using social media (although in my opinion it backfired: people who read his tweets were mostly turned off, not on) but one thing is certain: this time money did not win, because Clinton had a lot more money than Trump.
- Italy is a small country, but it has come up with many bad inventions that spread around the world, like the mafia and fascism. Italy pioneered the idea that a tycoon outside the political establishment can change the system when it elected its richest man, Berlusconi, as prime minister. It turned out to be another bad idea: the Italian economy has still to recover from that experience. Then when Berlusconi's star faded, Italy hailed a TV celebrity, comedian Beppe Grillo, as the savior of the white middle class. Berlusconi + Grillo = Trump.
- Technology utterly failed. Rarely have predictions been so wrong. The combination of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence yields utter nonsense. The New York Times' Upshot algorithm gave Clinton an 85% chance of winning. FiveThirtyEight gave her a 72% chance.
- Hillary Clinton wanted to run at all costs, and the Democratic Party didn't have the guts to tell her "thanks, but no thanks". The result is the election of the Republican candidate plus a Republican majority in Congress. The outcome of her unhinged ambition will, presumably, be an avalanche of anti-environmental laws, perhaps a new war in the Middle East, a right-wing Supreme Court and perhaps another great recession. I cannot find the words to express my disdain for this woman who always put her personal interest before the good of the country (and of her own party).
- Donald Trump has created a lot of fear, and not only among immigrants (both legal and illegal). He has created a lot of fear around the world and within his own country. It is fair to compare the psychological effect of his election to Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and to the Soviet Union's first atomic bomb. Few events have created so much fear in the USA. I wonder if this fear is what Einstein felt in 1933 when Hitler rose to power? (Einstein emigrated to the USA renouncing his German citizenship)
- Most people won't reach the end of this article. This is the age of 140-character tweets. All the people who didn't reach the end of this article because it is too long are de-facto enablers of the Trump presidency: he quite simply was the best at using the 140-character message. Clinton kept sending people to her website to read her lengthy program, but these days people's attention span is only 140 characters.
- I have a neighbor who is a borderline sociopath and certified drunkard and proud gun owner who uses the "F" word every five words. He won the election.
- The real losers are perhaps all the parents who taught their children "don't be a bully, don't be a racist, don't be a sexist, don't lie, don't break the law, don't be rude to others, don't cheat on your wife, and don't neglect your homework so you won't be stuck with a low-paid blue-collar job for the rest of your life." Guess what: if you do all of those things, you become president of the USA.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2016 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
Back to the world news | Back to 2016 politics
- (november 2016)
My final thoughts on the 2016 presidential election.
- This election continues and worsens the anti-democratic trend that started in the 1990s. First the Republicans tried to overthrow the democratically elected president Bill Clinton because of a sex scandal. Then Bush won the 2000 elections on a technicality (having lost the popular vote) and this unleashed an avalanche of accusations that the Supreme Court had stolen the election from Al Gore.
Then in 2004 Bush won the majority of the popular vote, but some Democrats noticed that Ohio would have tilted the electoral vote towards the Democratic candidate and started asking for a "recount" in Ohio (even if Bush had won the popular vote). Then in 2008 some Republicans came up with the fantasy that Obama was not born in the USA, and therefore his election (by a landslide) was null and void, and this story continued throughout his presidency.
Obviously there are an increasing number of people who don't care about the will of the voters: they only care about making sure that their candidate wins, by whatever means.
Politics has become so similar to business that an increasing number of people
have forgotten the principle of democracy and only think in terms of marketing
and selling their own brand.
In 2016 the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, started
talking of a "rigged" election even before one vote was cast.
One of his mottos
was "Lock her up!" demanding that his opponent, Hillary Clinton, be jailed
(the way they treat political opponents in banana republics and communist dictatorships).
There is also mounting evidence of a connection between Trump and
Russia's president Vladimir Putin.
Russia may have sensed that the US democracy is as weak as it has ever been,
and that its system is vulnerable to an undercover operative. Trump has refused to
release his tax returns. Given that we already know that he has not paid any
taxes, what else is there that is even more damning than not having paid
taxes? It could be that his tax returns show his dealings with a foreign power,
the same foreign power that has hacked and leaked information about Trump's
opponent. A New York Times article revealed that Trump is not quite as rich as
he claims: who is footing his bills?
Donald Trump's political campaign has been led by people like
Paul Manafort, the former lobbyist for Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, African dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and, last but not least, Ukraine's former president Viktor Yanukovych (Putin's stooge in Ukraine); and by
Steve Bannon, a right-wing radical who also happens to be a Putin.
Russia's ultra-nationalist Aleksandr Dugin, known as "Putin's Rasputin", has written: "Trump began in the United States a new revolution for your freedom and ours".
The negative publicity relentlessly unleashed by Fox News and other mainstream
media has created a very undemocratic mood, in which the reality of many small
facts does not matter as much as the bigger lies that keep being repeated on the airwaves. For example, the economy is in much better shape than it was under
George W Bush, but you wouldn't know it listening to Fox News. San Francisco is depicted as a "sanctuary city" living in anarchy and poverty when in fact the
Bay Area is the wealthiest region in the USA with the lowest unemployment rate,
the highest salaries and (alas) the highest home prices.
The 24-hour "news" cycle at Fox News is meant to create an undemocratic
atmosphere in which the only will of the people that is accepted is the one
that Fox News likes (radical right-wing).
Fox News has hammered Hillary Clinton for years after 4 US citizens died in an embassy attack in Lybia, but never found anything wrong with the 3,000 people killed on September 11 of 2001.
According to Fox News,
the Clinton Foundation is a criminal organization, despite the fact that 87% of donations are spent in well-documented humanitarian projects, whereas the Trump Foundation somehow is ok, despite the fact that it doesn't have a single documented humanitarian project.
Media on the right and on the left specialize in demonizing political opponents
to an unprecedented degree.
I would not be surprised if Hillary Clinton were assassinated.
The climate is so undemocratic that people, taking for granted a victory by
Hillary Clinton, already wonder whether Donald Trump will concede, as customary
in the USA; but they should also ask the opposite question: if the unthinkable happen and Donald Trump wins, will (the super-ambitious) Hillary Clinton concede?
The will of the people seems to have become a secondary concern for our politicians and our parties. One fears to ask "What next"?
- This is the end of the Reagan era. For three decades Reagan has been the unchallenged prophet of the Republican Party.
Trump won by campaigning against
free trade (he is opposed), fiscal conservatism (he would spend a fortune to build a useless wall with Mexico), and military intervention (he is
opposed to the Iraqi war).
He is not even a social conservative since he is addicted to divorce, has been mostly pro-abortion and never went to church.
Despite all these anti-Republican traits, he won the Republican nomination.
He stood against the principles of the Republican party and he won
over the candidates who advocated those principles.
Last but not least, today Reagan would be a Democrat: there is very little left
in today's Republican Party of Reagan's Republican Party.
- Donald Trump owes his fortune to Hillary Clinton. Any other Democratic candidate would have easily beaten a grotesquely incompetent candidate like Trump, but (right or wrong) Clinton is the only Democratic politician who is almost as unpopular as Trump.
She outspent Trump 2 to 1, in same cases 3 or 4 to 1, and, yet, the race is tight until the very last minute: it is telling of how much people dislike her.
Donald Trump is campaigning alone, not supported by anyone, not even by his own party, while Clinton has her husband, Joe Biden, Al Gore, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama and even her former opponent Bernie Sanders, campaigning for her all over the USA, plus pop stars and Hollywood celebrities. And, yet, the race is tight.
The mother of all reasons to dislike her is that she didn't step aside: had she stepped aside, it would have been much easier to defeat Trump. She put her personal ambition before the good of her party and, more importantly, of the country;
something to remember if she is elected.
- Even the Republican Party forgot that this was supposed to be a referendum on "Obamacare",
the much disliked health-care system introduced during Obama's first term.
Well, this is still a referendum on "Obamacare".
It has insured millions of people who did not have insurance, but at the cost of millions of dollars in additional premiums paid by people who had insurance. And the people who really need it are often the ones who cannot get it (e.g. people with no income) or for whom it makes no economic sense (if you are over 50 the plans are very expensive and if you have a medium income you don't qualify for "subsidies").
Many people just don't want four more years of Obamacare.
If Donald Trump is the only way to undo Obamacare, so be it.
- According to the polls, Donald Trump loses among just about every ethnic group and every age group as well as among women. So how can he have won the Republican Party nomination and how can he still be in the race, even tied with Hillary Clinton in the polls? Because he gets a lot of support from white men who didn't go to college. Everybody else has an excuse if she or he missed the high-tech revolution and still works on "blue collar" jobs; but not white men. White men had all the advantages that African-Americans, Hispanics, women, second-generation immigrants and first-generation immigrants did not have. White men speak the language, they know the system, there are plenty of good colleges in their neighborhoods, they can qualify easily for financial help, and they were here when the high-tech revolution started. How could they have missed it? How did they end up being blue-collar workers when tens of thousands of foreign immigrants got their computer science or engineering or math degrees and easily found a job in places like Silicon Valley where salaries for a first-time job are three times the salary of a 50-year-old blue-collar job in the Midwest?
That's a mystery that tens of thousands of immigrants don't quite understand (but they certainly thank these white US-born males for missing the opportunity).
Viewed from California, it is really weird that white men are voting for Trump because of the economy: what is wrong with a booming economy? Well, it's not booming for them. Now for these very white males who have been left behind the solution is to elect someone who will save them from complete annihilation by turning the system upside down: Trump said he will force companies like Apple to stop making products abroad and he will bring back manufacturing jobs.
That, of course, will greatly harm the part of the USA that is doing just fine. Imagine what Apple would do if forced to make its iPhones in the USA, which would cause the price of the iPhone to skyrocket, which would send Apple bankrupt: Apple would either shut down or move to China. And so would all the other companies whose competitivity depends on using cheap manufacturing outside the USA. The experiment of the government telling corporations what to do in order to help poor uneducated people had been tried before in many countries: it is called communism, and it has always failed. Besides, we don't really want any manufacturing job in our backyard. Those are the industries that pollute. We want clean software, not dirty hardware.
These white uneducated men are also hostile to science in general, and not only to
climate science: they just don't like the scientist who tells them things that they cannot understand because they didn't go to school.
These white men didn't study geography and don't have the money to travel around
the world: they get annoyed when they hear news of all these strange nationalities. They want a return to white Christian nationalism not because of a racist view of the others but because it's easy to understand for people who know nothing about the rest of the world.
The fury of white blue-collar men against illegal immigration is ironic.
Due to the fact that Congress never managed to pass a decent immigration bill,
the illegal immigrants are the lifeblood of the economy. They do all the jobs
that these white blue-collar men would never do. And the illegal immigrants
do it for little money, making those services affordable to middle-class
families. Places like California where salaries are skyrocketing need more
illegal immigrants, not fewer, because there aren't enough workers for the
humble jobs (in construction, agriculture and services) to match the demand
of a growing economy. Who will take care of you when you are 80 years old?
Almost certainly a foreign-born nurse. Hopefully, you will be able to hire a foreigner
who doesn't charge the outrageous rates of US citizens, otherwise you will
probably just die, unable to pay for the help you will need.
Illegal immigrants prospered during the Great Recession, when white middle-class
men were getting unemployment benefits: the illegal immigrants took all the jobs
that US citizens didn't want and did much better than white men with the same (low) level of education.
Trump's white male supporters
advocate a sinister scenario: they want the USA to become a country run not by winners but by losers.
They want to impose the rule of the losers, the rule of the people who dropped out of college and totally missed the train of progress (not to mention of women's emancipation).
- If Hillary Clinton wins, as the polls predict, she will probably make the huge mistake of claiming that she has a mandate. That's what George W Bush did when he lost the popular vote but became president thanks to a technicality. Clinton is in a similar situation: if she wins, it will not be because people voted for her, but because people voted against Trump. Very few voters (even within her own party) would have picked her as their ideal president out of one hundred politicians selected at random. She will have absolutely no mandate.
Hillary Clinton needs to remember that a decent Republican candidate would have easily defeated her. Trump was a godsend for her. There is a reason if people voted for Trump despite all of Trump's shortcomings. People are indeed fed up with "politially correct" talk. Trump's unhibited comments were a fresh draft of oxygen for people asphyxiated by
political correctedness. The USA is a country where an incredible number of
words are banned. Not even in China are there so many restrictions on which words
you can use. Whenever a public official opens his or her mouth, s/he has to
consult with lawyers and experts to make sure that s/he is not saying something
that is sensitive to this or that group (and, generally speaking, the least
protected group is precisely the white males who support Trump).
For example, we cannot say that most violent crime is due to young black males, even if
the statistics say so. It is politically incorrect to say so, even if it is so (the USA is not such a dangerous country if you don't count black neighborhoods, as most homicides happen in black neighborhoods and are committed by young males). It does not help to solve the problem, and black communities are the first victims of this problem. Ironically, the politically-correct speech that is supposed to protect them is actually one reason why their situation is not improving.
Nor does it help to keep calling Islam a "religion of peace" to avoid that Muslims get offended. Islam is the only major religion that was founded by a man who personally killed, the only religion that started with a war, and the
whole point of that war was to expel all other religions. The vast majority
of victims of this "religion of peace" are Muslims themselves.
It helps neither "us" (non-Muslims) nor them (Muslims) to pretend that there
is nothing wrong with the foundations of Islam.
- You should vote for Hillary Clinton. The reason is none of these. The reason is very practical. It is very likely that the Republican Party will retain control of both the house of representatives and the senate.
If Trump becomes president with house and senate on his side, you will see not
only his current political opponent go to jail but also any politician
and any journalist who dares criticize him. Even if you believe that an
unchecked Republican government (White House and Congress) can be trusted
with unlimited power in domestic and foreign affairs, you should think about
the consequences for the US democracy.
And i, for one, don't trust the Republican Party with unlimited unchecked
power: they are too influenced (and funded) by the military industrial
establishment and de facto take orders from Israel, which means that the USA
would almost certainly get involved in another major war, causing another
major budget deficit, another major recession and more anti-US terrorism.
The Republicans are using a scare tactic, predicting that Hillary Clinton
will nominate so many justices of the Supreme Court in the next four years.
First of all, the president cannot appoint a justice of the Supreme Court: the
Congress has to approve the nomination.
And that's the main point, because the situation is exactly the opposite of what the Republicans claim: if Hillary Clinton is president, checked by a Republican-dominated Congress, she will not be able to appoint radical left-wing justices;
but if Trump is president, the Republicans (who control Congress) will be able to appoint the justices they want, no matter how radical. A Clinton presidency will be much more "fair and balanced" (to use Fox News' favorite oxymoron) than a Trump presidency for the simple fact that it will be checked by a Congress dominated by the other party.
The other reason we are voting for Hillary Clinton is simple: she will be the first woman to be elected president of a country that has been around for 240 years. That would indeed be something to be proud of. It is the only thing that can make us proud in this awful presidential election.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2016 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
Back to the world news | Back to 2016 politics
- (october 2016)
The three epic campaigns of Donald Trump.
"There is no merit or veracity to this fabricated story."
No, this is not an old quote from the days of communist Soviet Union or from Mao's communist China.
This is a statement by the campaign of presidential candidate Donald Trump, who aspires to be the
president of a democratic country, the USA. The same presidential candidate has vowed stiff retribution
against the people who criticized him or opposed him, and has even promised that his opponent, Hillary
Clinton, will be imprisoned if he is elected (something that dictators around the world used to do with
impunity, but has now become unfashionable even in places like Iran and Zimbabwe).
This is more than just an eerie echo of Vladimir Putin's rule in Russia.
Russian hackers have attacked the Clinton campaign, but not the Trump campaign.
Putin allies have openly stated that Russia cannot accept the election of Hillary Clinton, even threatening war should
she become president.
The problem harkens back to 2011, when large demonstrations took place in Russia against Putin. Putin came to believe
that Hillary Clinton was behind them, and certainly she openly encouraged them.
Putin, like Trump, does not forget those who attacked him.
Russia has hacked Hillary Clinton's emails and the emails of other Democratic politicians. It is hard to believe
that Russia could not hack as well Donald Trump's emails or his tax returns or other damning documents. Trump has
ten times more skeletons in the closet than Hillary Clinton. But Russia has only "leaked" the material that is
embarrassing to Hillary Clinton, and not a single byte about Trump.
Gerry Kasparov is adamant that Putin is trying to get Trump elected.
If Russia has indeed accumulated damning material about Trump's various shady businesses, it is not unreasonable to
suspect that this material is being used to blackmail Trump into doing what Putin tells him to do.
Trump is de facto an agent of Putin in the USA. For the first time a foreign power has sent one of its men to
run for president in the USA. Trump is not disclosing his tax returns despite the fact that by now we all know
that he didn't pay any taxes. What else is he hiding? Most likely he is hiding his secret dealings with Russia.
If his tax returns show huge sums of money received from Russia, it would prove beyond any reasonable doubt that
Russia paid Trump to run for president.
(Note that hackers have been able to leak just about everything about Hillary Clinton, but not a line from Donald
Trump's tax returns).
It is not a coincidence that Trump's foreign policy coincides with Putin's: Trump has described the war against
Saddam Hussein as a disaster (Russia was strongly opposed to it), Trump has pledged to recognize
Russia's annexation of Crimea, and to suspend economic sanctions against Russia (which, of course, would only
encourage Russia to annex more territories from neighboring countries). Trump has praised Putin's policies of mass
extermination in Syria.
Trump is the first and possibly the only US politician who has presented Putin's brutal policies as acceptable to the
US public. Putin has no other apologist for his policies in the entire Western world.
During the Cold War there was Noam Chomsky trying to explain that the Soviet Union was not so bad after all
and that the USA was not so good after all; but Chomsky never ran for president.
Trump has said that "The election is being rigged by corrupt media pushing completely false allegations and outright lies in an effort to elect her (Clinton) president." Well, that happens to be exactly what Putin has said to the Russian
public, and that happens to be exactly what the Soviet Union's propaganda used to say of US presidential elections.
Trump is literally taken cues from Putin about how to manage his campaign and what to say.
Read between the lines of what Trump says (and later claims he didn't say, Putin-style) and you will realize that the
target of his campaign is democracy itself. Trump is fighting to delegitimize democracy. He relentlessly attacks the
free press, doesn't he? Well, Putin put the free press in jail (or in cemeteries all over Russia).
The Republican Party, the party of Ronald Reagan, is either being naive about Trump's legitimacy or too afraid to confront Putin's #1 agent in the USA.
The Republican Party is as much a target of Donald Trump's campaign as is Hillary Clinton. Clinton is, in a sense,
a mere pretext. Trump would have used the exact similar tactic and pretty much the exact same words (plus or minus
the email scandal) to attack any other opponent. His campaign against Clinton is a diversionary tactic.
Trump's real targets have been the war in Iraq, free trade and even Ronald Reagan (the supreme god of the Republicans).
He has not
managed to destroy Clinton's image (in fact, he may have slightly improved her image among the general public) but,
in the process, he is destroying the Republican Party. The Republican Party is a much more valuable target than an
individual politician.
It is fairly obvious that there are at least three campaigns: one is Trump vs Clinton, the second one is Trump vs his own party, and the third one (the real one) is Trump vs democracy.
His real target is not just Clinton, not just the Republican Party, but the whole democratic process.
Trump's visceral rejection of the Washington establishment is the perfect way to start an anti-USA revolution in the
USA, given the (justified) resentment among the moral majority against politicians of both parties.
(Don't get me wrong: Trump was and is the wrong answer to the correct question: how do we get honest, competent and accountable politicians in a democratic system? We will get Hillay Clinton, who will claim a popular mandate when in fact
people have to shut their nose in order to vote for her).
It is truly disconcerting that the moral majority of the USA (usually associated with the Republican Party)
has nominated the most immoral candidate in the race.
But it is not so disconcerting if you accept the fact that a major power is behind his entire political campaign, that
Trump is part of a sophisticated Russian conspiracy to subvert the US democracy.
Trump's campaign against Clinton is failing miserably: he may turn out to be the biggest loser of any presidential
candidate. Trump's campaign against the Republican Party is likely to have some serious consequences.
But Trump's campaign to discredit democracy is already successful. No matter how many votes Hillary Clinton wins, the
real winner of this election will be Vladimir Putin, the most dangerous man in the world.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2016 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
Back to the world news | Back to 2016 politics
- (august 2016)
Let's make America Ridiculous like Never Before.
Every week the Republican candidate for president of the United States, Donald Trump, brings the country to a new low. His motto is "Let's make America great again," but in practice it means, "Let's make America ridiculous like never before."
The Republican Party
wants us to vote for a cowardly, racist, sexist, ignorant megalomaniac who
perjured himself to dodge the draft, ripped off thousands of poor people with a
fake university, filed for bankruptcy several times to avoid paying back his
creditors, failed repeatedly as a businessman (Trump Airlines, Trump Vodka,
Trump Steaks, etc.), has divorced twice after sex scandals and eventually
married a fashion model (who faked a college degree), has been involved in 169
different lawsuits (including one for allegedly raping a 13 year old girl),
refuses to disclose his tax returns because they would likely reveal that he
outsourced thousands of jobs, speculated on the people who lost their homes
during the Great Recession, robbed citizens of their life-savings, and made
deals with criminals of the worst kind.
If you had done one
tenth of what he has done, you would probably be in jail for many years.
The Republican Party
wants us to vote for a man who has done all of this and who now dares to insult
soldiers who fought in the Vietnam war and were tortured by the enemy (John
McCain), soldiers who died in the Iraq war, women who are guilty of being more
intelligent than him, Hispanics who are guilty of being more honest and
hardworking than him, and Muslims who are guilty of being more moral than him.
The Republican Party
wants us to vote for a man who doesn't know that Putin invaded Ukraine and who
doesn't seem to have a plan of any kind regarding foreign or domestic policy.
Trump is a crooked,
insane, dishonest, disgraceful, incompetent fraud. He is a joke and a clown,
has no credibility, and is a cowardly man who failed both as a businessman and
as a family man (just look at his dysfunctional family). It is sad to watch his
goofy performances. Last but not least, he is a congenital liar. Trump is the
worst ever candidate for president. (Yes, I created a collage of his favorite
repetitive epithets thrown at whoever criticizes him: he is accusing others what
he knows of himself).
So why is the
Republican Party embarrassing itself by asking us to vote for this pathetically
ridiculous man? Doesn't the Republican Party realize that the damage to its
reputation will be enduring?
When four years ago
Mitt Romney (a good and competent man) lost the election to Barack Obama, the
Republican Party's self-analysis correctly identified the problem: it was and
is losing among women, millennials, Hispanics,
African-Americans, ethnic minorities in general, and college-educated white
men; all categories that happen to be growing in size and influence. Four years
later the Republican Party is nominating Donald Trump: a sexist and racist who
mainly appeals to older white men with no college degree. Trump represents
precisely the problem that the Republican Party set out to solve four years ago
(hence the Republican Party's only strategy: demonize the alternative, Hillary
Clinton).
And shame on Fox
News, the mouthpiece of the Republican Party, for ignoring the real news of
this presidential campaign. For example, when Donald Trump was insulting the
parents of a war hero, the Fox News website was headlined by a story about a
sexy Swedish police officer in a bikini, and the same website was headlined by
the story of a dethroned Florida pageant participant when new polls showed
Trump losing in virtually every state. Instead of apologizing for creating the
awful Tea Party phenomenon (read: old, white, uneducated men frustrated by a
world that has left their obsolete jobs behind) via a sinister cast of fascist
and racist TV hosts ("Slaves that worked there were well fed." -Bill
O'Reilly), Fox News keeps inventing non-existent scandals that are consistently
debunked... at the cost of millions of taxpayers’ dollars.
For example, we have
had a multi-million dollar investigation into the Benghazi attacks that killed
4 US citizens (far away from U.S. soil) but never had a similar investigation
into the September 11 attacks that killed 3,000 U.S. citizens (on U.S. soil),
nor any investigation into the many terrorist attacks since the Beirut marine
barracks bombings of the Reagan era (200+ marines killed) that have killed
scores of U.S. citizens around the world, nor any investigation into the
Katrina disaster of 2005 (one of the worst cases of incompetence in the history
of U.S. politics), nor any investigation into New York mayor Rudy Giuliani's
response to the 2001 attacks (that many considered grossly incompetent). For
example, we still have an endless investigation into some convoluted e-mail issue
but never investigated the e-mail habits of previous Secretaries of State or
presidents. Countless presidents were "hacked" by foreign spies
during the time before e-mail without generating this kind of Fox News-driven
hysteria.
Meanwhile, Fox News has
not investigated any of the real Trump scandals: he has dodged the draft,
screwed his creditors, scammed the students of Trump University, refused to
disclose his tax returns, went after all sorts of poor and defenseless people
to create his business empire, and so forth. Imagine what Fox News would do if
a candidate of the other party refused to disclose her/his tax returns...
If Fox News treated
Donald Trump the way they treated Obama or the Clintons, there would be enough
depravity to cover their 24 hour cycle. When one Hillary Clinton scandal is
debunked, Fox News invents another one, and pushes Republicans to demand for an
investigation. The investigation leads to absolutely nothing, but it's enough
to keep people thinking that it was justified. Fox News, which was the
cheerleader of Bush's war in Iraq, keeps inventing wars, most recently a
fictitious war with a mysterious "radical Islam" that is a lot less
likely to kill you than is your neighbor armed by the NRA. Listen to Fox News
(Fix News?) and you'd think that San Francisco (a "sanctuary city" in
their lingo) is a poor, anarchic, violent city, and not the wealthiest city in
the USA with the lowest crime rate, highest salaries, and lowest unemployment
rate. The tactic of cowardly discrediting anybody who stands in the way of your
lies was not invented by Donald Trump but by Fox News.
These radical right-wing militants are way more dangerous than the Islamic terrorists that
they promise to fight in our name.
"I like people who weren't captured." -Donald
Trump, who dodged the draft when he was a young, insulting war hero John McCain
who served in Vietnam and was captured and tortured by the enemy.
"They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists.
And some, I assume, are good people." -Donald Trump,
describing Hispanic immigrants.
"I'd like to hear his wife say something." -Donald Trump,
who dodged the draft when he was young, insulting the mother of a U.S. soldier
who died in war.
"I think I've made a lot of sacrifices." -Donald Trump,
Republican candidate for president of the United States, claiming that his life
of golf courses and casinos is comparable to the life of two parents who lost
their son in war.
"Putin is not going to go into Ukraine." -Donald Trump, obviously not knowing that Putin has already invaded
and annexed Ukraine's Crimea.
"Nobody knows the system better than me" -Donald Trump,
publicly admitting that he is a crook and a liar.
"I am going to abide by the Constitution whether it's number one,
number two, number 12, number nine." -Donald Trump,
talking about the seven-article constitution of the U.S.
"In Europe, pictures like this are very fashionable and common."
-Donald Trump, talking about the nude pictures of his wife, Melania, which in Europe are neither fashionable nor common
but are called something else.
"There is great unity in my campaign, perhaps greater than ever
before." -Donald Trump, after scores of Republicans announced that
they will vote for Hillary Clinton.
"Now the poor guy, you gotta see this
guy." -Donald Trump, mocking a disabled person.
"I was against the war in Iraq. It was a horrible mistake - one of
the worst mistakes in the history of our country. We destabilized the Middle
East and we've been paying the price for it for years." -Donald Trump, who supported Republican president George W. Bush's
invasion of Iraq.
"ISIS is honoring President Obama. He is the founder of ISIS. He's
the founder of ISIS, OK? He's the founder. He founded ISIS." -Donald Trump speaking about Barack Obama, one of the few
politicians who opposed the war in Iraq that Trump supported.
Trump's campaign has
been a combination of bullying, insulting, bribing, and, worst of all, pitting
one group of citizens against others, something that no war
enemy nor terrorist has succeeded in doing since the Civil War of 1861.
So far he has had absolutely nothing to offer to the nation other than behavior
that no family-oriented woman or man would like to show their children. This is
a man who used to discuss sex with Lady Diana (after she had already died) and
oral sex on Howard Stern's radio program. His contempt for civility and for the
Constitution itself constitutes one of the biggest threats to the survival of
U.S. democracy since the McCarthy "witch-hunt" of the 1950s.
Nor is Trump credible regarding any
opinion that he holds today. Trump has held different opinions on just about
every major issue: he used to support the Iraq war, immigration reform, gun
control, and abortion but to win the Republican nomination he had to pretend to
oppose all three. He has flip-flopped right and left depending on who he is
talking with.
The last time that
the U.S. elected a president who had no electoral experience was Dwight
Eisenhower in 1953, but that was a general who had just won a world war, not a
crooked real-estate tycoon and vulgar playboy who has a closet full of
skeletons.
Donald Trump has
contributed no positive ideas to the political debate. His campaign has relied
exclusively on painting a "doom and gloom" picture of the nation
based on dubious "facts," a litany of scapegoats (typically those who
cannot defend themselves), conspiracy theories (Obama is a Muslim traitor who
wasn't even born in the U.S., Hillary Clinton killed a man, Ted Cruz's father
was involved in the assassination of president John Kennedy, the elections will
be rigged, etc), and then in pretending that he can fix all the problems. The
only problem that we can see is that his ignorance makes him ignore the real
problems and makes him imagine non-existent problems. Here is a short list of
his "ideas."
● Existing trade deals are "stupid" - Trump never mentions one economist who thinks that the U.S. economy has suffered from those trade deals nor has he ever explained how he would improve any of them.
● ISIS must be "destroyed" - Trump never explained what he would do differently, arguing both against troops on the ground and against the current policy that is limited to bombing strategic targets.
● Millions of illegal immigrants must be deported - Trump never explained how this can be done in practice, and why we should do it in the first place since every statistic shows that they contribute more than they take from the nation and that the economy would suffer greatly without the millions of people willing to do the jobs that U.S. citizens are not willing to do. For the record, immigrants commit far fewer crimes than U.S. citizens.
● A wall must be built to stop illegal immigration from Mexico - Trump never explained how that would stop illegal immigration via sea or even air or why smugglers would be deterred from simply digging tunnels under the wall.
● The U.S. should not help NATO allies - Trump has not explained how that would benefit the United States’ strategic interests worldwide, from Western Europe (the United States’ main importer of goods) to the Middle East.
● Ban Muslims from entering the U.S. - Trump does not explain how that would encourage Muslims to continue fighting ISIS. Muslims are the main victims of Islamic terrorism and the vast majority of people fighting ISIS.
● The U.S. should torture suspected terrorists and kill their innocent relatives - Trump has not explained why the U.S. should succeed employing the strategy that Hitler and other losers employed in their own time.
● Putin, Saddam Hussein, and Qaddafi were good for the U.S. - Trump has not said clearly whether he would support dictators worldwide and restore dictators wherever they have been deposed.
There are, however, statements that we can believe 100%.
He has clearly threatened those who criticize him of retribution should he become president.
He has promised to restrict the freedom of the press.
He has suggested that any judge ruling against him should be fired.
He has hinted at violent riots should he not be nominated.
He has suggested that he may lose the elections because the elections will be rigged, indirectly calling for an uprising should he lose the elections.
Take his word on these ones.
(Proof-edited by Daron Tovmasyan)
TM, ®, Copyright © 2016 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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