Thoughts for the Final Day of the Democratic Convention

The message from Obama and many of the other prominent speakers at the DNC is has been, as that lovely hat has written on it: “America is Already Great”. Trump’s response to that was well:

He’s not wrong and the more the Democrats run on the idea that everything is fine without some positive message of a way forward the more likely they are going to lose. We have an opioid epidemic, factory towns throughout the Midwest and the South have been hit hard by de-industrialization and are struggling, wages have stagnated, there are massive levels of debt in the economy. People can barely afford medicine and in rural parts of the country the life expectancy is going down, since 1990 the death rate for white men has risen by 12%, 48% of white women. and suicide levels are at a 30 year high.

My favorite headline to that about the suicide problem, because it is epitome of out of touch status quo media, is from the liberal site Vox who ran this “Suicides are rising in the United States, and no one really knows why”. Its not hard to guess why, people don’t kill themselves in large numbers because things are going well for them.

There is tendency to slag people off voting for Trump and are drawn to the “Make America Great Again” rhetoric, particularly with this idea that America back the America is the one of segregation. There are racists that support Trump but what about the guy behind him. The person that isn’t getting the attention because he’s not a raving lunatic. That person worried because of how uncertain there position is, and while the average Trump supporter is richer and better educated than the average American (but not average GOP voter interestingly enough), many are the well off in the parts of the country that are doing poorly, looking at the people in their communities that out of work when the factories leave and realizing “I could be next”. Many of them are factory workers, or if their in Appalachia the ex-miners, but now competes with convicts for fry cook jobs when the factory left or the mine went bankrupt, jobs they had pride, and gets to watch their communities fall apart. Humiliation and Despair, not racism, is the breeding ground of Fascism.

In the 2002 French Presidential election, Jean-Marie Le Pen was the National Front presidential candidate made it to the second round narrowly beating out Lionel Jospin, the center left candidate. In the runoff Le Pen lost to Jacques Chirac 87% to 13%. Jean Marie Le Pen is an out and out anti-semite that got kicked out of the party he founded, by his daughter Marine Le Pen, because he couldn’t keep stop talking, all in an attempt to become more respectable. In 2017 is the next French general election and looks like a real possibility that National front will be single biggest party in France as well an outside possibility of Marine Le Pen being the next French President.

I bring this up because if Hillary wins, congratulations you stopped Trump. What about the next guy in four to eight years, because Hillary and current Democratic leadership aren’t interested in tackling the issues that made his rise possible in the first place, with “America is Already Great” rhetoric or this idea they and the media are peddling that he’s a Putin sleeper agent so can pretend he’s not homegrown. So they can pretend it will all go away.

I’m not worried about Trump but by the guy after him in because however Trump gets defeated will not work the next time. That guy after Trump, and I don’t mean any Republican when I write this another right-wing populist, will be the one who will pick the ball where Trump left it, shine it up, and spike it in the endzone and their will be nothing the media or the Dems will be able to do.

I keep hearing this argument trotted out that Hillary is fundamentally honest, in particular they refer to Politifact and her rating there. Politifact, only follows statements during elections so the only statements on their are from her two presidential race. What Politifact doesn’t cover is what happens once she’s not under the scrutiny of an elections once she has her hands on the levers of power.

Here’s the thing, besides her cheer leading for endless war, she triangulates positions to the center like a classic of 90s politicians like her husband unless she can be pushed to do otherwise. Beyond the well known example of same sex marriage and her changing position on that or the on the Colombia free trade agreement which she ran against it until she got into the state department then she lobbied her heart our for it. Or the TPP were she was for it and now against it and if Terry McAuliffe’s gaffe is anything to go by Hillary will be for it once she doesn’t have to deal with a popular vote. I fully think she will do it.

All because is very squishy on non foreign policy issues and she will do anything to win “respectable” votes, including during her 2000 Senate run throwing Muslim voters under the bus so she can win Jewish voters.

In her memoir Hard Choices she took credit about helping maintain power of the coup d'etat regime that over threw Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, before striking that entire passage about Honduras in the paperback release. Does that sound like the actions of an honest person? Lets not forget that the results of the coup in Honduras are horrific, in March was the assassination of indigenous rights activist Berta Caceres and the further assassination of environmental and indigenous rights activists from death squads have been in the hundreds. For a number of years Honduras was the murder capital of the world after the coup.

Lets bring it back to the US because kids come to America fleeing all of this violence. I have heard and seen oh so many people who are happy to criticize Trump for calling for deportations and rub this call in my face while saying telling me if I don’t vote for Hillary that I’m being privileged. Never saying a peep about this issue under as it concerns Obama, whose presidency that has deported more people than any president ever, or, and here’s the kicker, is that Hillary has defended the fact that she called for the deportation of the kids back to Central America, back to countries like Honduras, so they can live under gun of the death squads, the cartels and the street gangs.