Why Trump Won

Donald Trump is returning to the White House.  As I write this he is about 4 million ahead in the popular vote, and in the electoral college he won every swing state.  The Senate will have the GOP with a decent-sized margin, and the House looks like it might be red as well.  

A lot of us are stunned and angry.  A lot have created negative answers about the losers in this race: 'The Democrats are incompetent.'  Yep.  'People are tired of liberal wokeness'.  Ok.  'Joe Biden waited too long to not run.'  Agreed.  'Kamala Harris was a bad candidate.'  Not sure about that, but I can see how some think it.  'America won't vote for a woman.'  Likely.  'Inflation and housing costs have made Americans mad.'  Sure, but Biden inherited Trump's Trainwreck of an economy and was fixing it.  'Nations around the world in recent elections have been casting out the incumbents.'  Absolutely.  'Josh Shapiro should have been VP instead of Tim Walz.'  Whatever.

I won't get into the positive answers some are spouting about the greatness of Donald Trump and how he is rightfully coming back to his proper throne, because I don't want to break my computer.  I'm guessing that many people voted for him for that reason, even as many more were simply anti-democrat, anti-incumbent, anti-Harris and voted for him while holding their nose.  

But most of the talk I have heard has not gotten to the real point: the United States of America is a morally and spiritually bankrupt country.  The leaders for whom we vote are in many ways expressions of who we are.  If we vote for a person who is corrupt, immoral, and idolatrous, what does that say about us as a nation?  

This summer I finished 25 years of full-time preaching.  I have become increasingly convinced that one of the primary themes of Scripture is the Kingdom of God.  I'm not the first person who knows this, of course, but I do think that the church has become increasingly heretical by forgetting about the Kingdom.  We have a God who reigns, and we are his subjects.  And if we know that Jesus is Lord, what does that demand about us as his people?  In recent weeks I have seen a lot of 'Jesus is my King, and Trump is my president' flags.  I really want to ask the people who fly them what they mean by that, because Donald Trump is the antithesis of Jesus Christ.  If Jesus is his king, I'm guessing that Donald Trump is not his wingman. 

Of course, there's one other point that may be more troubling than anything.  What if God is returning Donald Trump as a punishment upon us?  We talk of being one nation under God, and Donald Trump has loudly boasted to his supporters that 'I am your retribution.'  What if this is true, that God is choosing to punish us as a nation by giving us such a wicked and immoral man as a leader?  What if he really is the object through which God is bringing about retribution, even as he doesn't even know this?

I have no hope that the next four years are going to go well for our country or the bigger world around us.  Likely NATO will crumble, and Ukraine (and other eastern European countries) will fall because we abandon them.  The middle east will continue to be a fiasco.  RFK Jr. in charge of health means that public health programs will be greatly hindered.  Raising tariffs and lopping off the bottom of the workforce through mass deportations (who do you think builds houses, works in slaughterhouses, and picks labor-intensive crops?) will drive up prices to the point that we will crave 2022 inflation.  Our hatred of migrants will be a dark stain upon us for generations as the best and brightest will no longer feel safe in coming here.  

I said during his first presidency that it might take a decade or more to undo the damage he does to our country, even with good leadership.  I'm not sure that we will recover from his return this time.  Could it be that God has finally lost patience with us?  For years I have heard his supporters think of Trump as a new 'Cyrus', God's chosen instrument (cf. Isaiah 44:23-45:1).  On the one hand I was happy to see that they recognized him as the pagan that he is.  But I think that their Biblical identification of Trump is wrong.  He is much more likely Belshazzar, the foolish king who partied hearty and found destruction the next day (cf. Daniel 5).    

I have seen signs all over for years that speaks of America's need to repent.  While I would likely disagree with the ones putting up as to the reasons we need to repent, I do think that turning back to the God of the Bible and the Jesus of the gospels is our only hope.  Only if we live in the ways of his goodness will we find a way to get out of the black hole we are finding ourselves entering into.  

Folks, We're Screwed

A little more than four months before a third straight election that makes millions of Americans want to put their heads in the oven, and last night they had the first debate.  Joe Biden or Donald Trump.  I didn't watch it, but by all accounts Trump continued his lunatic legacy by spouting lies, and Biden was barely coherent.  

I don't really feel anything about Joe Biden one way or another.  After four years of the Trump Trainwreck, we needed greatness, but we got Mediocre Joe instead.  No matter how much his people keep trying to tell us that he's engaged and laser sharp, we can see with our own eyes that he's a doddering old man who needs to enjoy retirement, not try and run a country. 

Early last year Biden should have found a microphone and said, 'Folks, it's been an honor and a privilege.  I ran back in 2020 in order to kick that orange fraud to the curb, and I did.  Now that we're back on track as a country, I'm gonna retire and turn things over to the younger generation.  I'll be here to help make sure that that nimrod doesn't come back, but I'm not running next year.  Good luck with everything, see you soon.'  

Joe Biden could have wandered off the stage that day and we would have added him to Mt. Rushmore in our thanks.  But that never happened, and the Dems are too clueless to know what to do.  This should have been a slam dunk.  Trump is a criminal with no moral framework and supported by a limited base living in an alternative universe.  All the Dems needed to do was find a governor or senator who was at least somewhat centrist, and they would have won this in a landslide.  The fact that they have no plan in place tells you everything you need to know about them...incompetent, inept, inert. 

As it is, Trump is likely gonna win again this fall.  And when that happens, we really are screwed.  

The Election

Some thoughts that really, really need to get out of my head so I can be productive today. 

-As of this writing, at 7:17am the morning after the election, it's still too close to call.  In an election where the worst president of my lifetime is running for re-election, it should have been a slam-dunk for the Democrats.  They ran an elder statesman of the party, a decent man who for a Democrat was rather moderate.  They didn't make a bunch of huge missteps, which is susprising because Joe Biden may be about two years from a dementia diagnosis.  But nope, likely they are going to blow it.  In an election in which they had a strong opportunity and a huge war chest of money to overtake the Senate, they blew it there, too.  Stuff like this is only one of the reasons why I can never be a Democrat.  The Republicans may have become morally repugnant, but at least they know what they are doing in order to get power.  The Democrats?  The only difference between them and the play-acting of the Libertarians is that they have been around awhile and once did some Things.  Maybe it's time to put them out of their misery.  The Whigs used to be a major thing in this country, and within a decade they were replaced by the Republicans.  It's time to establish a viable new centrist party.  

-Once again a Democrat is going to win the popular vote (though not by nearly as much as projected) but probably will lose the electoral college.  It's once again going to come down to a few votes in a few states.  This system stinks.  

-As heartbreaking as this week has been, it's time for Christians to stand up and truly live as citizens of the Kingdom of God.  This is an opportunity for us.  The major parties surely won't follow godliness, and so the church needs to stand for righteousness and justice and mercy and grace.  I'm becoming enough of a cynic of mainstream 'American Christianity' to think that this is not going to happen, but we need to try.  The next four years, if Trump ends up winning, are going to make 2020 look like paradise in comparison.  Who is to stand up and do what's right?  

EDIT 11/9/20 2:26pm.  So Joe Biden ended up winning the election, thankfully.  But it should never have been this close. The Democrats still have massive problems, and even though Trump will eventually be gone (willingly or not), they have a long way to go to ever earn my trust.

50-A Birthday Wish

I turn 50 this week.  Friends and family ask me what I want, and I don't really need anything...I have a great life, a wonderful family, and all that I really could ever want.  

And so what do I really want you to do for my birthday?  I'll keep this wish simple for any of you who read this:  PLEASE DO NOT VOTE FOR DONALD TRUMP.  There, that's it.  I understand that many of you will do so, regardless of what I say.  I'll try not to think less of you for doing such a thing, though it's hard...how can you justify voting for such a terrible person who has been such a terrible president?  I say this as a former Republican who has no desire to become a Democrat, and who is not at all excited about the possible Democratic landslide in November. But that doesn't worry me nearly as much as four more years of Trump.  Better a democratic socialist than a national socialist, I say.  

I have been intentional in recent years in not talking about politics (much) on Facebook.  I don't preach politics (not directly, though all proclamation of the Kingdom of God is inherently political).  I bite my tongue more often than not when I see such blatantly wrong things being said in support of Trumpism.  As a steward of the gospel of Christ, I know that it's so much important to keep relationships peaceful for the sake of the faith than it is to argue about something so stupid.  

But as we come closer to the 2020 election, now only 61 days away, I feel compelled to speak out against President Trump.  This will be the last time before the election I will speak directly on this, and so I need to be concise with my words: one could spend hours, even days, cataloguing the horrible things he has done as president.  But I think his failures can be narrowed down to three broad topics:

1)Corruption, both financial and electoral.  Remember when Trump was going to release his tax returns, like every other presidential candidate does so that we can ensure there are not any direct financial conflicts?  Whoops.  But it's not just about tax returns (which can be just as corrupted and hidden as anything else).  It's about the millions that he gets the government to pay to his properties so that he can golf more than he governs (even as he brags about returning his $400K salary back).  It's about the shady agreements he has made with foreign entities ("I love the Saudis"...they are some of his biggest renters).  It's about how much money his kids and his cronies are making off the family brand name, even as they are quasi-members of the administration. It's awfully hard to drain the swamp when he depends on that swamp to prop him up.  Then there's the way Trump has welcomed the undermining of our democracy by foreign entities, the way he is seeking to suppress voter turnout, and even the fact that he simply cares nothing for those who do not vote for him.  This is why he puts cities against rural areas, why he puts the elderly against the youth, why he puts red states versus blue states.  He knows that if he can just win the electoral college by the tiniest of margins, that's all he really needs to keep his grip on power.  It's unseemly and simply wrong...but that's not the end of the problem.  

2)Competence, or the lack thereof.  Donald Trump is simply bad at his job.  Trumpites will point to the stock market, but like everything else the market is easy to manipulate by the massive deficit spending he has continued to support since he came into office.  Because of many of his economic policies, the long-term economic future of this country is bleak.  He's not the only one at fault, of course...but the same person who wants to take credit for anything good also has to take blame for the bad as well.  And there's a lot of bad things in our country: racial unrest that he continues to stoke, the militarization of law enforcement that has led to many the ongoing protests, massive unemployment and wage disparity, and broken relationship with the closest of our allies while at the same time honoring dictators in Saudi Arabia, Russia, and North Korea.  And that doesn't even get us far into 2020, in which his one of his greatest failures is on display, the COVID-19 pandemic.  Is it Trump's fault that the virus got into the country?  No.  But how he has handled the federal government's response to this is beyond criminal.  Look at how we have responded compared to most other western democracies, where the pandemic is now mostly a nuisance rather than a clear and present danger.  Again, it's not all Trump's fault: hopefully we will have learned the lesson that shutdowns don't stop the pandemic; but his unwillingness to take it seriously for months and devote the resources of government to curbing it (his neo-federalism of telling the states to fend for themselves was based mostly on a.his laziness to attend to detail and b.his desire to stick it to the blue states) has been reprehensible.  For several years I thought that perhaps we would survive with somebody as incompetent as Trump in office, that the bureaucracy (or, as he and his supporters call it, the 'Deep State') developed by leaders from both parties over the years would be sufficient.  But I was wrong...it's amazing how quickly one awful leader can destroy an institution.  I get it...being a president is hard work.  Not many people can do it, I surely can't.  I have no idea whether or not Joe Biden will do well, and wish we had a better option.  But Donald Trump proven that he is not up to the task.  Yet I genuinely believe that his bad job as president is rooted in the deepest problem.  

3)A complete lack of moral character.  For years many of my conservative Christian friends would bemoan the lack of moral character in our presidents...wasn't this the entire case against Bill Clinton?  "We need a godly man in the White House!"  And now, we are left with "God can do great things through a flawed individual."  I've even heard Trump compared to Cyrus, the anointed king from Isaiah 44:28-45:1.  Well, I am glad to see that people see him as a pagan, but in fact they've got the wrong comparison.  A better one might be Belshazzar (Daniel 5), who partied while the empire was crumbling.  Others go so far as to compare Trump to King David, who after all was a murderer and an adulterer.  But the question remains: who does God use in a surprising way?  Continually we find people whose hearts are open to being changed by God, who are penitent of their sins, and who honor God in a genuine way.  None of these  describes Trump, who only uses God as a prop and thinks himself above sin.  Trump is his own god.  As a parent there is nothing about Donald Trump's character that I can commend to my children.  Fathers, would you trust him with your daughers?  Would you trust him to manage your money?  Would you trust him to speak at your church for five minutes without blasphemy being uttered?  Like it or not, political leaders are role models...and if the president continually lies, is unfaithful to their spouse, and is more interested in ratings than he is in righteousness, then I don't feel that he's fit to be president.  

If you have made it this far, thank you, and I promise that I won't do this again before the election.  But it truly breaks my heart to see what Donald Trump has done to this country.  If you have supported Trump in the past, please re-consider as your birthday gift to me.  Trump continually uses the unrest in our country now to say, 'See, this is what a Biden presidency looks like.'  But the neverending unrest and divisiveness is what 3 1/2 years of a Trump presidency have been in reality, and it will only get worse if he is re-elected.  Please, vote this man out.  Thank you.  

Hot Summer Presidential Dreams

I have very little hope for our upcoming presidential election.  While surely America is not going to vote for the current dimwit again, I'm not all that thrilled with the slate of the Dems who are running.  Most of them either are running so far to the far left as to be unelectable (not to mention the insanity of the policies), but they are also playing right into the Far Right's hands whereby their own insanity is still insane, but comparable. 

So I have been having this heated fantasy popping into my head while mowing the yard or driving the bus or playing video game, and it's to my blog that I turn when I have stupid ideas that needs to be disposed of. 

Here's how it goes:  the presidential election debates of 2020 get opened up to a third person on stage.  A random American, somebody with no desire for public office but who is drawn by lottery to stand on the stage with Trump and Sanders/Warren/Booker/Biden whoever.  Who knows how it happens?  Maybe a network decides to spice things up, maybe Trump demands a third person be on the ballots to draw off votes from his opponents.  And someday, next September, I get a call saying, "Sir, we need you to come to Columbus next week.  You have been drafted to be in the Presidential debate."

I feel so contradictory about being in the limelight.  I am a preacher, after all...and so I stand before audiences several times a week and hope to impress for the sake of the gospel.  I've never been fully comfortable before others, but I've done it long enough now that I can do this, and I'm arrogant enough to think that I'm smarter than most everybody else.  But at the same time being up in front of a stage, becoming famous, horrifies me, because I know that a)I'm not charismatic or telegenic, at all b)I would stumble over my words and become the new meme generator for the 20s, and c)I really, really don't want the responsibility of representing the half of the American population who is sick of both sides. 

Yet I'm drafted into this fantasy.  And there I am, standing before Chuck Todd and Megan Kelly to give my answers at the great debates of the presidency.  I picture myself on the one hand being respectful of the Democrats while at the same time pointing out their message is not being accepted because it is, well, impractical.  Cancelling college debt for 17th century French literature majors?  Providing 'free' health care for the morbidly obese?  Seriously.  I know you have good intentions...but do you have any idea how dumb and unrealistic these ideas are? 

But my bigger anger turns towards Trump.   I imagine myself looking over at the big orange blob known as Mr. President and blasting away.  'Sir, you're a disgrace, an embarassment, a serial adulterer and perhaps a serial rapist...please, for the love of all that's good, resign.  I promise, I'll ensure that somebody comes over to you and kisses your butt everyday, since that's what you want.  Just go away, and nobody else gets hurt.'  And on and on it goes. 

Overall, I do my best, dodge the particulars of policy, and I collapse at the end of the night, glad that it's over.  But of course my words have sparked a scandal.  How dare he!  Who does he think he is?  Learn to be respectful!  You're a preacher of the gospel, and this is God's chosen man?  The whole establishment, both left and right, are infuriated (or secretly delighted). 

And then three days later the polls come out:  Trump, 38% (because he's got 38% of Americans who will never leave him, I'm convinced, until the next paragraph's turn of events).  Sanders/Warren/Booker/Biden, 36%.  Me, 22%.  Other, 4%.  People go crazy.  Wait, is there a third alternative?  Can we get out of the stupidity of this two party system that is destroying America?  Yes!  Ballot initiatives to get me on the ballots are begun out of nowhere by grassroots people who are equally as frustrated and I find myself on the presidential ballot in 46 states.  My high school friend Derek agrees to be my VP running mate, 'cuz he's smart and business-like and he has lived in Iowa long enough to pull those votes.   I don't really do anything, except being featured in the Atlantic and occasionally being talked about on late night talk shows.  But I've hit a nerve. 

And then late September rolls around:  the stock market crashes.  Sean Hannity breaks down on air.  Trump's two oldest sons are indicted for paying millions to the Russians to purchase a tape of their father in a Russian hotel room doing unmentionable things.  Mike Pence is overheard on a video saying that the last four years have been a disaster.  Trump's support vanishes overnight, and people wake up long enough to recognize that he's the moron that he has always been.  Sanders/Warren/Booker/Biden has no plan to get us through this except Spend and Hold Hands. 

On a random Thursday evening I finish my bus route and eat dinner with my family and then appear on Wolf Blitzer's show and state the obvious, that the bill has come due for our profligate spending, and we have to suck it up and ride out the next four years, and hey, I'll do my best and then leave, whatever.  Immedately people find that I'm the least of three evils, and I'm now polling in late October at 53%.  The media swarms my little town, talks to people at church and the kids on my bus route, and I'm suddenly the frontrunner.  America's sweetheart, perhaps.

And then suddenly every bad thing I've ever done or thought of doing is now featured in Breitbert News and then picked up on Fox News.  Once I underpaid my state income taxes by $200 (honest mistake).  I have taken a housing allowance and not paid into social security.  In college I once broke up with a girl because I said I was 'bored'.  I worked at a pawn shop.  I watched I Dream of Jeannie when I was younger because Barbara Eden was HOT.  I once posted on a message board about the how Americans are in love too much with a flag and not enough with righteousness, and another time I posted on my blog about how many Americans are just fat and stupid. 

All true, I finally announce, three days before the election.  At my press conference I have a large bruise and bandage on my forehead where I scraped my bald head on the kitchen cabinet door and look like a complete dork. I get asked a few questions that trap me into saying that too many Americans are privileged and that we haven't been a Christian nation recently, if ever, and that we pay far too much attention to our 'brave men and women in uniform' and not enough to the garbage collectors and custodians and fast-food workers who really make this country run.

And here the fantasy ends. 

On the Sunday evening before the election Trump launches some missiles into Iran and North Korea and the Patriotic Defense Rationalization kicks in to give him the votes.  Sanders/Warren/Booker/Biden's tour bus crashes somewhere in the Appalachins, and suddenly it's over.  Trump wins again, puts me in jail for dissent and unAmerican behavior, and three months later nuclear missiles are detonated under the ice caps and 90% of humanity dies within a week. 

I never did figure out how the story would end differently. 

The election is...19 months away?

Hmmm.  Checked in on Facebook today for the first time in awhile and it appears that people are getting excited about the election that is still far, far, far in the distant future.  Either they are sticking with their boy Trump (judges! the economy!), or they are hashing through the 2-dozen different democratic candidates.  Can they win?  Are they female?  Are they good Americans?  Will they support the military?  And on and on and on...

Excuse me while I yawn.  I think that part of the brokenness of our system is the fact that so often we can do little more than talk and give money, and neither of those are really good ways to get good candidates.  Because consider my very real voting situation as regards to the presidentia election: 

-I live in a state that is not early in the primary system, so by the time the primary schedule gets to me most of the candidates are already long dead in the polls and have dropped out.  By the time I would cast my vote, the party candidates are basically decided on. 
-I am not a member of either major political party anymore, and I live in a state with a closed primary system, and so even if there was a close race and my vote might count, I can't really vote my preference anyway. 
-By the time we get to the general election, I live in one of the reddest of the red states.  A president could continually lie, be in legal trouble, be caught with various mistresses, be married three times with five children, and be filled with so many stupid things on his record that were he be of the other party he'd have been sunk long ago, and still win...in case you aren't following, that's the situation we find ourselves in and Trump will still win our electoral college votes without a doubt. 

So why do I get all riled up about a system in which I really do not have a genuine voice?  Why give my time and my frustration (and even my money!) to a cause that ultimately will fail?  I don't really believe in American electoral politics anymore.

But many people do, and my job over the next few months is to steer clear of them.  I don't need that in my life. 

The election apocalypse has arrived

We wake up this morning to the idea of President-Elect Donald Trump.  Ugh.  I had no affinity for Hillary Clinton, but this was an outcome far worse than I could have imagined.  The polls got it all wrong, though Clinton will still win the popular vote count.  Yep, once again the person getting the most votes loses because of an 18th century system of electing by state senate and representative counts.  Good job democracy!

Of course, there have to be some upsides to this.  Many of us will be praying much, much more because we know that only God stands between us and the downfall of civilization at this point.  The Clintons and their endless scandals will leave the national stage.  The election was not a landslide by any means; there is no mandate for Trump in this election, though I wish the Democrats would have at least won the Senate so as to block his worst excesses.

But perhaps the biggest upside over the next four years (assuming Trump is not impeached/does not die/does not resign before his term is up) is that the angry white rage that has built over the past 25 years will finally be shown for what it is.  Trump's lack of experience combined with the reality that whatever ideas he has are either undoable (the wall) or just bad (huge tariffs) will make the executive function of his presidency laughable.  Quite simply, he's going to be a terrible president, and the Democrats (and hopefully others) will be able to spend the next four years pointing out how terrible they are.  Though many Americans may seem so far gone into an alternate reality that nothing he do will turn them away, now this is put-up or shut-up time for these people.  So, you're going to make America great?  Do it!  I'm guessing that these ideas will now mostly die a stillborn death; I fear what might have happened had they been in the hands of somebody more competent or smart.

But this morning over breakfast I apologized to my just-turned-11-year-old daughter about this.  We are leaving her and her brother with a mess.  Those plans we had awhile back to visit somewhere in central America?  They are now not just plans to visit, but perhaps stay.

The Three Unforgivable Curses

I have been reading again the Harry Potter series, which I am increasingly convinced may be the best series of books written since the Bible.  In the wizarding world there are three unforgivable curses, for which a wizard will go to Azkaban: the Imperius curse, in which one controls another person; the Cruciatus curse, in which one causes another person unspeakable pain; and finally the Killing curse (Avada Kedavra), in which one kills another.

I am starting to wonder whether our country is living within this wizarding world and whether or not Voldemort has taken over.  Consider: the people who are excited about either candidate, Trump especially, must be under the Imperius curse...is there any other explanation for the behavior that people have in supporting these candidates?  Their actions and the actions of the candidates is casting upon the rest of us the Cruciatus curse...it's really painful to watch; we are all scarred by what is happening.  And if Trump should happen to win, dare we say that we will all be under the Killing curse?  I really fear that if Trump wins this country will be irrevocably broken, and if he loses his supporters will soon break it.  Death to America seems to no longer be the chant of Muslim extremists.

Fortunately those books and those curses are not real, are they?  Yet right now they certainly feel real.

Baskets upon baskets of deplorables

It's a pretty safe bet at this point to say that Donald Trump will NOT be our next president.  Despite Hilary Clinton being the second-most hated person in America, despite the cowardice of the American population to not even consider looking at third party candidates...he's simply not going to win.  He's shot himself in the foot so many times that his unfavorable ratings are 63%; the sense is that he has a ceiling of about 38-40%, and no more.  He can't win. 

Yet this number that he has a 63% disapproval rating tells us something else: there are still 37% of Americans who either have their heads in the grounds or have decided that yeah, they still really like Donald Trump.  After all the allegations of shady business dealings (Trump University, condo deals gone bad, unpaid creditors), all the racist and hateful things he has said to offend anybody who is not an older white male, and now after the recordings of him laughing about groping and even assaulting women, they still look at him and think that everything bad about him is a mainstream media/Clinton Foundation/globalistic plot to keep the true Friend of the Working Man from becoming president. 

How do people become so deluded?  I get it...there are at least a few of his voters who will vote for him because they think that any Clinton is worse.  I can relate to that, as I've considered it myself a few times.  And sure, he is unlike any politician on this stage that we have seen since probably Henry Wallace.  In a way it's kind of refreshing to have somebody who is not so guarded and measured in their words. 

But c'mon.  It's still Trump.  How can anybody with any kind of conscience, any kind of Christian value system, look at him and still approve at this point?  What does that say about a small and loud minority of Americans that somebody will  still think that he is our last best hope?  Have we really sunk that low?

Yes, yes we have. 

Unavoidable

Four weeks ago I was sick of the election, not just the candidates but the social media crapfest in which we heard nothing but the very worst about two of the worst candidates of all time.  And so I decided to jump off Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, to take an eight week 'fast'.  Perhaps it was also a recognition that I was looking at these things too much.  I had thought it would be a total social media fast, but of course I am still blogging and checking email and reading the news.  A mini-fast, I suppose.

Of course, I have found out that my plans were naive.  Nowhere can I get away from this election...waiting around hospital surgical waiting room C-Span feeds from political rallies were on the TV.  Every news story is about the most recent abomination that Trump has spouted, or about some new potential scandal of the Clintons.  A friend of mine was telling me about therir vacation cabin having new TV and I was at first envious, before I recognized that I get most of my news from elsewhere. 

I used to have this dream back in my single days ending up in some unelectrified cabin and living out my days as a hermit...maybe that still should still be a future bucket list goal.  As it is now, I'm just as annoyed as I was a month ago.  Let it be over.

A Poor Pool of Potential Presidents

Do you feel qualified to be President?  Sure...you may be over 35 and born a citizen.  Constitutionally, you are qualified.

But going by more than just a legal definition, I am becoming increasingly convinced that there are not a lot of human beings that are capable of handling this job.  How many?  In a nation of 300 million, maybe 300.

Think about what it means to be President...you have to have an intimate knowledge of all workings of government, not just the stuff that ends up on the news every night.  You have to have a temperament that allows you to multi-task, work hard, not get frustrated, not quit, and again multi-task to the point that you can juggle a hundred balls in the air at once, because, you are the Decider.  You have to be relatively free of scandal, both real and perceived.  And you have to have the intelligence that only a few people have, tempered by the wisdom of age and experience.

For all the cries that people have that 'I don't want a politician!' to be president, don't we want somebody who knows what is going on?  Somebody who has paid their dues?  Somebody whose life has not been a celebration of self-interest but public service?  I know...it's easy to say we don't want somebody who knows what the job will really involve.  But would you want a CEO who has no knowledge of their industry and thus only sees the bottom line, not customers or products or employees?  Would you want a major league baseball manager who doesn't know the techniques of bat control or the ins and outs of handling a multi-national clubhouse?  Would you want a preacher who just recently started to study Scripture?

Being qualified matters...and likely there are very few who are truly qualified.  The biggest mark against Obama was his lack of experience, and while he has done well given his inexperience (remember, he had been a state senator less than 10 seasons before becoming president!), one wonders whether or not he might have been a great president with a little more seasoning.  I am thinking that being a Governor, Senator, or Cabinet secretary should be the minimum requirement; more than one of those is likely needed to get both the executive experience and the overall knowledge needed.  So how many are left who have done this...300?  This doesn't even begin to phase out those who were dunderheads or bad at their job; these usually get sorted out quick enough in the primaries.

And so this leads us to our election...we have two people who have a chance to win.  I am voting for neither, instead deciding to vote for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, who was once a governor.  I wish he could win, but he can't get above about 12% so he has little or no shot.  The other two candidates are Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.  One has vast experience, as a first lady (don't tell me that doesn't help somebody know what to expect), Senator, and Cabinet secretary.  Is she scandal-prone?  Absolutely.  Do I like her?  No.  But compared to the alternative, who has no experience, no willingness to learn, and nothing to indicate anything beyond a concern with himself, and I'll take Hillary any day of the week, even when I don't always agree with her policies.

A Hillary presidency will be...not fun.  But a Trump presidency?  Get the fire extinguishers ready, because the mother of all dumpster fires is coming.

Why I Am Tempted To Vote For Trump

I think Donald Trump may be the worst main party presidential candidate in American history.  He would make Silvio Berlusconi (former Italian PM) look like a genius by comparison.  He's a crude, uneducated, unprepared man who shouldn't be anywhere near political power.

Yet in the back of my mind I am tempted to vote for him.  Why?  It would be easy to say that Gary Johnson can't win and that Hillary Clinton is not a better option (she is, but not by much).  I'm not sure that Donald Trump has the ability to destroy the freight train that is 'Merica, and part of me wonders how long he would stay in the job, that he might do it for a year, get bored or tired of the hatred he has to deal with, and just quit and leave us with Magical Mike Pence.

But let's say Hillary Clinton wins the election.  The scandals (real or imagined) keep simmering, but more important is what actually happens in a Clinton administration.  Let's say there's another big terrorist attack, or the economy bubble inevitably pops, or some other event that happens that crushes whatever approval rating she has.  Trumpites come out and proclaim, 'This wouldn't happen on Trump's watch!  We should have let him make America great again!'  We draw closer to an election and Trumpism, in the form of Donald Trump or Sarah Palin or some other numbskull, rises above and claims, 'see, I told you so!  Vote for us this time to get it right!'  And Trumpism is legitimized, claims real power not just in the presidency but in the legislatures and governors and Congress.  It's at this point that we'd be really screwed.

Because right now let's say Trump wins.  He's already unpopular with a sizable majority of the electorate, and it's unlikely that he's going to bring a lot of Congress along with him, even if they are Republicans.  Because, I believe, there are still principled real conservatives who, even though Trump is a Republican, won't support him with legislation.  If he wins Trumpism and its emperor with no clothes (I would hope) will be seen for the fraud that it is, even if it really never really takes hold with actual governmental legislation.  Giving it a little bit of power now might be enough to show America how worthless and empty is and drive a stake through it before it gets started.

But give it the opportunity to stay outside of power, to let it grow in a land of increasingly entitled idiots who are fueled by hate and rage and evil, and then it might really cause problems down the road.  For the long-term health of America, shouldn't we let the cancer take over now for a short time so that we can become immune to it, rather let it simmer and build and come back as a bigger monster later?

I really, really hate these options.

Hillary, her haters, and my vote

So this week Hillary Clinton was declined to be prosecuted for not getting her email server security up to snuff.  Her haters have been having a field day with this...'If she were anybody else she'd be in jail right now!', even though the FBI director is a Republican appointment and has nothing to lose by going after her.   I get the hatred, though...25 years of the Clintons, and it seems like they keep getting away with stuff.   Whitewater, Monica, Vince Foster, the Clinton Foundation, Benghazi...forget Reagan, these are truly the teflon presidents!  Clinton fatigue has already set in, and she's not even president yet.

Of course, once again we have a situation in which people are outraged because they things they have been told on Breitbart or Fox News or Rush Limbaugh have once again been false.  They have a sense of reality that is not really real, and so they believe that the system is rigged.  But just as you may have a right to your own opinion but not your own facts, so also you do not get to believe absolutely that your view of the world must be so.

What's funny about this is that different polls have been done asking essentially, "Do you believe that a leader sometimes needs to break the rules to get things done?"  And almost universally Trump supporters say yes, even as they are screaming for Hillary to go to jail.  Hillary broke rules about the proper protocols for her email servers...shouldn't conservatives be praising her for going outside Big Government rules?  In the end, this is a about 2 (1-10 scale) in the world of real scandals.  The Donald smashes that number each week.

Yet this week has also made me realize something...as much as I despise Donald Trump, and think that Hillary Clinton in a vacuum would be a decent president (though I think she's too much of a hawk and is too close to big business), I just can't support her.  This week was a preview of what the next four years is going to look like with a Hillary presidency...scandal after perceived scandal after near scandal.  If this presidency is a rerun of Bill Clinton's presidency, it's a wonder that anything can get done between all the damage control.  2020 would likely be set up to be a Republican landslide.

So, who will I vote for?  Four years ago I declined to vote since this is the reddest of red states.  But this year I think there's a chance that many of the right-wing policies of Brownback and the Koch Brothers in Kansas may get beaten...mostly I will vote for non-incumbents, meaning Democrats since they are about the only options in most elections (though I'm not a big fan of the party).  Yet for Presidency, there are many options...and at this point I am leaning towards Gary Johnson & William Weld, the Libertarian ticket.  Generally I am sympathetic towards libertarianism (when it doesn't go crazy with free market economics and nakedly support the wealth class), and they have a chance to make a real difference this election.  They still won't win...but it would be nice to not have to support the lesser of two evils.

Post Super Tuesday

It finally hit me this morning as I was getting around.  I had been under the impression that Trump would win most of the primaries yesterday and that Cruz, Cruz Lite, and the other no-hopes would have their usual poor showings, and the GOP would finally wake up.  Finally, I thought, the adults in the GOP would get their act together and put everybody but Trump into a Royal Rumble and the winner of that would then get to face Trump one-on-one at Republicamania.  Finally, the Trump freight train would be overwhelmed as his 35% peak was finally overrun by a united party, Cruz or Cruz Lite would grab the belt, and the GOP would go on to face Hillary in November.

But I realized that I'm wrong.  It's not Trump that scares the crap out of most of the GOP establishment...it's Cruz.  Here's a guy from Texas (electoral votes!), a minority (broadening the base!), somebody with true conservative bonafides (really, really extreme bonafides, but whatever).  He's just mean enough to fight against Hillary, and maybe win back the Presidency and 'take back America from the libruls'.  On paper, this guy should have had the nomination wrapped up yesterday and be planning for November.

But here's the thing...everybody in the GOP establishment HATES Ted Cruz.  It did not hit me until Big Chris Christie threw his support behind Trump.  Until Lindsay Graham finally endorsed Cruz (after first supporting JEB), Cruz did not have a single endorsement from the US Senate.  Sure, he has a lot of people supporting him, but nobody who works with the guy likes him. On a personal level (where so much of politics really works) nobody can stand him.  By all accounts, he's just not a very nice person.  He's not charming by any standard, he has no charisma, and people who work with him simply don't like him.  How would somebody disliked by his own people make deals as a President needs to make?

But is there more?  Is his standard of extremist conservatism even too radical for even the GOP?  Surely not...the GOP has gone off a cliff in recent years (and I have not gone with them); but it makes one think: instead of being afraid of Donald Trump, is the GOP more afraid of Ted Cruz?

This election season continues to be fascinating, even if its outcome is potentially terrifying.  Maybe Rubio will finally win something and step up to lead as the mainstream GOP hopes that he will.  But until he does, this Trump/Cruz mess is something to behold.

PS: Here's an interesting link about who endorses who.  Fascinating.  Kurt Angle supports Marco Rubio, but Ted DiBiase, Jerry Lawler, and Hulk Hogan support Trump.

The Republican Mess

So here's my current morbid fascination: the Republican primaries and caucuses for President.  As of today there are six remaining candidates: The Donald, Cruz, Cruz Lite (Rubio), moderate-by-comparison Kasich, and the two tokens (Carly Fiorina & Herman Cain Ben Carson).

For some time I thought Trump would eventually crash and burn by the many stupid things he has said again and again.  But he still keeps winning primaries, always topping out at about 35%.  Meanwhile, everybody else keeps firing at him to no avail.  Trump keeps winning (he's a Winner!) and the rest keep doing the same things they do.  Cruz and Cruz Lite keep holding steady about 22%, and don't look to grow much more than that, since they are basically the same candidate.  Cruz Lite seems to be less annoying, less informed, and less serious than Cruz, but the fact that both of them still exist means that there will continue to be a logjam.  With Super Tuesday coming up soon, however, their co-existence seems to indicate that Trump might well be handed the nomination with his hard 35%.  I find the whole thing funny, but how is it that one of the kingmakers has not offed Cruz or Cruz Lite?  A party of adults, as the Republican party used to be, would have done this.  But we are long past that.

And so, unless something changes quickly, we are looking at a Trump-Hillary election.  Have there ever been two people who were so roundly hated by so many Americans running on the two main tickets?  How did it come to this?  Could it be that this will be the lowest-attended election ever? Most of my circle is red-state in their ideology, and so I know more conservatives than others, and many people I know have said that they will sit this one out if it's these two.

Maybe, though, this election is gearing up for a third party challenge.  I have long hoped that a decent third party challenger would arise from the middle, but can you imagine a Cruz/Rubio protest vote from the Tea Party?  Throw in Bloomberg (Trump 2.0) and Sanders running anyway as a Socialist, and we could have a perfect storm of election chaos.

For all the hand wringing by my many Republican friends, this is exactly what they created.  Years and years of hate-speech (yes, that's what it is....when your ideology is all about the things you hate, that's hate-speech) combined with Trumpian 'truth' telling, and you get a candidate that sounds little different than the Rush Limbaugh show.  Personally, I'm delighted to see what will be the end of this.  I can't imagine that it will destroy the Republican party, as some think will happen; the adults will eventually get back ahold of things.  But things really are different this time around.