Tag Archives: Donald Trump

Hillary’s History and Politcal Conventions in a Time of Crisis

Posted on August 1, 2016 | Leave a comment

The conventions have had a bit of time to fade into the background. Both campaigns have been unconventional and both candidates experienced something different about their conventions.  In the DNC there was the contention between  Sanders supporters and the Hillary majority that she might have wished was less than it was. In the RNC,  Donald Trump was operating in a situation where Ted Cruz was booed off stage for not endorsing him and where not a single former President spoke to endorse him. Hillary had President Hubby and President Hussein. Trump did not have  have George War Hero Bush, George Texas Rangers Bush,  or Mitt Romney captain of the very loyal GOP block of moderate Mormons.  But if both sides had memorable conventions the most historic was the Democratic National Convention where a woman we all know very well if we know politics was nominated as the candidate for the Presidency of the United States.  I have no wife, no daughter and largely followed the conventions on both sides alone. I have a lot of female relatives and correspondents. But no matter what their political beliefs I would have to expect that most American women felt some kind of identification with Hillary.  It has been a long road here and she has earned the nomination by dint of creating an unequalled record of engagement in the affairs to which it relates in our time. That does not mean I will vote for her. I have not decided whom to vote for but I do want  recognize that as a student radical,  constituent advocacy attorney, First Lady of Arkansas, First Lady of the United States, United States Senator from New York,     U.S. Secretary of State and Presidential Candidate twice she has paid her dues. She simply cannot be denied that statement — no Democrat has ever had more sweat equity than she has…

She faces a candidate who is running on the plat form of building the Great Wall of the United States and encouraging an immigration policy led by wives for billionaires — although Marla Maples snuck in there somehow…. So we will see.  She is likely to be the next President of the United States of America.  She and her hubby do not make me happy about America’s future but unhappiness is a fairly permanent and pervasive thing for me.  I began my Mon ay with a meeting with the police to reclaim a relatives lost dog who had innocently enough put another relative into medical (really dental care) and then escaped the makeshift tethering the owners had done  as they left for the hospital.  Sunday after the DNC which was yesterday I had a very pleasant dinner with family but there was a potentially serious injury on both the way out and the way home.   Not traffic injuries but unrelated things. My life is full of little problems and medium size problems and big distractions but like most Americans I feel that I have a connection to Presidential politics.  Madame President or President Trump seem the only alternatives likely and Madame President is more likely. I do care and have a few things to say now.

We all have images of what leadership should look like which are not simple portrayals of reality.
To safeguard liberty we must be able to adapt to the changing times.
Hillary Clinton a familiar face….
The icons of our country are precious as are our diverse people. But changes of interpretation have been continuous.

Hillary Clinton has emerged as the first truly serious Presidential nominee by a major party in American history.  Victoria Woodhull’s candidacy in the Equal Rights Party in the nineteenth century was not a joke and has has been followed by many other minor party candidates but none of them had a realistic chance of winning. In addition, Geraldine Ferraro failed spectacularly on her ticket and Sarah Palin first lost with John McCain and then resigned the governorship of Alaska whereas before the national run she had reason to believe that she would be a reasonably successful governor and a fixture in Alaskan and regional politics for years to come.  Both women had some real success and fame after their losing bids, but not enough to say in either case that the run was entirely good for their public and political status. Palin did better in the creation of other opportunities than Feraro. But neither had as much to lose as HRC. Her selfish political reason for running (along with whatever noble and other reasons she has) is that she has done everything else except the VP and the Presidency that would constitute a climb up this ladder. Hillary Rodham Clinton has  a lot of valuable experience and also has a great deal of history to overcome. The Democratic National Convention was her time to try to cement her position leading the charge of the Democrats to regain the White House and also to show she can be an asset on down ballot elections. I think that it is fair to say that it has not gone all that smoothly. Thursday evening was the peak and the key of her efforts to legitimize and secure her position. The precedent had been set by Ivanka Trump introducing her father at the Republican National Convention, Chelsea and her mother would follow suit. But the crucial difference in a daughter introducing her mother was lost on nobody.  The question many were asking was whether a woman’s moment could be an effective reality. I thought that as regards the evening as a whole the jury is still out and may always be out. But Chelsea did a fine job.

Thursday evening Chelsea Clinton looked the best I have ever seen her look on a big stage and she spoke with virtually flawless delivery and presentation as she introduced her mother.  Then there was a video in the hall and a great deal of commentary by people who get paid to comment on most networks.  Bernie Sanders supporters in yellow shorts emblazoned with a dove of peace and the slogan “enough is enough” were much in evidence and some were interviewed.  Almost everyone was respectful of Chelsea and what she had to say.  It was much like Ivanka’s introduction at the Republican National Convention, in that it was hard not to at least wish to allow the speaker in each case a chance to rejoice and be proud of their respective parent.

Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech was another matter. There were several times when chants of “Feel the Bern” had to be drowned out by her supporters chanting “Hill-a-ry” but that was not like a cheer at the right spot — it still disrupted her delivery. That was despite several points in the speech where she made overtures to Sander and his supporters including directly thanking him and adopting his cause. She also attacked Donald Trump a great deal.

 

Wednesday, I did watch the Democratic National Convention during most of the nearly two hours that they were broadcast on broadcast networks in what seems like a later version of primetime than I remember primetime being. But actually the speeches by Tim Kaine and President Obama had little trouble keeping my interest. While I was tired and my nerves were frayed from a hard day I was eager to hear what they had to say. Of course, it bears saying that I had a high level of interest when watching Donald Trump and Ivanka as well as Ben Carson and some others who spoke at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland last week. Both conventions have been contentious. Both seem to have achieved unity by their respective Wednesday evening speeches…. the contest between the parties can in fact take place.

 

I went out to dinner with an old friend on Tuesday evening and so we both missed the Bill Clinton speech. It is a tense time in the country and in the world as all times are but more so.  The country is at its most partisan, the supremacy of these two parties no matter what is more clear than ever in a year like this if there have been any other years like this. Monday July 25, 2016 the Democrats got their convention started. Most people seemed to agree that the highlight of the evening for the party was the speech given by Michelle Obama, the First Lady of these United States.   The news was not all good. there were scandals with the DNC, which has been hacked and has  leaked emails some say show they acted unfairly in favor of Clinton and against Sanders. Those scandals with the DNC are bound to make some people wonder about what was in the Clinton emails lost from her private server when she was in the State Department. Donald Trump has certainly already tried to make the connection. But regardless of what this means for the long history of apparent improprieties among the Clinton network and its two principal actors there were more direct concerns early on. It seemed clear enough that  not all Sanders supporters were in the mood to forgive and forget or to focus their anger on the hackers or any support the hackers may have received from Donald Trump or Russia. That is not likely to change completely even if it turns out that Russia is launching deliberate attacks on the Democratic party. Some evidence suggests there may be a pattern of such attacks.

They were already annoyed and now some of them are really angry. Debbie Wasserman Schultz had not planned to start the convention with her own public resignation from leadership. But her resignation and the hard work, symbolic gestures, speeches and other activities of the Democratic National Convention do seem to have worked to bring the discordant party together.  We must see the struggle as one aided by the supposed sharp contrast between the parties and candidates. However, when that is said one wants to remind everyone of all the candidates have in common although there is no reason to believe that that matters all that much. This is a season of conflict and competition….

Some will rejoice at the tone of the Hillarious  Democrats, peaceful and Kind compared to some in the GOP. But others will wonder if that is realistic.  Trump is not seeking world war or genocide. He is more alarmed than alrmist. The events around the world kept conspiring to make alarm seem reasonable. Japan had is largest mass killing in over half a century without firearms and a saintly old priest was immolated by ISIS in a French church. The Convention seemed tone deaf to some outsiders.  The message of universal tolerance, equal opportunity and average wonderfulness did not jive well with all the headlines. Of course the Democrats are in executive power that has two very different effects which play out across long periods of time.  First, a certain amount of relevance is assured and more is presumed. It’s almost impossible to be as out of touch as a party out of power can be. On the other hand, the portion of the electorate seeking change is likely to want to change such a party into an out of power party. But, in our current situation –and unlike the way many but not all countries work– the roles of the parties are reversed on the legislative side of things. Dems are out there and GOP holds sway. Both sides experience the two effects listed above in a limited and complicated way…

So the country has a complicated set of signals being sent…. But one of these people is going to be President.  Republicans just had their big political convention a few weeks ago at the longest description and it fades from memory. Hillary had her moment and now the Democrats are having their own chance for the Convention to fade in memory. The press is on for the vote. The election matters and I will return to it. But I do want to look at this moment as well.

 

 

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Posted in 1, family, ISIS, Islam, Islamist modern Jihad, media, Sarah and Todd Palin Family, United States of America, Western civilization, White House

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Clinton’s Campaign: Does She Have Credibility, a Creed and a Contest ?

Posted on July 5, 2016 | 1 comment

Will Secretary and Senator and Former First Lady  Hillary Rodham Clinton be the first female President of the United States? It certainly seems likely. Here you can read my first post when she became the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party.  Since the very first version of this post came out the Washington Post has run an article saying that her credibility is damaged, that article is here and it may or may not represent political reality. But the contention made here in all versions of this post so far is that there appears to be a small chance that she will be indicted, arrested and charged in the email scandal or in any matter to do with Benghazi. By small of course I mean that there is not a large chance. There appears to be a miniscule chance that Bernie Sanders will mount a successful revolt or set up a powerful third party challenge which would derail her path to the presidency. There is more or less no realistic chance that she will be stopped from being elected except by the victory of Donald Trump as the Republican Nominee over her as the Democratic Nominee in the general election. Almost no chance is not the same as no chance. Any number of things could happen including death of physical impairment. But the odds seem to be better than fifty percents that she will be the next POTUS. Few people have ever had more relevant work or official experience when approaching the highest office in the land. To be a Senator is a lot, to be Secretary of State is a lot, to be First Lady is a lot — to be all three is a staggering degree of experience. Of course I physically stagger more easily than some more physically gifted readers and so I go to that adjective and the related adverb more readily than they might. But if one does not stagger one at least must take notice of the degree to which she embodies tremendous experience. Compared to her:

  1. Donald Trump has never held elected office,
  2. he has never lived in the White House,
  3. he has never lived in the executive mansion of a State,
  4. he has never held an office appointed by a President,
  5. he has never led a sustained policy discussion as Clinton did with healthcare,
  6. he has never been officially invited to sit at the table to negotiate  a formal treaty on behalf of the United States.
To safeguard liberty we must be able to adapt to the changing times.

To safeguard liberty we must be able to adapt to the changing times.

On the other hand they do have some lack of experience in common:

  1. Neither on has held a major post in a religious institution,
  2. neither has served in the military,
  3. neither has served in the workaday world of the intelligence community,
  4. neither has lived on our borders or in border towns for any length of time,
  5. neither speaks Spanish of French well, official languages of our neighbors,
  6.  neither has lived and worked as a citizen in the way business people, missionaries, journalists and  volunteers do every day across this world as they forge an American identity abroad.

Ambassador Stevens was an unusually high ranking victim of violence abroad. In the last few days other Americans have lost their lives around the world but a glimpse into the kinds of decisions he faced is also a glimpse into kinds of decisions that Americans who believe in what they are doing abroad face every day.  The following excerpt is from the recent report on the Benghazi incident:

While the end of the fiscal year funding deadline was looming, the Diplomatic Security Agent in charge at the Embassy in Tripoli was, nonetheless,
concerned about Stevens’ trip to Benghazi. Although his first planned trip to Benghazi in the beginning of August 2012 had to be canceled because of security,14 Stevens was adamant, however, about going in September.15 The Diplomatic Security Agent testified:
Previous to this—to his decisions to going up there, there was— we would meet weekly to discuss the security situation in Libya.…[
T]here was a specific meeting regarding what was happening in Benghazi. In that meeting, we reviewed incidents and  probable causes, what’s initiating it. And a lot of discussion was that it was the conflict or the incidents up there were, you know, local population against local population and that that they weren’t specifically targeting Americans … up there. I expressed my concerns about the incidents that did involve us. And the basic response was that they … were anomalies.

We all have images of what leadership should look like which are not simple portrayals of reality.

We all have images of what leadership should look like which are not simple portrayals of reality.

Romney was a missionary in France during anti-American times, Bill Clinton visited Russia as a student in the Cold War years and there are other connections to tat least the same world Chris Stevens lived in that can be found in other political lives outside the military but not in the lives of Hillary Clinton or Donald trump so far as I know. Both have traveled a great deal. both have been at some risk but the proportion of risk to resources has never been equal in my opinion to the baseline many Americans abroad have experienced every day all of my life.

The other thing that they have in common is access to fame, fortune, privilege and the people in power. This is not an even contest between the two of them but neither does it really matter who has had more of such opportunity. These opportunities have defined both of their lives for a long time. One big difference of course is that Trump like all previous American Presidents is a man and Clinton is a woman. I visited that in the post where her candidacy was all but assured but I am not going to deal with it much in this post.

There are issues related to Clinton that have very little to do with the fact that she is a woman. Trump recently said he just knew very little about her religion and she responded by declaring her self emphatically enough to be a Methodist. My own take on some of the discussion of Clinton’s religion has been posted in this blog before and can be seen here. Of course there may be more to say as time goes on.  One fact about the election of the first Clinton to the Presidency is that the result was likely determined by the most credible third party candidate in presidential politics in my lifetime — Ross Perot. He made it more than possible for Bill Clinton to defeat George Bush Senior. Thus Clinton did not face the kind of intense contest he would have otherwise.  This kind of splitting is well established in British politics and may have been fostered in some way or another by the Rhodes Scholar, Bill Clinton as the biggest take home lesson from his time in Oxford. Some may see Trump as Ross Perot on steroids. He is the third party candidate who became the  candidate of a major party and the main obstacle to Clinton’s election. that would still be true even if Romney or someone becomes a real third party candidate somehow. So how does trump match Clinton on matters of faith?

To see Clinton’s faith in political terms this season means to examine Donald Trump’s faith as well. He seems to be a person, like Clinton, about whom one could say a great many contradictory things based on pretty good evidence. That is not necessarily because he is deceptive or a hypocrite but may be because of the place he comes from in his life context. Interestingly enough he has made it clear that he supports Christmas as a national holiday and seeks to preserve it. That was the narrow subject of my original blog post about Clinton’s faith and the faith of other candidates.    Christmas was of course never my only interest in the religious identity of candidates. I love Christmas very much and the Christian observance of it by this country is a tradition I think worth striving for and worth some sacrifice. However, it is interesting that the ugliest rumors and suspicions about Donald Trump involve the ways in which he reminds people of the NSDAP or Nazis and the Third Reich. While many Christians nothing like the Hitlerites have rallied around Christmas, there is also no doubt that the Nazis made Christmas and especially the control of Christmas tree sales and early focus of political activity.  In further clarification, it is interesting to note that the list of candidates in the Democrats poll I posted in that article did include Biden but did not include Sanders. Even more interesting is that Trump does not appear among the six Republican candidates who appear in the poll I posted and reviewed in terms of the religion of the candidates. Huckabee was the leader in the poll and he was of course a Baptist minister who claimed the same hometown as President William Jefferson Clinton — Hope, Arkansas. So where does that leave the discussion of religion as I saw it back in 2014? It is not a perfectly relevant post in every way  then.  But here is the principal quotation from that blog post as it pertains to understanding Clinton’s faith in very general political terms. The first paragraph below deals with how Americans likely to vote Republican were thinking about Republican candidates in 2014 and how that related to Christmas and it observance by the Christians of this nation . However the remaining paragraphs  relate to what Clinton’s religious identity is likely to be. It is perhaps best to look at the text:

There is a lot of shaking out to do if these numbers mean any thing before any Republican can claim the nomination.  But it does indicate perhaps the streams of thought that are shaping the country as regards finding a religious root for values expressed by America’s  “right” in politics.

What then about the left? Where does the other side of American  political energy come down on our connecting with the roots of Christianity.  Unlike the possible GOP nominees, Hillary Clinton has tended to tower over her challengers for the 2016 Democratic nomination. Some people are saying that candidates like Elizabeth Warren are poised to show explosive growth but it would take a lot of growth to challenge  Clinton in the primary.

Joe Lieberman who ran with Al Gore was not a Christian but a Jew who seemed to tolerate a good deal of public Christmas. Mitt Romney belonged to what most scholars consider to be a post-Christian religion but it is one that celebrates Christmas as an American holiday and the birth festival of Jesus Christ. Many presidents have been devout Christians: Washington, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Jimmy Carter, Woodrow Wilson, John Kennedy and half a dozen others are clearly men who in my opinion must be seen as Christians entirely. Whatever they did not achieve of the Christian ideal is not because they did not adhere to that faith and religion. Richard Nixon was reared as a Quaker and (though many American Quakers seem pretty much to be Christians) Quakers as a whole are not a Christian faith but one which grew up among Christians.  It is hard to say what Nixon was when he was President. With men like Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and  a few others it hard to say where they stood in terms of religious classification and identity.

So that brings me to Clinton. She is a favorite enemy of the Christian Right and other religious people in American politics and she may well deserve it. She has a background which is mostly verifiable: Clinton was reared a Methodist Protestant Christian, belonged to a Senate Prayer Group and has spoken at Prayer Breakfasts.  Her profile may seem different to American atheists than to most other people. Here is an atheist site evaluating Clinton’s background and religious values.  It is hard to know how  she would deal with Christmas.

I have just finished observing the Independence Day  holiday in a minimal sort of way. It is always a time that I like to think about what it means to be an American and posts about those thoughts can be seen here. But although those ideas have been posted here they have more often been shared in other places and my thoughts about America have been posted here on other holidays. Those holiday thoughts on Memorial Day have been  here and on Veterans day have been here. While I have in common with Clinton and Trump that I have not a day of service in the military in my past it seems to be the military holidays that most inspire my patriotism. My observation of the Independence Day holiday was not entirely minimal by every standard and I did post quite a few notes and the lyrics of the National Anthem on my Facebook profile but minimal my observance  certainly was  in some measures. Neither Trump nor Clinton were very visible in my own perusal of our nation’s birthday. But one of them will likely be the American Head of State by next Independence Day. Unlike Christmas these holidays are not specifically Christian. I am a Christian and for me Christian prayer is part of these national holidays. I am not sure how the faith of either major candidate informs  their celebration of these days.  But faith and the most gung ho kinds of patriotism are linked by many as can be seen at links here and here. What else does  America expect from a leader and does Clinton have it?

Clinton has a lot of government experience, but the range is not infinite. One of the big achievements of this week has been the placement of the Juno observatory in position as a satellite of Jupiter. Some of the reason many people around the world are interested in this project can be gleaned here.  Neither Clinton nor Trump seems to be the kind to play an extraordinary role in blazing a pioneering trail into space.  These kinds of brave explorations may shape the future or not but they do not seem to define the vision of either Clinton or Trump.

One question many people have about religion is whether or not someone who prays for help should be President. Perhaps prayer means one cannot do the job. But some contend Clinton had private emails because she did not want to disclose the degree to which she could not do her job. That story can be seen here. It is to be noted that this not entirely clear story comes from a publication as biased in favor of Clinton and against Trump as one can get. But the point is here only that Buzz Aldrin, a rocket scientist, astronaut and space planner is a noted public prayer promoter in his own life and not being known for religious acts makes nobody a scientist.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Posted in 1, Christianity, France, Independence Day, Religious Holidays, Russia, United States Armed Forces, United States of America, Western civilization, White House

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BRexit from the Bayou

Posted on June 25, 2016 | Leave a comment

What will become of the Special Relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom in coming months and years?

What will become of the funds in peoples varied accounts and peoples varied investments in America and the world?

What will become of the European Union?

These are all questions brought to the fore by the recent event called the BRexit Referendum.  They are important questions and will only be slightly ventured into within this post but it is possible that some more insight may be forthcoming from other portions of this site past, present and future.

This blog is a place in the wide world where very ambitious plans (which to many would seem absurdly ambitious and very unusual) are put forward. But the reason that I do put forth such plans is in part because the economy does not just respond to purely economic forces and purely economic plans made by typical economists are not likely to steer it all that well. Nor do I believe that conservatism — which I lay claim to here repeatedly –means having no plans at all. In fact I believe both planning and a limited socialist and communitarian element belong in any  healthy conservative economic philosophy. Among many plans in this blog is a desire expressed to bring the United States to a floating quatrimetalism which is something like the gold standard. As I type this many are rushing to gold. Compared to either panic or the pure gold standard this standard might actually seem moderate. But in recent years it would usually have seemed very bearish and conservative indeed.

 

The Current Queen of England and Scotland's United Kingdom with Eisenhower

I don’t think any two constitutional changes are the same. The British Monarchy is not our target here in the problems I as an American and a Cajun may point out.  But it was among the targets of the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.

Do you come to this blog to get a sense of what stock market and financial  trends are urgently important? Perhaps you should. I seldom discuss market volatility or warn of impending short term risk in that aspect of life but prior to one of the biggest crashes in my lifetime my humble blog warned of the possibility in time for a handful of readers to have called their brokers and accountants if they were inclined to do so . But I make no claim to being unique in pointing out the risk, nor to having given specific advice. Nonetheless, the overall pattern of advice here seems to have been better than that being offered in some other quarters.

US Marines guard many embassies where our diplomats seek peace with security around the world.
Because of our Memorial Day traditions we only tie in indirectly with British Remembrance Day
The voting booth remains a powerful part of our society.
June 5-7 model and projected trajectory
British Besiege and Attack Baltimore in war of 1812
British invasion and repulsion in the Battle of New Orleans
Local efforts to block oil incursions
money is always part of the law but fiscal policy is separate here and elsewhere from other laws
Paper legal tender will still be around.
America is used to paper money as a great symbol of National unity as well as the tangible form of our unifying preoccupation.

 

Britain Exits — the United Kingdom is finding a path forward without EU membership. Company will not be kept by the same countries in the same way ant longer — or so it all would seem. The news which has been developing includes a seeming set of contradictory signals from various places as to how fast this split should be. Voices are urging speed in the EU, as seen in detail here. But there have been voices from Spain, the UK and several other countries that have emphasized the need to proceed at a measured and not overly hasty pace.  The question on the most minds these days seems to be how severe the financial and economic impacts will be. Alan Greenspan. former Federal Reserve Chairman of the United States of America  has been a voice warning that there could be extensive and extended effects. TIME has been able to put together an article that is much more optimistic, that is linked here.

France one would think is still France, Germany is still Germany, the UK is still the UK. Italy may even be Italy and so forth. One feels when a severe corrections sets in that there were reasons in the market for panic. One suddenly sees Europe, the U.K.,  stock markets and financial markets as well as other institutions in a different way than one saw them before. During the Chinese crisis a while back I urged a more moderate view of the crisis than was then in vogue but I did not produce any large autonomous piece on the subject which I can now locate. However in the case of BRexit I posted on this subject just a day before the historic vote. That post is here.

I began with these words:

 

The British who it seems are by far America’s closest association in the world — even if to me it is not obvious that this must or even should be the case or deciding whether of not to leave the European Union.  NATO is surely in decline and is troubled despite being very big and victorious. As a Cajun I would like to see better relations between the US, France, Belgium,  Spain and the UK especially. But realistically those relationships may be as good as they are going to get.  the Brits who want to stay in the EU fall into those who see Europe as a country and say the sooner it becomes a superpower nation state the better and those who believe it is better for British interest to stay in the EU.  Those who want to leave include people who fear woes of limitless migration, economic collapse and cultural corruption in the new order. But the real thorny issues are not simply resolved into two camps  — but the votes are in tow camps. Some have said the shooting in Orlando helped the leavers most — called Brexit. BRexit can argue that families like the Mateens can arrive anywhere in Europe and strike anywhere else and nobody has a chance to know the risk.  Some who want to stay in believe Europe must change and offer better collective security and that will be best for Britain.

My niece Anika at her confirmation with her baptismal godparents who are my sister Mary and myself. Anika’s mother, my sister Sarah took the picture.
My recent reunion with my godmother Cousin Mickey or Aunt Mickey depending on my mood.
Congratulating Louisiana State Senator Fred Mills on reforming Marijuana law…
Just another selfie …

Armed with a few links to various articles, I raised the alarm on a potential Stock Market  Crisis to those among my readers who might not have been prepared.

The lack of certainty this vote has created in the stock market and elsewhere is discussed here.  But this is an analysis mostly of how the markets will react if BRexit beats the Remainers. It is a bit more complicated to decide whether the current process itself is affecting financial markets and other economic indicators, perhaps some of that complexity can be recaptured here.

So BRexit has happened. Why did it happen that Britain left first because there was a referendum. Lord Norton discusses that here. TIME has put together an approach to why there was a referendum as well, a sort of history linked here. But here is a telling quote from Lord Norton in a post linked herein a post linked here:

In the post-war era, the issue of European integration has been a fault line of British politics.  Both main parties have been divided internally  and both have changed their stance on the issue.  However, there has been no formal requirement for a referendum on the issue.  Harold Wilson used a nation-wide referendum, a constitutional innovation, in 1975 in order to resolve conflict within the Labour Party.  David Cameron moved to initiate one in response to conflict within Conservative ranks.  The roots are to be found in the last Parliament.  Details can be found in the chapters by Phil Cowley and me in Seldon and Finn’s The Coalition Effect.

There was no commitment in the Conservative 2010 manifesto to a referendum on continued membership of the EU.  The crucial development was the decision of the newly-formed Backbench Business Committee to schedule a debate, initiated by Conservative MP David Nuttall, in October 2011, calling for a referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU.  Had the Committee not come into existence the previous year, with responsibility for scheduling debates (which it did on the basis of proposals from private Members), there would almost certainly not have been a debate – the Government would not have found time for it.   Despite a heavy whipping operation against the motion, 81 Conservatives voted for it.

The Referendum may or may not have been the right or best thing to do but it was note purely inevitable. Had it not happened the EU and the world would have muddled a long a bit longer on a more similar path. What happened after that is up for debate. I discuss reasons below why I think that things were not so secure as they seemed. But for now let us turn to what did happen.

This is the link to the speech in which David Cameron announced his intention to resign after the BRexit vote.  Cameron invested his very considerable political capital very heavily in this referendum. We may well hear from him again but he is tied to it forever. Tizres a commenter on this blog on occasion has on her own blog posted a while ago a post linking Cameron and the EU over time and this has surely proven her right on that and other scores as well. The BRexit may well see a resurgence of the Commonwealth, a stimulus to improve the EU constitution, the impetus for liberty enshrined in better rules around the world. It may be a very good thing. Whether good or not it may be necessary. But today it is a scary thing for many and the most obvious sign of that is the crash in the stock markets and the worldwide wealth erasures. We shall see where all that leads.   There is a great deal more that can be said about BRexit and that has to be said somewhere and perhaps many places if the current political environment is to be properly understood. Here is one place I have been discussing such things. Lord Norton had already had something to say on all of this issue which has led to BRexit, he tangentially discussed it here and has now said a good bit about the mechanic of the thing here in a brief and early post. The results of all this are likely to be significant for many people.

The European Union has 28 member countries, here is the list from the European Union’s own official website :

On the road to EU membership

Candidate countries

Potential candidates

The list above shows the difficulties compared to the United States of America. In the United States we have the Senate where votes are equal and the House where votes are by population. Then we have an Electoral College where votes are identical to a State’s votes in each of these houses and they elect our President. We have a Supreme Court charged with seeing that the basic system is preserved.  i think our own system is corrupt and this blog is a place where I have spelled out model constitutions for the United States and for Louisiana.  But our Constitution as it was originally approved and as  it exists today has the basic components to make it possible to preserve healthy state identity and a healthy federal union — just barely so in my view. However, the EU is made to work by will and skill without really having anywhere near and adequate constitutional framework. Whether others leave or not that is clearly the case. But it has been a socially and politically cheap arrangement and now it has failed a major test.  The people who paid r it to survive as it as it was were equally the US tax payers and the Soviet and Russian people who kept up a nuclear terro balance that left Europe’s great powers and their vast depository of skilled diplomats and diplomatic resources free to patiently deal with many issues while not being pressured to clearly lead or fight for survival. Would it have been good for them to become a true United States of Europe? People will disagree for good reasons about the answer to that question.  But they never built the structures we have. The comparison was always a misplaced one by any standard. Now what will happen next is a different matter — I am not making predictions in this posting.

 

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Presidential Politics and the Crises Shaping American Life

Posted on September 4, 2015 | 6 comments

I am writing this blog post in a fairly low energy state in my own life to borrow a phrase from Donald Trump’s discussion of JEB (or Jeb Bush).  I have a certain amount of accumulated wear and tear that is getting me down just now.  In my blog and in other writing I have done I have dealt with and discussed issues that are troubling and involve the serious troubles of the world. I have been careful never to evoke specific acts of violence or to encourage people to take violent means to address their problems. I have argued for armed vigilance, for scrutiny and support for the military and law enforcement and I have told the tales of violence in the past. I live an often fairly solitary personal life now. However, I have lived among many people who were  prone to say things like “we ought to kill those bastards until the rest of them get the message”, others who said “the only good (fill in enemy here) is probably still a dead (repeat descriptor)” and many people have as far as words go threatened to kill me. I have also seen a lot of real violence but I could always believe that I could usually tell the difference between, on the one hand, someone warning that eventually the current course would leader to bloody conflict with me or some other specific group or person and on the other hand someone advocating homicide. That has been one of the luxuries of Americanism and American life. We remember Reagan’s joke on the microphone about abolishing the Soviet Union. We also know that not everyone around the world who screams “Death to America!” really means it in the worst way. Yet we are sure that none of them mean it in a way we could possible call good. Today as a clerk sits in jail for not issuing marriage license to same sex couples, the feds sue the Governor of Louisiana for defunding Planned Parenthood and there are other signs of American cultural transformation we know that  people are feeling aware that while they really feel threatened it may be riskier than ever to have ever tried to oppose or threaten in return any of the forces rolling across American society. This is a set of feelings related to evidence and fact but it remains a matter mostly of feelings. A lot of Americans are feeling both pressured and depressed.  I certainly feel some of the those feelings myself. Like a lot of Americans and other people I feel that every year for a long time my life has gotten worse, a little or a lot worse. Year ago among other things I led a worldwide discussion on what it would take to colonize the Moon and Mars. It was a serious and patient discussion and it is hard to imagine leading that kind of discussion today.

Today the Moon is a remote place I merely photograph with my phone at home...

Today the Moon is a remote place I merely photograph with my phone at home…

There no doubt are people who are doing a lot better than before but many feel alienated and stressed about the place things are and the place they will be.  Little seems certain except that they do not fit in to the world emerging around them and their plans and dreams are not relevant to what is actually happening. Obama’s Dreamers are the children of migrants who have not been born here but have grown up in this country and have human needs and aspirations. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” has struck different chords with the audiences over the decades and hardworking Americans believe still in the lure of the American dream that is a little better than any life they have actually known but is related to it as an ideal is related to a decent approximation. I recently discussed how there is a luxury in coolly discussing political ideas. You can see that post here. The environment on the campaign trail has not really gotten all that hostile so far and yet there are signs that many sources of stress are turning the dreams that frame our national dialog into a framing set of wake-up calls, nightmares and sleepless nights.  I certainly feel close to that state of mind.

The popular mass street politics of the left may yet be telling ...

The popular mass street politics of the left may yet be telling …

There are lots of little factors in creating my case of the blues that I will not include in this post. I do believe that we are in a complex situation as a society, as the United States of America. Catholics in the United States see the Pope coming to the United States, they wonder about the collision of Hispanic Catholics  and the movement to control migration which is finding a voice in Donald Trump and they worry about what the fallout from the Gay Marriage laws will be. You can see some of the commentary about migration here. But this is in the context not so much of a great trial for American Catholicism but a time which tries many American souls and consciences in a variety of ways.  Jewish Americans have less of a unified voice or even organized quarrel than Catholic Americans but they are troubled by disagreements in their ranks over moral issues, new and transforming threats to Israel, potential threats in the growing Christian Identity aspect of the Conservative movement and political spectrum in this country and a number of other issues that seem to affect them deeply. Law enforcement officers and their friends and families are troubled by the framing of organized deadly assaults on police officers across the nation. There does seem to be a diverse and widespread response of people, groups and governments getting together to show support for the police as well. One example of that is right here.   But there is a St. Martin Parish Friends of Law Enforcement rally going on as well  near me and many other things.  This is all to the good but does not change the fact that there are real problems with policing in this country and that some of the chaos and violence stems in large part from real fears, frustration and chaos for which various parts of our law enforcement institutions share some responsibility.  When I was younger I both supported the police in various ways in some of the hotspots where they lived and supported the inmates and their families. What has happened to the idealism, charity and energy that could do both things? Perhaps it is just one more example of how I like many others have grown tired. The police get tired as well and there is plenty to tire us all.

Grand Theater Shooting police presence days later

Grand Theater Shooting police presence days later

I provide a link in this paragraph to what is an article by a young man who has been my eldest niece’s boyfriend since they were in high school together. It seems to me to be the kind of thing a young man ought to be writing. He enthusiastically profiles the work of an academic in the university he attends. I wrote for my college paper too but didn’t have a piece like this there, but the writing reminds me of other pieces I wrote about 30 years ago.
I wrote and acted in pursuit of ideals similar to the set he espouses when I was young. I still care about torture. However, I am in a different place now. I can’t help questioning the results of the new professional standards but as I am now I remain very glad new young men find the pursuit of public decency as compelling now as I once did. You can see Aaron Credeur’s article here.

 

We presume that there will be a new President of the United States elected in 2016. The Constitution requires this and there seems to be no way that it can be amended in time for any other result. So if that is the case then it seems that the new President will be faced with a good number of serious challenges. These are unusual times with a high degree of uncertainty. It may well be that the forces behind groups like Black Lives Matter, Occupy Democrats, Black Block, The New Black Panther Party, and less obvious groups have not come behind a successor to Obama and do not have a plan for his succession.  They have come to believe in power on the streets and  may plan to really try to draft Obama directly for a third term. These group alone are a tiny sliver of the electorate but what would the impact be if they sparked a real crisis demanding that Obama stay in office?

This year is a crucial year for the United States in a number of ways. I believe that we will find more and more evidence of the dangers and opportunities of the current moment as the Presidential year unfolds. I am impressed already at the number of shakes and jolts our society is experiencing in all sorts of different directions. The number of protests, mass shooting, police shootings demonstrations of open carry organizations and calls for gun control have al reached heights that are impressive. The availability of two dollar gasoline at pumps in the nation’s cities and towns and the great state visit of the King of Saudi Arabia combine to cast an interesting light on things. The crisis in the Chinese stock markets and especially the Shanghai Stock Exchange form our perceptions of America’s situation in the world. The escape of El Chapo Guzman and the fact that he is still at large with billions of dollars and hundreds of armed men combines with the images of the refugees flooding into Europe to frame the questions related to borders and migration in a somewhat different context than would otherwise be true. The fact that so much has changed in the country and the fact that Biden is not yet running for President makes some people listen more attentively to those who have said that Obama intends to manipulate a crisis to seek an additional term in office under emergency powers.

Would that constitute that kind of lasting change Obama promised? Is that part of what he suggested as a possibility of lasting change all along? See his vision here.  I know that I am easily convinced we could face real emergencies and am really sure Americans are not unified around a love of constitutional legitimacy right now.

The Congress is deeply unpopular and it is hard to see how they could effectively oppose such a bid for unconstitutional power if it was properly initiated. The Republicans present what is arguably the most institutionally divided image in their party’s history. If Obama’s administration were to provoke and declare a state of emergency to  remain in power then who would stop such a thing from succeeding? I am not saying here that a third term crisis will in fact be the crisis that sweeps the nation. But I do expect more crises to come and soon enough. In my own life I feel the strain and threat of change and rising challenges from many directions.

This is a time when many of us turn to our faith, political ideals desperate need and fears and all of those are legitimate places to turn. But electing a President as we have done from the time of Washington comes from another place. It comes not from a sense of crises or unified crisis but from a sense of belief in constitutional process. I hope that the months remaining will not diminish that aspect of our nation very much. I am still writing and still not doing more than writing as the changes sweeping our country develop. There is a lot more that could be written. The refugees pouring into Europe and those not pouring in affect us. The heroes on the French train affect us. The crisis in understanding the merging geopolitical situation affects us. The question is whether any of these will lead to a stampeding crisis that will remake America and if that does happen how will America be remade?

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Presidential Politics and Personal Lives

Posted on August 27, 2015 | Leave a comment

Compared to many of my blog posts this post will have few links. This whole blog is filled with references to my personal life and I often draw connections in my writing between my personal life and whatever political issue I am discussing. You can use search engines on the site to connect this blog post to the rest of my blog. If you do you will not need links and guides to see that my personal life shapes my political views.

I think that to some degree all American voters and all the constituents of the United States of America do much the same thing in terms of making connections and are also influenced. People vote in favor of access to legal abortion in an unrestricted way so they or someone they know can possibly procure and abortion more often than not. People vote against broad legal access to abortion because they don’t want a clinic nearby, they fear their daughters will be sexually mistreated more often in a world where dealing with pregnancy that way is easy or they have lost an unborn child that was their girlfriend or wife’s choice and they felt abused. Some are young women who do not want to encourage irresponsible men to be more irresponsible are to send a message to the broader society that young women do not care about their unborn babies. Not all the pro-life movement is made up of people influenced that way but there are many of them.   The personal connections are complicated and not the core of the speeches, blogs and banners that fuel rallies and movements related to abortion, guns, war, welfare, the minimum wage and many other things.  Those personal stories can be heard but they are not on center stage publicly. This post is partly about how we voter are influenced by our view of our personal lives and how politicians personal lives are involved in their pursuit of office.  Even for those of us not seeking public office many of our personal experiences are shaped by events or trends that make the news and get into political speeches. Journalists and politicians would not be doing their jobs if that were not true. Where we live and what we do for a living determine which sorts of things are most likely to influence us. That is part of what is meant in the old saying that “all politics are local”.

Hurricanes have been a part of life here since before I went to China and since I returned. But some have really shaped my life in a variety of ways.

Hurricanes have been a part of life here since before I went to China and since I returned. But some have really shaped my life in a variety of ways.

 

 

There was a time when thoughts about personal lives of Presidents and candidates for the White House were different than now.  That time most recently was from perhaps when Jimmy Carter was embarrassed by his brother’s antics though the time  when Gary Hart was found with a  woman not his wife in a compromising position and until the Clinton dalliance with intern Monica Lewinski.  People were eager to say in those cases and other that the personal lives and especially the family and sexual lives of political figures were perhaps outside of our concern to some degree and cloaked in some kind of privacy expectations. But Clinton had done a lot of things that got people upset in various part of the political world and among various segments of the electorate and the affair with Monica Lewinski was the thing that almost got him impeached. Since then Elliot Spitzer and the escorts, Anthony Wiener and the sexting, the kissing freshman Congressman from Louisiana named McAllister (more or less) and the  news of Congressmen making homosexual advances in men’s rooms, racial segregationist Strom Thurmond having a mistress of color, the sexual escapades of President John F. Kennedy, Barney Frank consorting with a male escort and other such sexual conduct have been widely agreed to be relevant. In addition the jokes one tells, the clubs one belongs to, one’s mental and physical health over the last half century and whom one may have met at a party are all agreed by almost everyone to be the public’s business if one chooses to run for office.  What a woman tolerated from a mate is also seen as very much a political quality of some kind. So far in this race their seems to be a problem with Hillary Clinton and choices she made in determining what is or is not a personal email. There seems to be an issue with very few voters as to whether the intention of the fourteenth amendment was to so universalize all rights  that it trumped the native clause for Presidents. This must be what Ted Cruz believes even as he challenges the same fourteenth amendment in providing birthright citizenship for many. There seems to be a problem with Joe Biden being too sad about his son Beau’s death to be sure that he can run for President of the United States. But while many personal qualities and experiences have been discussed the personal lives of the candidates have really not yet been at the center of things.

We are most of us never going to run for office but if we do run we will find that in a very real sense we have always been running and everything we have done was part of our political campaign. Every meeting was a political gathering. But I am not writing this post primarily to protest against that trend. or to defend privacy and personal space and limits to public curiosity. This is a post of another kind.

Meeting at Big Woods with Filipino friends who are US citizens now.

Meeting at Big Woods with Filipino friends who are US citizens now.

I am putting together a sort of series of blog posts on presidential politics during this presidential primaries season. In this series I am examining a series of questions and issues related to the election of the President of the United States. In each of these posts I have explored some aspect of the context and significance of the presidential  race and related it to some positions and traits of at least some of the candidates. In this post I am planning to discuss both the personal lives of Presidents and Presidential candidates on the one hand and the personal lives of American citizens and voters. This is the great personal part of politics which most of us at one time or another have wished was not part of the political process at all but which is nonetheless part of the process anyway.

The odd thing about each of our personal lives is that they are so very individual and specific to us. The recent appearance of Donald Trump on the political scene has reminded people that those running for office can take personal offense at many things. Trump has also reminded the world that given the resources and the inclination a political contender can bring the battle of personal insults and disparaging remarks to bear on those who normally deal in inflicting such pain.

Many people seem to relate to this kind of personal belligerence on the part of Donald Trump rather well. In fact throughout the world and across the ages there has always been a tendency to follow leaders who could dish out pain in return for the grievances inflicted upon them. Of course there are many other factors that make up the kind of person most likely to be a leader.

Englissh_corner_China

Three years ago today I had an interview on the phone to try to get disability benefits. I had just had a very traumatic experience on August 7, 2012. Perhaps it was a cousin to a heart attack or perhaps it was a mild heart attack but the truth is that I reached a point where my health was so bad and the pain after getting treatment was so great that I could not function. Now things are different. Not good and maybe not better but different.  I am coming to this election a more completely disenfranchised man in terms of life in general but still on the downward trajectory of many years. But my beliefs are formed not by my narrowing experiences of decay and decline but by other experiences. Each day is part of a whole life and I write and blog about the politics that life has conditioned me to see. I think we all ought to ask which presidential  candidate has the experiences and not just the job experience that will make a good and great president. The truth is that I think millions of Americans are already examining these candidates just that way.

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Presidential Politics and American Demographics

Posted on August 19, 2015 | 1 comment

What will this next Presidential election tell us about the future of America?  Will it tell us more clearly where we are headed as a country? It is not such a simple thing to discover a national direction at all — all of us know that any great country and certainly ours is composed of lots of different people with differing interests, backgrounds and minor allegiances and associations within the great national whole. Donald Trump seems to be getting a lot of his energy and momentum from reacting to those whom he clearly believes must first be removed from whatever share of America they occupy unlawfully

 

 

 

 

Louisiana regional map bold

It is certainly worth noting that Donald Trump has moved into the commanding lead for first place by taking a strong stance against illegal immigration. The question of whether or not the children of undocumented workers should be treated as unlawful aliens is yet another question. Trump is committing himself  to acting within the law more or less but pushing for a legal methodology to effect the export of native born US Citizens. Nobody disputes Ted Cruz is a citizen as inherited from his parents and affirmed by his life but his one liability as a non-native is that he cannot be President but he is spearheading the larger movement to destroy Native Provisions and Rights as a whole. Those who read this blog will know that I believe false ideas and ridiculous interpretations of equality have driven the country into chaos and dysfunction but this all out press against aliens in this way without adjusting any other issues in our society is really about the wrong kind of discrimination and the wrong kind of identity politics.  I have written about discrimination in many places in this blog and you can see some of the posts here, here and here. We must recognize the rights of those here legally and we must recognize the faults in our legal system. But the solutions we need are not likely to involve such a drastic misinterpretation of the role which labor and consumption by people from neighboring and other alien societies may have on our development and our current state of being .

Gay Marriage has usurped the meaning of the rainbow symbol but it is a symbol of harmony, hope and coexistence with many different bases for its meaning, We all have to recognize that not all aspects of our lives and heritages must be blended to make a strong America. My own views about what needs to be done are rather radical and have been spelled out in model constitutions in this blog. You can begin to access them here and here. However, let us consider carefully that we have plenty of room for anger against ISIL , plenty of need for radical action in saving our infrastructure. We do need to assert our control over our demographic future — I make no bones about this. But is dispossessing and moving people as criminal by the millions the answer?  I propose mass movements within the country with compensations, some deportations and lots of constitutional reform. The issue will be visited in this blog again. But Mexico and the Mexicans here contribute a great deal and this proposal is couched in very hostile terms.

Double rainbow at Big Woods in August of 2015

Double rainbow at Big Woods in August of 2015

I was born in 1964.  I made tie-dyed tee-shirts at school, people I knew were hippies and others served in the military operations in and around Vietnam.  It was a different era. One of the things that I remember is that not only was the music which was being written and performed by first artists different but different music got covered, got sung around campfires and at schools and was part of my childhood’s sound track.  One song I remember was the anthem by Woody Guthrie. It was a song in English addressed to Americans but it had a meaning that led to a kind of harmony we are losing touch with today.

One is not sure to what degree private ownership of real estate is being attacked and to what degree a more complex sense of human community is being expressed which allows for a subsidiary sense of ownership of specific pieces of land when Guthrie sings:

This land is your land This land is my land
From California to the New York island
From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and Me

Policies come and go but we all see the heavens and can dream and see visions.

Policies come and go but we all see the heavens and can dream and see visions.

Three highways, the waters, the great commons of our country are indeed places all Americans should feel responsible for in life.  The desire for clean air and clean water will mean restricting what people do with their access to air and water and their use of land. Guthrie was committed to the great commons.

As I was walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me

Today there is a lot of concentration by Presidential hopefuls on the States of Iowa and New Hampshire. However over the totality of a race the  candidates do tend to reach out to a lot of the Union. These United States are not equally addressed and  courted but all of them and some of the lands outside the states are at least addressed and courted. We all watch these candidates chart their paths and plan their trips across the face of our great nation.  Restricted access to the many reactions to Donald Trump on immigration can be accessed here.

I’ve roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
And all around me a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling
And the wheat fields waving & the dust clouds rolling
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting
This land was made for you and me

In those diamond sand deserts in Arizona people who feel that the government of the United States has long ignored there concerns are flocking to Trump rallies by the thousands. I have a mixed history personally with illegal migrants. I have helped people in need and given casual work to people likely here without full paperwork. I have physically but not criminally driven men off the places they were camped and parked who were not meeting the standard of the place. I have of course lived in Mexico and had lots of conversations with the families who send people to work here. I am aware of the increase in Central Americans passing through Mexico. My opinions and proposals are not modest but they are based on reality. They also recognize a rich, wide and diverse country to be preserved.  Can liberal and libertarian people accept the need for border security in Arizona? Can conservatives consider the economic and cultural realities of the country we actually live in? Travelling around the country gives all our candidates a chance to see different realities. Those realities are what matter more than our wishes about the way things ought to be.

 

Guthrie like the varied pioneers, the Acadian Diaspora, Johnny Appleseed, the armies marching in the War Between the States,  Lewis and Clark’s expedition,  The young George Washington, Alex De Toqueville and so many others is roaming across this great land learning and changing.  Like the others listed and many more he hopes to come and believes that he is coming to a clearer sense of what the United States of America is all about. Hillary Clinton has had several road trips and  has found in them a kind of legitimacy fro her causes and aspirations.   In America we find the adventure of human solidarity awaiting us and we must face that challenge in determining how we will face the future.  Guthrie had this to say about the quest for that dreamed of solidarity in sufficiency in his lyrics:

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said “No Trespassing”
But on the other side it didn’t say nothing
That side was made for you and me

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people
By the relief office I seen my people
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?

Recognizing what he must address that is not well in this great land gives both Guthrie himself and his fictional persona in the lyrics of his song a quest, a destiny and a sense of daily purpose.  The candidates on the road are also in search of such a quest which in turn they can persuade a lot of other people to support them in pursuing. In their resolve they will find their message. Guthrie desscribes such a resolve and such a message.

Nobody living can ever stop me
As I go walking that freedom highway
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

 

 

The best thing about along race by a large field of candidates is that there is plenty to write and say before the election runs its course. The truth s that American politics has gotten pretty interesting lately and has never been boring. But that does not mean we all are interested in the same things and in fact many people do not have an interest which inspires them to vote at all.

 

What do Americans expect? If there is an American dream still around what is it? How do all the parts of  our economy come together to shape a vision for the future and the workings of that future? Asians who flock to our technical and science programs and go home to teach and lead,  the decline of marriage and formal nuclear families, the war on neighborhoods, the lack of some cultural systems needed for survival AND problems with illegal immigration from the Southern Border ARE ALL factors in our demographic crisis. The kinds of jobs people will take and do and how many parts of our infrastructure are undermined by new systems that may be ill advised — that also has a demographic element. I advise against panic but the crisis is everywhere.

Changes in American society are made manifest in all sorts of ways. Amazon has recently been blasted by the New York Times for its work culture in an important piece of journalism that may be read here in a form similar to the newsstand and subscription article I think and you can see how other media outlets have covered the exchange here and here.

A lot of Americans are reacting to a fear of Mexican ethnic demographic expansion when they support Trump’s proposals. I love Mexico but I want the USA to be the USA and not the EEUUMM (as Mexico is properly abbreviated). But hating Mexican-American ethnicity even where it is troubled is not in any part of my vision for the country.   My father, my nephew Soren and I recently gathered together to watch McFarland USA which starred Kevin Costner and Maria Bello along with a larger cast of lesser known Latino and Hispanic actors… I recommend watching it and think most people will come away thinking what they already thought on the big issues. But at least it is a glimpse of one part of the huge puzzle too many politicians are pretending does not exist. Our Demographic puzzle is discussed in detail in my model constitutions and I take it seriously. But to single out one problem in an extreme way can be  ill advised.

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Donald Trump and the Current Political Moment

Posted on August 6, 2015 | 5 comments

Donald Trump is running for President. He is a significant and influential figure in the United States of America. He is not merely a rich man but a man with an association with the ideas and conceptions of wealth across America.   His show The Apprentice and his casinos all represent the glamour and and appeal of money in an unapologetic way.

I have begun drafting this post just before the first debate of the Republican primaries of the Presidential electoral campaigns. This will give him a chance to go up against other people, in fact only nine other men who also want to be President of the United States of America. It might be that the least successful approach to this subject in terms of timing would be to write a post just before the debate that will allow us all to see what is going on in the life, mind and politics of Mr. Donald Trump.  So far we know little except that  he is a wealthy celebrity businessman who questioned whether or not President Barack Hussein Obama was born in the United States.

Americans are concerned about  the shrinking economic prospects in the country. Americans are concerned about a sense of diminished hopes for the kind of future that can lead to outcomes they believe in and a better future than the current state of things. Many find in Donald Trump a chance to believe in someone who is eager to proclaim that he can lead America back to greatness. His slogan is, “Make America Great Again”.

Familiar Greenbacks

America is used to paper money as a great symbol of National unity as well as the tangible form of our unifying preoccupation.

Donald Trump has been saying a lot of things that a lot of Americans  can understand and which represent feelings many Americans share.  He shows a confidence in America and its power to win and to lead which many people find very attractive. I am not sure of all the context of his remarks about immigrants from Mexico. I am sure that Mexican and other migrants arriving with all sorts of levels of documentation do contribute greatly to our economy. They also inflict and exact a cost. I agree with anyone who believes that one of the primary tasks of governance is to control borders and sovereign territory and to manage the census, records and planning related to demographics and population groups. It is also true that all sorts of crime, smuggling risk is associated with our borders. Unlike Mr. Trump I really want to let anyone who thinks about me in political terms know that I really want to see America double down and double down again in its commitment to NAFTA, the Organization of American States, the Pan American Games, the creative and sensitive reinterpretation of the Monroe Doctrine and many other institutions. I want to see the United States become a country where a man like Jorge Bergoglio could be well known even before his address changed to the Vatican and he became the Bishop of Rome.

I just read Mike Huckabee’s book God, Guns, Grits and Gravy. I wonder to what degree Donald Trump intends to be an antidote to Huckabee. Trump is the other kind of populist than Huckabee’s populism based in the NASCAR, Southern Baptist and  Duck Dynasty hubs of the South. Huckabee contrasts Bubba-ville and Bubbleville and there is no doubt that Trump is from what Huckabee calls Bubbleville. Is Trump rooted  enough in the other conservative elements of American society given how far he is from Bubba-ville?

Gettysburg settled upon our country many parts of a new consensus . . .

Gettysburg settled upon our country many parts of a new consensus . . .

We face many challenges as a society, a federal union and as the United States of America. Donald Trump is like many other running for President of the United States in that he is an accomplished person who has shown he can get things done. He is like them in his capacity to express himself in a way many people find compelling and in that he cares about this country.

I am not a Republican. But I am interested in watching the Republican Primary debates. In Louisiana we have an open primary, majoritarian outcome system. Although this is modified for the Presidential and only truly national (although it is a Federal and not unitary election in structure) US election it still affects the way we approach politics. Here anyone can vote in a primary and if one person gets more than half of all votes cast he wins as Jindal did in his first election as governor. If not the two top vote-getters run again and one is assure to have more than half the vote cast and is elected.

So since I left the Democrats in 1993 and have voted as a Louisiana citizen not being in a party has not affected me as much as in most other states. However, a few elections have had closed primaries for complex constitutional reasons. But the Presidential elections are under a different set of rules. Louisiana is also one of a few states that has its statewide elections in the year before the Presidential elections when the national party primary elections are being contested.

I expect Donald Trump to make headlines tonight. But what kinds of headlines where?

We all have images of what leadership should look like which are not simple portrayals of reality.

We all have images of what leadership should look like which are not simple portrayals of reality.

Many of us are concerned about divisions in the country. Does Donald Trump have what it takes to reach people who would identify more with Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Carla Fiorino and Mike Huckabee. People one might possibly notice were Latino, African-American, women or Southern?

He certainly cannot win by getting the votes of only rich celebrities. I think that the debate tonight is his to lose. This is a long way from the White House. But this is Trump’s moment.  Can the Miss USA promoter stand out in his own line up of candidates?

There is a song interpreted by Julianne Hough which says in part,

Hard to find, took some time
But I think that I might be hittin’
On what’s been missing all along
Singing my hallelujah song

Trump has been honest in his concern for Christians being tortured and killed and it has caused him to search his faith I think. It has not been something he has done very gracefully. I think he may well live to regret this whole campaign. But I think now he is on a moral and spiritual quest carrying a lot of Americans with him. Can a worldly, rich, good-timing man who loves the spotlight  emerge as a great leader? Many are eager to say “no!’ I am not one of those people. I believe the Donald really is digging in and I am not sure whether what he finds will be enough to produce greatness or not…

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