Trump is making peace, and “liberals” hate him for it!

These are crazy times!

In 1972, Democrat George McGovern ran against then President Nixon on a peace platform.  McGovern (D) was the hippies’ candidate.  McGovern’s supporters were often chastised as “communists” and told to “go to Russia!”

In 2004, Kerry ran against Bush criticizing him for Iraq.  Around that same time, Betty Castor (D) ran against Mel Martinez (R) in Florida for a US Senate seat.  Martinez ridiculed her for calling the US the “global bully”.  Republicans loved putting their Bush/Cheney bumper stickers on their pickup trucks, right next to the “How do you like US now!” with images of bombs falling on the middle east.  Can anyone have imagined then a Republican President leading the charge towards peace, while Democrats chastised him and claimed he was doing it to help Russia?!

Yet here we are!  A few months ago, Trump made an important first step towards peace with N. Korea, and Rachel Maddow chastised him for it and claimed he was doing it to help Russia.  Now, Trump has announced that we will be withdrawing from Syria, as ISIS has been defeated, and surely enough, the “liberals” are chastising Trump for “helping Russia”?

How did we get here?

I have two theories.  1.  “Liberals” hate Trump so much, they will simply oppose anything and everything he is for.  2.  “Liberals” were never really advocates of peace, but of globalism.  It’s unilateral warmongering that they oppose, not warmongering in and of itself.

So, either the “liberals” are blinded by their hatred of Trump, or they are prepared to inflict mass suffering and death on people in the Middle East who did NOTHING to us, just to test out their far-fetched theories of globalism and “nation-building”.  I’m leaning toward #1, the hate theory.  The reason being that Trump is also trying to pass a rather substantial prison reform bill right now (The First Step Act).  Despite the fact that African Americans have for decades lamented racial injustice in the criminal justice system; the entire Congressional Black Caucus (all Democrats) opposes this bill that Trump supports.*

Just in case you think the entire American Left has gone insane, let me reassure you.  There’s a few principled ones left on the left.  Jimmy Dore never fails, and he has said that Trump’s recent announcement is good news, and has called out so-called “liberals” for their hypocrisy.  “Trump has so completely ruined Liberals brains that they now publicly cheer on war and military confrontations with Nuclear powers”

And no, Dore is not shilling for Trump.  He also criticized Trump for not also cutting military spending and re-investing it in America.  You see, Dore has these things called principles.  It’s something I vaguely remember liberals having many years ago, like, early Obama era (pre-Libya).

Another principled lefty, Cornel West, warned us about this two years ago.  He warned us of the Democrats’ hypocrisy.  “…when you actually look at the reinforcement of the new Jim Crow…that occurred under Democrats; it would persist under Hillary Clinton.”  Given that Clinton’s very loyal Congressional Black Caucas is unanimously opposing Trump’s efforts to roll back the new Jim Crow, it seems West was right.  On this matter of peace abroad:

“Can you imagine Russian troops in Mexico and Canada?  What would US response be?  Well that’s very much what NATO troops are vis a vis Russia…but that kind of provocation for Russia that has nuclear arms is the kind of thing that Hillary Clinton supported, and her connections to the Robert Kagans and Henry Kissingers are just frightening!”

I haven’t been able to find Cornel West’s take on Trump’s recent announcement, but I’d be eager to hear it.  West has described the Trump administration as “neo-fascist” on multiple occasions, but he is not afflicted with blind partisan hatred.

Despite a handful of principle, it looks like most of the American “left” would rather hate Trump than give peace a chance.

**

 

Note(s):

*Since posting this, the CBC supported the final version of the First Step Act, and I and so many others are grateful for their insistence on a truly substantial bill before passing, rather than just a symbolic gesture.

**I’m not sure where Mr. Chase’s politics are, so I’m not putting him in with West and Dore.  I just shared his post because it’s clever and adds some perspective to this lunacy.

Truth About the Caravan – CD Comics

So many of my good-natured friends have bought into this.  At the beginning, I did too.  I still said from the beginning that we need to do this legally, but I was under the impression that they were “fleeing for their lives.”  I then saw the truth on DC Whispers, that a groups of these migrants went to our border authorities demanding either to be processed and admitted to the US quickly, or to be paid $50,000 each to return home.  Now, I haven’t know DC Whispers to publish any fake news in the time I’ve been following, (very opinionated, but not fake) but I realize it’s pretty independent.  So I traced it back to their source, FOX, and then FOX’s source, The San Diego Union Tribune (a pretty basic, established local newspaper)

*On my comics, feel free to screen cap them and share to your heart’s content.  Just leave them unaltered please.

Reflections On Bush – From A Perot Youth

It’s a cosmic injustice when a man is a victim of his own success.  I think that pretty well describes George H.W. Bush in the photo above from 1992, as Bush debated Perot and Clinton in his failed attempt at re-election.

I was about 10-11 years old at the time, and had just developed my love for politics and debate.  I knew then what I know now – Bush was a good man, but he represented America’s past.  Perot was the future.  (Maybe not Perot himself, but the ideas he ran on.)

Bush always had a modesty about him, and that’s part of the reason he was underappreciated at the time.  But he was actually a very significant one-term President.  I recently heard his dear friend, and wise former Sec. of State James Baker say that Bush was the most substantial one-term President in our history.  (More than John Adams?!)  Well, I would maybe give him most significant one-term President of the 20th Century.

Bush represented the end of an era.  It was the bipolarity of the Cold War.  Bush saw the fall of the Berlin Wall, the soaring economy from the second half of the Reagan era, prudently worked with Congress to manage the soaring debt from the Reagan era, and then led the charge to liberate Kuwait from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.  I know plenty of good, peace loving people who have labelled Bush a “warmonger” for Operation Desert Storm.  This is misguided.  A war monger looks for reasons to go to war.  A cautious realist goes to war when necessary.  When a dangerous dictator that controls some of the Arab oil supply, conquers a neighbor to control more of the Arab oil supply, war is necessary.  I think Bush used as much force as was necessary, and no more.  Truly, this is the kind of leadership you can expect from a humble man with the kind of character judgement to chose someone like James Baker to be his Sec. of State.

The problem for Mr. Bush was that by the end of his first term, he had finished solving all of yesterday’s problems.  America’s hard hats, and my 10-year old self, were all like “yes yes yes, thanks for winning the Cold War, and winning Operation Desert Storm and all, but now what?  What about our jobs?”

Ross Perot is a true patriot.  I noticed on stage that Perot seemed to have a certain respect for Mr. Bush.  That didn’t stop him from fiercely debating him on his naive trade philosophies.  Bush may have been prudent when it came to foreign policy, but he was idealistic and horribly misguided on trade.

The above photo says it all.  Bush was dignified, but passing.  Perot passionately argued for our country’s future.  But to the right, smugly, stands Bill Clinton.  Opportunistically he positioned himself to take the White House by taking cheap shots against Bush for having compromised on taxes.  Opportunistically did he position himself as a moderate on trade, only to sell out America’s working class at the first opportunity.  Perot’s ideas may be America’s future, but Bill Clinton was America’s present at the time.  It was a present where the greatness built by people like George H. W. Bush would be squandered by political opportunists playing “moderate” like Bill Clinton, and fiercely partisan demagogues like Newt Gingrich.*

Some said McCain’s death represented the end of an era?  No.  McCain was just another “moderate”.  Less sleazy than Clinton? Sure, but that’s a low bar!  Bush’s death does represent the end of an era.  An era where political leaders really were public servants who were self sacrificing, and would lose an election for the good of the country.

RIP Mr. Bush.  You lived a long, amazing life!

 

Note(s):

*Gingrich has his good points, but I meant what I said.  For the record, I actually don’t think “demagogues” are all that bad, but they do rouse passion and impede critical thinking, though they usually represent legitimate grievances.

Sorry Democrats, You Can’t Have It Both Ways

“Liberals” in June:  OMG!  Trump’s starting a trade war!  He’s going to cause a recession!

“Liberals” now:  Well, the economy is thriving because…Obama

 

Sorry “liberals”, you can’t have it both ways.  Now I recognize that Obama left Trump a pretty healthy economy.  But if you’re going to claim that Trump is about to crash the economy, and then the economy thrives even more; then if you’re intellectually honest, at least some of that credit goes to Trump.

Like it or not, Democrats aren’t getting the recession of their dreams.  Those pesky jobs reports just keep showing job growth, and higher median outcome.  And furthermore, those “marginalized groups” that Dems feign such compassion for, they are benefiting!  The median income for Hispanic households grew 3.7% in Trump’s first year (and that’s adjusted for inflation)!  Yeah, sorry about Trump’s nasty comments about “rapists” and “drug dealers”, but the “good people” Trump also mentioned who come here legally seem to be doing well under this administration.

We can win this trade war, a trade war that China started, even with the corporate media trying to undermine it every step of the way.  We just gotta keep up the fight, and not let our poor, lost fellow Americans glued to CNN get to us with all the manufactured talking points from the corporate boardrooms of the MSM.  Remember, though, that these fellow Americans are lost.  They’re not our enemies.  Contrary to what HRC once expressed, no human being is irredeemable.  As they come at us with their talking points, we need to try to get through to them.  Pointing out my initial point here, is a good start.

Trump’s Most Leftist Supporter

It’s no wonder Democrats like illegal immigrants so much; the legal immigrants think for themselves!  People like Caxcan* and his family, who immigrant legally from Mexico and wherever else, and appreciate this country; they help make America great!  I’m happy to embrace Caxcan as my fellow American!

When I started watching Caxcan’s video, for the first few minutes, I thought he was criticizing the #walkaway movement.  I was getting ready to comment that his title was misleading, but I decided to listen to most of it first.  I’m glad I did!

In some ways, he is criticizing #walkaway, but he does so constructively.  He basically lays out his very left of center political views, explains why leaving “the left” is a bad idea, and then goes on to explain something I figured out years ago.  Trump actually has more in common with the true left than the average Democrat these days!

Several times, Caxcan discussed “free trade” and how harmful it’s been to Latin America.  He discusses why he believes socialism is the solution.  And explains why Trump’s trade policies are a step in the right direction.  And here I thought I was Trump’s most leftist supporter!  I embrace some elements of socialism, but am still essentially a capitalist, but I favor a very regulated capitalism.

Like Caxcan, I never walked away from my principles; I walked away from the party that I’m constantly told adheres to my principles, but I can plainly see doesn’t.  I’d rather get half of what I believe in from Trump, than none of what I believe in from the Democratic Party.

Walking away doesn’t mean becoming a Republican.  I was so proud to reluctantly vote for Trump, and nervously thrilled when he actually won!  But I didn’t vote for that “R” next to his name.  Like Caxcan, it’s his trade policies!

Caxcan’s message is clear.  Don’t #walkaway from “the left.”  #walkaway from ignorance.  I don’t know how many views he’ll get.  He isn’t the best video-maker, unfortunately, and spoke rather slowly and impromptu.  I’d recommend he make a script next time and keep it short and sweet.  But his message is one that people all across the spectrum need to hear.

We need to stop being trapped into this false “left/right” dichotomy that we think overlaps the “Democratic/Republican” dichotomy.  This is what causes Bernie Sanders voters to hold their noses and vote for imperialist Hillary Clinton, even though they have more in common with Trump on policy .  This is what could also cause today’s Trump voter to vote for tomorrows revived neocon Republican – the only thing the neocon of the future and Trump will have in common is tax cuts and an “R” next to their name.  When we #walkaway from partisan ignorance and prejudice, we can clearly see the issues, and vote for candidates who represent our values, rather than voting for rhetoric and party labels.

Note(s):

*I couldn’t find a name on his youtube channel, but he identifies with his Caxcan ethnicity, so I’ll call him Caxcan for the time being.

Lily White Liberals In Chicago

Rahm Emanuel is really clearing out the undesirables.  First he declared Chicago to be a “Trump free zone”. Isn’t it great to know that while sipping your pumpkin latte, you won’t have to run into one of those deplorables?  

But there’s something else that could spoil your day. Part of being a lily white liberal is liking oppressed minorities from a distance.  You wouldn’t actually want to step out of your comfort zone and mix with regular black folk, now would you? Sure, one or two is fine, if they’re like Carlton Banks!  

Well Rahm Emanuel has a solution!  Gentrification! It’s an oldie but a goodie!  The Gubernatorial candidate Chris Kennedy called him out!  As reported by the Chicago Tribune:

“I believe that black people are being pushed out of Chicago intentionally by a strategy that involves disinvestment in communities being implemented by the city administration, and I believe Rahm Emanuel is the head of the city administration and therefore needs to be held responsible for those outcomes,” Kennedy said during a news conference about gun violence in North Lawndale.

“This is involuntary. That we’re cutting off funding for schools, cutting off funding for police, allowing people to be forced to live in food deserts, closing hospitals, closing access to mental health facilities. What choice do people have but to move, to leave?” Kennedy added. “And I think that’s part of a strategic gentrification plan being implemented by the city of Chicago to push people of color out of the city. The city is becoming smaller, and as it becomes smaller, it’s become whiter.”

Predictably, Emanuel responded by comparing Kennedy to Trump.  That’s what establishment Democrats do when real progressives call them out as the lily white corporatists that they are.  But maybe that’s not such a bad comparison! After all, Trump seems more comfortable hanging out with Kanye West than the average politician or journalist of any color.  

Meanwhile, blacks in Chicago, the vast majority of whom are peaceful, law abiding citizens, are asking for Trump’s help. La Shawn K. Ford, a Democratic State Representative, said:

We have to make sure that President Trump recognizes that not everyone believes that Chicago is a Trump free zone.  If he’s serious about helping the people in Chicago, especially on the west side of Chicago, I accept his help.

Who can blame him?  Rahm Emanuel sees crime and poverty, and his solution is to gentrify them out!  Why shouldn’t Rep. Ford turn to Trump for help? Trump isn’t perfect, but he’s shown a willingness to talk to black leaders and discuss how to address what afflicts them.  There’s much that Trump doesn’t understand, and in many ways, Trump is privileged. But at least he’s making a genuine effort, which is more than I can say for the lily white liberals.

Read Also:

Lily White Liberals At Yale And Beyond

How The Left Brought Me To Trump

I didn’t leave the left, the left left me

 

Though I’m conservative in some ways, I never fit in with the right.  I have compassion for the poor, I care about the environment, I loathe militarism abroad and have no problem calling the US a “global bully” when it’s acting like one.  Aside from that, I have a genuine concern for the well being of working people and disdain for corporatists who exploit them. You won’t typically hear me refer to the rich as “the job creators”.  Doesn’t that make me some kind of socialist?

(I hope I haven’t lost my Trumpian readers yet.  Stick with me, my dear deplorables. It’ll be worth it, bigly!)

In the early Bush era, I was an undergrad in Florida, still learning about the world and forming my political views.  One day I saw an episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show that really opened my eyes. She discussed the horrible working conditions of children in sweatshops in India.  They would work 12 hours a day in the textile mills, making inexpensive clothing and other cloth for export. Being crouched over in the same position all day, every day for so many years caused many of them to grow up deformed, even going blind.  Someone in the audience dared to ask the question that needed to be asked – do we bear some blame for that, as we buy those goods in our stores? Yes, she dared to “blame America”.

From that moment on, I became very outspoken against child labor in particular, but also the exploitation of cheap labor anywhere in the third world (ahem, I mean “developing world”).

Throughout the Bush era, I became ever more disgusted with the American right, and the Republican Party.  It was the party of endless wars overseas. It was the party that considered itself the “savior of the world”, even having the audacity to suggest that the countries invaded should be grateful for American intervention!  And on top of that, while mainstream Democrats like John Kerry had at least some compassion for working people (even if apathetic on his ability to do anything about it), Republicans called those in need “lazy” while sending more jobs overseas.  As Bush continued his foreign military adventurism, our military weapons were more and more imported from China, all while our government borrowed money – from China!  This was the Republican Party that became the source of all evil in the world to me.  It was the Republican Party that had to be defeated at any cost.

(Still with me, my dear deplorables?)

The “Messiah”

In 2008, hope came.  Hope, that this evil legacy would change.  Yes, you know who I’m talking about. We were going to bring our troops home from Iraq.  We were going to put the money we were blowing in Iraq towards infrastructure at home. No longer would America “police the world”.  Now America would clean up its own backyard.

Obama is a great speaker.  As the economy plunged into the Great Recession, he filled so many of us with hope.  In my hometown of Jacksonville Florida, there was a growing progressive voice on the radio.  Led by a local former State Representative, Andy Johnson, progressive talk finally had a place on the airwaves!  In addition to his local program, he played nationally syndicated talk radio programs also. My favorite was usually Ed Schultz (May his memory be everlasting)  

Schultz had the kind of passion, and in-your-face style of early Rush Limbaugh.  He wasn’t politically correct, and didn’t have a smug bone in his body. He was an advocate for working Americans.  While the sweatshop issue had been in the back of my mind, as I was more concerned with the state of our country, Ed Schultz brought it back to the forefront.  More like Ross Perot than Oprah Winfrey, Schultz spoke of how outsourcing affected US. He spoke of the bad trade deals made over the decades, and the erosion of America’s manufacturing sector.  When it came to PC issues like gay marriage, abortion, he was on the left. Sure, why not?  Not my business.  That was pretty much his attitude.  But this wasn’t his focus. He brought my attention to efforts to revive American manufacturing, including a website called madeinusaforever.com.  

So, if Ed Schultz, a nationally syndicated progressive radio host, and later MSNBC host, is all about American jobs, then FOX must be all about sending our jobs to China, right?  After all, in 2009, Obama passed a tire tariff on China (still grateful to Obama for that one by the way). “CPAC” was very critical of Obama for this. I started calling them CCPAC, as in “Chinese Communist Party Action Committee”.  

(My dear deplorables, thank you for your patience.  You’ll like this next part!)

But wait!  It wasn’t long after that I heard the owner of madeinusaforever.com being interviewed on Fox and Friends!  Say what?!  Yes indeed!  Maybe the right isn’t all evil after all.  And not long after that, I was exposed to political Trump for the first time.  It was on Ed Schultz’s radio show!

What do Ed Schultz and Donald Trump have in common?

Ed Schultz was pleasantly surprised to hear long shot 2012 Republican candidate Donald Trump talking about – tariffs!  Tariffs?! From a post-Reagan Republican?! Yes! Tariffs!

On his radio show, Schultz actually said he might support Trump.  Sure, he’s a Republican, and probably wants to cut taxes on the wealthy, but tariffs!  Tariffs! Glorious, glorious, tariffs!

Then I heard Trump was a birther.  Uggg!

(Sorry Trumpians, we’ll have to agree to disagree on that one.)

The False Messiah

All while this was happening, I was becoming increasingly disappointed in Obama.  I admit. My hopes were way too high in 2008! But still, he could have at least tried to keep some of his most important campaign promises.  Well, at least we got that tire tariff, and he wasn’t starting any new illegal wars, right?

Then Libya.

After a few years of struggling to fix our economy, and dragging our feet as we slowly withdrew from Iraq, Obama made the biggest foreign policy mistake of his entire Presidency.  He was supposed to be a man of peace! What happened? Hillary Rodham Clinton! That’s what happened!

I underestimated just how damaging Obama’s air-strikes would be.  But they were enough to topple the only stable government in Libya, and create a power vacuum to be filled by terrorists and slave traders.  

As the Gen. Election of 2012 was between Obama and Romney, and Romney just looked like Bush-lite to me, I held my nose and voted for Obama.  But not with the same enthusiasm as I did in 2008. I wasn’t excited this time; not much hope for change. But the status quo of the Obama era was preferable to the status quo that came before.

Coming around to Trump

It’s like a cheesy romance movie.  Ya know the kind where the girl first finds the guy obnoxious, thinks she’d never date him in a million years.  But then she gets used to all his quirks, and finds some things about him she likes? By the end, she’s in love?

Thinking back to the birther years, I remember Obama mocking Trump.  He played the “live birth” video, which was actually a clip from the Lion King.  I was ROFL! I even bought the coffee mug of Obama’s Birth Certificate with “Made in USA” on the other side.  Buy American, right Trump?

Though many things about Trump are nothing short of sickening to me, he was the only candidate boldly talking about changing America’s unsustainable trade practices.  I loved THAT about Trump, and not much else. The only other candidate who even came close on that issue was Bernie Sanders. Neither Trump nor Sanders were my first choice, but as Sanders seemed to have the best chance in the primaries, he got my vote.  

But there she was, Her Royal Clintonness.  Her husband had sold us out to China, sold us out to Mexico, wrecked what was left of Yugoslavia and handed Kosovo over to a bunch of Al Qaeda linked terrorists.  But Hillary isn’t her husband, right? Not quite, but close enough. I already discussed Libya above, and lets not forget that Hillary also supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and of course, the invasion of Kosovo during her husband’s administration.

But she’s a woman!  And we’ve never had a woman president.  And she’s all for LGBT issues! And she’s pro-choice!  And she’s sensitive to the struggles of ethnic minorities!

Gimme a break!  First, I’ll happily vote for a woman who deserves to be President.  Let our first woman president be someone we can be proud of. On LGBT issues, Her Royal Clintonness goes whichever way the wind blows.  She was against gay marriage until it was cool.  Trump, by contrast, was actually bold enough to promote LGBT rights in the Republican primaries!  Where it’s not so cool. Pro-choice? Well I’m pro-life, so piss off with that! As for ethnic minorities, Hillary Clinton was a very outspoken supporter of her husband’s crime bill in 1994.  Following that, we’re in a situation now where 1 in 3 black males will be arrested in their life times if nothing changes.  Trump is far from perfect I realize, but I’ll not be lectured to on racial inequality by Hillary Clinton or any of her supporters!

Trump Got Better

Many years before, I was pleasantly surprised when the Tea Party, that would re-invent the American conservative movement, actually seemed to go a bit to the left of Obama when it came to militarism abroad.  Please understand that I respect our soldiers who enlist to put their lives on the line for our country. I respect them so much that I loathe politicians who would put them in harm’s way for any other purpose.  Libya was no threat to us. The government of Libya was violently suppressing a violent revolution against it. It’s what governments do. But I actually heard people in the Tea Party criticizing Obama for intervening, including talk radio personality Michael Savage.  Also, as principled advocates of smaller government, they wanted to reduce wasteful military spending and get our military to focus on national defense. I figured Rand Paul was the only barer of these sentiments in the Republican Primary.

But in the debates, despite all of Trump’s history of boisterous, provocative talk, he showed himself to be cautious, and even humble, on American foreign policy.  He had no problem criticizing Hillary Clinton for her reckless interventions.  Shortly after winning, when the Democrats started their neo-McCarthyite witch-hunt, Trump even dared to rhetorically ask “You think our country is so innocent?”  WOW! Is Trump “blaming America”? I love this guy!

Let me be clear about what it means to love your country.  Love is hard. Love can even be cruel. Love is not, however, enabling.  Enabling is easy. If you see someone hurting themselves, it’s easy to pat them on the back and tell them it’s OK to keep doing what they’re doing.  It takes love to grab them by the shoulders and say, “Stop doing this to yourself.” That’s how I feel about America when I see us engaged in these reckless, foreign wars that topple stable governments and empower terrorists.  The enablers might say that I “hate America”. But no, this is true love.

In 2000, I liked that Bush advocated for a more “humble foreign policy.”  Then he betrayed us. In 2008, I like that Obama ran on getting us out of Iraq.  And then, Libya. In 2016, I was proud to see a President who was ready to use our military the way it’s meant to be used – to fight those who would attack us, ISIS, Al Qaeda, etc.  Not to police the world. Not to cooperate with “the global community.” No. To protect America’s interests.

The Final Straw

Trump isn’t perfect.  I hear he’s engaged in some military action in Syria, and I wish he weren’t.  But at least he had the sense to hold off until ISIS was reduced to feebility.  And it doesn’t look like he’s trying to topple the government. But on the Korean front, he’s working towards peace! President Moon of South Korea, whom I’ve come to greatly respect, even said Trump should get a Nobel Prize!  The American people also largely support the North Korean summit, even though Trump remains highly controversial.

But in case you thought Rachel Maddow had even a shred of integrity left, here’s the sad truth.  The same Rachel Maddow that once welcomed the Tea Party’s calls for cutting wasteful military spending; is the same Rachel Maddow that now chastises Trump for the North Korean summit, and even accuses him of doing it to help Russia!  What?! Red bating and warmongering from “progressive” Rachel Maddow?

The “Democrats” Today

I once saw the Democratic Party as the party of the people.  They were the ones who would fight for American jobs, resist the warmongers, regulate the big banks, protect their environment.  I would put up with all the PC stuff, because it was worth it to vote “in my own best interests”, right? Now, can Democrats even pretend to be the party of working Americans anymore?  In 2004, John Kerry criticized Bush for outsourcing and promised to end tax incentives to companies that send our jobs overseas. Now, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to embrace “free trade”!  WTF?!!!!!

The treatment of Bernie Sanders and his supporters only furthered revealed the truth.  For no other reason than Sanders’s gender, he and his supporters were accused of being “sexist” and called “berniebros” as a pejorative.  The first time I heard the term “berniebro”, I liked the sound of it. But in today’s PCed Democratic Party, masculinity is “toxic”, so nobody wants to be a “bro”.*

Today’s Democratic Party is a corporate sponsored circus of political correctness, allied with neoliberal imperialism!  As long as they got gay marriage, they don’t care what happens to the rest of us. They don’t care about poor Appalachian whites, they don’t care about struggling African Americans, they don’t care about Latinos unless they’re illegal immigrants, and even then only care about how much they can exploit them!  But they raise lots of money from Goldman Sachs to pursue their social agendas! I really don’t care one way or the other if gays marry, or what bathroom and trans-person uses, but I’m not about to sell out America’s working class over it. But the Democrats have!

#EvenTrump

I’m so fed up with those pumpkin latte sipping elitists, that I’ll even vote for Trump.  Trump may be rude, crude, and sometimes lewd, but at least he cares about the working class.  And don’t tell me he doesn’t! He’s slapping tariffs on China faster than Bill Clinton can zip up his pants!  Much as I love Kyle Kulinski, a principled liberal unafflicted by Trump Derangement Syndrome, I don’t think he gives Trump enough credit.  I’m glad to see someone on the left criticizing Trump for being still too interventionist on foreign policy. I admit I’ve gone soft on Trump for this.  But Kulinski doesn’t give Trump credit for the tariffs. The Young Turks, once harsh critics of bad trade deals, is actually echoing CNN and warning about the “trade war” that Trump is supposedly starting!  

This is the American left today.  A handful of principled Jimmy Dore and Kyle Kulinski types on the outskirts, and a large mainstream of TDS afflicted corporatists who only care about you if you are useful to the sexual revolution and wear a vagina hat!  Respectable, two-parent households, just need to check their privilege, right?! Well, I’ll take all my light-beige skinned, happily married, church attending privilege to the polls and vote for Trump, despite that “R” next to his name, and Americans of every skin tone with similar values are welcome aboard the #trumptrain !

Note(s):

*For those hoping to use this article as “proof” that “berniebros” cost Clinton the election, the facts are not on your side.  I’m one of the few.  94% of Sanders voters went Clinton in the Gen. Election, compared to over 30% of Kasich voters going Clinton instead of Trump, 11% of Rubio to Clinton, and 7% of Cruz to Clinton.

Everlasting Be Your Memory – Ed Schultz

 

I’ve just learned today that a man who has had a great impact on this country, and on me, has passed away.  I stumbled across this sad news that Ed Schultz has died while catching up on my Jimmy Dore‘s.  It’s so weird.  I admit I hadn’t thought about Ed in a while.  But seeing President Trump come through on his tariffs, I got to wondering – I wonder what Ed Schultz thinks of all this.  So I did some searching, found him on youtube, and – I knew it!  Ed Schultz still has a soul!  But now, he has left this life.

I first came across Ed Schultz on a progressive radio station in Jacksonville, FL in 2009.  In the depths of the Great Recession, as I was working odd jobs scrapping to not let my student loans go into default, here came a progressive I could relate to.

Schultz isn’t the stereotypical “pinhead” you hear Bill O’Reilly talking about.  Schultz is a working man’s progressive.  One thing he really drew (or rather reminded me of) my attention to is the need to bring back American jobs.  Schultz was passionate about ending the bad trade deals, restoring America’s manufacturing sector, building our infrastructure, taking care of our veterans, sensible national security and foreign policy, and single payer healthcare.  (I think my Trumpian friends can agree with at least the majority of that.)  But “BUY AMERICAN” is what always resonated.  Hardly an Ed Show went by without him talking about that!

In those days, Schultz was an Obama supporter, fiercely critical of the Republican Party establishment, a bit race-baitie, I admit, but that’s forgivable.  People like Ed Schultz are authentic.  Their wear their good qualities and bad on their sleeve.  You may not like everything you see, but what you see is what you get.

Once he had Pat Buchanan on his show.  When he announced it, I was expecting a fierce argument.  But it was nothing of the sort.  They were pals.  And why not?  Pat Buchanan is an old paleo-conservative who cares about American jobs.  Ed Schultz is an old school progressive who cares about American jobs.  They’re two sides of the same coin!

Things started changing in the late Obama era, and not the kind of “change” that Obama campaigned on.  No, it was the Democratic Party establishment.  It became less about working Americans, and more about political correctness, virtue signaling, “marginalized groups”, and consequently, globalization and corporatism.  Schultz could have gone either way on the PC stuff, though he was never a man to pussy-foot around.  But he was pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, pro-racial integration.  But for Schultz, that all took a back seat to the heart and soul of the Democratic Party of the past – the working class.  When the working class started getting pushed to the back in favor of all the PC stuff, and then the corporatists starting driving the bus, and then insisted they’d only keep driving the bus if the working class weren’t on it, there was no place for a principled man like Ed Schultz anymore.

Consequently, he was kicked off MSNBC (now owned by Comcast) and took refuge with the RT network.  From there, he kept telling the truth, while the hacks at MSNBC kept telling us about Russia.  Schultz took Trump with a grain of salt.  Some accused Schultz of changing, but he never changed.  Schultz cared about American jobs just as much in 2009 as he did in 2016.  Schultz saw some of the things he cared about in Trump, other things, not so much.  But rather than being a partisan hack, and flipping his positions just so that he could opposite of the President with an “R” next to his name, he simply started evaluating Trump issue by issue.  When it came to steel tariffs, ending TPP, infrastructure, etc. Trump earned Schultz’s support.

Like our President, Schultz puts America first, not political party, not political correctness, and sure not the “global community”.

Any American who works for a living, building things, these are Ed’s people.  If you don’t built things yourself, but appreciate those who do, close enough.  Ed, after all, spent much of his life as a media personality doing just that.  But make no mistake.  He wasn’t some spoiled, lily white liberal admiring from afar people he wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole.  He had no problem meeting with workers and helping them fight for better wages, better working conditions, and to protect American jobs from soulless multinational corporations.

I almost titled this “Rest in Peace”, but that’s not how Ed would want it.  He lived to fight the good fight.  So I went with the Orthodox “Everlasting be your memory!”  He won’t rest.  His spirit will live on!  It’ll live on in every Trumpian hard hat who used to vote Democrat, but voted Trump this time for American jobs.  It’ll live on in every solid progressive who won’t sell their souls to Comcast or the DNC.  It’ll live on in the Justice Democrats who fight to restore the soul to the Democratic Party.  And wherever there’s a Clinton or a Bush trying to sell out America to the “global community” – Ed Schultz will live on, ready to fight for us.

 

Another note:

Before this news, I was working on another article – How the left brought me to Trump – and Ed Schultz certainly makes up a chunk of that.  I’ll finish it pretty soon and post it here also.

For now, if you want to honor Ed Schultz, support Wounded Warriors, or buy something American made, or contact someone in Congress and tell them that no matter what they think of Trump, to stand by him as he fights for American jobs.

Ed Schultz also drew my attention to this site

www.madeinusaforever.com

I have an ongoing project, developing news links showing jobs being saved or added due to Trump’s trade policies.  Take a look, and share some links if you have them

https://politicallywag.wordpress.com/2018/03/19/trumps-tariffs-bring-jobs/

China Will Not Help US With N Korea

Regardless of a trade war with China, they will not help us with N. Korea.  Indeed, China does have some sway over N. Korea.  Indeed, China has used that to play us many times over.  For most of Trump’s first year in office, he held off on his campaign promise to implement tariffs on China to reduce our astronomical trade deficit.  (China exports 4 times as much to US, as we export to China, year after year.)  This was because China was promising to convince N. Korea to agree to a nuclear deal.

However, China accomplished nothing during that time as Trump was holding off on the tariffs.  Yet, when Trump started making plans to follow through with his promise, suddenly N. Korea came to the negotiating table and a deal was made.

Despite this, Lyle J. Goldstein with the National Interest claims that Trump must now chose between a trade war with China, and the N. Korean deal.  Where exactly has Mr. Goldstein been this last year?  Trump already tried that!  It didn’t work!  So he went forward with the tariffs, and now we have a N. Korean deal.  It’s not complicated.

Despite this glaringly obvious reality, it’s likely that Mr. Goldstein is not the only one who will make this claim.  If this deal does fall apart, don’t be surprised when most of mainstream media ignores the facts presented above and blames Trump’s tariffs.

After all, this is the same mainstream media that ignored decades of terrible trade policies that have empowered China, only to blame Trump leaving TPP for the rise of China.

China is the greatest geopolitical threat to our superpower since the fall of the Soviet Union.  And what makes China a particularly unique threat is their remarkable ability to get many of our politicians and opinion leaders to shill for them.

What Trump has accomplished, however, is getting them to play their N. Korean card.  It was a big card, a scary card, but now it’s played, and China can’t take it back.  We now know that China has far too much to lose from a denuclearized N. Korea to ever let that happen, despite what they say.  But we also know now that there are no N. Korean consequences to standing up to China.

Trump can’t denuclearize N. Korea, and China wouldn’t even if they could.  If anything is going to get N. Korea to denuclearize, it will be S. Korea.  It’s a long shot, but maybe, just maybe, S. Korea can work out some kind of loose unification, and with that, just maybe, a loosely united Korean state could see the gradual extension of freedoms to N. Koreans and effectively pacify the threat.  N. Korea would still be a nuclear power, but they’d be no more a threat than S. Korea.  We can only hope.

Further Reading:

From Fareed Zakaria of all people!  Trump is Right: China’s a trade cheat If you have access to Wapo.  If you are not subscribed to them, I recommend opening them in a browser you don’t normally use.  You get 2 free articles, but it won’t notice you’ve used your two if you open it in a different browser, like Internet Explorer if you normally use Chrome.

Why Anti-Trump John Pavlovitz is being “Tone Policed”

To read John Pavlovitz’s blog post, you’d think the country was just fine and dandy, and the government generally respected the Constitution and tried to serve the people – until Trump came along!

He complains that his Trump supporting friends are “tone policing” him by asking him to be more constructive rather than just raging against Trump.  He then seeks to justify his rage with a list of points, complaining that these Trump voters are giving Trump a free pass.  I’m going to go through them piece by piece.  He actually does have a few good points…a few.

Mr. Pavlovitz complained, “I haven’t heard a peep from them privately or publicly over the past eighteen months:” and then proceeded to his list.  I’ll start with the ones we more or less agree upon, and then work my way down.  (My comments are in direct response to Mr. Pavlovitz)

Not when he said protestors at his rallies should have been roughed up.

Fair enough, though I’d point out that many Trump supporters faced threats of violence entering those rallies, and when Trump cancelled one rally due to threats of violence, he was mocked.  Trump’s opponents aren’t so innocent.

 Not when Elizabeth Warren was silenced and persisted.

 I’m with you on this one.

 Not when kneeling black NFL players were called sons of bitches.

I’m with you here too!  They are kneeling, not making some obscene gesture.  I support Kaepernick and what he’s trying to do.  And guess what?  Trump is actually planning to meet with him and Kanye West to discuss race relations.  Yes, Trump should’t call them “sons of bitches”, but at least he’s open to reconsidering his position after some reflection.  Maybe Kanye’s gettin’ through to him?

 Not when Evangelists offered public prayers for predatory Alabama senators.

That was a low point for the Evangelicals.  I’m so glad Doug Jones won!

Not when the vile Access Hollywood video surfaced. 

 Right, the private conversation between Trump and two other people where Trump bragged about how because he was rich and famous, women LET HIM grab them.  It’s disgusting, but it’s also his personal life.

Not when refugees were stranded at airports.

I’m sorry things are so tough for people on the other side of the world.  But where were you when Obama was bombing the crap out of Libya?!  Where were you when Sec. of State Hillary Clinton was sending weapons to dangerous rebel groups in Syria?!  You know, the very place these refugees are coming from?  Why do you think Syria has a refugee crisis in the first place?  Because of Trump?  (But there I go deflecting, right?)

Not when they were bulldozing Standing Rock burial grounds.

What did Trump do that was any different from what Obama was already doing?  I realize the Republicans used to blame Obama for problems that began during the Bush era, but two wrongs don’t make a right.  Or do they?

Not when Sally Yates was unceremoniously terminated.

Right, right, right.  It’s fine to dig into every detail of Trump’s relations with Stormy Daniels 11 years ago, but looking into whether he was wiretapped by the FBI?!!!!  A travesty of justice to even suggest such a thing!  Gimme a break!

Not when Nazis and racists in Charlottesville were called “fine people.”

First off, Trump did not call “Nazis and racists” “very fine people”.  All you have to do is listen to his entire statement.  He said there were others there that were not involved with the white nationalists, who just wanted to support the statue of Robert E. Lee, and it was them that Trump called “very fine people.”

Not when tens of millions lost healthcare under the cover of night.

I’ll believe that you weren’t deliberately dishonest in the last one, but not this time.  No, repealing the individual mandate is NOT “tens of millions” losing “healthcare under the cover of night.”  He didn’t take away anyone’s healthcare.  He took away a tax burden, a penalty for not buying healthcare.  I, and tens of millions more, now have the freedom to choose whether or not to buy healthcare.  My body my choice, right?

Not when he tweeted taunts at North Korea.

 This is what you’re outraged about?

Not when the #MeToos were victimized a second time.

 Not sure what you’re talking about here.  I can only speak for myself, but I’m cautiously optimistic about #metoo.  I don’t want it to turn into a witch hunt, but as the father of a daughter, I’d like her to grow up in a better world where women who are harassed or worse can stand up for themselves and get justice…so that this happens far less often.

We’re not as blind as Pavlovitz thinks

“Nothing moved them to say anything, nothing burdened them enough to rouse them from their silence, nothing offended their sensibilities significantly enough to merit even a whisper.”

Many of us do criticize Trump on issues when we think it’s called for.  I was very critical of Trump for his tweet that he was banning transgender persons from serving in the military.  We’re just taking Trump with a grain of salt, rather than being absolutely for him, or absolutely against him.  I’m sure Pavlovitz knows some pro-Trump fanatics who really would support Trump if he killed a man in the street, but few of us fit into that category.

But we’re also weighing the alternative, and keeping things in perspective.  The only thing unprecedented about Trump is his tweets and rhetoric.  None of his actions are any more shocking than what you can find in previous administrations, except his trade policies, which are long overdue!  (Thank you Trump for finally doing something about our crippling trade deficits!)

Many of us #eventrumpers, the kind of people who voted Obama and then Trump, we haven’t forgotten that it’s possible to disagree with good people.  Having a different political view doesn’t make you the devil.  Sadly, Trump Derangement Syndrome has the effect of making anyone who voted for Trump appear to be a demon from the 9^th circle of hell.