Friday, July 22, 2016 9:08 PM
The popularity contest that is a presidential election doesn’t treat intellectuals very well. People such as Al Gore get tagged as ‘college-boys’ with lots of smarts but no experience or heart. And I find it ironic that we have, in Donald Trump, the real threat that such fear supposes—he is an incredibly clever man—but he has no experience and no heart. These top-tier wheeler-dealers of our financial stratosphere are well-known to pride themselves on their heartlessness. And business tycoons like Trump have a very narrow, very one-sided view of what government is and what it does. Business owners rarely get to own billions-of-dollars-worth of assets by virtue of their tender humanitarianism or their sense of civic duty.
That he is manipulative is proven by the fact that he has taken a woman whose life is indeed one of tender humanitarianism and a sense of civic duty—a public servant virtually all her adult life—an educated, experienced, competent lady and a doting grandmother—and reduced her to a satanic conspiracy of lies and greed. Not too long ago, Trump claimed he had sent a team of investigators to Hawaii to dig into President Obama’s birth records and expose him as the foreign-born Muslim intruder the GOP wished he was. This was after the election—when President Obama was already serving his term. This was after President Obama had already released his birth certificate. Trump actually claimed that his investigators were finding ‘incredible things’.
But a few years have gone by, at least one or two—since he splooged that particular bit of narcissism—so let’s forget that he tried to smear the President just to get attention from the media. Let’s ignore the fact that he has yet to show any interest in the day after the coming finale—I mean election. Let’s just take his word that Hillary Clinton, without leaving any evidence, has spent her whole life trying to destroy America. We’re much better off with the world’s worst boss, I figure. He’s so entertaining—why shouldn’t I listen to him?
But that is a question. Everyone who has ever worked for Hillary Clinton just goes on and on about what a sweet, thoughtful boss she is, how smart and caring. We don’t hear a lot from Trump’s underlings (I assume he thinks of them that way) and there’s a good reason for that. NDAs. NDAs are non-disclosure agreements—they are legal papers some people make you sign before you can work for them. Trump can sue anyone who tells the world what it’s like to work for the guy. Not that he wouldn’t sue just about anyone—he has a long list of former litigants. And that’s another question—we’ve had lots of lawyers who became president—but we’ve never had a litigious businessman—I wonder which countries Trump would sue first? I wonder if I could bring myself to sue someone for telling the truth about me? Hmm.
Here’s how I see it—Hillary Clinton couldn’t possibly be the Machiavellian super-villain her detractors paint her as—and that’s not to deny her imperfections. She simply doesn’t have any of the symptoms of a person who only cares for herself—she’s not nearly as comfortable huckstering herself to the public as Trump is (or her husband was)—she’s too sincere for that. And the fact that she has it in her to be sincere—too sincere perhaps to be comfortable tap-dancing in the public eye—disqualifies her completely from being anything near as bad as her detractors would like to believe.
Trump however reminds me of nothing so much as the barker who inveigles Pinocchio into joining the after-party at the carnival. The American public is the Pinocchio in this scenario, you understand—and we’ll all wake up with asses-ears, being loaded into a truck like cattle. At today’s rally in Tampa, Hillary told the crowd, “I never thought I’d say this—but Ted Cruz was right.” She was referring to Cruz being booed at the RNC convention for saying “Vote your conscience.” I don’t care for Cruz, but right is right—we could all probably use a Jiminy Cricket right about now.
Congrats grandpa. Today (Sat.) I saw an interview with a woman who interviewed the ghost writer of Trump’s “The Art of The Deal”. the ghost writer followed Trump for 18 months in the mid-eighties. He has never spoken out and this was before Trump used the nondisclosure contracts. He said Trump has no attention span which scared him over complex foreign affairs. He was never satisfied and always wanted more. He also called him a sociopath. They had a 50-50 profit agreement and of course he wanted the book to do well. I think him speaking out in an article is very powerful.
Folks can’t operate from a place of fear though many do. The insults thrown at Secretary Clinton are offensive, ill-spirited and wrong. How can Chris Christie “prosecute” (his words)(I think you were having a baby around Christie’s speech at the convention.) a case against her when his popularity in NJ is low. The responsibility of the Trump winning the primaries is directly in the hands of the GOP. They did not take him seriously during the primaries until it was too late. All the other candidates were weak. (Imagine if Bush had gone off on Trump in the beginning over the talk of the wall as a direct insult to his wife. If he said, “are you calling my wife a murderer or a criminal. Had he done that, who knows where we would be.) Congress has done nothing for 8 years to make Obama look bad, but they didn’t realize most Americans saw through it as Congress’ ratings are single digit, last I saw.
He actually has me interested in volunteering, something I never could do. Now, I am fired up and ready to go.