Symphony

Encore of Revival: America, November 14, 2016

The hashtag #Calexit would be #Texit if the election had gone the other way. California and Texas already did secede once. Of course Washington would do something to stop it, we wouldn’t be dealing with Obama anymore. Secession is now on the table for real, thank you Californians. It’s only a matter of time. These are bad days for globalism.

Reince Priebus and Stephen Bannon will be great in the White House. Trump is the man who led and starred one of NBC’s most profitable shows, The Apprentice. He knows who to hire. This man, accused of being a woman-hating, homophobic racist has already hired KellyAnne Connway, Peter Thiel, and Dr. Ben Carson. The Anti-Trumpist retort is that they are examples of Trump operating in “rare form”.

Are the protesters in as much danger of Trump as they protest to being? Will Trump retaliate against NBC and other venomous enemies with an onslaught of IRS audits and the like? Historically, no because Trump is not a Democrat.

“Experts” in other countries, disparaged Democrat voters, members from the four corners of Congress, and media talking heads from the four corners of the moon—even Fox News Sunday and debate host extraordinaire Christopher Wallace—did not predict the 2016 US election outcome; Pacific Daily Times Editor in Chief and writer-narrator of this editorial, Jesse Steele, did in early February. The most widely-known prediction of Trump’s victory before Jesse Steele’s was from Richard Nixon’s wife, though Mrs. Nixon didn’t make a map.

A few polls got it right. Khali at Trafalgar polling found a way to get the truth from “shy” Trumpist Conservatives who think they can’t tell the truth to pollsters: “Who is your neighbor voting for?” It’s interesting how we tend to think that our neighbors think how we think.

In their ever-shifting opinions and speculations about Trump, so-called “experts” of 20/20 hindsight who park their pedestals among aftermath should cite their more accurate election maps published before February. As usual, if you read it here, you read it here first, at Pacific Daily Times.

The divide in America is between the archetypal city mice and country mice. The country mice need land to make things in factories and grow food on farms; the city mice manage the market’s business on less and more costly land, all the while consuming the fat of the land they rarely visit. Like a saddle and a horse, a saddle helps, but bareback is an option while a saddle ridden on the fence goes nowhere.

The two are naturally polarized and out of touch with each other; they have formed political right and left extremes. The country mice want production and renaissance while the city mice want fashion and manners. Being a “moderate” in the city-country conflict surmounts to mixing coffee with orange juice at breakfast—both are great, but they need different cups.

As for the controversy of the electoral college, it resurfaces in every presidential election as if it has just surfaced for the first time: It’s a newbie voter’s topic. The basic purpose is, in the event of a very close margin of city mice v country mice, the country mice will win because the country can’t function without the rural backbone. This is why a State gets just two extra votes just for being a State, and all that comes with it. This is why Alaska contributed 3 Republican votes, not just 1, and Hawaii and New Hampshire contributed each 4 Democrat votes, not just 2. That said, there have been no certified reports on how much of Clinton’s 260k vote lead came from illegal voting. We do know that Democrats openly object to measures that prevent illegal voting while moderate Republicans claim to oppose illegal voting, with little or no action to back up that claim. The policies, both actual and claimed, of both Democrats and Republicans brought the vote to what it was.

Pro-Lifers should be glad abortion will likely end. That was the biggest and most lasting direct result of this election, which many people have not realized, yet if ever. Perhaps Religious Right Conservative Christian Anti-Trumpist lamenters could learn a thing or two about gratitude from Liberal Democratic Anti-Trumpist protesters. Trump has managed to inspire shared hashtags for these Conservatives and Liberals. They might actually talk to each other now. That could be a longer-lasting, less direct result of this election. The way has been paved for The People’s Party.

The massive protests against Trump are the result of the country’s public education policies since the 1990’s. Students are given a trophy for showing up and recognition of winners and losers in sports is outright persecuted. Nannying and sissifying young people left the generation of first-time voters ill-prepared to deal with loss. While neither Conservative nor Liberal youth have had much experience training them to deal with the emotions of “losing” something, Conservative parents were more likely to prepare them at home for the things that school neglected. If nothing else, Conservative first-time voters had their first eight years of voting to learn to deal with loss; the Democrats did not.

There would have been protests of some kind either way. These protests are more of a “nasty” nature, involving destruction of private property with little legislative result. Had the election gone the other way, riots would have been replaced with larger, more peaceful, and yet more effective protests. Secession petitions would have been legitimate enough to provoke Congress, involve the Supreme Court, and surely military action, citing Clinton corruption and excess executive orders that Trump promised to undo. This election was somewhat of a “deal”: Get back inside the Constitutional boundaries or rip it up; the electors chose to get back inside the lines, for now. California and Texas will secede eventually, but that will require the “don’t get mad, get busy” action of sobriety and will happen only after elections and wars yet to come.

Contrary to some opinions floating around the “media-osphere”, there actually is a Constitutional basis for secession, though not stated directly. The Federal government is obligated to repel invasion, according to original Article IV. If the US is ever invaded, State secession will be as Constitutional as it is inevitable. The topic California brought up implies a warning to US enemies: Invading the United States at home would not be an act of war against one country, but against fifty. While secession is coming, let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. The president elect still has not taken office, the electoral college has not voted, and the results of many States have not yet been certified by their election authorities. While some things are foreseeable from the vantage point of history, history informs foresight while the two remain separate.

The earthquakes had the final and poetic word after “US election week”: Both sides of the Pacific were shocked and shaken, and, more poetically, the shock in Christchurch started a tsunami.

continue reading

Standard
Symphony

Encore of Revival: America, November 7, 2016

This was the week of chest-thumping before the election. Mass media make their last-minute poll corrections to make it look “close” so that no matter who wins the media can maintain polling credibility. The FBI has gone Agnostic on Hillary. Comey’s metaphoric beat-up, dead horse resurrected himself to shoot himself in the foot; Comey’s career that he had finished is now finished, finished.

A single mother of six could end up in prison for selling food. How dare she! She put the public at risk, and insulted all the companies that pay big, big money to sell food to three people. It would have been safer to sell State secrets without a license. Hillary’s use of her maid to print classified documents doesn’t speak to her disdain for rules of the “top secret” road as much as it speaks to her attitude of superiority. A maid is “too much beneath” her to matter—you don’t try to keep classified information from your dog. More over, protection of the public good isn’t important either—who cares if the Russians discover secrets of sheep and cattle while the dog was fetching documents for the farm.

As for State secrets and ironies, if the US government really was planning a classified cyberattack against Russia they wouldn’t tell NBC News. Notwithstanding that leaking a story is usually best done with a network that is viewed by the public more than foreign governments, leaking “classified stories of a deterrent in the making” is just another strategy of deterrence. Perhaps such “classified leak story” games confused Hillary. Never believe the TV when it says what one government might be planning against another—especially if they say “might“. That’s just governments using non-diplomatic channels of undiplomatic diplomacy. In the East, they call it “State media control”; in America, Congress publicly called it “Operation Blue Book”. For the record, the story didn’t only air on NBC, it was also picked up by Breitbart, which is banned at Pacific Daily Times for having websites that take too long to load. The Blaze is also banned for this reason.

Note that when NBC and Breitbart break the same story, something is amiss. The actual secret that got out with the “Russia, we’re having our media tell you you’d better not interfere with our election” story is that the US government is very set on making sure that the election happens. We already knew that. Not citing their reason for the extra caution indicates that the problem probably came from within; but, that is historically anecdotal. We don’t know the deep reason the government has been making grunts about ensuring that the election happens two months out. That is the actual secret, proving that classified measures are still functioning. The election will happen. So, most people won’t even notice the efforts to make it happen. They are too busy being obsessed with which candidate they hate.

No one notices the real danger: Paul Ryan, who has managed to go from a failed-attempted second-in-line to a successful third-in-line, all while convincing the public that he opposes the very candidate who will grant his closet Liberal party a super-majority. No one notices, though. The voters are too busy being obsessed with which candidate they hate.

Everything we see in the media looks to be orchestrated. Comey demonstrates the powerful non-decision making of Allen Greenspan. Maybe he wants to be the Chairman of the Fed. WikiLeaks didn’t throw an October Surprise, they threw an October Schedule. The government does interviews in media to help the election succeed? The media finally now reports on Clinton problems that have been known for decades? People need a break from all these scheduled surprises. At this point, it’s best to stop talking about the election, go vote, and then get back to work.

continue reading

Standard
Symphony

Encore of Revival: America, October 10, 2016

There is a point where moot meets mud. We are almost to that point. America is in danger because of both Trumpists and anti-Trumpists.

Anti-Trumpists—except “Cruzers”—despise every political opponent Trump cut down prior to the election. What anti-Trumpist likes the Bushes or Karl Rove? What Leftist or “pro-public sector expansionist” likes the Republican agenda? There is a lot of hate for Trump from the people who hate the people whose political careers Trump permanently ruined. They are quite ungrateful for all their enemies he has knocked down when their other “favorites” never did.

Why? The best explanation to this point is that anti-Trumpists live in worlds of “theory”. They aren’t founders of small business employers. They aren’t money-making, bread-winning, hard-working vertebra of the economy’s manufacturing backbone.

Anti-Trumpists include members of third parties who support politicians who lose every election, but somehow still pay their bills with campaign contributions. They work in an office of a company created by someone who is long decease where most of their “professionalism” is tied to “tone of voice” as they enjoy someone else’s wake, thinking it is the entire lake. Or, they live and work in the world of padded furniture, complements of big education. They theorize without ever making waves themselves, without ever cutting the top off the mustard, without having to prove whether their theories even work.

For too long, too many Americans have coached from the bleachers, instructed the driver from the back seat, and commented from the show’s peanut gallery. They criticize and say, “That’s the wrong way to do it,” while seeming to forget that doing a thing the “right way” involves the thing actually getting done. Perhaps, it wasn’t the right or wrong “way” that they were concerned about, but that the thing got done at all, and the “way” was their excuse to object. Or, perhaps they didn’t care whether the thing got done at all, but only about “the right way” exclusive of doing or not doing the thing that did or didn’t get done. And, our nation-wide lack of care for whether or not things get done has brought us to this election.

Trump’s worst is what he has said and how he says it. Both Clinton’s worst is in what they have done when they said the opposite. We all know who supports who. Of all possible criticisms, anti-Trumpists choose the arguments that appear to be most contradictory. One would think one would choose arguments that might hold up better. There are better arguments against Trump than anti-Trumpists give, such as “what would happen if he succeeds”. But, maybe Trump’s “tone” so angers “tone-lovers” that they lose their composure. Anti-Trumpists might be right, but if they knew why they were right, they have kept it a better secret than the contents of emails on a scrubbed email server.

Trumpism and anti-Trumpism are two symptoms of a disease in America—a disease which causes its victims to not know how to actually make stuff work, but to keep using proven-to-fail methods over and over again, expecting success. When some of them first and finally wake-up at last, they leap to the closest go-gettter they find: Trump. And, that’s true of Christians more than any other, both the White Religious Right and the Black Church Democrats, both who support the very poster-boy politicians who yank the football every November—at Thanksgiving, safely after the elections.

Trumpists, want “anything” that might change status quo. It’s almost dangerous. The biggest virtue Trump offers is that he is “different”, the second-biggest is that he has “done” what America needs done more of, namely infrastructure and job-creation. The danger is that Trump might succeed, which means shoes too big to fill and the quick downfall of America thereafter. For too long we have cared about manner more than results. Now, we want to elect someone who will hand us what results we wouldn’t work for.

If only the anti-Trumpists now and the pro-Bushists before had a little more awareness of the real world, the country’s situation would be different. Then, neither Trump nor Hillary could possibly be on the ballot. But, America has a disease of disconnecting theory with the reality it theorizes. So, 2016 has been condemned to a Trump-Hillary ticket.

continue reading

Standard