More Ramblings on the Election, Trump et
al
I am an American patriot.
Always have been, always will be.
I’ve lived a long time, back through the Second World
War. As I come to the final years of my
life, I’ve become somewhat introspective.
A year or so ago I undertook to research and blog a list of moral and
ethical issues that are important in our world, and how I stood on these
issues. My research was long on facts,
and short on anecdotal views. I modified
my views on several key issues. In a nutshell,
I found that I was more Libertarian in nature than I had thought. You can read my rather lengthy blog by
googling my name, Ray Gruszecki. I won’t
bore you by repeating the blog, other than highlighting a couple of key points.
My heritage is Polish-American. My background is blue collar middle class
from New England, and hence, originally FDR Democratic. I have been a Republican from age 17 or so,
onward, but have voted for Democrats on several occasions. For Lyndon Johnson vs Goldwater in 1964 (In
my mid twenties, I thought Goldwater was appallingly too right wing). For Ann Richards as Governor of Texas in 1990
after her opponent Clayton Williams joked that a rape victim should just “lay
back and enjoy it”. I would have voted
for Jack Kennedy in 1960, but I was disenfranchised in both Massachusetts and
New Jersey when I moved to The New York City area. The rest of my voting career has been pretty
much straight Republican
I am a pragmatic conservative with some libertarian
leanings.
I
reluctantly voted for Trump, and primarily
against the corrupt Clinton cabal. There
wasn’t much there to choose from folks.
The other choices were Gary Johnson, who couldn’t remember what and where
Aleppo, the largest city in Syria was, and Jill Stein, a raging left-winger,
who made Bernie Sanders look like Sean Hannity.
I have always considered myself a “pragmatic
conservative”. I believe in personal
responsibility, that we are responsible for our own actions and
well-being. I believe in helping others
who are less fortunate by providing the wherewithal for them to improve their
own lot. This means a “hand up” rather
than a “hand out”. I am proud of
America, and have never been apologetic about being an American, no matter
where in the world I lived. I won’t go on about American conservatism or
libertarianism or liberalism there is plenty available on the internet, and
tomes have been written on those topics.
I would like to comment briefly on the recent election
result. I’ll try not to be offensive or
controversial, but my personal honesty comes first.
First, the media. - What
can I say? They all unabashedly backed Clinton rather than reporting the news
(except Fox), and they were all woefully wrong, as were their vaunted
polls. Now they are back pedaling and
justifying and figuring out who to throw under the bus. They all should be ashamed, but they won’t
be, because they are part of the corrupt and dishonest cabal that won’t go
away, and that the voters in this election rebelled against. The media will continue to support “cry ins”
and demonstrations against an election that expressed the voice of the people.
Then, the Obamas and all of their Washington minions. Try as they may toward the end of the race,
they failed to put glitter and shine on the corrupt and inept Clintons. The same can be said for the free concerts by
numerous pop stars brought out, presumably to popularize the Clintons and energize
the millennials.
Next, all the rest of the liberal elitist thinkers,
plotters, intelligentsia, professors, newspapers, liberal bloggers and others –
all so badly wrong. And all of this amassed agglomeration of so called
intelligence was unable to accurately gauge the true will of the people. They were so blinded by their own distorted view
of their own touchy-feely and politically correct importance, to see the forest
for the trees. One way of categorizing
it is by calling it Brexit 2.
Unfortunately, the election didn’t end the lies and bias. Just turn on CNN, NBC, ABC. CBS and read the
New York Times for more of the same slanted news.
Trump, Clinton, Obama – So far they have all acted with
responsibility and grace. Let’s hope it
continues. At some point Obama and our
current government needs to rein in the rioters and looters before something
serious happens. There have been
virtually no pro-Trump or right wing demonstrations, although the biased media
rolls out individual incidents perpetrated against minorities as if these
single events represented a more general movement. There have also been reports of left wing
groups trying to frame Trump voters, and also reports of left wing paid looters
and rioters. A timely warning might be to
“remember that these deplorables that these riots are against do indeed have
their bibles and guns”.
Clinton wins the popular vote – according to the New York
Times, as of November 17, she won the popular vote by about one million
votes. She won California by about 3.1 million
votes. Hypothetically, taking extremely
liberal California out of the mix, Trump won the rest of the country, including
New York and Illinois, by about 2.1 million votes. We know where ultra-liberal California’s
sensibilities are. Doing this exercise
shows where the rest of the country’s preferences are, in addition to the 306
electoral votes Trump won.
Who voted for Trump? – An analysis on the
Pew
Research report on the election shows that Trump did very well across the
“rust belt, but did not really do much worse with the voters that the massed so
called “experts” said would be his demise, i.e., women, blacks and
Latinos.
It also shows that Hillary
failed to energize these same voters, that were to be her bulwark.
A closer look also shows that the few percent
that Johnson and Stein accumulated had a massive effect on the final result.
I’ve heard commentary by responsible media people (Chris Matthews of MSNBC, if
I remember correctly), comment on The crowds amassed at the Trump rallies,
Not only the large numbers, but also the
nature of the very enthusiastic attendees.
Flannel shirts, jeans, work boots _
“my God, most of them are Democrats”.
The Pew study also shows that Trump did very well among
non-college graduate white voters, and with evangelicals. This has already been seized upon by the
amassed liberal cabal described above, that Trump was elected by “white trash uneducated
white men”, and by the “deplorables holding on to their guns and bibles. While true that Trump did do well with these
groups, the study also shows that Trump also did reasonably well with college
educated men and women, with blacks and with Latinos, particularly in
Florida. Hillary failed to resonate with
the groups that were supposedly solidly in her camp. She did not improve with women, blacks,
Latinos and college educated voters over what Obama did in the last two
elections. It is obvious, that even
among these normally pro liberal groups, Clinton was a flawed candidate. She carried simply too much baggage, too much
lawbreaking and getting away with it, too much corruption, too much collusion
with special interest groups, too much elitism and smugness, too much cloying
political correctness from the Obama years.
And what about Trump’s reason for running? One thing that can be said about him is that
he has lived 70 years without being a politician, has been very outspoken and
not very careful about his verbiage. He
was only running for political office for a little over a year, and his loquaciousness
and gregariousness certainly did not diminish.
In fact it seems to have increased as part of a plan to stay on top of
the news because of his outrageousness.
It appears that some of this outrageousness came from his reality show
and Hollywood years. He turned serious
and reasonable as the presidential race drew to a close, reflecting his
education and long business experience.
He obviously was a high living, brash, promoter, playboy and
ladies’ man for many years, owning his own palatial apartments and homes, planes,
helicopters, yachts, etc. In terms of
creature comforts, Air Force One and the White House are downgrades for
Trump. So why expose himself to the abuse
and vituperativeness of a year and a half of political
campaigning, followed by the toughest job in the world? I believe we have to acknowledge that he saw
this country in dire straits and decided to do something about it. It seems that just doing it for the power
would not be worth it. So I think we have to accept his patriotism.
What now? The media hasn’t changed, as I mentioned
above. Trump is working on his cabinet
and tweeting occasionally on his activities and mostly against the false
coverage by the NYT and other media.
Maybe some of these media will shape up and become more truthful now
that they have someone as powerful as Trump vetting them, but let’s not hold
our breath. The media collectively
continues to be anti-Trump, pro law-breaking rioters and looters and a
continuing divisive force in the country.
Hey, it’s time to shape up.
Voters in the country spoke on election night. It’s time to support the President-Elect and
not try to second guess his appointments or back protests or sign petitions
against him. Not that these media
actions will have much impact on Trump.
They didn’t during the election, and they won’t now.
It’s
interesting to see the activity in the Congress and amongst other Washington
insiders. He doesn’t owe them anything
and they don’t know what he is yet, other than a populist phenomenon that won
the presidency. Of course the Congress
don’t owe Trump anything either, so that sort of equalizes things. Remember Trump was a Democrat once and has
expressed Democrat, Republican and Libertarian sentiments in his mostly
self-financed run to the top. Also, no
one really knows if any of the outrageous points he made during the election
are real, or mostly election rhetoric.
So far he seem to have taken a measured approach as regards his
transition team, (notwithstanding Steve Bannon), and is acting quite
presidential in other ways.
I heard Bob
Woodward, famous for Watergate, a Democrat and liberal, and currently an
associate editor of the Washington Post at a luncheon at the Belo Mansion in
downtown Dallas recently. From my notes
on Woodward’s comments on Trump (whom he has interviewed) - Trump likes
to bring out the rage in people. Trump
prides himself as the Lone Ranger, meting out old fashioned Western
justice. Trump has great velocity and
ferociousness. However Woodward feels
Trump’s leadership will be pragmatic, not dogmatic.
Obama recently spoke in Greece and Germany and commented on
the new President Elect. Now Obama is
quite intelligent and a very good orator. He is a nice guy – personable,
charismatic, witty, charming. His
approval ratings are in the mid 50 percent range even though he has mismanaged
or failed to manage both our domestic and foreign affairs. Lack of any apparent foreign policy is one
glaring defect. Obamacare here is a
social and economic disaster. The Iran
nuclear deal is a foreign policy disaster.
Yet he is popular, probably primarily to the younger set because of the
attributes listed above, handsome, personable, witty, etc. Obama’s comments in Greece and Germany were nicely
stated, as many of Obama’s speeches are.
While he didn’t criticize Trump directly, his admonition that Trump
become serious as president reflected the same old liberal smugness and
superciliousness that our electorate found so stifling in Hillary. Obama seems taken with his own empty, rock
star popularity, to the exclusion of his deficiencies. Another quote from Bob Woodward after
interviewing David Cameron of the UK several years ago, Cameron opined “Obama is a nice chap, but no one in the
world is afraid of him” - i.e. no one in the world respects him, or the
U.S. Unfortunately, Obama views the
world as he would like it to be, not as it actually is.
What can I say further about the amassed media and news
manipulation apparatus in the country?
They haven’t missed a beat, (well maybe a little one early morning
November 9th, when they realized how woefully wrong they and their
polls were). They continue to smugly
criticize and try to second guess the President Elect and his cabinet
choices. They continue to echo what they
posit as humanitarian concerns which actually mask the same cloying liberal
“holier than thou” attitudes that the country voted against. They can’t seem to
absorb that the real down to earth people of this country have had enough of
the Northeast and West Coast elitists telling then what to do, how to think and
ridiculing their morals, ethics and religious beliefs. And this same liberal elitist cabal goads on
the rioters and looters hiding as lawful protesters in our streets. They also support the “cry-ins”, safety pin
zones and other maudlin responses to a lawful election, rather than calling for
calm and rational responses to what is to many of our young people a life
disappointment.
Some further thoughts.
The whole world has become and is continuing to be less restrictive and
more liberalized with time. This is an
obvious and measurable trend. Some
recent examples in our own society are legalization of marijuana, increased
acceptance of same sex marriage, legalized gambling and many other such
activities that were once prohibited or off limits, and are now legal and acceptable. Simultaneously, the “thinkers” and “elitists”
of the world have posited morals, ethics and behavior which reflects this
liberalization and which fosters secularism, globalism, political correctness
and socialism. This thinking has been inculcated in our universities, media and
intelligentsia to the point of becoming ubiquitous and pervading the mores of
our centennials, millennials, gen x-ers and, particularly university graduates. This same elite group comprises the people
with six figure incomes in our economy who partake of their five dollar lattes,
send their kids to private schools and otherwise live an abundant life. Left out of this eclectic mix are the
remainder of Americans, not only those in the rust belt and fly-over country,
but also many others who have seen their jobs disappear, their morals eroded,
and their values ridiculed by the elitists on both coasts. Try as they may, they are economically
moribund, many times with second tier
jobs with two wage earners, while the powers in Washington tell them how low
unemployment and the crime rate are, and how great Obama has made the
country. They don’t see it, their life
sucks, - and along comes Trump, identifying with them and offering to “make
America great again”. Of course they
voted for him in such substantial numbers.
Something needed to be done, and here he was to do it.
A similar reaction is taking place in Europe. The UK leaving the EU is one example. Other examples are the Euroskeptic populist parties
in virtually every European country. I
made a survey about six months ago of the various European countries comprising
the European Union and found the same kind of dissatisfaction in Europe as in
the U.S. See my blog.
I believe that the Trump reset here and similar ant-establishment
actions in Europe are temporary. They
will not stem the tide of liberalization across the world, but they will give
us an opportunity to take pause and review our values and where we are going,
hopefully with some positive impact. We
certainly will not revert to some form of repressive tribalism. Simply, too many people have smart phones for
that. But Trump and his administration
for 4 or 8 years will give us pause, give us time to rethink some of our
values, and perhaps establish some guidelines that are a little less
wishy-washy than the completely permissive and otherwise moribund government of
the last eight years.
November 20, 2016
Ray Gruszecki
