Tag: President

12:01pm – 01/20/2021 – KEEP IT SIMPLE

Keep it simple. 12:01 pm, 1/20/2021Like everyone else, I’ve been riding a terrible roller coaster of highs—Biden wins!—and soul twisting lows—what if Trump refuses to go, what if GOP legislatures manage to void the popular vote, and various opinions on the spectre of constitutional crisis.

Then I woke up this morning and had an epiphany of clarity. Let’s, as the military says, keep it simple stupid. And let’s recall the logic of Occam’s Razor: the simplest answer is usually the right one.

In the latter case above, if GOP legislatures do indeed connive to override the popular vote with rigged electors, we have a problem. In that case, there is going to be hell to pay, and possibly a full Uncivil War. That is the worst case scenario, and one that is probably very unlikely. For that to happen, the Republicans will have to get past actual judges, as in state supreme courts. History tells us that judges, even Republican judges, are much harder to pervert than are politicians.So let’s put that possible but highly unlikely nightmare aside and deal with the more likely situation.

What if, after votes are recounted and re-audited ad infinitum and Joseph Biden is reaffirmed over and over as the President, Trump says he won’t go. I’ve been reading a plethora of hand-wringing discussions about the Constitution not providing for such a bizarre situation. I think they are all missing the point. Remember Occam’s Razor. Remember what the Sergeant says, keep it simple stupid. The answer is right in front of us.

The founding fathers weren’t so dumb after all, at least not in this case, but their ghosts are probably thinking we are.12:01 pm, eastern standard time, January 21st, 2021. Joe Biden is President and Kamala Harris is Vice-President. The entire power of the federal government is removed from Donald Trump and vested in them. All of the people who work within the government, including the Congress, (except for a few Trump toadies) know this. The FBI knows it. The Secret Service knows it. The National Security Agency knows it. The U.S. Military certainly knows it, and I can’t think of anyone more united in their dedication to the Constitution rather than an individual than them.

The entire structure of our government knows who will be President the moment Joe Biden finishes taking the oath. We should, and can, expect their heads to swivel from Trump to Biden with the smoothness and certainty of a Swiss watch movement. Donald Trump will still be defiant. He will still be loud. But he will in that instant lose every ounce of power he possesses. He will be squatting on property which is not his. Whether he leaves on his own or is politely but firmly guided out of the White House by the FBI and Secret Service, he is done and gone.

But what if he exhorts his demented followers to violence in his defense, as he may do? And what if they respond, as many of have threatened to? The answer to that is, again, simple. There is no need to make it complicated. They will be committing armed acts of sedition, and should be dealt with accordingly. With whatever force is necessary. Police? Absolutely. National Guard? Most assuredly. 101st Airborne? Marines? Navy Seals? Absolutely. Because any way you look at it, armed sedition is armed sedition. It is treason. There should be no confusion or hand-wringing about how to deal with it.

It would be sad, and it would be unpleasant as hell. But I remember Ben Franklin’s statement: “We have given you a republic. If you can keep it.” In retrospect, this is exactly the kind of situation the good doctor probably envisioned as a possibility. I don’t think he felt he should have to explain it. Americans have voted. The voice of the majority is clear and decisive, by six million votes. The peace of the nation is not now in their hands. The responsibility for that is in the hands of that segment of Trump voters who threaten violence.

They can parade, carry banners and flags, raise their voices. They can do all of this, peacefully, and that is their absolute right. Raising up arms and resorting to sedition because they are unhappy about losing at the polls, is not. It must be met with whatever level of force is necessary.12:01 pm, 1/20/2021—Keep It Simple.

Joe Biden? I don’t think so

Dems and progressive Americans need to move on from Biden. With him, they are trying to beat Trump with a man who is, at best, a C+ centrist. He promises too much “business as usual,” minus only the worst of Trump. He is weak on environment. He will fail to take/support the serious steps needed to forestall an environmental Armageddon. He is either tolerant of white supremacists, or a coatroom supporter. He is either uninclined or afraid to ruffle the feathers of the wealthy oligarchs. The more we hear from him, the more we learn about him, the stronger grows my belief that while he is not a ‘bad’ guy, he is certainly no beacon of progress. Underlining perhaps all of the above, the more we see of Joe, the more we realize he is no intellectual, no great thinker. He is the kind of man who may be qualified to follow the lead established by such a person, but not qualified to be such a one.

Joe Biden is in no way fit to lead America down the path it must follow post-Trump. With Joe Biden as President, America will spend four or eight years failing to gather any momentum on environmental salvation (if that is even possible at this point), equal rights, the destruction of the middle class, or beating back the surge of racists and extreme religious cultists empowered by Trump. He was effective as Barack Obama’s Sancho. He is, himself, no Don Quixote.

Joe Biden offers America neither a Kennedy nor a Johnson, an FDR nor an Obama. He represents a centrist compromise that tends to teeter toward the right. His history is too shady with too many questionable comments and stances, and “…no longer that person” goes only so far. He is in no way the strong progressive leader our country needs at this point in history.

Do NOT Call Donald Trump Stupid

Do NOT mistake or underestimate Donald Trump. He realizes damned well that informed Americans know this kind of tweet, and all the ones like it are bullshit. They are not intended for informed Americans. They are intended to keep his core supporters engaged and enraged. This is exactly what Trump’s angry,  poorly informed and analytically challenged supporters call “..talking like us.” He knows that the secret to his success is holding onto that rabid base, including racists, white supremacists, and the uneducated poor, then getting just enough others to cross the line because of various personal dissatisfactions, whether it be closet racism of Barack Obama, hatred of Hillary Clinton, or economic dissatisfaction. 
 
   Donald Trump is woefully ignorant in most of the ways that we judge as genuine intelligence and intellectual capacity. He is clearly narcissistic and psychotic, a veritable textbook sociopath. He is a serial liar, but one that can sell those lies like few in history.
   He is the granite statue of the con man who can sell ice in the Arctic and sand in the Sahara. He is the role model for ministers who live in million dollar mansions by taking the last dollars from already poor worshipers. If he had lived in the old west in the 1800’s, he would have lived in luxury while selling snake oil for fifty cents a bottle. If you believe in the antichrist, he will look and sound like Donald Trump.
   Donald Trump is brilliant in his understanding of how to manipulate the most vulnerable people around him in order to build and maintain a power base. His expertise is in doing this while preventing the people upon whom he preys (and depends) from seeing behind his curtain. He is then ruthless in ridding his personal power circle of anyone who disagrees with him.
  
   Calling Donald Trump stupid dismisses him without truly understanding the danger he represents. It creates a false sense of security. a comfortable sense of safety from him. It provides an illusion that he is mentally incompetent and therefore not really dangerous. It weakens resistance. It helps us to think it will all be okay because after all, he’s stupid.
 
That is the worst mistake we can make. Donald Trump is the most dangerous individual to surface since the end of WWII.
 
   Donald Trump is Adolf Hitler, right down the line, all the way to the last point of comparison. All that remains to be seen is if he has the same kind of world domination psychosis as did Hitler. He cannot be allowed to answer that question.