The Perils of Decoding “Coded” Language

Mike Barnicle appears frequently on MSNBC’s Morning Joe to offer his political commentary. Barnicle lurks in the shadows of left wingery, though he seems reasonably well educated and experienced. Some websites describe him as an award-winning broadcast and print journalist. He brings some cred to the table.

Barnicle tries his best to appear middle-of-the-road and equanimous. When the going gets tough, however, he quickly reveals his true sentiments.

Tuesday morning the Morning Joe crew played a clip of Trump speaking at one of his rallies. The successful real estate mogul identified once again to the audience his sense that the autocratic party establishments and their media collaborators rig campaigns and elections to suit their desired outcome. Trump named a few locales where he thought such rigging was in process, such as Philadelphia and St. Louis.

Barnicle did some processing of his own. His rusty, coughing mental machinery produced this delightful, if trite, commodity: Trump was employing “coded” language. Crusty Barnicle declared the Republican nominee’s reference to Philly and St. Louis, and one other city I can’t remember, meant The Donald was pointing at one subversive culprit: blacks – a.k.a. African-Americans!

WWWOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!

By virtue of his implication, Barnicle’s puffy righteousness pronounced Trump a racist, thereby repeating and reaffirming and confirming all of Hillary’s and all of her clamorous media collaborators’ blathering about Trump’s nasty penchant for hate.

Never mind that Trump has continually identified wealthy and powerful elites and special interests and their media lackeys as the culprits, and that 99% of blacks, thanks to the mismanaged Obama economy, cannot be a part of that cabal. For that matter, probably 90% or more of whites, orientals, Indians, gays, women, Hispanics, and any other minority you can contemplate, cannot and are not a part of that special clique either.

Facing that truth would require Barnicle to search his calloused soul. He can’t do that. That would mean he and his bias have been part of the problem. “No! No! It cannot be mmmeeeeeeee!”

Hillary and her media collaborators often resort to labeling to convey a message. She does not have anything substantive to say about Trump, so she just calls him a racist. Why? No particular reason. He does not want to suppress black voters. In fact, he wants more of them to vote for him. She does not name any fact to support her contention. Oh, every now and again she’ll say that something Trump said or did will “equate” to racism. Some KKKer was in his audience of tens of thousands. Or he didn’t out of the blue condemn someone or something.

Of course, Hillary selects carefully what she wants to highlight. Trump does, after all, condemn those who kill Americans and others because of their perverted religious beliefs. Ah! That’s different! That condemnation of evil is bad. Its xenophobic or religiophobic or something.

Hillary is such a scammer! Such a con artist! Such a two-face! So are her media collaborators.

Hillary cannot tell the truth. If she ever does, her narrative that Trump is a divider will fall apart. She can’t allow that to happen, eh?

I don’t know how Barnicle built his reputation. It certainly wasn’t on objectivity. It’s probably one of those situations where all his professional and personal pals got together to laud his partial reporting. It’s funny how Barnicle wants to decode Trump’s hidden meaning when he can’t even figure out the plain meaning in the emails produced by Wikileaks that Hillary’s lackeys at the Department of State wanted a quid pro quo deal with the FBI: we’ll allow more foreign assignments of your agents, if you change the classification of Hillary’s emails.

Not even a raised eyebrow for the obvious.

But Barnicle – oooooooooo! – Barnicle can decipher Trump’s secret messages. Stay tuned. Next time Trump mentions the city “Orlando” by name, you’ll know he’s hating on Mickey and Pluto.

Bill Bashes Obamacare; Hillary Laughs at Voters

An amazing thing happened yesterday. Former President Bill Clinton called the Affordable Health Care Act – known widely as “Obamacare” – crazy. In fact, he named it, “the craziest thing in the world.”

The former president said Obamacare was crazy because it has imposed an unbearable burden on middle class Americans who were working “60 hours a week” to pay for it to succeed, a burden that has punished them financially.

It’s not the first time Mr. Clinton has savaged the piece of legislation that the current president, Mr. Obama, considers the signature act of his presidency and his legacy, and which Mr. Clinton’s wife, Hillary, has vowed to perpetuate.

You can hear or read the former president’s exact words here:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/04/politics/bill-clinton-obamacare-craziest-thing/index.html

and here:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/bill-clinton-criticizes-obamacare-calls-u-s-healthcare-crazy-article-1.2817355

To be fair, Mr. Clinton did not advocate for a complete turn away from universal health care, though he did not advocate a strict staying with it either. He did suggest that at least in the respect he described, Obamacare was a failure that needed urgent attention for a remedy.

The bottom line, however, is that “affordable” health care isn’t affordable for everyone. A huge chunk of hardworking Americans, the mainstream of this country, is being punished to make it work. The reason that is so is because huge corporations were granted an inexpensive out from the system, which many have taken, and the 25 million persons now allegedly covered by Obama’s plan put absolutely nothing into it.

Pundits and people alike are struggling to reconcile Mr. Clinton’s denunciation of Obamacare and his wife’s angry, dogmatic support of it. Some explanations have been proposed, and we will review them and add a possibility.

It’s not just that Mr. Clinton disagrees with his wife; it’s that he has more than once disagreed with her on this issue. So there has been time for Hillary’s campaign to school Mr. Clinton on what he can and cannot say. Hillary has said her husband will be a major source of counsel and management in her administration, perhaps her chief advisor. So she knows and has known exactly where he stands.

So what’s up with Mr. Clinton’s denunciation of Obamacare?

Some are explaining it as Bill out of control, in discord with his wife and with Mr. Obama, the latter with whom he shares no lost love. His stunning frankness reveals at the least his intention to influence his wife away from the system constructed by Obamacare, perhaps completely away from universal health care at least as embodied in the existing legislation. Mr. Clinton, who was willing to deal with Republicans to help create a solvent administration that eventually created a financial surplus, wants to see his wife replace the affordable health care act with something different that keeps alive the ideal of universal health care but through pragmatic legislation that would reject Obama’s financially destructive act.

A toned down version of that explanation suggests that Mr. Clinton is signaling to Republicans that Hillary will compromise on the affordable health care act, something she cannot say during her campaign, while signaling faithful Democrats that she will never relinquish the ideal of universal health care. In this scenario, the affordable health care would be modified – significantly – but some sections would be left intact. This also provides a give-and-take with Republicans. In exchange, Hillary will want something else, and she will expect the Republicans to give it to her. For the time being, Mr. Clinton may have to walk back or appear to walk back his comments, but the long term signal is clear: Hillary will deal where Obama wouldn’t. It’s her own version of Trump’s “nothing is sacred, nothing is off the table” without her declaring such.

This is both good and bad for the American people, if it is true. The achievement of ideological and policy objectives requires either overwhelming support or compromise. In this day of polarization, compromise will usually fit the bill. Things will get done, and that alone would be a vast improvement over the Obama administration.

Compromise also reveals, however, the underlying reality of an establishment class divided into two factions who wield power for their enrichment and satisfaction. The give-and-take is for them, and only collaterally, if at all, serves the public in the sense that the public must be kept mollified just enough to go along with their decisions and to remain blind and deaf to what is really going on. It’s a kind of “Shove this bottle of formula in your mouth while mommy and daddy decide what we are doing” philosophy of governance. The baby consumes the formula and falls asleep. Mommy and daddy shovel the baby into the crib in a room upstairs at the back of the house. Mommy and daddy party wildly with the other mommies and daddies downstairs.

In a democracy, each and every citizen is a mommy or daddy. No one should lord over them. However, our system is not set up that way any more, from the limited two parties to the donor class who can pump fistfuls and suitcases of dollars into shaping policy and buying the allegiance of lawmakers. Our democracy is failing us, and too many of us cannot see it.

A third explanation is simply that Mr. Clinton, much older now (70), is speaking with the frankness of age. He’s looked at Obamacare and he doesn’t like it. Mr. Clinton believes it’s a bad policy that doesn’t work, even though his wife may have no desire to make anything but minor tweaks to it. He doesn’t reflect her or her campaign’s thinking at all but, in spite of his prevarications about his sexual conduct, just wants to give his straight observations to his fellow Americans. That neither makes him conservative nor denies his liberality, nor does it mean he stands against universal health care. He just thinks the Obamacare legislation was the wrong tool to get it done, and he’s not going to fudge it for his wife, perhaps much to her chagrin.

This explanation, too, has merit. Mr. Clinton, the politician par excellence, has shown signs of weariness along the campaign trail. He wants people to know what he’s thinking, and even he has his times where he cannot tolerate the BS. Mr. Clinton desires policies that work as much as policies that achieve his objectives. He does not believe the two are incompatible, and he is genuinely shocked at the machinery of the Obamacare legislation, which punishes a large segment of hardworking American citizens.

This looms as a key difference between Mr. Clinton and his wife.

Like Mr. Obama, Hillary stands out as an ideologue first and foremost who pulls and twists reality to conform to her ideology and its desired outcomes. Mr. Clinton is a liberal idealist but a pragmatist, too. He works to achieve his liberal objectives within the shape of reality.

Understand that neither the terms “ideologue” nor “liberal idealist but a pragmatist, too” are intended to imply that either Hillary or Mr. Clinton always act in accordance with their meanings. There are times when all of us wax ideological or pragmatic regardless of the category into which we generally fall. Many times other categories prevail in our reflection and decision-making. Thoughts and emotions swirl within a complexity we don’t always understand, at least not right away.

Generally speaking, however, Hillary and Mr. Clinton can be understood in the manner described.

A fourth explanation lies in the dishonesty and pridefulness that blemishes Hillary’s character. Hillary has marked her career by support for policies she varnishes with the rhetoric of “fighting for women” or “fighting for the middle class” or possession of a “fitness” or “temperament” for office or a “resumé of experience” that will bring stability and security and prosperity to American citizens. Yet she, and perhaps her husband, too, mock those who support her, precisely because she knows they are accepting her faux reasoning.

Remember when Hillary was asked whether she wiped her private server of government emails or ordered that her server be wiped? Do you remember what she said and how she said it?

“What, like, with a cloth or something?”

You can surf to YouTube and query “hillary wiped server with cloth”, and you will find a multitude of videos to choose from, including videos from Bloomberg and CNN, enemies of Trump and supporters of Clinton.

“What, like, with a cloth or something?”

The profundity of significance in her faux question does not even lie with its dissembling, although that is an element of the profundity. Rather, it lies with the attitude that gave birth to the dissembling, the notion that she could look reasonably intelligent reporters in the eye and American viewers in the eye and mock them by saying something she knew was disingenuous and something she knew was a flimsy cover for the fact that she did have her server wiped!

That attitude of mockery persists in every defect of her performance as a professional politician. That’s why she lied about sending and receiving classified material on her private server, in violation of the law and the protocols that governed the management of classified material. She already knew she would not be prosecuted. She is saying, “I can do what I want, and you won’t touch me, and I am still going to govern this country and run your lives. I am going to lie to you, make it obvious, and provide an explanation you will be only too willing to accept because I have taken – and you have given me – influence over your minds.”

Hillary Clinton is living proof of Neal Stephenson’s concept of mindshare and the ability of collectives (in his book, In the Beginning Was the Command Line, collective or collectivist corporations) to establish and grow a toehold in people’s minds to the point where people accept and defend that corporate view willingly.

Hillary is not alone. Many other elitist practitioners of mindshare exist on all sides of the ideological spectrum. Indeed, she has drawn endorsements and support from many of them. But the strength of her arrogance and her snobbery elevates her even among other elitist practitioners. Yet her supporters do not, perhaps cannot, because of their intellectual abdication, see it or act on it.

So when Mr. Clinton spits on the features and working of Obamacare, and Hillary allows him to, it is a part of her psychology, of her pattern of gamesmanship: letting Americans know what she really is and yet convincing them to pull the lever for her and her wasteful policies anyway. That’s why she screamed with all the affectation of indignation, “What difference does it make!?” during a senate hearing.

Please, examine carefully what she said. Her reply to the question of obtaining timely information to make a decision about what to do in Benghazi was to say:

“With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest? Or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and to do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator.”

First, please note that Hillary was asked to respond to a question about why she didn’t pick up the phone, call the ambassador in Benghazi or others there, to find out exactly what was happening. She avoided answering at first. Afterward, she said she didn’t want to interfere with the process and uttered her notorious “what difference does it make” line.

Second, Hillary was asking about an event over which she had authority and management. She was not someone “outside of the process”. As secretary of state, other than the president, she was the chief part of the process. She, of her own choice, became an aloof outsider to the process with fatal consequences.

Third, Hillary tosses in an axiom about what should be done from this point on to obscure her accountability for what should have been done before the murders by terrorists occurred at Benghazi. Sure, she should figure out what happened, since she didn’t know beforehand, so death can be prevented in the future; that does not exclude the requirement that it was her job to figure out what was going on, either before it went down or as it was going down, to prevent the unnecessary deaths of our four fellow Americans in the first place. That’s why she received classified diplomatic and intelligence information that she illicitly stored on her server.

This is a huge point. Every western country with an embassy or consulate in Benghazi pulled out its people. They pulled out their people because they knew an attack was coming. They knew who it was coming from, too. The only person and the only government in the western world that maintained a diplomatic presence in Benghazi in spite of overwhelming evidence and information that that presence was in peril was the government that spun around the Obama-Hillary axis, the United States.

It’s unfortunate to have to say it, but Hillary has no shame. She then further torqued the whole Benghazi tale and flatly lied to the faces of the relative-survivors of the four Americans murdered about why they had been murdered: Libyans were protesting an anti-Muslim film. Then she lied to everyone else about what she had said to the relatives of the murdered! A mountain of lies!

One cannot exaggerate the immensity and offensiveness of the personal lie Hillary told to the surviving relatives of the Americans murdered in Benghazi. It’s offensiveness is bloated to the greatest, most expansive proportions. And It’s impossible to exaggerate the immensity and the baldfacedness of the lie that an anti-Muslim movie generated the murderous riot in Benghazi. Playing on the guilt some Americans feel about their natural aversion to Islam and its tenets of violence and its prophets of violence, she blamed the murders of four Americans on America and Americans. Americans are anti-Islamic and thus anti-diversity and anti-compassion and so we made a film that ridiculed Mohammed and Islam (thought we had free speech) and WE brought death to our own people. It’s a terrorist’s, and a murderer’s, dream: “I murdered you because you caused me to murder you. It’s your own fault!”

Mindshare. Hillary has captured it from her supporters, well-meaning but terribly misled and intellectually abused supporters. You may not think or believe or even entertain anything ill about Islam or Islamics, but you may think, believe, and entertain anything ill about yourself and your country.

That’s the tie-in with Mr. Clinton’s stunningly frank disembowelment of Obamacare. Hillary is laughing at you, because she and Obama took an ideal, twisted it into an unworkable policy, got you to accept it (got Congress to accept it without even reading it!). She’s telling you, through herself or her husband, that she is feeding you fecal matter and getting you to eat it anyway. She’s telling you, signaling to you, that she is lying to you, and then employing the simplest, most indignant, and most intellectually subversive excuses to protest the truth of her lies, and finally laughing at you when she obtains your acceptance, if not your agreement!

Sophistication and truth are not the same thing.

That has been her victory. That is the contest she really wants to win. Winning the presidency is simply the crown to her pathology of egomania and prevarication.

As much as any shame that accrues to her, we the voters are full of shame if we accept her and elect her.

Caveat emptor!

British Boobs, and Pics of Angry Muslims!

The United Kingdom once stood as a noble, righteous nation – flawed, granted – but always striving for excellence. The expansion of the English culture and language owes to the English spirit: tough, never-say-die, idealistic, inquiring, seeking the good of the Crown and its peoples, noble yet democratic, industrious, and profitable. From England’s womb emerged the greatest, freest countries on Earth: the United States, the Dominion of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Now we see the decadence of the once proud empire and its prime nation. Certainly, it could be expected that such a limited number of people would not secure primacy forever. Yet it is not England’s martial primacy that we miss, but the dissolution and disintegration of its spirit, the utter effeminization of its character!

Yesterday, on Monday, January 18^th, A.D. 2016, the British Parliament debated whether to ban Donald Trump from entry into its country. Trump is the leading Republican candidate for the presidency of the United States. The request for the ban derived from a petition seeking it and signed by over half a million people (that isn’t even a fifth of Britain’s 2.7 million Muslims, a 2011 census figure from its Office for National Statistics).

Oddly, the reason for the request was the irritation of some petitioners over Trump’s proposed temporary ban on Muslims entering the U.S. Trump wants to establish an effective vetting procedure first to make sure Muslim terrorists do not slaughter American citizens by getting lost in a crowd of students or refugees or by stealth when they enter the country.

So some Brits proposed a ban because a ban was proposed. The difference is that Trump’s ban would keep out bloody murderers; the British ban strangles free speech and political action. No less a person than Prime Minister David Cameron called Trump’s remarks, “divisive, stupid, and wrong.”

Others said even worse things, such as the Labour Party’s candidate for mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who misfired rhetorically when he said that he hoped Mr. Trump’s “campaign dies a death.”

Some Brits spewed vitriol over Trump’s additional comments that some sections of London were so radicalized that the police did not want to enter them. One can only wonder what Londoners really think, those who have to go about their lives day-to-day, as opposed to the rosy picture England’s politicos want to present, like it has always been safe for people and police to go into ethnically or racially unique neighborhoods! There’s an investigative piece for the British press.

The real problem that exists is a philosophical fascism in England and in these United States that chokes off ideas and expression unless it conforms to some 1984ish standard of tolerance and diversity. Say something the government doesn’t like, or some misfit doesn’t like, and they’ll clap the hate speech label on you like flypaper and prosecute your ass!

I’m Hispanic, but you know what? I’m proud of America’s white Anglo-Saxon and Christian heritage. It may be far from perfect, but an inspection of the rest of the world reveals it is a lot better than most, if not all.

This is the movement we are seeing in the United States: people vomiting on the proliferation of political correctness tyrannizing the country and overthrowing it. Citizens have had their fill of the spoiled, sissified diversity-thumpers calling the shots with their hissy fits, wrecking our culture, and promoting godlessness and corruption while allowing a ghetto mentality to fester and spread like a virus. We are tired of having our values pissed on and told its wrong to bring them to the public marketplace, even as the diversity thumpers demand the acceptance of theirs. We hate to see excellence dropped as a standard and mere participation made the rule. Down with the notion that an idea is the best not because it is the best, but because it represents “the marginalized” or because it includes everybody or makes everything “accessible.”

What all those words are is code, code for “we are going to gut your Christianity and your political liberty and your Constitution to make our foolproof world where nobody gets hurt and the consideration of the offended is primary, except if you adhere to the white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture from which you emerged. That must be disintegrated and a new, exotic culture established.”

No More!

We have had it with your phony tolerance, which is actually quite intolerant. We are sick of your imposed understanding of diversity, which is another word for a mess. And if you don’t like the fact that the United States is going to take measures to protect itself, including banning murderous Muslims, who should be required to reject the verses of violence in the Quran anyway, give us a call when you experience the next Muslim mass murder.

It is you, David Cameron, who are stupid and wrong, and you lie to paper over the ills brought on by the migration of Muslim hordes to your country. You were elected to represent and serve your people, but instead you think it is your job to engineer them socially. Reports of unrest and danger from Muslim residents in London surfaced long before Trump’s comments. Divisiveness in and of itself is not wrong. Citizens – in your case, subjects – have a right and a responsibility to debate the merits of the people whose faith intrinsically advocates violence against “infidels”, i.e., anyone who is not Muslim. How stupid of you to reject a temporary ban on Muslim entry to secure the well-being of your subjects but to denounce free speech and legitimate policy proposals.

By the way, Jeb Bush speaks for hardly anyone. He is at or below 5% in the polls.

It is you Brits who have spawned this whole political correctness tyranny, this philosophical fascism that is strangling our countries like a plumber from Boston. May you find your mojo again. Meanwhile, we are going to do what we think is right and safe for our country. If you don’t like it, too bad!

Ah! The Partialisms of the Press

It is far too easy to criticize the media, yet they bring it on themselves. The media’s coverage of events generally lacks substance and accuracy, not completely, but enough. I know, time limits prevent the communication of deeper, more accurate understandings. Then one should consider the avenue of expression compromised, at least somewhat.

Today I will harp on the media’s representation of one of Donald Trump’s comments about Ted Cruz. We have become acculturated to sensitivity, so for many, even conservatives, the utterances of the Donald seem harsh or offensive. Some hearers take umbrage at Trump’s words while others revel in them because, in their view, political correctness has devolved into censorship and stifled honesty, and Trump smashes through that cage with the honesty of expression for which those voters have hungered.

Someone can be honest and still be a jerk. But then someone can be a jerk and still be the most qualified person for the office of president.

We are still learning.

Meanwhile, let’s look at how the media reported one of Trump’s comments about Cruz. Trump told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday that Cruz was “a little bit of a maniac” when he castigated Mitch McConnell publicly and on the senate floor over a recent vote to re-authorize the Export/Import Bank. Cruz said McConnell told “a simple lie.”

Cruz’s comments ran athwart of good sense and civility, some critics said, but also a Senate rule which prohibits such public denigration.

Whatever one thinks of Cruz or McConnell, or Trump for that matter, Trump said that Cruz was “a little bit of a maniac.” Yet reporters did not repeat Trump’s statement that way. They said Trump called Cruz “a maniac.” Over and over again they reported it that way, and they are still saying it that way, as I listened to a report earlier this morning from a journalist on MSNBC’s Live with Jose Diaz-Balart.

As a voter who wants to understand Trump’s use of hyperbole in his speeches and quotes, the distinction is important. Despite the media effort to create a fight between Trump and Cruz, neither has been too critical of the other. Cruz was caught saying Trump’s campaign would fail and he (Cruz) would collect his support. That prompted Trump’s “attack” on Cruz, which included a fumbled questioning of whether Cruz was an evangelical and a legitimate remark about Cruz’s temperament, since Cruz, if he became president, would have to work with people like McConnell.

The question becomes why the media reports Trump’s words inaccurately. The answers are similar but different.

Many in the conservative media want Trump and Cruz to consume each other with vitriol so either Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush, establishment candidates, can step forward to fill the void. So the inaccuracy is useful to them.

Many in the liberal media want Trump or Cruz to earn the Republican nomination because, in their opinion, both are more easily smeared and flayed, so by the time they reach the general election, Hillary, most likely, can defeat their crippled candidacies. Repeating inaccuracies and deliberately misrepresenting utterances, however hyperbolic or figurative, helps to cripple Trump and Cruz and advance the cause of their candidate.

So the game is truly afoot, with the media weighing in for its own purposes. It is getting hard to cry “foul”, though. The Republican leadership, establishment, elites, insiders -whatever you want to call them, are losing this election for their party and its members. They neither understand nor accept the deep disenchantment and outcry of their own members.

By alienating Trump and Cruz, the Republican leadership alienates the bulk of their members, or at least a huge bloc of them. If Rubio or Bush get the nomination through dishonest machinations, the party faithful, feeling cheated and betrayed, will not go to the polls or will vote for a third party candidate. Hillary wins.

Alternatively, the Democrats reliance on current sentiment about Trump stands out as gross overconfidence. People may not like the way Trump expresses himself, but plenty of them want a strong leader who will protect them and protect their borders and restore the economy. Hillary’s high negativity, even within her own party, could cost her votes as citizens look at Trump and say he is more likely to protect them and create prosperity. Hillary will have a hard time winning on those grounds.

Novelty props up Hillary – the first female presidential candidate from the two major parties. People speak of her resume, but it is open to criticism and devaluation. In tough economic times, it’s hard to sell more government spending, especially for welfare, when the bulk of the citizenry is not doing all that well. Certainly, the ideologues will stand with her. With uncertainty about the future prevalent, Trump’s chances, in particular, actually look pretty good.

People will complain about the way Trump speaks, but in the end, when it comes time to pull the lever, the voter is not going to pull it for political correctness, but for the person who will give them more opportunity, more freedom, more prosperity, and more safety.

That’s Trump, hands down. Trump may be rough, but he’s real. Hillary comes across as the charlatan who’s been prepping for the job just because she wants it and she wants to make history. Trump is open about his elitism and his billions. Hillary hides it in the dark and pretends to be a middle class person while she bargains surreptitiously for her own enrichment.

Frankly, there is no comparison, and the voters, regardless of party affiliation, sense it and know it. Trump chafes them, and they want to stop him from getting the Republican nomination, if they can, but they are going to vote for him if he gets to the general election, because they know he is the better, more qualified person. They don’t like him, but the reason for that is he is right even as he is insufferable.

Hillary is a shadow, and shadowy, candidate by comparison, an ideologue who wants to shape America into her self-inflated image.  She cannot be trusted. She cannot be relied upon. Ultimately, she is only about herself and her “legacy”.

I know I couldn’t take it: four or more years of Bush or Clinton. God, please, no!

And for all those old-time Republicans Joe Scarborough has been talking about, who allegedly said they will never vote for Trump and for the first time in their political lives they will vote Democrat for Hillary: then you will become the party’s Brutus!

For years you have told your disenchanted members that they had to vote for the candidate you proffered because the alternative was to vote for the greater evil: a Democrat! Now the shoe is on the other foot. Your deafness to all but a few of your party members has been destroying the Republican Party for years. Now a time of change has arrived, and once again you want to force your way down people’s throats. No! No! No! Not this time. Now it’s your turn to be faithful. Now it’s your turn to suck it up and support “the party.” Stop that greater evil from being elected: Hillary!

Ah! How treachery brews in the heart, in the darkened, isolated caverns of the mind!

And it all begins with deliberate inaccuracy!

The Question of Socialism

News commentators, anchors, field reporters, and politicians have been tossing around a term within the political and presidential debates that packs a lot of punch: “socialism.” So I am going to review what I consider the meanings of the term. This is not a scholarly article, nor even researched de profundis. It is only a starting point, but I hope a helpful one.

I would suggest the term “socialism” covers a spectrum of meaning, and confusing the meanings leads to erroneous understanding, reporting, and digestion of the political debate. Caveat emptor!

Socialism, when practiced by a communist state, usually means government ownership of the means of production under the direction of the leadership of a communist party. In communistic socialism, little to no private ownership exists, whether it be a business, a factory, a farm, etc. The communist party-directed state owns everything. This type of socialism is largely unknown or unpracticed by Western democracies. Even few communist states practice this type. Cuba and North Korea are likely the only exceptions.

In national socialism, which saw its most extreme embodiment in Nazism, socialism refers to government control and direction of the means of production and the economy. Like communism, this is an extreme form of tyranny; however, private ownership continues in this arrangement. A private owner or corporate owners would never cross the government. If the government says a business is going to build gizmos, then the business is going to build gizmos. The state assumes a martial and authoritarian attitude that subordinates private and corporate interests to its own. That doesn’t mean the private interests don’t profit and prosper. They often do. However, the state exercises tight control of the economy. As with communism, a single party often runs the show, as it did in Nazi Germany.

Red China is a mix of communism and national socialism. Reportedly, the communist-directed Red Chinese government owns about 60% of the means of production and service. Some local and foreign investment exists. And some Red Chinese individuals have become exceedingly wealthy. At any moment, however, the communist-led state may impose its will.

Western democracies have no to little acquaintance with national socialism. Venezuela was moving toward a type of national socialism, but I think that movement has taken a hit since the death of its progenitor, Hugo Chavez. Chavez led the Venezuelan government’s takeover of the private sector oil industry.

I might add at this moment that the terms “democracy” and “democratic” offer an astounding ambivalence that readers, viewers, and listeners must treat with care and discernment. I’ll delve into them in a bit.

Finally, there remains the still broad term of what I will call western socialism. I acknowledge that western socialism can be approached from two angles. I am going to choose mine, but I acknowledge that anyone could approach from another direction.

With western socialism, we mean the government assumption of greater control over the market in which goods and services are provided. While the government usually does not own the means of production or services, it can establish itself as an intermediary between, or governor over, the producer and the consumer. This constitutes a certain market control. However, it can also become the provider of services, as with the maintenance and discharge of social security or unemployment benefits. Under the current health care legislation, the government determines how the funding of health care will operate and to whom it will apply.

Western democracies experience this kind of socialism to one degree or another, and I will leave it to the ideologues to argue where to draw the bright line between standard government operation and the practice of socialism.

Our American Constitution provides for the general welfare or the common good, often called the “common weal” or “common welfare” of our people. This is a shared responsibility for each other under the direction of our democratically elected legislators and presiders, in short, the Union to which we agreed.

At what point does that common good begin and at what point does it end? Traditionally, laws, defense, foreign relations, domestic tranquility, interstate and international commerce, etc.,  have all been assigned to the operation of the federal government, with an overarching view to enhance and protect the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of the individual citizen.

Our arguments about socialism revolve around the government’s role in maintaining personal life, liberty, and pursuit against its role in promoting  the common good. The religious, ethnic, cultural, and economic turmoil of our times has disrupted our domestic tranquility and is tossing our political ship to and fro. The federal government has without precedent entered the business of determining what constitutes a marriage. It now governs the purchase of health insurance to compel everyone to obtain it, to provide coverage for those who lacked it, and to control its functions for the purpose of controlling its costs. One candidate has extended a proposal to make it the province of the federal government to subsidize all student college costs because of the accumulated mountainous student loan debt. That same candidate describes himself as a “socialist”.

So now the question becomes, is favoring or legislating such programs “socialism”? This question differs from the pragmatic question of whether such programs are good ideas, feasible, or practicable. As with any budget item intended for the common good, such programs receive their funding from the individual taxpayers and the wages or salaries they have worked hard to earn. Most, if not all, of us would agree we would like to keep as much of our pay as possible. On the other hand, as good citizens, we see the need and the desirability for programs that promote our common good: a strong defense, a retirement we can count on, clean air, etc.

So the battle over “socialism” really comes down to how much money we are willing to be taxed and, if we are going to give up our hard-earned money, how we will allow it to be spent. We want government to be lean and effective, not bloated and ponderous; what should our government do with our money and how involved should they be in spending it.

As we vote, or our legislators votes for us, or our presiders employ their executive powers, we may allow a greater degree of government involvement and control over our lives. What is an acceptable level of that involvement and control? Is the only viable solution to student loan debt to use our taxpayer money to pay it? Should taxpayer money be used to pay college costs because they have become so outrageous no one individual can pay them? If I support such action, am I a socialist? I don’t want a big brother watching over me. I don’t want one political party dictating its beliefs to me.

Furthermore, am I partaking in socialism if I support such a use of taxpayer money? If I was, is that kind of socialism bad like national socialism or communistic socialism?

At the least, voting, for instance, to have the government use taxpayer money to subsidize all future college costs would constitute increased government involvement and diminished personal responsibility. I don’t think that means taking a stand for socialism. Whether it is a good idea or a bad idea, or a feasible idea, or a desirable idea remains another question. If college costs have become so outrageous and unreasonable in today’s market, it can be argued that allowing the federal government to pay for them would be a good idea.

The key here is that this kind of socialism is not necessarily evil or wrong, not when it is practiced democratically. When a majority of the citizens vote for it, or their representatives vote for it, this kind of socialism is democratic and lacks the strong-arm authoritarianism of the national socialistic and communistic ideologues. If that is what the citizens collectively want their government to do and how they want the government to do it, then it is democratic and is only economically socialist, and in regard to that program only, not the entire economy.

So when you hear a commentator or reporter or politician use the word “socialism” positively or negatively, beware! Examine and mull over what he or she really means, and evaluate the significance of what he or she is saying.

Finally, beware of the use of “democracy” or “democratic” when used by an authoritarian socialist, one who wants to exercise control over the citizens and their lives.  The meaning of democracy is rule by the people, and a democratic country is one ruled by the voice of the people through themselves or by their consent through their elected representatives. When authoritarians, especially Marxists, use those words, they mean doing something for the people or on behalf of the people to bring a wider result, whether the people like it or not.

The difference is vital. In democracy, we decide directly or indirectly. In a “democracy”, the leaders of a particular movement decide “for the benefit” of their subjects. The mere increase of goods and services to more members of a state does not make a democracy nor a program democratic.

Do not allow good words to be hijacked by the unscrupulous. Caveat emptor!