Category: American Politics

Donald Trump continues to amaze Americans and the rest of the world. Yes, the Americans have failed to keep the Trump jokes to themselves. The entire world is watching. Particularly Canadians. Lots of them not only understand the strange American dialect but they share the same time zones.

But this past week of hot summer days got to us. Did we really hear an on-again, off-again, on-again choice of Indiana’s Governor Mike Pence as running mate for Donald Trump? This is the guy who made Indiana the laughing stock among the blue-stocking crowd. He is the guy that signed into law Indiana’s bigotry law letting business discriminate. (It was law until some large businesses threatened to leave the state.)

It used to be that the vice presidential choice was supposed to add some balance to the ticket. Mike Pence just took the Republican ticket off the deep end. Pence is no peace offering to the middle ground.

The only way Pence is different from Trump is that he goes to church. Other than that he is a lackey for the billionaire Koch brothers and might improve Trump’s fund-raising. What he does not bring to the ticket is balance. His political career is a litany of anti-labour, anti-renewable energy, anti-gay legislation. The only issue he disagrees with Trump on is trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and North American Free Trade.

Since Vice Presidents are required to be seen but not heard, Pence could be the perfect running mate. Trump will be quite capable of sticking his feet in both their mouths. And frankly, Pence adds nothing to the ticket nor is he likely to have any influence on the campaign. You might not be all that impressed with Trump’s brains but he at least has more going for him than his running mate.

We were hoping that Trump would choose former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Imagine the jokes on that relationship? Mind you we have to admit that Huffington Post beat us to the headline reading: Mike Pence: Sarah Palin without the charisma.

But the fun really starts in the coming week. The Cleveland site for the Republican National Convention is already set up as an armed camp. With people allowed to go armed in public in Ohio, police dressed as storm troopers, truck bomb traps surrounding the convention site and the National Guard on standby, what could go wrong?

-30-

Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  [email protected]

 

Canadians need their own wall. It would hardly be fair for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to have a wall on the south without equal opportunity for the north. This conclusion seems to be necessary as you meet Canadians who think Trump is cool. Hard to believe, but true.

Talking to one lady recently, it was obvious that she sincerely admired Mr. Trump and she was looking forward to him being U.S. President. What made her attitude doubly concerning was that she is a born-again something, home schools her children to keep them from impure thoughts and knows for sure that the rest of us are destined for the fires of hell.

She does not care that Trump has a reputation of being something of a libertine, a scoundrel, a nasty business person and knows nothing about politics. Nor is she concerned about his erratic behaviour, his obvious bigotry and misogyny and disrespect for women. She does not even care that Mr. Trump is not regular in his church attendance. You would wish that this woman would be so forgiving of the rest of us sinners.

“Tell me,” she said, leaning forward and putting her hand on our arm, “Why do you not think Donald Trump will be the next President?”

There was no way we could tell her that it is just Donald Trump’s ego that is running for President of the United States and he was definitely not equipped with the political smarts needed to serve in that capacity. We needed a simpler reason. And that led to the following answer:

“As you have probably noted there is a sizeable number of angry Americans who are supporting Mr. Trump and believe that he will get even for them. They want to get even with the very rich without recognizing that Mr. Trump is very rich. They want to get even with people who send jobs off-shore without recognizing that Mr. Trump is one of those people who has been sending jobs off-shore. They want to get even with business people who offer them a less than living wage without recognizing that Mr. Trump hires people at less than a living wage.

“Regrettably there is no reason to expect that these people will see the light any time soon. They want Trump.

“But the good news is that Mr. Trump has no organization that can make sure that people go to the polls to vote for him. He is too cheap to pay for that. He thinks the Republican Party will do it for him. Which is not too likely. Sure they will have people out getting Republicans to the polls because they want as many of their politicians as possible to survive despite Trump. They will just not place any emphasis on voting for Mr. Trump.

“And it would be a waste of time anyway. Only about 50 per cent of eligible American voters are likely to bother to vote for the presidency. Mr. Trump’s angry supporters are not among the voting frequent flyers.”

-30-

Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  [email protected]

It has been written numerous times that the measure of a person’s intelligence is based on how much they agree with you. And having a political science professor agree with this political apparatchik is doubly gratifying. You have to admit it is a rare occurrence. Too often we get into the typical argument with political scientists between theory and application.

And that was why a recent news release from Brock University caught our eye. (You might be surprised at the number of news releases you get every day when you are writing a political blog.) Published in the June 20 edition of New Political Science, Professor Stefan Dolgert has written a paper entitled The Praise of Ressentiment: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Donald Trump.

Despite the hackneyed title (probably written by Brock’s PR department), Professor Dolgert is right on in his use of the French ‘Ressentiment’ to describe Trump’s target group of supporters.

‘Ressentiment’ goes beyond the resentment of the English word as it embraces the anger and frustration that you often find in lower class, less educated, middle-aged men. And this is the core support of Donald Trump. He appeals to their misogyny, bigotry, anger and frustration. Trump is their leader and they accept anything Trump says.

Dolgert correctly asserts that there is little to be gained among this group in correcting Trump’s wild claims. These people are on automatic in the sense that they accept and grow what ideas he feeds them.

And should the Republican National Convention in Cleveland attempt to dislodge Trump as their candidate, these are the potential storm troops of the ensuing riots. And there will be lots of people in Cleveland who are willing to take them on. Frankly, the convention organizers could save time by having the National Guard ordered out before the convention starts.

The only disappointment with Professor Dolgert’s theories is that he considers the opposition to Trump is wasting its time trying to correct Trump’s rhetoric. He thinks the ‘left’ should create its own stories about who is to blame for the ills of society. That could only work if there is an essential truth to the stories.

And besides, Trump’s bombast is already losing steam. He fired his campaign manager the other day who was letting Trump be Trump. His campaign is at a serious point. He has no real organization. He has to capitulate to the Republican Party and let it run his campaign or be an also-ran.

-30-

Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  [email protected]

 

You might be tired of hearing about Donald Trump. That is understandable. He is definitely a Johnny-one-note. There are still miles to go before the November election. The one way to reach people who see him as a solution instead of the problem is to ask them to imagine Trump in the White House. It is when you try to imagine him there that your stomach churns.

First of all, you need to realize that nobody is going to let him tear it down and build a hotel. In the overall scheme of things, he would never be there long enough. And there are strict height restrictions on building in the District of Columbia. At best he could turn it into a two-story inn. He would call it Trump’s Inn.

There would be no children in residence while he was there. He does not seem to like children anyway.

We are not sure who he cares about. He revolted a lot of decent people when they heard him talk crudely about his daughter.

The only people he has said he likes are bikers. It was fascinating to see how he interacted with bikers early in his campaign. He enjoyed their novelty. He seemed to fit right in with them.

But then, Trump is also a misogynist. He insults all women in general and his Democratic opponent in particular. He thinks his jokes that ridicule women are amusing.

He does not joke about Mexicans, or Muslims, or blacks. He is a bigot.

He obviously has a very poor understanding of Americans. He believes they are all National Rifle Association members. He thinks they all want to go to war. He sees the daily murders of Americans in their cities as just practice.

But Trump must be a bit of a dreamer. He actually thinks all those right-wing religious cranks who normally vote the straight Republican ticket are going to support him for the presidency. Why they would support an atheist, who also supports abortion is hard to figure out. Is he dreaming?

This is not to deny that quite a few million Americans will vote for Mr. Trump in November. There are the angry, the bitter, the losers, the vulgar and just plain stupid who are more than willing to waste their vote on Mr. Trump. Why not, they deserve to be heard too.

But if you think Mr. Trump is going to win, you obviously have a very low opinion of our friends in America.

-30-

Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  [email protected]

Mia culpa. It must be the arrogance of a commentator that afflicted us. We wrote a casual commentary about populist politicians and thought nothing of it. At least until we read a commentary by a professor the other day that inferred that a populist was a fascist. It got us thinking.

Obviously we are going to include that aberration Donald Trump in this discussion but that is too black and white. Start with a more complex question: is Bernie Sanders of the Democratic Party in the U.S. a populist? We would suggest to you he is not. He is clearly a social democrat and is a fine example of the old adage that we are too soon old and too late smart.

You have to consider the characteristics of a political populist. Initially a populist was part of the populist movement in the United States in the late 1890s that advocated public ownership of services to people such as railways. It has since come to mean any politician who speaks to public concerns without reference to party dogma. Call it pandering to the masses if you wish but every politician wishes they could.

And then there are some politicians who cannot see it any other way than to deal directly with what they feel is the will of ‘their’ people. There are also those who simply do it their way. Pierre Trudeau was a good example of the ‘my-way’ school. It took him a while to learn that without the help of political apparatchiks such as Keith Davey, his intellectual style was not going to work. He actually made a game of being of the vox populi.

Of course, all politicians need to have some ego but Donald Trump trumps them all. From his funny hair to what he considers his people, Trumps ego is all you see. He could not tell you what a fascist is because he knows next to nothing about politics and how it works. He is fascinated with the idea of being President but has seemingly no understanding of the job.

Thinking of alternative histories, the world would have been very different if Adolph Hitler had been a Brit. Seeing him on a step ladder at Speakers’ Corner at London’s Hyde Park would have been safer than haranguing drunken, out-of-work Bavarians in their beer halls.

People hung fascism on Hitler because it was the rage at that time and because of his buddy Benito Mussolini. Hitler was a monster waiting to be turned loose on the world. And, come to think of it, what is Donald Trump?

-30-

Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  [email protected]

A fellow progressive once accused Babel-on-the-Bay of using bumper sticker solutions. What he did not realize is that the era of the bumper sticker is long gone. Maybe he had failed to note that automobiles no longer have real bumpers. Getting adhesive off a painted surface can be expensive.

But what he was really complaining about was the simplicity of words used to make our point. We have always been a strong believer in the adage that if you cannot write your proposal on the back of your business card, you need to rethink your proposal.

It is why in a career of writing business and political material there was always a demand for our services. If you are allowed a little pride in your accomplishments, we could always reduce the complex to something easy to understand. It was why when heading up the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada our medical director always joked that he wanted to do the fund raising while we explained the disease and prospects for a cure.

But the point is that while bumper stickers still work, the problem is the closest thing to bumper stickers today is called Twitter. As we have noted at times: Twitter must be for twits. Like the rest of the Internet, you always have to consider the source. Just like blogs, any idiot can write them and they often do. Sometimes you think the Internet was invented for the dumbing down of the human race.

It is amusing to note that the blog repeatedly chosen as best in an accumulation of Canadian progressives continues to be by a chap who likely spends more time using Adobe PhotoShop than MicroSoft Word. His cartoons can be quite funny.

Mind you, the current situation in the United States might also be proving the point. When our morning line called Donald Trump at 25 to 1 on the American presidency, it was because he is a longshot and far from a good bet. It is just frightening to think of.

Trump has reduced the race to the lowest common denominator. It is a race to the bottom of the barrel. He has no interest in the truth or reason. He is nothing but a massive, self aggrandizing ego who appeals to the angry, the bigots and other losers. The only problem is there are quite a few.

-30-

Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  [email protected]

It was not until finding out that American bikers love Donald Trump that we think we have come to grips with his appeal. This guy feeds on negative vibes. He is like top-selling sales persons who tell you that they are never really selling until somebody says ‘No.’  It is all beginning to come clear.

It also figures that the candidate for the Republicans in the American presidential election this year is an out-and-out misanthrope. It is not that he is just anti-social or misogynistic towards women, but he also seems to have little use for men. It is not that he hates Mexicans, Muslims or people of a different colour. Nor is it his over-inflated ego that causes his problems but he simply thinks he is better than anyone else.

And this explains his affection for bikers. Now we are not talking about your granddad’s hog-riding seniors club here, we are talking about the dope-running, prostitute pandering, hard-drinking, inter-connected outlaw gangs who can even scare those mafia dilettantes. Donald Trump must figure these hard-riding bikers are his kind of people.

Though The Donald might hope he smells better. Anyone who spends as much time and money on his hair as Trump does is obviously fixated on his daily ablutions.

But bikers love The Donald anyway. As a bully and a developer, he has been screwing the system every way he can for years. You can hardly get anywhere in his kind of development scams without being an unfeeling, uncaring, con artist.

And what Trump has never been is a good businessman. His corporate bankruptcies are classics of over-reaching, junk-bond schemes. The Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City was such a bad deal that it is claimed his slot machine supplier had to repossess 500 slot machines in the first week the casino was open because Trump was so badly over-extended.

And this is the guy the American religious right thinks can take them down the Glory Road to Make America Great Again!

Now, Trump insists that he has never been personally bankrupt. He has only left behind corporate entities that were over-sold, under-funded and doomed to failure. The Donald just kept accumulating his wealth that today might be between $2 billion and $3 billion. You can deduct what he is wasting trying to buy the American presidency.

Oh yes, the presidency. That is the ultimate ego trip. Here is a person who has made billions marketing himself. He is the ultimate egotist. His slogan in the fall might as well be: Fuck America; Vote Trump.

-30-

Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  [email protected]