Portrait of a Fool
It's time for me to take off the gloves. No more Mr. Nice Keln. I've been incredibly patient with the stupids this entire election season, especially up to the point where Donald Trump was the nominee and the stupids continued to cry about it like babies that didn't get their blankie and their nappy.
I've delicately tried to lay out a reasonable argument as to why they should just go along with it and focus on the greater threat here, which is Hillary Clinton. I was being diplomatic.
No more. It's now time to explain to these infantile, deluded ignoramuses what the real deal is. From this point forward, I'm going to be tossing out bricks of truth. And I don't care who gets hit in the blankie.
The Conservative Well has been poisoned. And it's been poisoned over a long period of time by two primary actors. This poisoning of the well has been a concerted effort to twist and distort conservatism away from the Reagan vision of a Shining City on a Hill into this ideology of corporatism and globalism that exists today...Neoconservativism.
We've been told since about the mid-80s that free trade at all costs is somehow a conservative virtue. That it shall not be questioned. That somehow, what is best for the corporate elite is best for us. Never mind that these neocons consider Reagan a hero. And never mind that Reagan used tariffs to balance trade and protect US manufacturing. This was a new model...their model. It led to NAFTA. It has led to an expansion of the WTO. And it has led to ignoring the stipulations of our trade deals, including NAFTA, with respect to currency manipulation and basic cheating.
And it is leading to TPP.
And what now do we have to show for this so-called golden "conservative" virtue of free trade at all costs? An economy on a downhill, crap-coated Slip'N'Slide to Hell. There are no jobs. Let me repeat this for you peons: THERE ARE NO JOBS.
Here's what happened. Back in the day, the United States was a manufacturing-based economy. Main Street held political power, people had jobs, growth was through the roof, and life was good, for it's time.
Then some people had the bright idea that they could make a crap ton of money through investment banking. However, the Glass-Steagall Act of the 30s kept such banking separated from the capital-commercial banking industry. Basically, these would-be paper-traders had no real capital to risk. And without all of that capital, they couldn't make all of that money in the paper market.
So they eroded the Act, using the courts, mainly in the 1970s-1990s. Eventually, the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed (under Clinton of course). Investment banking combined with the commercial banks and the ginormous banks we see today (that are "too big to fail") were born. The predominant market shifted from a tangible market to a paper market...or a Shadow Market.
As such, the political power shifted from the industrialists and manufacturers to the corporate investment bankers. And so the focus shifted from maintaining a manufacturing powerhouse in the US to buying power on the global market. Great for the traders, but a death knell for US manufacturing.
With all of that money, you can see now how political power was suddenly in the hands of banks and investment firms. And you can now see why these corporatists wouldn't give a rodent's posterior about American workers or really even the American economy. They were Global now. They have transcended borders. And to them, borders are really an obstacle.
I'm sure you can fast-forward along those lines from the late 80s until now and see how we have come to the point we are now in. If you can't...well you are a really slow learner, and I've not the time to explain it to you. I can't type that slowly.
It would be easy to blame the Democrats for all of this, considering the worst steps were all signed into law by Bill Clinton. But in reality, both the Democrats and the Republicans were at fault here. There is really very little difference between your average Democrat and Republican. Their checks are written by the same investment firms. They are visited by the same K-street pimps.
If you really want to shift blame around, you need to look at the two primary actors behind twisting Conservatism into something that would allow this to happen: Conservative punditry and Conservative Think Tanks.
For decades, Conservative punditry has been vastly controlled by one man: William Kristol. It sounds crazy, even conspiracy theorish...except that books and articles have for years been written about his singular influence on Conservative media. The Wall Street Journal, as an example, used to chase stories based merely on where Kristol's finger happened to be pointing. That's a lot of power vested in one man.
And of course Kristol is literally owned by Wall Street. He's worked hard to warp conservatism in an effort to gain his power, influence, and especially all of that money. Another guy in this lollapalooza of nefarious punditry is Charles Krauthammer. As I like to say about these two gentlemen, I've become pretty regular as I've gotten older. I flush a Krauthammer every day, and when I eat Tex-Mex, I get a bad case of Kristol. But I digress.
The other actor, Conservative think tanks, are really little more than pseudo-academic conglomerates paid for by grants from....ta da! Wall Street. Their entire purpose is to continue to push the "free trade at all costs" agenda. Keep the borders open, eliminate tariffs, and make it as easy as pie for companies to relocate to countries where labor is almost slavery and importing into the US doesn't cost anything.
How do they make it so easy to convince manufacturers (that these investment types bet on) to leave the US? Taxation and Regulation. Makes it pretty hard to keep operating here when you have to pay all of those costs. And starting a new business? Fuggitaboudit.
That is your modern conservatives for you. And hence, your modern conservative party. Last year, about 17 Republicans stepped forward to run for President. Of the 17, only two had no connections to Wall Street, and only one had no reason to accept a dime from Wall Street. The one guy was Donald Trump. He represents the old, almost now defunct, Main Street. The old industrialists who no longer have much power. The other outsider, Ben Carson, never had the kind of capital (or charisma) to mount a serious campaign.
The Federal Government loves to issue unemployment numbers that have no basis in reality. "Unemployment", according to the government, means people who are literally on unemployment benefits. Once your bennies run out...you are now no longer "unemployed". This in no way represents the true unemployment figures (1 in 5 households have 0 adults with a job).
Manufacturing is all but gone. And the so-called service economy is not, and never will be, big enough to make up for it. And the service economy is by-and-large composed of minimum wage jobs. The American Dream is not about flipping burgers at McDonalds or stacking shelves at WalMart. Those are supposed to be teenager jobs.
Adult jobs were supposed to be working at factories, making THINGS. Now China, Mexico, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, and others make all of those things. All we do is buy them. That is an untenable situation. It is only a matter of time before our entire economy collapses on itself. We're screwed unless we can change back to a Main Street economy. The very economy that created the middle class.
Enter Trump. He has literally been talking about all of this since the 1980s. For all of you morons saying "oh, he's really a Democrat, mer mer mer"...shut your whorish mouth. He has been saying the same doggone thing for decades. He saw what would happen, it happened, now he is saying "I told you so". And not only that, he is saying "and we can fix it". He's pretty optimistic. I don't know if I am as optimistic, but at least not continuing to dig a hole is a step in the right direction.
My point is, and this is for the stupids (those who call themselves "Never Trump"), the well was poisoned, even before Reagan left office. And it has poisoned your thinking. You have a definition of "Conservative Principles" branded into your hide that you just cannot shake off. And you have been listening for decades to punditry who have reaffirmed these so-called principles so long, you are not willing to accept you could have been wrong.
The difference between you and a lot of us is this: We can admit we were wrong. Gloriously wrong, and I am OK with that. I still consider Reagan my hero. It's easy...because he wasn't a part of that neoconism in the first place.
But your pride has you so latched onto that, because you invested so many years into that thinking, that you cannot let go, and to Hell with the world before you will let go. Arrogant pride, nothing more. That is all you are reduced to.
It's time to let go. It's time to look around and see who all of these people supporting Trump are. No, many might not have been staunch conservatives in the past. Some were even Democrats (shudder). Some of us have been super-staunch conservatives all of our lives. But we all have a common bond...we love our country. And we see it going down the tubes. And out of all of these political candidates and pundits we've listened to over the years, Trump is the first in a position to win that is actually speaking to the real problems in this country. He is not so fascinated with social issues, which are used to divide us every election.
He is going back to the old "it's the economy, stupid" motto. And he's right. It really is the economy. From economic security, national security is assured. And everything else is possible once those two are fixed.
People aren't supporting Trump because he had a reality show (which I never actually watched), or because he has a giant ego or a line of ties or wines or steaks or hotels. We're supporting him in spite of a lot of that stuff. It's the message we're interested in. And God save Trump if he were lying, because this movement behind him will not stand for it. We want America First, and we want to change the political climate. NOW.
Call it Populism if you like. I'm sure you had some professor tell you that "populism is bad mmkay...because Nazis". Well, professors are usually leftist stupids, so keep that in mind.
But the message of Trump isn't all that populist. It's simply sensible. Our economy sucks. People are out of work. The reasons why are definable. And the solutions, while maybe not as easy as he says they are (or are they?), are definitely doable.
And his message is not demagoguery. Saying such is a nice intellectual-sounding argument without any substance. Trump doesn't play on fears: he points out reality. Literally nothing he points out is anything everyone doesn't already know. It is just that he points it out without apology or sugar-coating. We already know Islamic terrorism is a serious threat to our existence. We already know that unmitigated immigration is a recipe for disaster, both from an economic and security standpoint.
And the argument that Trump is a racist: leftist projection. Trump is big tent. He has even stated he is big tent. He doesn't pander. The left panders. Hillary panders. She labels everyone. And depending on what your label is, you get a different speech. Trump gives everyone the same speech. His ideology: Make America Great for Everyone.
It isn't racism. It is indifference to race. It isn't sexism, it is indifference to gender. The man who broke racial barriers on golf courses and gender barriers in the construction world cares about one thing only: can you do the job? Your race or your gender don't matter.
That is not racism nor is it sexism. And those calling him such are the same who call anyone they disagree with sexist or racist. Those words have lost their power when coming from the left.
I will never ask anyone to like Donald Trump. But I will ask you to let go of your pride and stop being such a rube. Politicians and media have been playing us all for decades. I've fallen for a lot of it myself, with McCain followed by Romney as wake-up calls that all was not well in modern conservatism. It turned me real cynical. I'm still a cynic, but I am taking a chance here.
Might as well. The alternative is...Clinton.
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