Sunday, November 6, 2016

If Trump Wins

For some reason, as the election draws close, I find myself engaging in lots of last minute debates with Trump supporters on facebook in a closed group called "Politics".
I am not sure what I am trying to achieve, given that practically nobody is changing their position by a millimeter, but the exercise, trying to remain civil and rational, is at least challenging and it is therapeutic in the sense that we get to air out our arguments.
Tonight a fellow wrote his predictions of what would happen within 24 hours of a Trump presidency, and I wrote my response.
Here it is, for what it is worth:

"Ridiculous bit of speculation based on fantasy by Dennis in bullet points, and my replies:

• The Clinton Corruption is destroyed and rendered powerless.
No, just replaced by the Trump corruption in the White House and whatever corruption the Clinton's are involved with will go on, as it always have, with Trump being the beneficiary. The Clintons didn't create corruption, the plutocrats did and do, and Trump is one of the plutocrats. He is not a champion of the people and CERTAINLY DOESN'T BELIEVE IN TRANSPARENCY. He hates being fact checked. You can't get a better recipe for corruption than that!

• The media has been neutered forever.
The media is the only protection we have in a democracy against corruption. Who will the whistle blowers be? Who will report the excesses when our rights to free speech and a free press are taken from us by Trump?

• Career politicians will have lost all job security.
The career politicians job security is the mostly republican revolving door to corporate positions. Under Trump I'm sure he will cut all sorts of deals like Cheney and his ilk did, knowing they can screw us all with their policies during the time they spend paid less in Congress or the Senate and then forget about even pretending to serve the people and simply head up companies that run roughshod over our rights. Dangerous, dangerous. Rather have somebody stay longer and be accountable to the American people!

• The guns in your home will safely stay there.
It was the fascists who took away guns in Europe, people who spoke and acted like Trump. Hillary can talk about limiting the ability of criminals and domestic terrorists and foreign infiltrators to get truly dangerous weapons and keep us safe. Trump will enable the criminals to commit more crimes until he then sets a mandate to take away all guns because it has gotten to dangerous. That is the play. The Democrats have never and will never take our guns away, and most of them don't want to. We rightly fear demogogues on both right and left. Trump is lying his way into your trust and, with a neutered press and the threat of lawsuits for exposure, will do stuff behind your back you will never hear of until it is too late. Talk to the Germans.

• Preachers will be free to preach truth without the threat of government interference.
Preachers ARE free to preach our faith and the government does nothing because we have SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE. That is what distinguishes us from dictatorships in the Middle East. Trumps world will be an American version of ISIS, so they won't have to even come over here.

• Israel will have no doubt that we are truly their ally
You must not spend much time in Israel. My closest Israeli friends, with whom I have spent time every year in Israel for the past decade, are terrified of Trump. They will doubt that we care about them at all. They will feel we only do what is expedient for our bottom line. Trump speaks hate talk against Jews, and speaks in a way that makes many Holocaust survivors quake in their boots, because they've heard this stuff before. All you mean is that the hawks in Israel will have no doubt that under Trump we will fund them to fight our battles for us and lose their children to feed our addictions to fossil fuels and cheap prices while creating markets for the military industrial corporations. A true ally, as many editorials in Haaretz point out, would help Israel make productive peace with its Palestinian and Arab neighbors, as Perez told us recently in his speech at the Harvard Business School "prosperity for peace". Trump doesn't understand that kind of business or diplomacy.

• Iran will not get one more plane full of cash.
Nonesense. Iran is loving Trumps rhetoric as it inflames anti-American sentiment and makes us seem like haters of Islam instead of haters of crazy terrorists and their profiteering international funders. Under Trump, instead of being isolated by the Arab countries surrounding it, Iran will seek common grievance with other Muslim dominated nations and will get more planes full of cash from the petrodictators than we could ever send them in our bargaining for compliance on the non-proliferation.

• No more apologies to the world for being great!
We have never apologized for being great. We apologize, as all dignified peoples do, when we do things that are not great. Your fuhrer Trump was embarrassed, he said, by the war in Iraq (which he was for until it was politically expedient) . That amounts, in a way, to an apology for our country doing non-great things. That is the only good thing he has done. We should always apologize when we are less than great. When we are great, we have nothing to apologize for and the world celebrates us. If Trump is elected, since the vast majority in every country I know deplores him, we will have A LOT of apologizing to do.

• Our enemies, most of which help fund Hillary's campaign will definitely be a little scared.
Our enemies will be emboldened. The suicide bombers will be celebrating. They aren't scared of anything, they just want more excuses to attack. Trump seems to them to justify all of their grievances, winning them more support from their super rich funders. It is the innocent who will be scared and they will have no power at all. No diplomacy, no safe havens, no no-fly zones. Our enemies are so so happy to have Trump.

• Our healthcare rates stand a real good chance of going down.
No, the quality of our service will go down. Trump is no Bernie, he is no libertarian, he is no socialist, he is no green, he is no Christian. He is about business profits. And with no regulation, no journalistic investigations, there will be no protections. He hates competition so the market won't discipline him and his cronies either. You are electing a monopolist.

• There is at least some hope that new manufacturing jobs will be coming back to your state.
That's got nothing to do with Trump. AI, Automation, Robotics, Apps, Super computers, smart phones, 3D printing, genetic modification, the internet, all of these things make it certain that manufacturing jobs will continue to decline. The only jobs that can't be done by machines or outsourced (as Trump has done time and again) are those that are in the new Green Economy (which deals with space and its infrastructural modification needing hands and boots on roofs and in fields and new factories) which Trump has vowed to end, and service jobs in stagnant places. Would you like fries with that?

• The drug cartel and other criminals currently crossing our borders will realize their days are numbered.
Drugs are big business. Trump may or may not be a coke addict, but his superwealthy friends are the ones with the silver spoons up their noses, driving the drug cartels. The coyotes crossing our borders are bringing people who Trump employs for pennies on the dollar because we made them desparate. The drugs are flown in or boated in to Miami and other private airstrips. The criminals wear suits and have multiple passports and business visas. Business as usual. Closing the border just means that when the wealthy open it up from time to time to let in low wage workers they can argue against minimum wage by scaring the workers with deportation. Old game, new emperor.

• The police will be supported so they can restore law and order.
The police are best supported by training in cultural anthropology and by keeping assault rifles out of the hands of criminals and making sure everyone has a background check and nobody can just go around shooting them. Trump won't support the police, he will use them as corporate security forces, evicting, beating and jailing anyone who disagrees with him or his policies. The police will become his handmaidens and will only serve and protect him and his cronies. Journalist and people engaged in nonviolent protest will be beaten and arrested. "Throw them out of here" he will cry.


The list could go on and on, but it sounds like America may be on the road to becoming AWFUL, again and again, within the first few hours on November 9 if Trump does win.


Copy and paste this as your status if you support sanity and will vote AGAINST Donald Trump for president 2016