TRIGGER WARNING: Long read, Trump
Reason #1: Feeling the Bust. I am a woman and I am an immigrant to this country. I am Jewish by birth and atheist by faith. I am fairly well educated, borderline socialist and straight Democratic ticket voter. I have no use for guns, I despise hunting, and I believe the death penalty is state sponsored murder. I think abortions are perfectly fine and I think everybody should be free to choose how they use their own body for their own happiness and joy. I have no respect for authority, strength, power or large wads of cash. Come to think of it, I have no respect for anything or anyone in particular.
On November eighth, barring any natural disasters, I will be voting for Donald Trump and according to my liberal bible, I will be doing so for all the wrong reasons.
There was a brief moment there when I thought Bernie Sanders may just pull it off. He didn’t, and I should have known he wouldn’t. The first time I heard Bernie speak, it felt like he was reading my mind. The billionaire class, big corporations, a rigged economy, tax funded college and health care, and the list goes on and on. It was too good to be true. Bernie did not speak about foreign policy that day, and when he finally did, I found some things I could disagree with. I have a feeling that Bernie himself may disagree with some of his own foreign policy positions.
I was fairly sure that a President Sanders would have been able to cross off very few, if any, items on his to-do list, but that was not the point. A political revolution (unlike the real one coming down the pike) takes time, and I was willing to be patient, because I thought I would sleep better at night knowing that the person in the White House is on my side, and sleep is very important. In addition to nuclear codes and veto power, the President of the United States has that nifty tool invented by Theodore Roosevelt and named after his own self: the bully pulpit. Can you imagine a President Sanders State of the Union address, blasting the billionaire class and the greed of Wall Street? No? Try it. It’s very therapeutic. Well, that’s all over now, so what’s next?
Reason #2: I’m not with HER
This may be one of those divisive cultural issues, but in the place where I come from, an American woman became Commander in Chief almost half a century ago, and all across the globe many other women have served or are currently serving in similar positions. I must beg forgiveness for my lack of appreciation for this historic moment when America came one step closer to catching up with Bangladesh. If you believed in Bernie Sanders’ words long before you heard Bernie speak, and I mean really and truly believed, with both your heart and your brain, there is absolutely no way you can wake up one morning and be with HER, because she is the embodiment of everything you want to blow to smithereens.
Yes, President Obama endorsed HER because he doesn’t “think there’s ever been someone so qualified to hold this office”, and yes, I wholeheartedly agree, because the last few decades have transformed the United States Presidency into “this office”, which fits HER like a glove. Obviously, HER unique, and truly historic, qualification is that, according to President Obama’s own spokesman, she is currently under “criminal investigation” by the FBI. Neither Bernie Sanders nor Donald Trump has anything remotely as qualifying as that little jewel. Unfortunately, I am not looking for someone to “hold this office”, but for someone to refurbish and restore “this office” to its Teddy Roosevelt condition.
Reason #3: I’m a Racist
I didn’t think I was a racist, but it seems that I am. If I say that black lives matter, I’m a racist because how about white lives and Asian lives and Native American lives? Don’t they matter? Of course they do. All lives matter. Oops. Now I’m a racist because all lives matter is code words for black lives don’t matter. If I say “radical Islam” instead of “radical Islamism”, I’m a racist, because without the “ism” I’m offending our friends and allies in the fight against terror (i.e. the largest clients of our military industrial complex). If I support school vouchers, I’m a racist, because I propose to defund inner city schools where children are mostly black. If I oppose school vouchers, I am also a racist because I am trying to deny black children the same opportunities that privileged white children have. So I must be a racist. I don’t think I know what racist means anymore, but I hear that Bernie Sanders is a racist and Mr. Trump is also a racist, so as a racist, I should probably stick with my own kind.
Reason #4: The Copperheads
Let me tell you a little story, folks. Back when Abe Lincoln was leading the nation through its most painful fight for survival as a truly free nation, a group of conservative Democrats, called the Copperheads, came within inches of destroying everything Lincoln and his Republican party ultimately achieved. The Copperheads were strict constitutional constructionists espousing a philosophy practically identical to that of sanctimonious conservative ideologues who are viciously fighting the Trump candidacy today. The party of Lincoln, and the party of Teddy, has been slowly and stealthily hijacked by the Copperheads. To my immense delight, Donald Trump, who during a recent rally blurted out that “this is called the Republican Party, it’s not called the Conservative Party”, is prying the party of Lincoln out of the cold grip of the Copperheads, and they loathe him for it.
Reason #5: FDR said so
The other President Roosevelt asked the country to judge him, not by his deeds, but by the enemies he has made, and that was good advice. Donald Trump has accumulated the most excellent team of enemies I have ever seen in modern politics (by my liberal standards, of course). Here is just the latest statement from Mr. Trump, after being snubbed by the Grand Copperhead and his brother: “I think the American public will be happy to know that the Koch brothers will not have influence over a Trump administration or the lives of the American people”, and this is just the cherry on top.
From the corporate raider who used 47 percent of our nation as his personal spittoon, to the avid Ayn Rand disciple who proposed to give old people two dollars for health care and let them go figure it out, to the Silicon Valley artificially intelligent extraction machine, and all the way through the calcified remains of the Copperheads themselves, the righteous indignation coalition for the preservation of global capital rights is raining fire and brimstone on Donald Trump and anyone who won’t publicly disavow him. Without knowing anything else about Mr. Trump, this would be sufficient information for me, but there is more. When the stars of corruption align so perfectly, there is always more.
Reason #6: The Media
Throughout history, the press was never impartial. It was never just about reporting the news. In fact the First Amendment reference to the press is precisely about protecting the freedom of journalists to attack politicians as they see fit. From the dawn of the Republic, there has never been a President or a candidate for political office that has not been chewed up, or promoted and endorsed, by this or that media outlet. This was all fine and dandy when each newspaper was a small business, and when public TV stations maintained a modicum of decorum in return for being granted free use of public airwaves. But the framers of the constitution did not and could not foresee a day when all media is owned by a handful of global corporations, and that’s where we are today.
The problem is not that the media is too liberal. Just ask Bernie Sanders how well the liberal media served his liberal campaign. The media looks and sounds liberal because it is targeting liberals. People who consider themselves conservative are already indoctrinated into corporate servitude. Liberals need to be cajoled by other liberals pointing to imaginary streams of racism, bigotry, misogyny and xenophobia, punctuated by indignant exhortations of “this is not who we are”, until they internalize the egalitarian benefits of free trade and open borders (i.e. an endless just-in-time supply of cheap slave labor for global corporations). I don’t know about other liberals, but I oppose slave labor, which leaves me very little wiggle room here.
Reason #7: Health Care is like Football
I work in health care. Health care is like football now, and I play on the losing team. We lose every time we show up, and we show up every day. We used to win most of the time, but they changed the rules. They change the rules in mid game now, in mid pass even. My favorite rule is where they get to move the goalposts two years after we kick the ball. The guys on the other team are big and strong and they are legion. Our team is shriveling and dwindling and aging rapidly. Nobody wants to join our team and I can’t blame them. I run interference for a dying breed of quarterbacks. We pretend to know the rules and some of us pretend to like the rules. It’s a rigged game of survival of the crookedest.
We don’t have universal health care. We are not on the road to universal health care. These are not growing pains. These are not unintended consequences that need to be incrementally tweaked. This is not incompetence of well-meaning, but clueless, bureaucrats. Nobody can possibly be that incompetent. Donald Trump wants to win with health care. I am fairly confident that Mr. Trump knows very little about the health care football right now, but he seems to be an obsessive-compulsive winner, and I want him on our team. No football team can win with lousy management (believe me, I’m from St. Louis). We want Mr. Trump to manage our team, and we’ll leave it all on the field for America.
Reason #8: I Love our Conmen
Thomas Jefferson was elected President based on his very public opposition to strong Federal government. Then he went and bought half a continent without asking anybody’s permission. I guess he was a conman. Teddy Roosevelt was put in the White House by his wealthy buddies, and then he turned around and chose to throw them under the bus in favor of the “working man”. He must have been a conman too. Abraham Lincoln was most certainly not elected President based on his promise to launch a civil war that will kill half a million Americans, but he did that anyway. He was the ultimate conman. I voted for Bill and I got NAFTA and “the era of big government is over”. I voted for Barack Obama twice, and I got no hope and barely any change. I think I have a peculiar predilection for conmen, and my liberal friends say that Mr. Trump is a conman.
I’m a little worried about this conman thing though. I made it my business to watch dozens of Trump rallies, interviews and press conferences. Daniel Webster would be rolling on the floor laughing at Mr. Trump’s oratory skills, because he has this plebeian way of talking to his audience, instead of directing soaring sophistry down at them. His body language is concerning too, because he seems way too relaxed and comfortable chatting away (gaffes and foot-in-mouth and all that) in front of thousands of regular people, but tenses up like crazy during media interviews or when they bring out those godawful teleprompters for more upscale audiences. I fear that he may not be a genuine conman after all, but at this point I’m running out of options.
Reason #9: Teddy made me do it
So come November I will be voting for a xenophobe who is married to an immigrant, a racist bigot whose grandchildren are little Jews, an old fashioned misogynist who calls strange women “darling” and puts his daughter in charge of his own company, a dangerous man who wants to build schools and hospitals and bridges instead of financing foreign wars, a rabid Republican who wants to preserve and strengthen Medicare and Social Security, an authoritarian who wants to negotiate good deals, a sleek conman who couldn’t finesse his message if his life depended on it. And I will be voting for a bully, because whereas being a bully in third grade is a bad thing, bullying from the pulpit is in the President of the United States job description. Teddy put it there, and I adore Teddy. I want a Bull Moose for President this year.
Categories: Uncategorized
The way Hillary handled the travel office people was enough for me. Mean.
We deserve better people in government. And most are not like whores; they are actually whores in fact– who sell themselves for money. At least Donald doesn’t have to do that. I wish we could persuade people like Mitch Daniels to run. It is so important to get this Muslim think right, I guess I’ll have to vote for Donald.
“Donald has been involved in more than 3,500 lawsuits.”
Trump is a businessman involved in areas where suits are quite common. Did you bother to find out whether he won them or lost them? Did that 3,500 lawsuits go to trial or were they settled? Was it against him or against a corporation where he might not have even been the majority owner? He is the face of many businesses where he might not even be the majority owner. Before convicting someone I think the facts need to be searched out.
I believe Chase Manhattan Bank with their fantastic legal advisors and accountants has also had contract disputes with Trump and has lost money when companies, where Trump was involved, went bankrupt. Yet, Chase continues to do business with him. Why? Because they made money dealing with him. With all these complaints that you believe are so terrible, why do so many wise people continue to flock around him? Do you think they are all that stupid?
Have you ever had your house painted, car serviced or anything of that nature? Don’t tell me you never were involved in a lawsuit (or would have been had attorneys not been so expensive) or a settlement. His financial adventures are so huge that you can’t draw your conclusions from the seat you are sitting in. If you handle your own stocks think of the number of class-action suits you have been a party to without even being directly involved.
I think almost all the complaints on your list are pretty baseless as well. He is not a racist. He simply has a coarse tone with everyone that he disagrees with. That is his nature and maybe that tone will be used against the legislators of both parties that have lined their pockets while scr-wing the people. His ideology doesn’t match mine, but we need new leadership and not the leadership of a woman who has sold our nation and the people. I hope some of Trump’s distasteful statements cease, but they are superficial. The woman running is a race baiter, liar, cheat and a fraud. Her strongest campaign platform is that she will keep the toilet seat down while Donald will leave it up.
I do respect your choice, Steven. We don’t have to agree, but I think it’s useful to have conversations.
Regarding health care, I agree with you that Mr. Trump probably has very superficial understanding of health care. I am not surprised and I am not expecting anything else from someone new to government at this point in time. I happen to disagree with Mrs. Clinton’s solution, just like I disagreed with her first try at it in the nineties, and just like I disagreed with the Heritage Foundation similar proposal, and just like Candidate Bark Obama disagreed with all of the above in 2008. I think Mrs. Clinton is going to continue on the road we are on (it is her road after all), while Mr. Trump is very likely to try something else.
Will that something else be better or worse? I don’t know for sure, but I do know that the current path is not the right path, and I can piece together a few things Mr. Trump said that are indicative to me of a decent chance at something better:
1) He said early in the primaries that single payer seems to be working just fine in other countries, which is indicative that he has no ideological objection to my preferred solution, unlike other “conservatives”. So this is a good sign.
2) He said he doesn’t want people dying in the street, which is a nice departure from the “personal responsibility” libertarian garbage of previous elections (see Ron Paul 2012). In Trump language, this means a strong safety net (and note that he never mentions Medicaid, probably to avoid the wacko conservative third rail).
3) He is the only candidate in this election cycle, except Bernie Sanders, who declared his support for saving Medicare (not changing it to a shell game, as Ryan wants to do, and not making “reasonable” concessions as I am sure Mrs. Clinton will agree to do (so we can finance another stupid war).
4) He stated numerous times that he will make an effort to reduce wasteful bureaucracy in government, and I think HHS is ripe for a whole bunch of waste reduction initiatives, particularly when it comes to programs designed to harass physicians.
5) Various people that worked for Mr. Trump over the years keep relaying stories of how he regularly seeks input from workers in the field instead of relying on executives and managers to provide second hand analysis. I hope this means consulting with (real) practicing physicians, which is something I have been advocating for from my first blog here on THCB in 2009.
So all that considered, I am more than willing to take my chances with a Trump administration when it comes to health care. And no, I am not expecting miracles…
Well, Margalit, you sparked a robust discussion—and, of course, it’s a highly topical, engaging, and serious issue. Per our exchange below, we disagree on the choice of candidate….and the analysis that would arrive at any acceptance of Trump.
On THCB, I’d add one more point to what I said below: Trump by all evidence has absolutely no understanding of the way the health care system is the U.S. is structured or the details of the most important heath policy debates over the last 30 years. And he apparently took no time to inform himself during the campaign so far. In contrast, Hillary is highly knowledgeable in this area and cares deeply about creating a workable universal coverage system in the U.S. that won’t eat up 25% to 30% of the GDP.
Dr. Zwerling, You have spoken passionately on these pages about over regulation, meaningful use, your travails with the ehr….yet you throw your support behind those whose foot is on our neck? Mrs. Clinton has made her choice – she will double down on the ACA with its unworkable risk pools and offers bandaids at best. I have no faith that a continuation of current policies will be good for patients or their biggest advocates – their physicians. We have a constitutional harvard lawyer who sounds wonderful, but then gives us healthcare.gov, ACA’s, ACO’s, ONC…should i go on?? The soaring ideology has not been matched with competence. Good intentions need to be followed through with policy that works. As ‘qualified’ as Mrs. Clinton may be…if she caves to the special interests as her predecessor did, the nation will continue to be worse off. Just looking good on paper (btw someone tell me what her major accomplishment as sec. of state was?) isn’t going to cut it for me.
And Margalit’s point – about the xenophobic donald who’s married to an immigrant, the misogynist who puts his daughter in charge of his company, and the bigot who invites caitlyn jenner to trump tower to use whatever bathroom she chooses – holds. I certainly don’t agree with all of Mr. Trump’s positions, but he is the most openly socially liberal republican nominee in some time. I think the republic’s safe..
Honestly, I’m shocked you of all folks would consider continuing on our current trajectory..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbM6WbUw7Bs
Amen. I doubt the nobility of days bygone, and those who served them, appreciated the wisdom or elegance of pitchforks. Donald Trump is our pitchfork.
Donald has been involved in more than 3,500 lawsuits.
He had repeatedly failed to pay his contractors according to their contract.
He has failed to publish his tax returns, for obvious reasons. This failure alone is sufficient to disqualify him for the office.
His bigotry is beyond question, even members of his party have stated this. Those in minority groups should be very fearful of Donald.
Clearly this is not a person who should be entrusted with great responsibility.
Hillary has been vetted more than any presidential candidate in the history of the country.
Everybody knows her flaws, both real and perceived.
She has disclosed 33 years of tax returns to the American public.
While she may not be the perfect candidate for president, she is clearly the more qualified to manage the most complicated job in the world.
Woe to us and the world if Donald becomes President of the US.
Excellent piece, appreciate your honesty.
To your other commenters, don’t look to your president to be your savior, your helper, your righter-of-wrongs. Trump is an egomaniac, but that same ego I believe is what will provide a much needed shot of leadership and strength in our feckless federal govt. Trump calls it as he sees it, and you must see how this appeals to the vast horde that has been lied to and manipulated.
Obummer has been a catastrophe and has blood on his hands. Trump is the only one I can vote for in this election.
Bilarry is a corrupt abomination, takes money from the Saudis who want to kill women and gays, and then talks out of the other side of her mouth. She needs to be in prison. Too bad Bernie is following the party omerta and backing down instead of running as an independent.
The elites are nervous and calling Trump names, but they have wrought this on themselves. When their arrogance dissociated them from their voters, the voters turned on them in a way they’re only now comprehending. The East and Left coasts better wake up and see the rest of the nation with all of its varied individuals who sell tires, fix air conditioners, or are sadly looking for jobs for years and can’t pay the mortgage. Americans are sick of the establishment. Viva la revolucion!!!
“I Alone Can Solve”
https://medium.com/@BobbyGvegas/i-alone-can-solve-8a4b5fe1ff47#.8zmqvbhoh
Meanwhile on Twitter @brianrahmer just pointed out an article to me. If you are an enlightened “progressive” who needs affirmation from the “mainstream media” before you take a position, or if you just want a “respectable” opinion, please read this in Politico :
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/wall-street-2016-donald-trump-hillary-clinton-213931
Not the savior Peter. Just a temporary finger in the dike. He does say crazy stuff, and the media makes it sound a heck of a lot crazier than it actually is when said at some rally or whatever. Just the other day WaPo ran a headline saying that he said that President Obama was involved in the Orlando shooting. Of course he said no such thing, and WaPo had to change their headline, but the damage was done.
If he actually did a fraction of the deeds the Democratic candidate did, the media would have run him out of town by now. There is a coalition of corruption that includes both parties (and lots of wealthy people here and abroad) which is fighting tooth and nail to preserve their cozy arrangements in DC. I would very much like to throw a wrench into that little business as usual racket. The only option left is this guy….and I doubt very much that he is an idiot… I also don’t think the people showing up at his rallies are idiots, and I certainly don’t think that the currently anointed elite has some sort of monopoly on wisdom, although they seem to think they do….
Yes. There was an article by Peggy Noonan in the WSJ a couple of weeks ago that attempted to explain this. People are upset, and the only thing available that may affect some change is this “orange bomb”, as she called it. Frankly, I don’t know if he can affect any change, seeing how things are set up (the President is not some all powerful head of state in our system, and that’s a good thing), but maybe it’s better than nothing. Maybe something will shake loose… Remember that, like Bernie, he thinks the system is rigged and he opposes the “donor” concept in politics, so maybe if only that one thing changes, it will trigger a healthy cascade of events in future elections. And if we get to fix a few “deals” as well, and give working people some dignity back, then that’s more than we accomplished in the last 20-30 years….
I can’t believe we’re trying to have an intelligent conversation about Donald Trump, as if he’s the savior for western democracy and this republic.
The man’s an idiot, and if a Democrat had said half the ignorant things Trump has said they’d be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail by the same Republicans (and Fox News) who now are forced (for the sake of the party not the country) to think Trump’s their man.
Margalit, I especially liked this perspective you provided ” the same media that had a field day with Michelle Bachman’s looks, the way she doesn’t seem to blink, and then there was that famous foot long corn dog at the Iowa fair… now that one was disgusting. I think we are all sophomoric, so I just toss these things aside.”
Well said!
And it seems to me that your attraction to Trump over Hillary is the disruption factor….that the establishment is so calcified in a negative way we need an agent who shakes things up….and trust the democracy to work that it then moves in a positive way….is that an accurate read?
Let me offer some help here, because as I said in a previous comment, this was a journey for me, and I had to make my peace with these things. Back in a September debate (or circus show) he blasted Rand Paul on his “looks” and we all remember the derogatory reference to Rubio’s height and the statement that Cruz looks like a jerk….etc. etc. Seems like pretty evenly distributed nonsense. So yeah, it can be considered rude or “sophomoric” as Sen. Paul put it, but I don’t think the Fiorina remark had anything to do with attitude towards women in particular.
What I do find exasperating is the way the media feigned apoplectic shock at that comment. This is the same media that had a field day with Michelle Bachman’s looks, the way she doesn’t seem to blink, and then there was that famous foot long corn dog at the Iowa fair… now that one was disgusting. I think we are all sophomoric, so I just toss these things aside.
How does he feel about women? I don’t know. He certainly was quite a “player” in his day, colorful language and all, but the man is 70 years old now, and I am more bothered by that Miss America racket. By all accounts he hires women, promotes women, and pays them equally to men employees, which is more than we can say about the other choice we have. (wasn’t kidding about my long journey… 🙂 )
I wish he had been nicer to Carly Fiorina’s face. Some of us are non-partisan admirers of women. Maybe, right toward November, I can forgive him.
Thank you, Allan.You just said in a couple of sentences what took me over 2000 words to say up there 🙂
Bernie should keep the “revolution” alive instead of bending the knee… sigh….
It’s the chicken or the fish…. all other options are illusory….
I know….
Wow.
I’m just trying to find someone at random in the phone book to vote for, a la Bill Buckley.
Steven, you said “the man is clearly one of those instinctual, natural-born sociopaths”…..I used to practice clinical psychology….now organizational….and I object to my colleagues who practice….or malpractice….political psycho babble….but were I to partake, I would note bald lies to grieving Benghazi families about video causing their death would be a more reliable/definitive indicator of sociopathy.
The lack of any real representation in government is leaving people desperate. Those who have not already fallen prey to apathy will be disgusted by this years antics. And then we wonder why extremists are all that remain. If every sensible person in this country would just write in Bernie…at least we would have someone likable and on the side of the common person. No one is going to win in Dynasty vs. Empire.
Thank you for your blunt and honest Israeli way of communicating. It is refreshing. I come from another side of the polygon as there is more than right and left. I agree with many of your feelings towards our government and its leaders. I don’t expect any of the candidates to completely agree with me and it appears you feel the same. Trump, though not my idea of the model candidate, is who I will support as well. My hope is he will bridge the gap between Americans despite some of his mannerisms. Our leaders have not served us well.
In this election, all of us will have to be careful what we wish for, Peter. I don’t think this is about a yearning for post war America, although that’s all most people have to fall back on. I think there is a sense of loss out there, an insecurity about the future, that we are choosing to belittle or ignore. Things are changing fast and people have no financial strengths, no savings, no nothing (I’m sure you saw the surveys about the majority not being able to come up with $400 or $1,000 – there were two separate ones, both very bad).
We can blame this insecurity on the poor too, on “their” lack of education, stupidity…. and that’s precisely what we are doing when we keep talking about “Trump supporters” as some devolved group of bumpkins (the guns, beer and NASCAR crowd). We have no problem sending them to die in some god forsaken desert, but we have a problem with their judgement when it comes to politics. We need to call it what it is… It makes me want to scream…. Some things people write now remind me of stuff the nobility in France used to write before 1789….
Thank you for reading, Steven and I am delighted that you liked the style. It was meant to entertain….
I understand that most people who will read this, will fervently disagree with the conclusion, or the path to such conclusion, but here is what troubles me more than that. Why are we expecting that engaging in real conversation is impossible now? Why do we need to quickly demonize personas instead of analyzing ideas? Have we lost the ability to take the long and by necessity intricate and sometimes painful paths to opinion? Have we lost the ability to see the many possible sides of things? Does everything have to fall into one of two categories: stuff I agree with or stuff that is evil? Are we afraid to look inside ourselves? Our children certainly seem to be afraid (hence the cynical trigger warning). What kind of monochromatic culture are we creating? What’s the point of having free speech if we lose the ability to listen?
I don’t know if I am right in my conclusion about this election, but this is my best effort to sift through mountains of misinformation and I am certainly open to continued exploration. I approach nothing with the finality we all seem to think is equal to virtue now. I thought I’d share my journey, or rather its highlights, because it would take a book to document my process so far, and it’s only June 🙂
Well, this was certainly entertaining to read. And I appreciate the well crafted and fun writing…and the bravery in taking a very unconventional path to Trump’s candidacy, and admitting it publicly. But the scope of analysis is very narrow, the logic flawed, and the conclusion not in any way supportable if you, Margalit, are truly the liberal you claim to be. You sound much more like a doctrinaire anti-governent libertarian; that would better explain any impulse towards Trump—easily the most flawed and dangerous candidate for president in the last 100 years.
I’m quite sure you anticipated responses like this….so it’s probably useless to engage in any real online discourse. For the benefit of other readers then: this kind of logic and all other paths to Trump would ignore an overwhelming body of evidence based on investigative journalism and the testimony of those who have worked with him that the man is clearly one of those instinctual, natural-born sociopaths that—smart but also amoral and unethical—thrive in and on a capitalist system that puts no check on them as they use (abuse) the system cunningly (backed up by predatory and unprincipled lawyers) ONLY for their own benefit and not society’s.
Careful what you wish for Margalit. Everyone wants simple answers to complex problems that won’t cost them anything. Those who want, “America Great Again” want a $45,000 job with a high school education – just like the boys returning from WWII – who by the way, got education and housing subsidies and later Medicare and SS. They also got a nation exporting to a destroyed Europe where trade deals weren’t needed. America also thought imprisoning Japanese Americans and confiscating their property was the right thing to do.
We blamed the poor for the mortgage implosion and as usual we blame immigrants for most everything else.
Never trust a demagogue, especially one who is also a megalomaniac.
In a perfect world, and maybe as things get worse, this is exactly what should happen, but we’re not ready just yet. It will come in a decade or so because left vs right is no longer a relevant representation of the two competing visions in this country
Hmm, maybe Donald will choose Bernie as his running mate….