Trump's Reich - Part One

by Tom Kando

Mandate schmandate! Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, as has happened five times before to a candidate who was then robbed of the presidency which he earned (e.g. Gore, 2000). And I believe that in every instance the presidency was stolen from the Democrats.

The national polls - now universally loathed - were not far off. As Nate Silver emphasized over and over again, it’s at the state level that polling was problematic. His last overall prediction (Nov. 8) had Clinton at 48.5% of the national total and Trump at 44.9%. After the California votes have been counted, Clinton may have a million more votes than Trump, so the Five ThirtyEight numbers will be well within the typical statistical error range.

Trump is Right: The system is Rigged. America is not a Democracy: Once again the winner was robbed, the presidency was stolen. The electoral college is an 18th century anachronism that should be abolished. Doesn’t democracy mean one (wo)man = one vote? Why does my vote count for a small fraction of that of someone in Nevada just because I live in California? There have been many undemocratic rules throughout history. For example the three-fifths compromise which counted a black man as worth three fifths of a white man, the poll tax, and many other income requirements for voting.


Also, the bicameral parliamentary system, whereby representation in the upper house (the Senate) is NOT proportional to population. Some of these elitist, plutocratic and undemocratic practices survive today. The electoral college is one of them. The fact that our slave-owning 18th century Founding Fathers favored them does not make them sacrosanct.

I told You So: I predicted a probable Trump victory. See, among others, my A Letter to my Daughters. (I actually made some money on a bet with a friend).

How did I know? I sensed something. Sometimes, you can see a revolutionary movement coming, and it cannot be stopped. The more money, TV ads and computer printouts you throw at it, as the much better-funded and better-organized Hillary campaign was doing, the more establishment bigwigs you parade (Biden, Michelle and Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Hollywood celebrities, Lady Gaga, etc.), the more fuel you add to the fire.

The Tea Party insurrection just got stronger and stronger. I understood this when people like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell were betting on Trump. These sly politicians knew that they had the inside track. They are career politicians who specialize in legalistic tricks and maneuvers. They are experts at rigging things through machinations. They are reptilian predators who spend their life to protect and advance the interests of the plutocracy.

I sensed that the conservative power structure, while feigning to be put off by Trump’s style, was licking their chops at a Trump victory. The brainwashing of dozens of millions of low-education, knee-jerk, white Tea Party-types was proceeding apace. Thanks to Fox News and other hate-spewing media on the right, it became a cinch to elect a vulgar sex fiend, a bully, a misogynist, a narcissist who cares for nobody but himself, who profits by turning urban neighborhoods into casinos surrounded by slums and garbage, who bankrupts cities and companies, who cheats contractors, and who assaults women. A man whose pathetic side-kicks are cunning, corrupt, aging men - people like Rudolph Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, Chris Christie, Ben Carson - willing to lie and sell their soul to the devil in return for some crumbs from the presidential table.

At the same time, I saw few encouraging signs among Hillary’s supporting cast. Her campaign head John Podesta did not inspire the same confidence as David Axelrod had, when running Obama’s campaigns.

I am temperamentally pessimistic, and I have a strong sense of history, both from reading and from living (through war-ravaged Europe, the turbulent sixties and other bad times). I know a lot about life and about politics, based on many years of experience.

I sensed that this insurrection was strong, maybe as unstoppable as fascism, communism and other murderous movements of the past.

My pessimism was also driven by the naive, the dumbass, giggly atmosphere at presumably liberal or “mainstream” media such as CNN (e.g. Don Lemon, Anderson Cooper, Wolf Blitzer) and MSNBC (e.g. Chris Matthews). I saw no reason for imbecile pre-election euphoria reminiscent of Voltaire’s Pangloss.

A week before the election, Michael Moore said gleefully something to the effect that “the days of white male domination are over. Get used to it. WHEN (not “if”) Hillary assumes the presidency in January, the first thing she WILL (not “might”) do is...”

For weeks we heard from mainstream media that the GOP was obsolete, moribund, ready to break up.

Instead, the opposite is happening. The GOP and conservatism are growing ever stronger. The Tea Party has now effectively taken over the entire government. It will now control ALL THREE branches of the federal government. In addition, an ever larger majority of states are also in Republican hands.

Four years ago, Frank Rich wrote that “The Tea Party will win in the end.” I reviewed this article in my “The Tea Party will Win and America Will Lose” (see Tom Kando.) As Rich wrote, “this is a nation that loathes government and always has. Liberals should not be deluded: The Goldwater revolution will ultimately triumph, regardless of what happens in November” (October 2012).

The GOP never dies. The Republican Party and conservatism are indestructible. Every prediction of their imminent demise is followed by a resurgence. They represent America’s national character, a people that lives mentally in the 19th century and the age of mythical individualism. America is the most conservative country on the planet.

In 2016, the only hope for progressives was that there was insufficient time left for Hillary Clinton’s advantage to collapse. However, the Comey letters and the FBI finished her off.

So I was right and all the intelligentsia, all the brilliant and open-minded academicians were wrong. Now they learn. The Tea Party is in control of the country. Whites remain the largest tribe, and white men will continue to rule. A few days ago, pundits declared that thewhite man's reign was over. If you don’t think that a small percentage of the population can rule almost in perpetuity, just remember South Africa. Under Trump, voter suppression will go into high gear, further strengthening the supremacy of the white male upper middle-class.

Complacency, Media Collaboration, Enabling Behavior, Counting Your Chickens Before they Hatch: As I said, this is what the Democrats and the mainstream media are guilty of. Three weeks before the election, the Clinton campaign started diverting its resources towards house and senate races, thinking that Hillary’s victory was in the bag. Now, the chickens which they were counting before they hatched are coming home to roost (good double metaphor).

Of course, ratings are the media’s first and foremost motive. It is for the sake of $$$ that the so-called “mainstream” media gave such an inordinate amount of time to Donald Trump and to Hillary’s trumped up e-mail scandals. They played a greedy and cowardly game, implying moral equivalency between a psychopathic sex fiend and a fine politician who had mistakenly used the wrong e-mail server. They gave equal time to good and evil. They equivocated , as if journalistic ethics requires giving equal time to lies and fascistoid propaganda. They refused to be partisan on the side of reason and decency. They are the ENABLERS.

TIMING is another way in which the media are playing havoc with elections and undermine the democratic process: Unreliable and blatantly false poll results are broadcast at any time before and during elections. Early results are spewed out all over the media, thereby affecting the voting behavior of those who have not yet voted. We in California might as well not vote in national elections, as many results are called before we get to the ballot box. It is incomprehensible that it is legal to call results before the voting is complete.

And of course, FBI director Comey’s two letters - just DAYS before the election - were the final blows assuring Clinton’s defeat. The “retraction” letter was too little and too late. Even after it was made public, the rabid Trumpsters, reminiscent of lynch mobs, continued their chant,”Lock her up! Lock her up!” The outcome of this election is one in which (1) a majority of the people realize that Hillary Clinton deserved to win, and (2) a majority voted to assure her defeat.

Equally guilty: The millions of independents, former Sanders supporters and assorted others who gave the job to Trump by not voting for Clinton. Especially grotesque are the allegedly “progressive” Sanders followers who switched to Trump. You jump from socialism to fascism? What is that?

Let’s also not forget the dozens of millions (nearly half of the electorate) who did not vote, including millions of millennials. Shame on you. It’s YOUR own future which you have just messed up almost irreparably.

But the bottom line was MISOGYNY. Millions of husbands lied to the pollsters and to their wives. They said that they were voting for Clinton but they lied. Remember this, women: ALL men are liars. They are genetically programmed that way.

In the second part of this article, I will list the probable consequences of Trump’s ill-gotten victory. Things are likely to change for the worse, MUCH worse.
© Tom Kando 2016;All Rights Reserved
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