The New Left-run Democratic Party staged an unsuccessful convention in my estimation, underscoring a contention that Democrats, if elected again to the presidency, may be less effective in persuading the public than you might think. With a politically correct culture and its byproduct, rampant self-suppression and self-censorship, polls may conceal or underestimate the number of Trump voters. I suspect that Trump, a buffoon who represents an American backlash against dominant ideas and intellectuals, has the edge in 2016’s presidential race.
This is partly thanks to Democrats, whose vacancy and empty value proposition is contained in their secondhand convention slogan: “Stronger Together”.
Hillary Clinton, the former Goldwater girl gone to college, may have intended to stress togetherness over strength but I think the convention theme is a part of her campaign’s problem. By emphasizing unity without providing a coherent cause around which to unite or evidence of unity—the nation, in fact, is divided—Democrats incurred the voter’s anger (Clinton admits that people are “furious” at the state of the union) and affirmed that the nation is more divided than before Obama was elected and re-elected. There is no togetherness in America. Given two terms of hope and change and constant conflict brought by Barack Obama, there is chronic domestic violence and foreign attack—often the blurring of both—amid daily strife, confusion and division.
Obama is why Donald Trump is the only apparent alternative.
Similarly, by emphasizing strength—”Stronger Together”—as the goal, Democrats all but cede Trump’s reason to exist in the race, daring the American voter to choose the strongman whose basic proposition is that he can fix what’s wrong with America, because he’s a more conniving crony than Mrs. Clinton, and that he can do it—somehow, never mind details. If togetherness is what voters seek, they were reminded this week during the Philadelphia propaganda that it is lacking in the U.S. If pure strength is what voters want, they were given a contrast between Trump, whose bluster is mistaken for strength, and Clinton, who obviously does not bring Americans “together” let alone make the incessantly attacked U.S. “stronger”. The evidence is everywhere in the news, social media and the streets. The U.S. is neither stronger nor together by the most elementary accounting of facts. Only entrenched New Left intellectuals and stakeholders really believe Democrats’ slogan if they do (and if they told the truth, they probably don’t). Leftists hurl invective at the Tea Party movement, Ted Cruz and Fox News and at anyone, even CNN and Starbucks, who questions the Obama administration or leftist dogma.
In other words, the Democratic National Convention’s “Stronger Together” is based on a fraud, a lie, a contradiction.
This suits President Barack Obama, a dishonest president who lapsed this week into his performance persona again, cadence and all, to deliver what most pundits deemed an optimistic speech on America. That Obama’s speech was not optimistic, unless by optimism one means confidence in a future nation divided by race, sex and every other factor beyond one’s immediate control, was lost on most pundits, who compared Obama to Ronald Reagan. Obama’s hip, rhythmic rant chided Trump’s narcissism while displaying Obama’s own, invoking himself over and over, from self-centered focus on a past speech to a veiled pitch for a book he wrote. No, Obama’s speech is not an example of optimism in America’s future. It is an example of gloating about America’s demise by his doing. Flag-waving displays of what’s been interpreted as patriotism were a hacking at Americanism—a kind of gravedancing before the casket’s been lowered. The Obama presidency stands for dismantling American law, rights and founding ideals. Obama and the Democrats seek an end to the United States for its moral basis: individual rights. The screaming, yelling, raging and sermonizing was not an expression of optimism, it was pure triumphalism for multiculturalism and feminism and their premise, egalitarianism, over individualism, thinly disguised as Philadelphia patriotism.
But Democrats’ celebration of victory over individualism is premature. America is not yet completely done as the nation based on individual rights. Not yet, not yet. Democrats laid out every old idea to dominate the world’s bloodiest century—altruism, collectivism, statism—with plans for total government control of the individual’s life in terms of faith and the use of force. A preacher sermonized the multicult while a general bellowed about a PC war. Mrs. Clinton would rehash her book about the U.S. as a village, a book in which she proposed prohibition of divorce for couples with children. Vice-presidential nominee Tim Kaine, a Virginian who expressed admiration for Harry Truman, the Democrat who brought peace in a world at war by dropping the atomic bomb twice, not just once, on the enemy, stood out for sounding reasonable. Bill Clinton was reduced to a prop to make his hard, embittered wife seem softer. Michelle Obama chastised and judged. Michael Bloomberg, who as mayor used demagoguery to ban drinks in New York City, denounced the danger of demagoguery. Socialist Bernie Sanders, who is not a Democrat, made an impact with his socialist uprising. Elizabeth Warren noticeably withheld a rant. Democrats succumbed to the New Left.
Then came Chelsea Clinton, the only child of multimillionaire influence peddlers Bill and Hillary Clinton. Ms. Clinton eerily emerged to mimic the Stepford-like appearance last week of her friend, Ivanka Trump. This familialism or familism—the alarming rise of a Blood Collective/Family as an American political power—began as modern-era mythology with the morally depraved Kennedys, continued with the terrible presidencies of the Bushes, echoed with repulsive objectification of wives, children and grandchildren with Gores, Palins and others and comes to a sickening, un-American climax with this parade of Trumps, Clintons and still more new breeds. Twins were a Democrat theme. America’s first pair of husband-wife presidential nominees is coupled with a nepotistic GOP nominee. If either major candidate wins, a tyranny of Family looms large over America.
Enter Hillary Clinton, an activist-Methodist from Park Ridge, Illinois, who in her less guarded moments is almost amicable compared to her vulgar, nationalist opponent. Yet the former first lady, senator and secretary of state resembles Meryl Streep’s matriarch ruler in The Giver, pointing, hugging and faking her way through this week’s propaganda show, complete with big screen breaking glass effects to evoke a female Big Brother in 1984. Whether that’s what persuades voters that she is less pathological than the deranged, dangerous Donald Trump remains to be seen. Hillary Clinton had an opportunity to show her composure and speak to Americans as a fractured but decent people, rising above the hatred and divisiveness of the Obama years, pledging to do what her gauzy graphics promise she’s equipped to do: listen to and contemplate Americans as individuals. Hillary Clinton, accepting her earliest New Left ideals, badgered by Sanders the socialist and tied to a track record of distorting the truth while peddling influence, did not rise to the occasion.
This month’s major political conventions will be historic. Nationalist Donald Trump, presumptive nominee of the philosophically bankrupt Republican Party, and welfare-statist Hillary Clinton, presumptive nominee of the New Left-dominated Democratic Party, are the most untrusted and, incidentally, unpopular presidential candidates in modern history. Clinton, exonerated this week by the Obama administration under a cloud of suspicion after the attorney general met with her spouse, the ex-president Bill Clinton, will be the first woman nominated for the presidency by a major party. Trump, generating controversy as always and this time by re-posting a Star of David superimposed on a pile of money via social media, will be the first non-Republican and explicit anti-capitalist nominated by the party which once advocated some degree of capitalism and individual rights. Both will be nominated in American states which were once great industrial centers; Clinton in America’s first capital, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Trump in Cleveland, Ohio.
Look for what today’s digital public relations, marketing and social media types call optics at the GOP (July 18-21) and Democratic (July 25-28) conventions. Halting, hair-splitting, cackling Clinton may try to come off as softer, less harsh and hostile and more easygoing as a leader; the safer choice. Spewing, ear-splitting, rambling Trump may try to pass himself off as essentially charismatic and strong, less harsh and hostile and more decisive as a leader; the stronger choice. He will try to be a man of the people, an unapologetic village crier and throwback to pre-Obama days, undoing Obama’s legacy by throwing up tougher, state-sponsored fixes at the strongman’s sole discretion. She will try to appear as a woman of the people, a servant carrying on the Obama presidency’s New Left agenda while silently signalling that the age of statism and egalitarianism—policy dictates defining one’s identity by race, sex or culture—has just begun. The next few weeks will be heavy on optics for two power-lusting frauds in American politics.
Look closer for signs of propaganda, however. Whether at the statist’s or the nationalist’s convention, despite whatever riots, anarchy and attack may be carried out, the coming conventions and 2016 will be filled with symbolism and signs of what’s to come. Trump is a master of this—Clinton is not—as he demonstrates by tagging media personalities, streams and channels to generate greater exposure and attract new followers (read my post on The Circus Cycle). Though Trump polls as a loser, polls have been wrong for years, from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s upset loss to this summer’s Brexit victory. I suspect the Trump voter conceals his planned vote from others. Watch for propaganda to foreshadow (unless Libertarian Gary Johnson is elected president) the new presidency.
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Propaganda, as shown at a recent exhibit at the Richard Riordan Central Library in Downtown Los Angeles, has the power to push a civilized nation to dictatorship. Through visual manipulation, such as digital memes, cartoons and posters, especially in today’s increasingly anti-conceptual, perceptual-level culture, the public can more easily be persuaded of certain assertions. National Socialist propaganda, including promotions for Hitler’s Mein Kampf (which translates as My Struggle), was thoroughly premeditated. Read Leonard Peikoff’s The Cause of Hitler’s Germany for a fundamental explanation of Nazi Germany.
As displayed in “State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda”, which runs at the Downtown LA library through August 21 (read about the traveling exhibition here), the Fuhrer (“leader”) and his top Nazis clearly grasped the importance of graphic arts in disseminating their philosophy of duty to the state and submission of the individual to serving others, i.e., altruism, in the name of the god-state-people-race. In certain cases, graphics and images glorify the upshot of National Socialism in practice: mass death and total government control of the individual’s life.
The exhibition, produced by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, shows how “the Nazis used propaganda to win broad voter support in Germany, implement radical programs, and justify war and mass murder”. The exhibit continues in Texas and Louisiana (see the schedule here).
Nazi propaganda posters, movies, art and designs also illustrate attacks on Jews, capitalism and profit. There are other lessons, too. Note the cult of personality employed to foster worship of the charismatic leader. Observe similarities to recent U.S. campaign themes, such as Obama’s “hope and change” paraphernalia, the controversial “Ready for Hillary” capital H with its arrow, and, of course, Trump’s chronic emphasis on himself as the charismatic leader for nationalism, bellowing against others—illegal immigrants, Moslems, Apple, businesses that trade with China—as causing America’s downfall. Clinton, and especially Sanders, target others, too—businesses, Apple, traders on Wall Street, the wealthy—and both sides explicitly target the individual for persecution.
What is so alarming about the 2016 presidential election, and what makes National Socialist propaganda particularly relevant, is the erosion of freedom of speech in America. Obama’s administration attacks free speech, from censoring news to censoring movies and intimidating Americans who would exercise free speech (read Obama Vs. Free Speech). Clinton, who once proposed outlawing divorce for couples with children, has been a part of Obama’s assault on the First Amendment and she sought to evade public and press scrutiny during her entire four years as secretary of state while denouncing an American film as the cause of an Islamic terrorist act of war on the United States. Trump, who cuts off microphones at press conferences, proposes eliminating free speech by weakening libel law and jokes, then says he means it seriously, about having journalists targeted for state-sponsored death.
These are explicit policy ideas, plans and actions. Insidious state sponsorship of media and the arts, like something emanating from the Nazi flow chart pictured here, includes quasi government control of the Oscars (Michelle Obama Ruins the Oscars) and arts and technology conferences (SXSW).
As the free press, too, diminishes with the spread of quasi-government control of industry, subsidizing state-favored cable TV monopolies like Time Warner and Comcast which own and operate major media (CNN, HBO, Warner Bros. Pictures, MSNBC, NBC, Universal Studios), coupled with the dumbing down of American education and culture, it becomes both easier and less apparent for the state to impose controls, cronyism and influence, i.e., blacklists. Only this summer did Tribune Publishing, which owns the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and Baltimore Sun, change its name to the term “tronc” (without the quotation marks but with the bad punctuation), an amalgamation of “Tribune online content” in what appears to be a bid to seem modern, generic and anti-conceptual.
Convergence of today’s aggregated, dumbed down media with secretive, oppressive censorship cannot be far behind.
Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, whom the world lost last week, lived his entire life warning of the danger of staying silent while ominous government insidiously gains the power to destroy life. As the summer of ’16—with Clinton, tronc and Trump—goes down shoveling propaganda in conventions and toward a darker history, this is the moment to stay tuned, call statist and nationalist propaganda what it is and speak out.
With five major candidates remaining in the Republican and Democratic political parties, the 2016 presidential campaign is, like the nation, coming to a climax.
This Tuesday’s Wisconsin primary may prove to be a turning point for the GOP, whose frontrunner is a lifelong anti-Republican who is running as a Republican, because the challenger is expected to win by a wide margin. Later this month, the New York primary may similarly prove to be a Democratic Party pivot point because that party’s challenger, a socialist running as a Democrat, may defeat the frontrunner. By May, with over two more months to go before the summer party conventions, the 2016 race could be totally undecided.
As in 2012’s election, the nation’s future hangs in the balance. The essential nature of America’s republican form of government—a constitutional republic based upon individual rights—is at stake in this election.
Especially this time, I think it is important to remember that, as loaded with volatility as the races are, and as divided as the nation is, anything can happen to change the whole campaign—economic catastrophe, acts of war, assassination, riots, smears, blackmail, indictment, illness, a third or fourth major candidacy, secret deal-making and maneuvering—and throw the American political process into a tailspin.
Already, for instance, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, whom I interviewed when he ran for president as the Libertarian Party’s candidate in 2012 (read the interview here) embraced a recent poll that puts him at 11 percent in a contest against frontrunners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Johnson would certainly be a better president than either Clinton or Trump, who both seek government control of people’s lives, though his election as a third party candidate is currently unlikely.
A more likely scenario is that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, a status quo Republican who said he would never run to be speaker of the House, will try to become the GOP’s nominee for president. The Speaker, who was chosen as Mitt Romney’s running mate in 2012, clearly has higher aspirations and, contradicting himself on every other issue such as the budget, being speaker and his endorsement and subsequent disavowal of Ayn Rand, Congressman Ryan is the typical politician. Also in the typical/status quo camp is Ohio Governor John Kasich (pronounced KAY-SICK), an altruist for the welfare state who seeks religion in government. Kasich is running as a spoiler to frontrunner Trump’s main challenger, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, jockeying for deal-making position, probably all the way to the GOP’s Cleveland, Ohio convention, despite having only won his home state.
To his credit, 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney, the candidate against President Obama last time who failed to identify Obama’s death premise and fully differentiate himself as the candidate of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, has denounced Trump, whom he said he will not vote for. This is more than most conservatives, libertarians and Republicans have done. Indeed, it’s more than Cruz has done. Romney announced that he would vote for Cruz, though he stopped short of an explicit endorsement. Romney himself may want to become the party’s nominee, though it may be more magnanimous and patriotic if he makes a deal with Cruz to abandon Cruz’s worst positions, such as pledging to support Trump if he’s the nominee, building a wall, banning abortion and opposing marriage for gays, in exchange for Romney’s endorsement.
Trump is running to be America’s strongman whether as a Republican or as an independent candidate. He opposes free trade, free choice in medicine, immigration, free speech, property rights, capitalism and individual rights. He’s expressed admiration for states with socialized medicine. He talks about having journalists murdered and seeks to be “neutral” with Israel’s enemies. He agrees with Barack Obama in opposing Apple’s individual rights and he says he would build a wall around America. Kasich wants American government to be ruled by religion and so does Cruz, though he at least says he wants to unite the nation around two key secular proposals: unyielding national defense against the Islamic jihad and restoring America’s government to a Constitutional republic.
The challenger in both parties may yet emerge as the nominee. Self-described socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders recently swept caucuses in the West, where pockets of socialism fester, especially among indoctrinated youths, and he could win the nomination (as he explains here). An election between Sanders and Cruz could be a contest of conflicting principles. A race between Trump and Clinton will be an impossible choice between toxic policies that will destroy America and there is a degree to which all the remaining five candidates pledge to end America. But there is time and there are degrees. The American for individual rights must choose (and those who refuse to choose are choosing, be default, to check and blank out). Because, this year, anything bad can happen—including economic collapse, foreign attack and anarchism (i.e., by the Anonymous anarchists)—the good American must start by choosing to be aware, staying on alert for rational activism.
The year 2016 promises to be another sharp turn in American government. Whichever direction the United States takes—toward dictatorship or liberty—becomes known in November. The choice intensifies next week.
The nation’s disunity was on display in America’s Hawkeye state tonight. Iowa’s caucuses, which resulted in thin margins in both major parties, indicate that this year’s presidential nominations may be close and contentious. Iowa’s election signals a crucial contest among five major candidates for president of the United States (read my thoughts on the GOP’s first debate here, my complete fall 2015 roundup of candidates here and my analysis of the GOP’s Reagan library debate here). In terms of supporting individual rights and the unity and defense of the nation, one candidate comes out ahead, if not on top.
Bernie Sanders, the socialist senator from Vermont, locked in a close Democratic Party race with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, gave one of the most vitriolic political speeches in recent memory. He denounced the wealthy and those who work on Wall Street, targeting them for persecution with wild-eyed raging abandon, and, as I wrote last fall citing the elections of Barack Obama, he can be nominated and he can be elected president. As of this writing, Mrs. Clinton is running ahead by a narrow margin, and I think that once the reality that raging socialist Sanders, similarly to raging statist Donald Trump in the GOP, could get the nomination sets in among Democrats, the race could shift in her favor. Despite the fact that she has no real accomplishments of her own, and, like Jeb Bush, she is a reminder of the repudiated and disastrous policies of the Clinton-Bush past, former Sen. Clinton is not as morally repugnant as Sen. Sanders, who explicitly seeks to bring the nation’s republican government to an end.
As bad as she is, and her record of censorship alone disqualifies her, Sanders is horrifying to any freedom-loving American, however softly he peddles his version of government control. Democrats may figure this out as early as next week in New Hampshire and go with the candidate who does not express open hostility for—and the intent to destroy—people who make money. Or the rowdy Sanders supporters who adopt the Orwellian motto that means pain is gain—warning voters that they will feel the Bern while sadistically demanding that they take it—could win the New Left argument and prevail in nominating the New England socialist as their candidate for president of the United States. Clinton’s basic value proposition remains her sex as her sole identity, a flimsy basis made flimsier by the lousy results of the last identity politics president, President Obama. This works in Sanders’ favor because he argues based on ideas, not his sex. No one mistakes Hillary Clinton as a candidate of consistent ideas and it is unlikely, if not too late, for her to become one.
The Republican victor last night was Ted Cruz, the first-term senator from Texas, who won last night’s Iowa caucuses by a few decisive points over Trump, who had predicted a “tremendous” victory hours before he became the loser. The three-way results included Florida’s first-term Sen. Marco Rubio snapping at Trump’s heels because Rubio consolidated panicked status quo voters that reject both Trump and Cruz as “extremists”. Rubio, who is smooth talking and inconsistent in his political philosophy, was first elected to the U.S. Senate as the Tea Party insurgent not long ago. Now, he’s almost the last man standing in for Bush, Christie, Kasich and other welfare state Republicans that appease and accommodate leftists and Democrats. That doesn’t mean Rubio can’t win, not in the Grand Old Party that constantly delivers milquetoast candidates and Rubio’s pro-surveillance state position ought to be enough to motivate Washington’s military-industrial complex’s support. But at some point Rubio has to make a case and win a primary and it’s still hard for me to see that happening from such a shallow candidate. Rubio could win by default.
Donald Trump, who opposes capitalism, property rights and free choice in medicine—he told ABC News that he thinks that health care is a right—remains a factor for now and his appeal continues to be fed by status quo Republicans and conservatives and leftists in the media feeding off his sensationalist tactics. Americans, as I wrote last fall, increasingly seek a strongman—a dictator—and this is a real threat to the country. Trump, who resembles crony businessman Orren Boyle more than productive businessman Hank Rearden in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, suits this spreading American zest for fascism. This leaves Cruz, in all his religious zealotry and huckster charms, as the candidate potentially most serious about averting the nation from the destruction brought on by Obama’s devastating presidency.
This, too, is how Cruz’s flaws, which I named in 2013, may be his best argument among a field of rotten candidates (and 2016 certainly offers that). The case against Cruz is often that he will say anything to get elected. Almost all of them appear to do that. On the most urgent problems facing the United States of America, however, Ted Cruz offers some of the best solutions. He pledges to kill the Islamic terrorists, repeal ObamaCare and begin to repair the damage done to America’s once-partly capitalist economy. Unfortunately, he also vows to inject religion into the government, too, and this is not an endorsement. But he is the only candidate of the five major contenders to emerge from the first election of 2016’s presidential campaign to take these problems seriously and with respect to the founding ideals of the republic. This is reason to take Ted Cruz seriously, especially as the alternative to Trump, the GOP candidate of government control, which makes the 2016 Iowa caucuses a sign of the nation’s bleak political statesmanship and leaves me with the knowledge that it could have been worse.
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Hillary Clinton, the former Goldwater girl gone to college, may have intended to stress togetherness over strength but I think the convention theme is a part of her campaign’s problem. By emphasizing unity without providing a coherent cause around which to unite or evidence of unity—the nation, in fact, is divided—Democrats incurred the voter’s anger (Clinton admits that people are “furious” at the state of the union) and affirmed that the nation is more divided than before Obama was elected and re-elected. There is no togetherness in America. Given two terms of hope and change and constant conflict brought by Barack Obama, there is chronic domestic violence and foreign attack—often the blurring of both—amid daily strife, confusion and division.
Nazi propaganda posters, movies, art and designs also illustrate attacks on Jews, capitalism and profit. There are other lessons, too. Note the cult of personality employed to foster worship of the charismatic leader. Observe similarities to recent U.S. campaign themes, such as Obama’s “hope and change” paraphernalia, the controversial “Ready for Hillary” capital H with its arrow, and, of course, Trump’s chronic emphasis on himself as the charismatic leader for nationalism, bellowing against others—illegal immigrants, Moslems, 
These are explicit policy ideas, plans and actions. Insidious state sponsorship of media and the arts, like something emanating from the Nazi flow chart pictured here, includes quasi government control of the Oscars (
As in 2012’s election, the nation’s future hangs in the balance. The essential nature of America’s republican form of government—a constitutional republic based upon individual rights—is at stake in this election.
A more likely scenario is that Speaker of the House 
Trump is running to be America’s strongman whether as a Republican or as an independent candidate. He opposes free trade, free choice in medicine, immigration, free speech, property rights, capitalism and individual rights. He’s expressed admiration for states with socialized medicine. He talks about having journalists murdered and seeks to be “neutral” with Israel’s enemies. He agrees with 