The long Republican presidential campaign ended last night in Cleveland, Ohio, as the Grand Old Party (GOP) essentially ended itself as a political party for individual rights by nominating non-Republican nationalist Donald Trump for president of the United States.
The wreckage Trump leaves in his wake is real. The Republican Party is gone. I am inclined to agree with scholar Thomas Sowell, who writes that the best outcome is an unresolved election between Hillary Clinton and Trump that goes to the House of Representatives.
Trump is the result of decades of Big Government status quo; his reckless, anti-intellectual plan for whim-based authoritarianism is a solution to every major unsolved problem America faces, from our multi-trillion dollar debt and lousy economy to the West’s war with radical Islam. While Americans were scoffing at solving these urgent problems, insisting that they didn’t want to think about them, talk politics or do anything but snivel and sneer at satire by Simpsons, South Park and Jon Stewart, Trump was deluding himself into believing that he’s the one to fill the void.
Variations on the prototypical angry white male—Colbert, Matthews, Gutfeld, Stewart, Miller, O’Reilly, Olbermann—all superficial and deeply anti-intellectual, converged into a single TV personality: the bumbling, foaming, splaying, monstrous Donald Trump. Trump mixes most of the popular cultural points since the turn of the century—the attention deficit, instant gratification and roaming, raging thuggishness of a vicariously violent video game, the boorish, slobbering sloth of The Sopranos and blood-lust of Game of Thrones, the petty, vulgar and vacant humor of Seinfeld and everything it bred—Trump is the triumph of the anti-romantic; he provides the gushing, momentary thrill of going by the gut. He is an embodiment of the anti-ideal.
The presidential nominee says he “admires” states with socialized medicine, “loves” violating property rights via eminent domain and opposes free trade, free press and freedom of speech. Trump vows to build a wall along the American border. All of this comes under his banner to “make America great again”, a theme of Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign.
Those were not the only words lifted without credit from someone else during the past four days. The speech Trump and his wife claimed she wrote, an assertion which was later revoked without serious media scrutiny, plagiarized an Obama convention speech. But Trump’s candidacy, which began on June 16, 2015, thrives on controversy. From his spat with Megyn Kelly, which put them both in the center of attention, to his accusations, smears and insinuations, everything he does is designed to make you look.
But not too closely, not for too long, and certainly not at his ideas. During the convention, Trump swore, for instance, that he will “make America work again”. Never mind what this phrase, which if taken literally could mean mandatory labor, actually means.
Vague on specific plans, though unmistakably clear in his anti-capitalist, authoritarian intent and purpose, Donald Trump’s convention was marked by screaming, ranting and a single voice of dissent in a speech by Ted Cruz, who refused to endorse the New York crony real estate developer (postscript: Cruz endorsed Trump). Trump was nominated after a motion over rules by Never Trump delegates was denied a roll call vote. Trump’s party platform adopted government controls such as a law targeting gays for prohibition from marriage and a restoration of the Franklin Roosevelt administration’s defunct Glass-Steagall Act controlling banks.
Trump Con is a swing to the left—toward a centralized government controlling economics, marital law and communication—erasing a party created by those seeking to abolish slavery. The leftist push came, too, from the candidate’s wife, Melania, who by her admission admiringly copied Michelle Obama, and his daughter, Ivanka, a non-Republican who introduced her father by emphasizing non-essential facts, such as the Trump corporation’s—Trumps call the entity an “organization”—hiring of “more women”, not men, as executives. Ivanka Trump, appearing as callous as Mrs. Obama and as blank as a mannequin or a model in a Robert Palmer music video, became momentarily expressive once during an otherwise Stepford-like address—when she praised laws granting favors to women based upon marriage and motherhood. Sounding like both a radical socialist such as Bernie Sanders and a staunch conservative such as Phyllis Schlafly, Trump’s child spoke of “wage discrepancy”, “wage equality” and “equal pay”, pledging to hold her father accountable as president to reclaiming “our heritage”, though, like her father, Ivanka Trump refused to explain the pronoun or the heritage.
Trump’s daughter, who is married to New York Observer owner Jared Kushner, dared Americans to “judge [Donald Trump’s] competency by the companies he’s built” and added that he “will call upon the best and brightest”. She did not say for what purpose the best and brightest would be called upon nor exactly what being “called upon” means, whether a voluntary draft or some form of servitude. Ivanka Trump, proponent of mandates for rewarding marriage and motherhood, told the audience that her father will seek and carry out “brave new solutions.”
Donald Trump’s speech was a spewing, shouting rant which CNN reports is the longest convention speech in 44 years. Trump railed against immigrants and the state of the union, citing statistics and promising “no lies…[only] the truth and nothing else”, a pledge he’s already broken and often. Trump ended his acceptance speech by blurting three indiscriminate words: “I love you!”
At the end of a convention dedicated to destroying the Republican Party and constructing a powerful family government bureaucracy, the audience was left mindlessly demanding imprisonment of Trump’s presumptive opponent, Hillary Clinton, and chanting a variation of Barack Obama’s 2008 theme, which Trump’s dishonest campaign extends. “YES YOU WILL!” is 2016’s corollary of 2008’s “YES WE CAN!” I contemplated the latter phrase in my post on Obama’s legacy and Trump’s motto, given his nationalist philosophy and threats to bring U.S. businesses such as Apple under the jackboot of the U.S. government, can only end in “…do as Trump commands!” Or worse.
“You can’t always get what you want,” the Rolling Stones sing on the record used without permission by Donald Trump. Short-sighted media pundits who powered his ominous rise mistake his featuring the song for a humbled check on Trump’s power-lusting intentions. But, as a voice of dissent to the supposed charisma of Melania, Ivanka and Donald Trump and this alarming mixture of familialism with fascism, I think media pundits got it wrong. Trump plays the tune as a taunt to Americans. Here comes my new autocratic administration, he’s transmitting to the nation and the world, and no one—especially not you, the individual—should expect to get what you deserve, because Trump’s time is coming and Trump will be in control. The anti-republican Trump Convention, the biggest con on the American people since Barack Obama, all but guarantees that, whether Clinton the statist or Trump the statist wins this election, unhappy days will soon be here.
Tonight’s GOP debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Ventura County, Southern California, was better as a debate, thanks to moderator Jake Tapper, who decided to be journalist rather than part of the status quo. But it reveals the Republican Party’s fundamental bankruptcy (read my pre-debate analysis of each candidate here).
As has been clear for decades, the party has abandoned its defense of individual rights and capitalism, which has never been strong and consistent. But tonight’s debate showed the total inversion. The three-hour main event demonstrated that the candidates oppose man’s rights and pure capitalism while pretending to represent the best of both ideals. Frontrunner Donald Trump, for instance, made his essential value proposition that he can fix America because he’s a businessman. Then, he promptly defended the income tax, denouncing the flat tax as too complicated in favor of the graduated income tax, and called himself “militaristic” in an apparent confusion over whether militarism is a virtue in an American president. When Trump was right, as he was in contending that George W. Bush made Obama possible, he failed to explain why, let alone do so on principle.
Fake capitalist Trump was topped by fake capitalist Carly Fiorina, an ex-CEO who was fired and ran for the U.S. Senate in a race she lost (by a wide margin). Everything she said, including her debate theme to challenge the status quo, is unconvincing. Ms. Fiorina had been elevated in stature by an earlier attack by Trump on her looks which allowed her to play to her essential value proposition in this presidential campaign: the fact that she is a woman. Everything she says and does is calculated to magnify this fact, despite her assertion that she’s the anti-Hillary Clinton. Actually, Carly Fiorina, who made an emotional rant against fetal tissue research, is very much like Mrs. Clinton, whom she rightly accused of being devoid of accomplishment.
That the most serious anti-abortion female presidential candidate later claimed in her Lady Liberty/Lady Justice pitch that she seeks to offer everyone the “opportunity to live the life she chooses” underscores that this candidate is a fraud as an advocate for individual rights. Everything from a line for women about Trump’s comment on her face, an easy shot against Trump, to her being the only candidate to decline to name a woman to put on paper currency, amounts to an appeal based solely on her sex. Ms. Fiorina proved again that she can come up with lines fast but she’s putting on an act; she seeks power for its own sake.
Sen. Ted Cruz denounced the Iran deal in strong terms, looking into the camera and speaking in measured language naming national security as a paramount concern, sharply asking an Iran deal apologist: “How do we know if they cheat?” Cruz’s closing statement, framed by Tapper as a hypothetical post-presidency assessment, was good, with no mention of his recent plan to elect the Supreme Court. He invoked Winston Churchill, pledged to open a U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, Israel, and named “radical Islamic terrorism”, which President Obama refuses to do. He promised that he would “never, ever, ever” let Iran’s ayatollahs acquire nuclear weapons, proposed a flat tax, abolition of the IRS and repeal of “every word of ObamaCare”. But in touting the fact that he’s been fighting the status quo, he reminded the audience that he is not winning.
Jeb Bush blurted out the debate’s biggest applause line with the lie that his brother “kept us safe” from attack, an outrageous if widely accepted claim given that the nation’s worst attack happened on Bush’s brother’s watch, not counting numerous attacks (DC sniper, anthrax attack, various passenger jet attacks stopped by passengers, not government) that followed. Trump replied with the question “do you feel safe right now?”, a legitimate counterpoint to the Bush presidency which no one answered.
On the positive side, Gov. John Kasich evoked a sense of optimism and called for a return to an American, can-do approach to getting things done and the questions and format were more serious than the personality-driven event co-sponsored by Fox News and Facebook. The debate’s best short line came from Sen. Marco Rubio, who noted that “we have a president who is more respectful of the ayatollah than of the prime minister of Israel”.
But Sen. Rubio also said that U.S. foreign policy “must find moderate elements in the Middle East” and arm them, without mentioning that the evidence that moderate elements exist is scant. Ben Carson equivocated and endorsed raising the minimum wage, adding that the U.S. government should impose two minimum wages! Gov. Kasich, who said he would put Mother Teresa on the ten dollar bill, proposed that America adopt Judeo Christianity’s ethics of selflessness to stop Islamic barbarians from recruiting Americans to sacrifice themselves in acts of Islamic jihad. Is Ohio’s governor, a serious contender polling well in New Hampshire, preaching religion and selflessness to stop violent acts of religion and selflessness?
Yes, seriously and unfortunately. Stand by for the Democrats in October.
Businessman, author (The Art of the Deal), presidential candidate and television personality Donald Trump’s current status on top of the Republican presidential field of candidates is chiefly another ominous sign that the country is in deep, serious trouble. The nation is in a downward spiral, as I wrote here, and the presidency is a crucial mechanism for pulling out of the dive. The campaign must be serious, deadly serious, because America is in dire straits.
Trump exploits this fact. He knew when he entered the race that this is true—he’s not unintelligent—and to whatever extent he holds principles, he wants to help solve America’s problems and thinks he can. This is his right as an American and I think he makes a partially good point about illegal immigration, tragically underscored by the recent murder of an innocent American by an illegal alien granted sanctuary in San Francisco.
I also think he’s right to question whether Senator John McCain is a war hero. George Washington is a war hero. Sergeant York is a war hero. Audie Murphy is a war hero. Generals Sherman, Grant, Patton and especially MacArthur are war heroes and, as far as I’m concerned, the passengers on United Flight 93 are war heroes. It is true that John McCain was captured and tortured by the enemy, but if John McCain is a war hero, it is to a much lesser degree than these other men. Sen. McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, is an elder statesman and leader and it is legitimate to question his leadership.
But what makes a war hero or an illegal immigrant is not as urgent and pressing as the assault on individual rights, America’s precarious welfare statist economy and the fact that the U.S. has a disaster in Iraq and is losing the war with states that sponsor terrorism motivated by Islam, such as Iran. Trump has no serious, tenable positions on the most critical issues of this dark moment in history. To the extent his positions, sense of purpose and reliability are known, he is mixed, anti-capitalist, unserious and unsteady or shaky, the opposite qualities needed for a good or even decent president at this pivotal point. As trader Jonathan Hoenig argues on his blog (read the post here), Trump advocates protectionism and redistribution of wealth; posing as a capitalist, he is a fraud.
America must have a serious and urgent debate of ideas during the 2016 election. Trump offers and brings nothing essential to the arena and should be dismissed as the clown or carnival barker many have said he is. That he’s right from time to time about certain isolated issues—and that this occasional correctness and brash willingness to speak his mind garners fans, attention and prospective voters—underscores the total and utter political-philosophical bankruptcy of the Republican Party, which was founded on the principle of abolishing slavery and has slithered into the party of submission to slavery by default ever since. Until and unless a serious candidate of ideas, or at least one who is not as hostile to man’s rights, emerges, the anti-intellectual Trump is a sideshow whose spotlight shows how corrupt, cynical and insane American politics has become.
Author’s Note
Thank you for your interest in my writing.
I write fiction and non-fiction. Read my blog at left for informal posts on news, ideas and the culture. I am available for contracting, so if you're interested, please start here.
I welcome feedback. To let me know your thoughts, please feel free to contact me.
The presidential nominee says he “admires” states with socialized medicine, “loves” violating property rights via eminent domain and opposes free trade, free press and freedom of speech. Trump vows to build a wall along the American border. All of this comes under his banner to “make America great again”, a theme of Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign.
Tonight’s GOP debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Ventura County, Southern California, was better as a debate, thanks to moderator 
Businessman, author (The Art of the Deal), presidential candidate and television personality Donald Trump’s current status on top of the Republican presidential field of candidates is chiefly another ominous sign that the country is in deep, serious trouble. The nation is in a downward spiral, as I wrote