Saturday, December 12, 2015

"I Hate to Say 'I Told You So', But..."




Men worshiped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast, and they worshiped the beast, saying, "Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?"
-Revelation 13:4

Those who would give up essential Liberty, even to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
-Benjamin Franklin

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
-Patrick Henry

I would rather be right than be President.
-Henry Clay





WARNING:
THE FOLLOWING POST INCLUDES CONTENT WHICH MAY BE CONSIDERED AS OFFENSIVE. VIEWER DISCRETION IS STRONGLY ADVISED.



On August 19, 2015, I posted what I thought would be the definitive blog column on why Donald Trump would prove himself to be the worst possible presidential candidate in the history of the Republican Party. I thought that whoever read the column would realize how much of a mockery Trump would make of Republican voters to the point that they would refuse to accept him as a viable presidential contender. I thought that whoever read the column would realize how much of an opportunistic charlatan Trump really is when it comes to taking advantage of people's fears and then using those fears to expose everything that has been wrong with the Republican Party since the end of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency. All in all, I thought that the column would actually help Republican voters to put their "Party Before Country" attitude aside and be objective enough to avoid making the embarrassing mistake of handing their party over to someone as lacking in ethics, decency and other forms of civil respectability as Donald Trump...


...Stupid me. What was I thinking?


I should have known as I was writing my column in August that Donald Trump would end up becoming as popular as he is among Republican voters today, just as I should have known all along that words like "objectivity", "ethics", "decency" and "civility" have been all but removed entirely from the Republican vocabulary since the end of FDR's presidency and World War II when Republicans in Congress attempted to use "The Red Scare" as a means to smear the reputations of prominent liberal Democrats in both public and private life for political gain. And because of this, I also should have realized more than ever that anyone who is white, protestant and portrays himself as a hybrid of Adolf Hitler, Joe McCarthy, George Wallace and Charles Foster Kane would be accepted as the quintessential candidate to support among Republican voters if and when that person announced his candidacy for the highest and most honorable office in the United States after eight years of Barack Obama's presidency. Xenophobes, racists, misogynists and other assorted sociopaths in America can rejoice now that Donald Trump is their "voice of reason" for the White House in 2016. "Praise The Lord, Pass The Ammunition, Close The Borders, To Hell With The Constitution, and Political Correctness Be Damned!"

  
As for the Republicans in Congress who have made the headlines this week by "condemning" Donald Trump for his statements about banning all Muslims from the United States, make no mistake: Despite their attempts at publicly denouncing Trump's inflammatory rhetoric, you can all but guarantee that the majority of House and Senate Republicans will end up becoming too reluctant to announce that they would be willing to either vote for articles of impeachment or renounce their party affiliation if Donald Trump ends up winning the nomination and goes on to win the 2016 presidency. Keep in mind that these are the same Republicans in Congress who used similar campaign rhetoric in 2010 against President Obama and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in order to win their seats on Capitol Hill.


Always remember that Republicans in Congress must answer
to crowds like this now.

I personally would be willing to argue that a large percentage of Republicans in Congress would have no other alternative but to accept Trump's nomination even if he were to announce that he had chosen former Ku Klux Klan leader and current Tea Party spokesperson David Duke to be his running mate after winning a majority of delegates at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio next Summer. When you create a mess, you have one of two options: You can either be a mature adult, take responsibility for the mess that you have created and clean it up before it becomes disastrous, or you can act like an immature delinquent, add to the already-existing mess until it becomes disastrous, and then blame others for the disaster that you have created. The majority of the Republican electorate have clearly chosen the latter option by showing their overwhelming support for Donald Trump's 2016 presidential candidacy, and it's a safe bet that even the most hardened anti-Trump Republicans in Congress will ultimately cave in and choose the latter option as well if he should win the Republican nomination next Summer in Cleveland.


Former Ku Klux Klan leader-turned-Tea Party
representative David Duke


Knowing how much Trump likes to portray himself as the ultimate anti-government/anti-establishment hero who doesn't have a problem with using negative or blatantly shameless publicity in order to keep his name in the headlines, it wouldn't be all that surprising to me if he actually did make the decision to select David Duke or some other influential white supremacist Tea Party leader as his running mate if he ends up winning the Republican nomination, especially if no one within the Republican establishment wanted to be remembered as the man or woman who took the job of being Donald Trump's choice for vice president. Consider this: The potential for a Trump/Duke presidency would help give the more radical element among conservatives a legitimate excuse to get out the neo-Confederate/Tea Party "White Pride" vote in the South and in other rural and suburban sections of the U.S. before the general election in November. Taking this into consideration, can you think of any other 2016 Republican presidential candidate who would select a white supremacist as his or her running mate for the general election with the same level of gall and calculated shock value as Donald Trump?


You can expect to see more billboard ads like these in the U.S.
if Donald Trump selects David Duke as his vice presidential
running mate and wins the 2016 general election.


For obvious reasons, neither Dr. Ben Carson or Senator Marco Rubio would continue to be thought of as credible Republican contenders among "White Pride"conservative voters if either of them were to select David Duke as their running mate after winning the 2016 nomination. For Senator Ted Cruz, selecting Duke as his running mate would be too much of a risk for him to consider because it would only sour his relations with fellow House and Senate Republicans even more on Capitol Hill. As for Jeb Bush, the prospect of selecting David Duke as his running mate would only add more injury to insult if his brother George W. Bush were to campaign for both of them. 
In short, only Donald Trump would have the audacity to pull off such a potentially disastrous stunt after winning the Republican nomination and get away with doing it unscathed from the consequences among white conservative voters; and it's mainly because no one in Congress would take Trump seriously if he were elected president, regardless of his choice for vice president. Democrats in Congress have no reason to take him seriously as a presidential contender already, and Republicans in Congress would be forced into taking him seriously if they wanted to keep their jobs in Washington, D.C. after his inauguration. Add David Duke to that equation, and the prospect of a Donald Trump presidency looks even more like a profile in stupidity among the Republican electorate than a demographics victory for the Republican Party as a whole. 


This brings up something else that should be considered as a nightmare scenario for the Republican establishment in particular: Given the amount of racism and xenophobia that already exists within the Republican electorate (which, as I will explain later in this post, is due in large part to the conservative media), what Republican member of the House or the Senate would dare to risk losing his or her seat in Congress by standing up against their own constituents and declaring Trump's candidacy for president as being too dangerous for their party and for the country after he selected David Duke to be his running mate following the 2016 Republican National Convention? At this point in time, Donald Trump already has the Republican Party by the balls enough to know that he can do or say whatever he wants on the campaign trail as long as it keeps his numbers up in the polls. If by chance that should include selecting David Duke as his running mate after winning the nomination in Cleveland next Summer, then everyone from Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus to the local Republican mayor in "Hometown, U.S.A." would have no other choice but to accept Trump's selection of David Duke for vice president as being legitimate. 

Stop and think about that for a moment before continuing to read further, because it should give anyone an idea as to how much conservative Republicans would like to drive the United States off the cliff of progressive thought and into the dark, putrid abyss of their regressive and unhinged ideology. 

When all is said and done, the real battle for the heart and
soul of the Republican Party can be best determined by the
above statement.

While the possibility of Donald Trump selecting David Duke as his running mate for the 2016 general election may be seen as an implausible scenario within the Republican establishment and among a certain number of Democrats and independent voters, it is nevertheless too much of a plausible temptation for white conservative voters to resist if such a possibility were to become likely. The fact of the matter is this: Despite his former leadership status within the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke remains a somewhat popular and influential figure among white conservatives in the Southern region of the United States. Couple that with the eight years of Barack Obama's term in the White House along with the lock-step, "Party Before Country" mentality that exists within the Republican electorate, and it wouldn't be too presumptuous to speculate that Trump could actually win a large portion of the South and several key voting districts in other parts of the country with David Duke as his vice presidential running mate in a general election scenario. 



For members of the Republican establishment and a certain number of Democrats and independent voters who don't know any better, the idea of Donald Trump winning the South and other sections of the country with David Duke as his running mate could be compared to the old joke about Southern white conservative Dixiecrats who used the voting booth because they could never beat Northern Yankee liberals in their own backyard with any other weapon after the Civil War. But in many sections of the South, however, the voting booth is still thought of as less of a joke and more as a strategic weapon in an ongoing, vindictive campaign of political and cultural subterfuge against the Federal government, and it is used with the intention of being successful on a national level instead of in Southern voting districts alone. Just the fact that a substantial number of white conservative voters from beyond the Mason-Dixon Line were literally howling for their states to secede from the Union immediately following Barack Obama's presidential election victories in 2008 and 2012 is proof that "The Southern Strategy" remains in existence and has the potential of being more of a genuine threat to centralized government, representative democracy and race relations in the U.S. than during the post-World War II Civil Rights era.


Reactionary images like this became popular in the South
 following President Harry S. Truman's executive order to
mandate racial equality within the U.S. armed forces
during the Summer of 1948.

Nowhere else in America does the adage "old soldiers never die" apply more than in the hearts and minds of post-Civil War Southern white conservatives, and white supremacist leaders like David Duke have all but guaranteed that the South's "old soldiers" will live on in the hearts and minds of white conservative voters in Dixie and elsewhere in the country, regardless of how negative the consequences could end up in the United States when it comes to race relations and responsible governing within the general populace. The fact that the conservative media plays into the concept of generating fear among their audiences while promoting white separatist propaganda, institutionalized bigotry and Jim Crow-era state's rights under the guise of religious freedom and American patriotism doesn't help to improve the situation from a demographics perspective either.



For the record, it should also be noted that only one group of people have been intentionally targeted for the purpose of accepting and perpetuating the conservative media's unified attack on race relations in America, and this group is the same targeted demographic that white supremacist leaders like David Duke have appealed to for decades. The group in question is made up of white voters who claim to have been disenfranchised by the Democratic Party because of the progress attributed to the Civil Rights movement within their communities. Since the end of Harry Truman's presidency, this group of white voters and their descendants have argued that they have been disenfranchised by liberals and Democrats because they haven't personally benefited from the idea of civil rights and equality being part of their everyday lives. In reality, this group has continuously refused to accept or acknowledge civil rights and other forms of equality as being anything other than offensive to their own way of life altogether. This is also the same group of white voters who unequivocally despise the idea of political correctness being a part of mainstream, everyday-American society because it doesn't allow them to "exercise" (i.e., abuse) their First Amendment right to free speech by using words like "nigger", "wetback", "wop", "kike", "rag-head", "faggot" or "retard" in casual conversation without being held accountable, as opposed to when they are with others who think and behave like themselves at private gatherings or public demonstrations.



It is this targeted demographic of irrational and unreasonable white voters who are now making a genuine attempt at seizing control of the Republican Party in an effort to restore legislative white supremacy and other forms of institutionalized bigotry in the United States under the moniker of conservative values, and it is also this targeted demographic of irrational and unreasonable white voters who have chosen to invest the future of the Republican Party into Donald Trump or anyone else within the 2016 field of presidential candidates who can appeal to their bigoted aspirations more than he does before the Republican National Convention next Summer. 


Statements like this apply just as easily to elections among
Southern white conservatives today as they did to the
battlefield during the Civil War. 

Taking this into consideration, it also wouldn't be too presumptuous to speculate that a Trump/Duke campaign victory for the 2016 presidency would prove to be the ultimate political litmus test in determining whether or not the Republican Party can remain a credible and viable faction among independent voters in other sections of the country besides the South. Imagine how four years of a Donald Trump/David Duke presidency would effect the political and cultural climate in the U.S., and it becomes more obvious just how devastating the results could become for the Republican Party on a national scale in regards to independent voters by November of 2020 and beyond.


Anti-progressive propaganda like this actually helps to
promote white supremacy by giving the impression that
white conservatives are being victimized by political
correctness in American culture.

As I stated earlier, when you create a mess, you have one of two options: You can either be a mature adult, take responsibility for the mess that you have created and clean it up before it becomes disastrous, or you can act like an immature delinquent, add to the already-existing mess until it becomes disastrous, and then blame others for the disaster that you have created. In the minds of Southern white conservatives and the conservative media that promotes their agenda, the latter option has proven to be an effective tool in getting a large percentage of the country to empathize with the already-existing hatred for the Federal government and the cause for civil rights in the South. However, the demographics numbers have clearly shown in recent years that conservatism is on a steady decline because of poor race relations between the Republican Party and an overwhelming majority of non-white voters in the U.S., including within the South. Basically, this means that the biggest victims of the conservative media's propaganda campaign to polarize Americans on the issues of federalism, civil rights and equality in general have been, and continue to be, the one group of people who drink the toxic Kool-Aid of conservative propaganda more than anyone else in the United States: White, conservative Republican voters. 

Irony always strikes at the best and worst of times when all is said and done, indeed.    

Quotes like these from Lee Atwater and Sen.
Lindsey Graham reflect how much racism plays

a significant role in Republican politics.

Yes, I honestly thought that the majority of Republican voters and elected officials would have realized by now just how far Donald Trump would go to bring their party to the brink of political and cultural ruin, but alas, I was proven wrong. Instead of rejecting Trump for exposing everything that has been proven to be failures within their party for the last 70 years, Republicans have chosen to embrace their party's failures in the personification of Donald Trump and his inflammatory, hate-filled demagoguery and megalomania, which he proudly displays like a two-dollar swastika armband around the sleeve of his high-priced, custom-tailored business coats, and expresses just as proudly with all the charisma, charm, grace and sophistication of a rabid pit bull on Prozac. 
I even made the mistake of thinking that Republican voters would have felt insulted to be described as "The Silent Majority" again by Donald Trump or any other presidential contender after the humiliating degradation of Richard Nixon's presidency and Watergate. But instead of feeling insulted, Trump's supporters proudly describe themselves as members of his "Silent Majority". I'm at the point now where I can't help but wonder how many Republicans would vote to re-elect "Tricky Dick" and "Sneaky Spiro" if they were alive and running for the Republican nomination again instead of Donald Trump. 




Are Republican voters so desperate to keep their party relevant in American politics that they're actually willing to jeopardize their party's future by letting a blatant fraud like Donald Trump become their next presidential nominee? And if so, then just exactly what are they willing to compromise in order to guarantee Trump's success in the November general election and beyond? Trump himself has made it clear that he doesn't have a problem with circumventing the Constitution to satisfy his fascist tendencies. Are conservatives actually hoping to replace almost 250 years of representative democracy and self-governance with Donald Trump's crude, obnoxious, vitriolic and vulgar brand of Holy Roman imperialism just so that they can thumb their collective noses at liberals once and for all, or has the Republican National Committee become so terrified of their party being thought of as obsolete that they're willing to continue dragging their own country through the mud of history until they have succeeded at getting the rest of America to go along with their corporate lobbyist-driven agenda? Your guess is as good as mine as to which of these is the real motive behind the fevered popularity of Donald Trump's candidacy among Republican voters at this point in the 2016 presidential election cycle.




One thing is definitely certain: Regardless of who he selects to be his vice presidential running mate, Donald Trump's legacy as president of the United States would prove to be the most embarrassing and degrading chapter in America's history if he were to be nominated in Cleveland, Ohio next Summer and go on to win in the 2016 general election, and Republican voters would have no one else to blame but themselves for the disgrace that they will have brought onto their country as a result of his presidency. Republicans might as well gamble away their party's credibility in November of next year, because they have already chosen to gamble away whatever shred of dignity is left within their party by allowing a tasteless and unapologetic con artist like Donald Trump to run for the White House under their banner, along with having chosen to gamble away whatever integrity America still has left in the modern, civilized world.
If repeating the same mistakes over and over again while hoping for a different outcome each time is the best description of insanity, then Donald Trump is the latest and most blatant example of how much the Republican National Committee is having difficulty with keeping their "Southern Strategy"-influenced lunatics from taking over the asylum.    




Abraham Lincoln once said that America will never be destroyed from the outside, and that if we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. Given the current situation that Republicans find themselves in with the growing popularity of Donald Trump's candidacy for the 2016 presidency, Lincoln's words could not be more hauntingly prophetic than they are now for the political party that he helped to establish. I should have known in August what I know now, and what I know now is this: As long as the Republican National Committee continues down the road towards plutocratic fascism in order to compensate for their party's lack of any substantive foreign and domestic policies that would benefit all U.S. citizens, then there will always be more fraudulent demagogues like Donald Trump to manipulate fear-obsessed voters into accepting the cowardly, delusional and unpatriotic notion that plutocratic fascism has and always will play an important role in America's future.   




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