Trump and the Goons

I have taken some time to let the shock of a Trump win settle to make sure what I am going to say is not emotion but what I honestly think is fact. As far as I can see we are faced with three scenarios which I will discuss in more detail below:

  1. Utter destruction of the earth and humanity
  2. Worldwide depression which will make the Great Depression which effected the entire world look like a time of affluence.
  3. The collapse of the United States economy and the rise of rabid fascism across the planet

All three of these scenarios are dismal. We are looking at a future where rationality and facts mean nothing. Trump and his Cabinet Goons are so fact challenged, as was the case with his campaign and Hitler propaganda, that contradictions, lies and deceit are strategic:

“The function of propaganda is to attract supporters, the function of organization to win members… Propaganda works on the general public from the standpoint of an idea and makes them ripe for the victory of this idea….” – Adolf Hitler, 1924

Trump makes no pretense to consistency, the hobgoblin of small minds. He is the prototypical ‘Prince’ of Machiavelli:

Trump loves war as he himself stated. The Prince in Machiavelli wants to ‘perfect’ war.

A Prince should have the appearance of being merciful, faithful, humane, frank, and religious, but the most important quality is only to seem to have these qualities. The Prince must play on the aspirational qualities of his subjects. Facts are a hindrance for the Prince.

Generosity is to be avoided for a Prince. Its sets up a presentence which can only result in disappointment and hatred on the part of the subjects. A Prince should have the appearance of a miser so as appear to be efficient and concerned about the taxes of his subjects. However, if the Prince can spend others money without the appearance of generosity he is wise.

Is it better to be loved or hated? Machiavelli states, “The answer is that one would like to be both the one and the other; but because it is difficult to combine them, it is far safer to be feared than loved if you cannot be both.”

Should Trump keep his word? Machiavelli states, “He should appear to be compassionate, faithful to his word, guileless, and devout. And indeed he should be so. But his disposition should be such that, if he needs to be the opposite, he knows how.” The appearance of being truthful is the opiate that his subjects need not the reality.

Lastly, the Prince should not have the appearance of depriving their subjects of property or women. If they want to “grab a woman by the pussy” it is only a little locker room talk, right?1

The ‘war of all against all’ originally from Locke but taken up in the Prince of Machiavelli is the ideal embodiment of Mr. DJ Trump.

I have previously predicted the end of the Republican Party.2 I think that Trump is the fulfillment of this prediction. I have written about this in more detail but the end of the Old Right was with Barry Goldwater.3 The New Right lasted until Trump. Now we have the New Reich. To use astronomical terms, I was wrong about the New Right ending in a Red Giant. Instead, it went Super Nova. The unthinkable downside of a Super Nova is the destruction of everything in its wake. This is what we are faced with now. The real problem is that we have 63 million voters of the 129 million votes cast that are intent on turning the evolutionary clock back. They are reacting from pure anger, bitterness, resentment and entitlement. They were pumped up with Machiavellian aspirations which never materialized except in the credit bubble which ended in the Great Recession. They could no longer afford the life style to which they were artificially accustomed to. When people believe they are in pain they react selfishly and irrationally.

Here is the final vote count for the popular vote according to Business Insider:

Trump     62.97 million votes

Clinton     65.84 million votes4

Hillary won by almost 3 million votes but Trump is President due to the Electoral College. I will not get into the pros and cons of the Electoral College in this post. My point is not so much that she won by almost 3 million but that he took almost 49% of the 128.81 million voters that voted in a country of over 350 million people with 218,959,000 eligible voters.5 55% of eligible voters actually voted.

 So, I ask myself if 55% of eligible voters voted and 45% did not why should I care? Additionally, if 49% of the folks that voted want Trump, we as a country are not ready for facts and science. Global warming is a liberal lie right? Evolution is a lie of liberal academics, creationism is God’s truth right? Abortion is filicide, the mass murder of children, right? The ‘free market’ is always more efficient than government, right? Our national intelligence is wrong. Perhaps we should save the tax payers some money and contract out our intelligence to the KGB, right? Why do we have nukes if we do not use them, right? The rate of increase of health care cost would be much less without ObamaCare, right? TrumpCare must be better, right? Health Savings Accounts will benefit the “50 percent of people that do not pay taxes” according to Romney, right? So going back to emergency room care will reduce the rate of increase of all our health care premiums, right?

Honestly, if that many folks think all this is feasible I am not going to fight it. We have much to learn to survive as a country and a world. The stakes are very high now with a narcissistic maniac as President and the Goon Squad of radical neo-cons aching for war. I have much intrepidation about our future as a country and a world. I am sorry for the 51% of folks that voted for Hillary and will be hurt by a Trump presidency. We cannot fight the 49% that will be hurt by the very guy they voted for. Realistically, we are not ready for something better we are, as a country ready, for something far worse. We need to learn. Democracy was made for enlightenment voters, educated and aware of real facts. The realm of propaganda and illusion still mesmerizes far too many of us to effect real change for the better. We still prefer phantasma to our own security. We will suffer greatly and as far as I can remember we have a higher chance of human extinction than we have ever faced. These are facts that I cannot change.

Did I mention that before the Great Recession of the last Republican President and Congress was the previous Republican President and Congress that preceded the Great Depression…now we have nukes in the hand of an imbecile and his Cabinet of Cronies. The last Republican majority we had in the Congress and the Presidency started two mass wars which killed 190,000 people, 70% civilians, 4,488 US military killed, 3,400 US contractors killed, cost 6 trillion dollars.6 Financial deregulation went Super Nova in the Bush years costing 30 trillion dollars worldwide due to faulty and deceptive financial derivatives. It is insane to suggest that the US Housing Bubble could cause that level of financial catastrophe.7 The result of the Bush years was the Great Recession and mass wars which needlessly exploded the Middle East, created ISIS and recruited massive numbers of terrorists (see references in my History post). A great proverb tells us, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. We the American People have become the ‘me’ in this proverb.

Under President Obama we had the longest running private sector job recovery in history and the fastest job growth pace since Clinton8, the fastest economic recovery in history 9

Since President Barack Obama first took office:

The U.S. trade deficit has shrunk by 24 percent; exports have grown faster than imports.
The number of immigrants in the U.S. illegally has gone down — by 3.4 percent according to one independent estimate and by 9 percent according to another.
The economy has added 9.7 million jobs.
The unemployment rate has dropped below the historical norm.
The buying power of the average worker’s weekly paycheck is up 4.2 percent.
Corporate profits are running 144 percent higher and stock prices have soared.
Federal debt has more than doubled, and annual deficits, after shrinking, are again on the rise.
The number of people lacking health insurance has gone down by nearly 15 million.10

We can kiss that all goodbye now thanks to millions of our own citizens. 64 million of our own voters, mainly rural voters, just voted against their own best interest.11 I blamed the Bush voters for mass killings of our own and others and economic disaster. The New Reich has a noteworthy chance of destroying the planet with a psychologically ill President. We can certainly count on economic disaster under Trump. If our citizens think they have rights protected by the Constitution, you can forget that. Women’s rights, civil rights, religious freedom, ethnic protections, health care, consumer protections are all a thing of the past thanks to 64 million voters. However, always remember they are us. We are all in this together. We failed as a country to move towards a better future. As much of the world is gathering dark storm clouds of nativism, xenophobia, protectionism, tribalism and fascism reminiscent of the rise of the Third Reich we have yet again forgotten history and the blame is on us all. We are in for long years of wars, millennials – you will discover the draft many of us already knew, massive debt that will make our current debt look like pocket change. All of our self-righteous ideals about democracy will simply fly out the window into the hypocritical whimpering of Nietzsche’s Last Man. All of us will have to own this one way or the other. We all failed.12

As far as my wife and I and my kids, in the short term, the irrational exuberance of the ‘Trump’ rally has been good to us although the Obama rally after the last Republican majority was by far better. I know that what I have described is dismal and goes against all of our grain but as a philosopher I find a great deal of resemblance of our dark future to death. We all face the reality of death every day and yet we live as if that day will never come. The same mechanism releases me from living my life in a pit of despair. Life is about quality not quantity. My family is doing very well and we will fare better than most until the day of Mad Max arrives. After that means nothing to me in the present. Others will suffer much more than my family both the 63 million that voted for Trump, 66 million for Clinton, the rest of the 350 million that did not vote and the rest of the world that could not vote. Optimism in the face of death is a great gift of evolution. If Nietzsche is right we will all be here again for another time around…forever. It is not about the absolute judgements and determinations of history, Spirit, Idea (of Hegel). It is about the small place of a human life endowed with optimism, forgetfulness and the will for drama (not the will for power). This is where value, happiness, love, desire and meaning happen in the face to face encounter of a small community and the day to day trivia of an infinitesimally small wisp of an instant we call existence. Be happy, what is our choice?

 

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1 See Niccolò Machiavelli
2 The End of the Republican Party
3 Conservatism and Liberalism: A Historical Perspective
4 The results are now final: Clinton wins popular vote by nearly 3 million, Business Insider
5 Voting Turnout Statistics
6 History
7 Latest Observations on the Housing and Economic Crisis, The Housing Crisis – Research Revisted, The Facts: Deregulation=Republicans=Economic Crisis
8 Obama Blows Republicans Out Of The Water With Fastest Job Growth Pace Since Clinton
9 Federal Deficit and Debt – President Obama vs President Bush, Unemployment Statistics – President Obama vs President Bush, The Big Picture: Facts Concerning History, Politics and the Economy
10 Obama’s Numbers April 2016 Update
11 After a Hard Day’s Night…
12 A Vote for Trump is a Vote for Human Extinction, Trump’s Red Lame Stream Media – Nightmares Work