I can’t stomach the debates these days... if that’s what you can truly call them. Election season has started so damn early and the Republican field is so overwhelmingly vast that the debates just boil down to an infomercial by the Republican National Committee more than anything else.
Certainly we aren’t seeing any discourse of substance here.
And really when we get right down to it, at this point in time are there people we see up on the stage we really believe have a snowball’s chance in hell of being president (cough... Ben Carson... cough, cough... Chris Christie cough, cough, cough... John Kasich).
The scary thing to contemplate now is that Donald Trump has a very real chance of winning the election!
And while people are probably ready to pooh-pooh the thought, I am old enough to have come of age in the seventies when Ronald Reagan was a punchline for jokes on the first season of Saturday night live. Believe me when I say stranger things have happened.
I saw Hillary on the Tonight Show the other night and I was struck by one immediate thought...
She is very vulnerable. Very beatable.
Now, you would think I don’t like Hillary but I do think she would be a good administrator and while many would ascribe regal powers to the office of the President basically out President is more of an administrator than anything else.
Problem is, Hillary didn’t look good on that show, she looked tired and the truth is she showed a disdain for Trump that could wind up being very much a part of her downfall. Trump actually plays very well in some quarters. His slogan of ‘Make America Great Again’ is just as amorphous and compelling a campaign statement as Barack Obama’s ‘Change’ was in 2008. Unfortunately, truth be told out fellow citizens have a very short memory so things like this go over very well.
Ronald Reagan spouted much the same refrain and isn’t it all too uncomfortably familiar that before the latest debate the talk was about sailors that were taking hostage? Sjades of what happened way back in 1979 with the Iranian Hostage Crisis!
The difference here is that the current President actually has laid the groundwork with the Iranian Nuclear Deal to move forward and open relations with the Persian Shia state. I realize that is hard for some people to swallow but maybe it was long overdue and now that the crisis was defused so readily via open dialog this could be a good sign and show that some moves in foreign policy of opening dialog can make sense.
But then you wouldn’t know that by listening to the bullshit being slung about at the Republican debate.
Here’s the rub... I was recently catching up with a friend long distance who has over the years become a conservative and expressing her fondness for the aforementioned Mister Trump. One of the things she thought he was accurate about was sending troops into Syria...
Which would be fine if the U.S. reinstituted the draft.
But you won’t hear too many Republicans or Conservatives talk about that because it is much easier to send poor white, brown and black people far away to foreign lands and to spill their blood to prove a point.
You know, I am a Republican and Conservative (in some ways) but I have a real problem with that. You never use the military or military force as your first option. You use it in concert with diplomacy and you use it when you have very identifiable and concrete goals that are achievable. It appears that the people who are currently running for the Executive office have ignored that.
The bigger problem here is whether or not my fellow Americans are willing to recognize that we are just past the longest war in our nation’s history (yes, Iraq was the longest war we have ever been in but you wouldn’t know it by the coverage of the supposed ‘liberal’ media).
It’s sad really...
Think about it for a second, we sent young Americans into two countries (Afghanistan and Iraq), we paid a high price and after all this time what do we have to show for it? Nation building is not a job for the military. The problem is that our country is so naive as to believe everyone the world over would readily accept our values and way of life? We approach our foreign ppolicy from this standpoint at our own peril.
And no one up on that stage the other night, no one who apparently had the intelligence and education was ready to do anything other that shovel the same pablum upon the America electorate.
Really it’s a shame.
And in that environment, an environment all too similar to one I remember all too vividly back in 1979 when another candidate was talking about making ‘America Great Again’ would up being elected to the nation’s highest office.
Wow, such a scary prospect!
In different circumstances, I might turn towards the American electorate and utter the simple phrase...
‘You’re fired!’
Certainly we aren’t seeing any discourse of substance here.
And really when we get right down to it, at this point in time are there people we see up on the stage we really believe have a snowball’s chance in hell of being president (cough... Ben Carson... cough, cough... Chris Christie cough, cough, cough... John Kasich).
The scary thing to contemplate now is that Donald Trump has a very real chance of winning the election!
And while people are probably ready to pooh-pooh the thought, I am old enough to have come of age in the seventies when Ronald Reagan was a punchline for jokes on the first season of Saturday night live. Believe me when I say stranger things have happened.
I saw Hillary on the Tonight Show the other night and I was struck by one immediate thought...
She is very vulnerable. Very beatable.
Now, you would think I don’t like Hillary but I do think she would be a good administrator and while many would ascribe regal powers to the office of the President basically out President is more of an administrator than anything else.
Problem is, Hillary didn’t look good on that show, she looked tired and the truth is she showed a disdain for Trump that could wind up being very much a part of her downfall. Trump actually plays very well in some quarters. His slogan of ‘Make America Great Again’ is just as amorphous and compelling a campaign statement as Barack Obama’s ‘Change’ was in 2008. Unfortunately, truth be told out fellow citizens have a very short memory so things like this go over very well.
Ronald Reagan spouted much the same refrain and isn’t it all too uncomfortably familiar that before the latest debate the talk was about sailors that were taking hostage? Sjades of what happened way back in 1979 with the Iranian Hostage Crisis!
The difference here is that the current President actually has laid the groundwork with the Iranian Nuclear Deal to move forward and open relations with the Persian Shia state. I realize that is hard for some people to swallow but maybe it was long overdue and now that the crisis was defused so readily via open dialog this could be a good sign and show that some moves in foreign policy of opening dialog can make sense.
But then you wouldn’t know that by listening to the bullshit being slung about at the Republican debate.
Here’s the rub... I was recently catching up with a friend long distance who has over the years become a conservative and expressing her fondness for the aforementioned Mister Trump. One of the things she thought he was accurate about was sending troops into Syria...
Which would be fine if the U.S. reinstituted the draft.
But you won’t hear too many Republicans or Conservatives talk about that because it is much easier to send poor white, brown and black people far away to foreign lands and to spill their blood to prove a point.
You know, I am a Republican and Conservative (in some ways) but I have a real problem with that. You never use the military or military force as your first option. You use it in concert with diplomacy and you use it when you have very identifiable and concrete goals that are achievable. It appears that the people who are currently running for the Executive office have ignored that.
The bigger problem here is whether or not my fellow Americans are willing to recognize that we are just past the longest war in our nation’s history (yes, Iraq was the longest war we have ever been in but you wouldn’t know it by the coverage of the supposed ‘liberal’ media).
It’s sad really...
Think about it for a second, we sent young Americans into two countries (Afghanistan and Iraq), we paid a high price and after all this time what do we have to show for it? Nation building is not a job for the military. The problem is that our country is so naive as to believe everyone the world over would readily accept our values and way of life? We approach our foreign ppolicy from this standpoint at our own peril.
And no one up on that stage the other night, no one who apparently had the intelligence and education was ready to do anything other that shovel the same pablum upon the America electorate.
Really it’s a shame.
And in that environment, an environment all too similar to one I remember all too vividly back in 1979 when another candidate was talking about making ‘America Great Again’ would up being elected to the nation’s highest office.
Wow, such a scary prospect!
In different circumstances, I might turn towards the American electorate and utter the simple phrase...
‘You’re fired!’
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