A Republican of Toxic America

So far America has experienced #ToxicTrump. But IF Trump steals the election, because to be sure, he will not WIN this election, you will all then learn what a truly toxic government is. 

So far we've only been seeing the beginning of it.

Under the malfeasant direction of Donald John Trump;.

A "man" who should never EVER have been invited to the White House, let alone spend even a single night IN it. 

IN The People's House. In OUR house. 

Not just Trump's base supporters' house. 

All OUR house. You damned fools. 

If he gets re-elected, then finally in the next four years even you people who elected him will begin to realize how good we had it. 

All while you hated what we had, wanting  ever more and forcing on us all... less, so much, much less than we had. And when the time comes finally that you too wake up and hate what has happened, it will already be far too late. Many of us will then smile in our shared misery. We will have earned that brief catharsis.

Finally you will realize just how very stupid you were in believing in Trump and his enablers. Those whose place it was to protect us, this country, the US Constitution. But greed and self interest and fear so easily subverted them. Too easily

But you have to be set up years ahead of time for that to happen. We kept warning them, and you. But you were poisoned by your self delusions and self perpetuated conspiracies, reveling in your fantasies, your dark projections and paranoias. Because it was too delicious to you. 

When one day that epiphany comes about how you deified a tyrant and not a savior, it will do NONE of us any good whatsoever. It will be too late. It may already be.

Believe it or not, we are now your own hope. 

So enjoy yourselves while you can. 

Because it is going to be temporary

Did you know that progressives, which I consider myself to be as I understand it and not necessarily as it is defined by that group today, is what FDR actually had as his policy that he ran under but called it liberalism, because at the time you couldn't win as a liberal, which was actually conservatism before FDR won election?

And so today conservative supporting Trump, or Republicans for that matter, aren't either. For more on this try "Still Right" on C-SPAN2. I don't agree with all they say but it's a good survey on a topic we all right now, need to know more about.

"Classic Liberalists" today are actually true American conservatives. 

Most people don't have a clue what they are today, they are just part of the tribe they enjoy considering themselves a part of.

Trump is a populist, not a conservative Republican at all and once he's gone, poof, the GOP collapses. It won't go away because it's been a zombie political party for ten years or so now. 

But a political party has got to be based on ideals not as Trump and his GOP now base theirs on whatever Trump wants.

What's the problem in all this? A lack of decent education in America, suppressed by a lack of funding, by those who do not believe in either government of any functional design or taxes to support our infrastructure. 

Look, all you need to know right now is...voting for Joe Biden takes America not back to the past, but back to reason and consistency, honesty over lies and pure political power over governing a nation. Is it a perfect solution? No, this isn't science, nor does the Trump crowed believe in science anymore. And if you do but you support Trump, well, just think about the confusion in that stance for a moment. 

Crippled America, Trump Presidency

Never forget who voted for Trump as president. Those who elected him. They are dangerous.

We should never give the ignorant, the greedy or the immature the vote. No matter their age. Yes, we do that. We did that in giving everyone the vote. But that's not even the problem. And not everyone has the vote.

Regarding the travesty in Charlottesville. No Mr. "President", you have NOT calmed our fears. But, nothing new there. Not when your calming message to us also is calming to those we all see as, or we should all see as, the enemy. As in this:

David Duke (American white nationalist, politician, antisemitic conspiracy theorist, Holocaust denier, convicted felon, and former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.):
"We are determined to take our country back. We are going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. That's what we believed in, that's what we voted for in Donald Trump. Yes he said we're going to take our country back. And that's what we're going to do."

Uh, no, dumbass. It's like John Oliver said on his show Last Week Tonight (you can watch it yourself here) recently about Neo Nazis and Trump and how Nazi types are like cats, "If cat's like you, it's probably because you're feeding them."

In deciding to be a Nazi type, a white supremacist, your rights end in your beliefs being contrary to America. We are a melting pot, not a separatist society. The rich and powerful have indeed divided us. We're working, fighting back, against all that. We don't need you making it even more confused and difficult to do what is right.

Germany, their hero's fatherland (in Hitler, and Germany...Germany who despise Nazism of any time), doesn't want you either. They at least matured into humanity. Try Iran, some country run by religion. You (and they) won't like it either though. Just consider yourselves outcasts find an island where you can vote yourselves off. Tear yourselves apart. Because we, don't want you. And it would seem in your ignorance, neither do you.

A Canadian friend and writer this weekend said America is misguided in thinking that hate speech is free speech. And she may have a point. We have gotten carried away with exactly what free speech is or should be. But we have to be very careful. Still, our extremism on freedom and free speech has indeed led us to allowing things that should be disallowed and has led to a segment of America who voted for someone like Donald J. Trump. And the Republican party, who have deluded themselves into their current dysfunctional and dissociative form.

Giving everyone the vote wasn't the Founding Fathers original intention. They gauged their intentions upon industry and land ownership, indications of an investment in America. That was the climate of their times leading into the industrial age. They also had an entirely different consideration of corporations. They had built in checks and balances for our government but did they fall down on protecting us from the future weight of modern economics? Or did we simply cripple their original intentions?

They understood the need for education and intelligence. When capitalism, greed, when big money of the size it is now, a size which they could have never imagined, supplants intellect and morality; when something they could imagine in religion subverting our morals and ethics, then you are in serious trouble.

We, are in serious trouble.

From:
Elements of Economic Theory in the Founding

For the Founders, government has an extensive set of responsibilities that it must fulfill in order to enable people to exercise their right to acquire and possess property. There are three main Founding-era economic policy principles that make possible sufficient production, for rich and poor alike, of the goods that are needed for life and the pursuit of happiness.

• The first principle is private ownership. Government must define who owns what, allow property to be used as each owner deems best, encourage widespread ownership among citizens, and protect property against infringements by others, including unjust infringement by government itself.
• The second principle of sound policy is market freedom. With some exceptions, everyone must be free to sell anything to anyone at any time or place at any mutually agreeable price. Government must define and enforce contracts. Means of transportation must be available to all on the same terms.
• The third principle is reliable money. To facilitate market transactions, there must be a medium of exchange whose value is reasonably constant and certain.

The Founding Fathers never wanted much of what we now have now to happen. According to Brian Murphy, a history professor at Baruch College in New York:

Early Americans had a far more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of corporations than the Court gives them credit for. They were much more comfortable with retaining pre-Revolutionary city or school charters than with creating new corporations that would concentrate economic and political power in potentially unaccountable institutions. When you read Madison in particular, you see that he wasn’t blindly hostile to banks during his fight with Alexander Hamilton over the Bank of the United States. Instead, he’s worried about the unchecked power of accumulations of capital that come with creating a class of bankers.

We got ourselves here and we continually shoot ourselves in the feet, making it hard to walk far enough to correct the disabling actions by those who benefit from them and do not want corrected. It is like we handed prisoners the keys to the prison and then allow them to lock us up, expecting them to do good by us. Many of which, do not have the right to vote, by the way.

It ain't gonna happen, it never does. Just like free markets without regulation do not function well and are harmful to far too many people. If we don't fix these things ourselves, if we don't take corrective actions, we will continue to see America heading as it is into a world built only for the wealthy and oligarchs.

That was not why America was founded, nor was it how it was set up to run. We can make it work. If we can just wrest it away from those who control our money, who hoard it from us, and who manage our government to run for them and not those who it was originally set up to support.

This isn't the end. Unless we want it to be.

A brief word on a very current topic. I know this is offensive to some but...

We should teach evolution in schools. If you want the disingenuous belief so inappropriately balled "intelligent design" taught then it should be in an appropriate class, which would have a social or eschatological and not a scientific orientation and has nothing to do with science, other than as a counter to scientific thinking. We should teach science as the best form of thinking that we have because we should teach the best forms of human thought, not the worst and not just second rate forms as primary.

We should not remove memorials showing who we were and who we have been, we should simply place additions to them to explain and place them in context. If it is humiliating to some, reality should always trump ignorance, stupidity and mere belief whenever and wherever they go against it.

We are a heterogeneous country, not a homogeneous one.

It is sad and ironic that white supremest types love homogeneity in only some areas but celebrate heterogeneity in others. Especially since it seems quite obvious where the homogeneous ones are for them even in their being hidden and yet so reviled by them.

Should we all be allowed to vote?

Consider yourself lucky. As a voter. You can vote.

I recently sold my house, and land. I'm just renting now. When this country first started out, I wouldn't have been allowed to vote as I'm no longer a land owner. Though, I am white.

Non landowners couldn't vote. I wouldn't have been able to vote. Slaves couldn't vote back then. Many couldn't, few could.

What we have now though is that many allowed to vote. Citizens in general can vote. Republicans have abused America for going on thirty years now, even longer. Because they find voters easily swayed to vote poorly.

As it is said, "Democrats are not very good at selling good ideas while Republicans are very good at selling bad ideas." An informed citizen will vote for a good idea poorly sold but not a bad idea well sold.

Donald Trump could now potentially become president because of that after all. Is THAT a good thing? No. If you really need to be told that, it is not a good idea. Also, Trump's choice of collaborator Mike Pence as his vice presidential running mate as a calming and stabilizing factor was sensible, but Pence also has his serious deformities as a politician.

There are many people who mistakenly believe he'd make a great president. Because they listen to him. Because they believe his lies. Because he exerts authority and acts like he knows what he's talking about. It is also said that to act like you belong, no one will ask questions.

All that is true because those supporting bad ideas and people, are not politically well educated. Because they are easily swayed. And because they can vote.

Is that really a good thing?

From Fair Vote:

Consider the realities of the election of 1789, the first election of the new Congress. The overall number of people who were allowed to, and actually voted, was miniscule in state after state. For example, Delaware had a total state population of just over 59,000, but only 2,059 ballots were cast, meaning just 3% of the population. Georgia’s turnout was around 5%, New York about 3% and Rhode Island has what seems to have been lowest turnout of all at an abysmal 0.7%.

From History.org:

Typically, white, male property owners twenty-one or older could vote. Some colonists not only accepted these restrictions but also opposed broadening the franchise. Duke University professor Alexander Keyssar wrote in The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States:

At its birth, the United States was not a democratic nation—far from it. The very word "democracy" had pejorative overtones, summoning up images of disorder, government by the unfit, even mob rule. In practice, moreover, relatively few of the nation's inhabitants were able to participate in elections: among the excluded were most African Americans, Native Americans, women, men who had not attained their majority, and white males who did not own land.

John Adams, signer of the Declaration of Independence and later president, wrote in 1776 that no good could come from enfranchising more Americans.

In the beginning of America democracy itself was considered bad.

Now a days social democracy is considered by many to be bad. Bernie Sanders' political affiliation, though all it really refers to is sane democratic governing, is in effect just governing with an appropriate consideration for the people that the government is governing. Social democracy should really just be called, democracy.

But people now are really not at the center of all our considerations. That's just lip service politicians feed to the people. Money and power are at the center now and really always have been, all in the hope that their benefits will filter down to the people.

Those people who are apparently just an afterthought. If they don't have the money themselves to assure they are above the problems in the country at any one time, then they are lost. Some social programs to be sure to help the worst of them, but the majority of Americans are just getting by.

Taxation at the beginning of America was important and if you paid taxes, you could vote. You had after all, a right to as you'd paid for your vote. You'd invested in America. You deserved a say in things. Restrictions were placed upon either the amount of taxes you paid or the amount of land you owned, in assuring who could vote.

Landowners paid taxes. It was an easy way to assure investment in the country. There was a solid connection. Governors needed to implement changes. They needed lawmakers to invoke taxes so they could afford to make those changes.

Landowners also tended to be more highly educated than the unwashed masses. A vote they cast the hope was, would do something. It would affect positive change. It would bolster the economy, strengthen the nation, make life better and safer, by association for everyone.

On an associated topic, is it a good idea for the common man to become president? We so love the ideal of a "common man" or person. One of us ascending to the highest office in the nation. It's romantic. It's hopeful. It gives us a sense of community, of greatness, of one of us running things. Of not being ruled by the upper class, or by royalty.

So is it really a good idea for everyone, anyone, to vote? 

As John Adams put it (again from History.org): 

Depend upon it, Sir, it is dangerous to open so fruitful a source of controversy and altercation as would be opened by attempting to alter the qualifications of voters; there will be no end to it. New claims will arise; women will demand the vote; lads from 12 to 21 will think their rights not enough attended to; and every man who has not a farthing, will demand an equal voice with any other, in all acts of state. It tends to confound and destroy all distinctions, and prostrate all ranks to one common level.

It does beg the question: Should those who are not knowledgeable about issues and politics have a vote? isn't that dangerous? Look at the state of things? On July 1, 1971 the voting age was lowered to eighteen. It was lowered because we were sending eighteen year old males and even younger with their parent's permission, off to Vietnam to die. To be maimed.

In the 1960s the mindset was one of inclusiveness. Which sounds great and all. However, do you let the ignorant, those with little physical if not just emotional investment in the country to vote? Is a vote something to play with, to experiment with? Or something to be judiciously cast with wisdom and restraint?

I might agree that if you are a citizen you should be allowed to vote. That would however include criminals. It delves into, crosses over to not killing American citizens in a "war on terror" or a "war on drugs". It encroaches into just who should be allowed to become president.

Would you allow for instance, some commoner to run your large corporation as CEO? Or would you want someone who has experience and education, a proven ability to handle that type of a position? That massive of an undertaking?

Let's say you own a professional race car. You're driver sucks. He keeps losing races. In your mind anyway, he's not doing a good job. You find  you're sick of race car drivers. So you get someone who says he can win. He's competent but is driven around for a living and doesn't actually drive himself.

He professionally produces and films car races. He knows a lot about the process of the actual races, but not the specifics about actually driving a race car. And you are going to put him in the driver's seat of a million dollar race car and think he will win a race and won't wreck it, potentially killing himself, if not others?

Seriously?

And yet, who do we allow to be president? Shouldn't there be some kind of a baseline for who can become president? So we don't have only the elite, the wealthy always and only becoming president, we need to fix out schools so anyone can educate themselves and become president.

In THAT sense, it could be great. Yes, that is potentially possible now. President Barack Obama is in fact, a case in point. But some do not even have his advantages in life. So we need free school for everyone, not just the wealthy or those who find enough advantage in life to be able to attain a higher education and in the end, possibly become president of the United States.

It's a noble thing to be sure, how we have set things up. But is it truly functional? 

To slightly paraphrase what an anonymous poster said on Political Pistachio: 

There were black and women landowners at the time of the founding of the country. There were free black men in America at the time and when a man died, his estate became his wife's, thus she was a landowner.

This practice ensured that those voting had something to loose....

But the few and far between there I'm sure. Part of the article on that page offered a quote to give one pause:

When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic. - Benjamin Franklin

It is perhaps, what we are seeing today in things like Citizen's United.

I'm not really saying we should limit who can vote. I love the inclusive idea. But we seem to have a broken system that is being sustained as it is, and therefore it is rapidly becoming worse in many ways, because it is broken. Certain politicians like Newt Gingrich going back to the 1990s have polarized the country and government in a disingenuous way for Republicans and conservative ideals to take control, even when it wasn't wanted.

Through various dirty tricks like gerrymandering, spin, disinformation, misinformation and even outright lies they have gained control. Even when there are more democratic voters in a state or area. The damage they have wrought is legion. In putting their conservative extreme ideals into practice they have killed and poisoned people in Flint, Michigan and elsewhere. They have lost literally billions of dollars with HB2 an anti-LGBT law in North Carolina. It goes on and on like that.

In the end, should we restrict voting then?

I would say no. Somehow we need to wrest control from those who would damn us to this cycle of bad and educate our citizens. Somehow we need to fix our schools, better our laws, remove from power those who do not belong there, and affect positive changes. Not through revolution. But through the system we have had for over 200 years.

Can we get there?

I believe through social media and simply the growing of the baseline knowledgebase of America and the world, we will one day have to face the facts. We will find one day that we can no longer not see reality for what it is. We will laugh at, decry, shout down and eliminate those who make up anti science arguments that win in congress and at the pools. Eventually we will wake up.

There is hope. We have hope. And we have time on our side. And what is right. Because in the end, the truth always wins out. It always escapes the darkness it is immersed in by those who wish to hide it for their own purposes.

The issue is not if, but when. Not when but how soon. Not how soon but how can we affect more immediate changes.

See what is going on. Not just through superficial sound bites. Not through lying politicians and ignorant citizens. but through education. Both through our school system and through ourselves.

Because in the end this is our country and it is up to us, each one of us, to educate ourselves. To be involve in our nation. To know what is really going on in the world at large and to put down those who would subvert reality for their own self interests.

To answer the question, Should we all be allowed to vote? I'd say the answer is yes, but no. We should not allow stupid to vote. We need to wipe out stupid and ignorant. We need to allow, to enable the intelligent vote to make it to the ballot box, to the mail in ballot. We need to see that all who should be allowed to vote see their vote cast.

Mostly however we need to make sure that the vote they cast has behind it intelligence, accurate information and a desire to see the nation prosper, to survive and remain strong for all American citizens and not just the few.