If I were an American, on the cusp of the election, I’d be cursing the fact that the Republican Party didn’t choose as its candidate several people who are far better than Donald Trump.
But it didn’t. So the choice is between Trump and Harris. Trump is loud, crude, narcissistic, arrogant, vengeful, spiteful, sexually delinquent, says stupid things and works from instinct rather than study or calculation. I’d have to vote for Trump. The primary reason is that his record as president was so much better than her record as vice-president. I’ll give other reasons below.
Trump is loathed with a deep visceral hatred by the fashionable ruling classes, most of the super rich (but not all), all the grandees in the Democrat Party and some in the Republican, nearly all big media and most big-time celebrities. This loathing has been called “Trump Derangement Syndrome”. Mention of Trump turns the smart people quite demented. They practically start fuming at the mouth (example: Robert De Niro talking about Trump).
They accuse him of being a “Nazi”, “fascist”, “dictator”, “racist’ and, of course, “extreme right-winger”. They can provide remarkably little evidence for any of these things. They say he lies all the time but when you ask for examples they turn out to be fairly trivial, unlike the lies of Kamala Harris or Joe Biden. They say he is a terrible racist but again when you ask for examples it turns out to be rather a thin list. He once referred to some African despotism in undiplomatic language (he said the country in question was a “shithole”) but since the black people suffering under its regime would probably agree with him completely, I can’t see why this is racist – unless of course you think it is racist to sympathise with ordinary black people oppressed by a black tyrant.
Trump is accused of being a warmonger and a threat to world peace; actually he was the most peaceful of all presidents in the last 40 years. Unlike Bush and Obama he did not start any war at all; unlike Biden he was responsible for nothing as violent and deadly as Biden’s disgraceful evacuation from Afghanistan. As President, Trump fired the bloodthirsty John Bolton, a neo-con bent on world aggression; I notice that there is little difference between Republican neo-cons and hardline Democrats such as Hillary Clinton, both of which groups seem to be itching for war. Judged on performance, the world would be safer under Trump than under any Democrat – except Tulsi Gabbard, a champion for peace, who has now defected to the Republicans for that very reason.
Further outrage
Causing further outrage for the ruling elite is Trump’s rapport with the working classes, whom the elite regard with patronising contempt. The ruling classes are happy to sympathise with the workers as victims of the evil capitalist system but rapidly lose sympathy when the workers begin to speak for themselves, begin to stop doffing their caps to their upper-class superiors. Then the workers become “right-wingers”, bigots and racists. Hillary Clinton described them as “deplorables”; Biden has recently described them as “garbage”. (Harris has distanced herself from this remark.) Anyone who speaks directly, as an equal, to the working classes is guilty of “populism”. Trump is such a person. He doesn’t patronise the workers, he doesn’t look down his nose at them; he doesn’t look down his nose at anyone. He speaks bluntly and directly to all classes in the same way. This is another reason he is so hated by the upper-class establishment.
I put off watching the Trump-Harris debate for as long as possible, knowing it would be excruciating and shrinking at the prospect of Trump falling into every trap that Harris’s coaches had instructed her to set for him. Afterwards, everybody seemed to agree that Harris had won the debate. A few days ago, I did watch it. It was pretty bad but not quite as bad as I had feared and I’m not so sure Harris won it, although that’s a matter of opinion.
Trump, unlike Harris, refuses to be coached, and so will keep on making the same blunders in debate. Much worse, he refuses to listen to his expert advisors on subjects on which he has strong opinions but knows nothing. Again, Republicans such as Ron DeSantis (Governor of Florida) and Tulsi Gabbard (who, as I’ve mentioned, has defected from the Democrats) would have done so much better in the debate, would have won every argument with Harris without raising their voices or saying anything stupid or resorting to any personal attack at all. In fact, Gabbard exposed Harris’s lies and viciousness in the most cool and clinical way in the 2019 Democrat primaries. Harris could make no reply.
A feature of the Harris-Trump debate was that neither would answer difficult questions and the moderator did not press them to do so. Harris was asked early, “Is America now better off than it was four years ago?” She refused to answer. Trump of course did answer for her, saying that America was far better under him than it was under Biden and Harris. The facts bear him out.
Under Trump there was record low unemployment, including among blacks, as Trump was eager to point out (maybe that shows what a racist he is). The American economy boomed. You might say that was part of some long-term trend, I suppose, but the fact is it happened under Trump. What was certainly not part of any long-term trend was the sudden jump of inflation under Biden, rising suddenly to its highest level for over 40 years. Under Trump inflation averaged about 2.1%. Under Biden it soared to 7% and remained high for several years, causing immense harm to the American economy and the American people, from which it and they have never really recovered. The record inflation was entirely because of the mad economic and monetary policies of Biden.
Low in importance
Climate change was very low in importance in the debate, reflecting its low and dropping importance among American people. But I cringed in anticipation of Trump’s remarks on it. Harris, interestingly enough and perhaps encouragingly enough, is rapidly backing away from most of the stupid, destructive Democrat policies on climate change. This is obviously in response to the public mood (unlike in the recent UK election, where none of the big parties cared about the public mood and carried on with their lunatic “net zero” policies).
She made the usual silly remarks that climate change was real and responsible for the recent devastating hurricanes over America but hastily went on to say that her government was going to promote manufacturing jobs and allow fracking. Previously she had been on public record as saying she was going to ban fracking. When the moderator accused Trump of calling climate change a “hoax” (which in a sense it is), he could only bluster.
While he was President he pulled America out of the absurd, anti-science Paris Accord but gave stupid reasons for doing so. He just refuses to learn the straightforward science that shows that rising CO2 is having no bad effects and only good effects. By contrast, Governor DeSantis, gave an excellent, scientifically informed interview on Hurricane Milton when it had swept through his state of Florida. He told of his best efforts to contain the damage and help the people devastated by it but, without reducing his sympathy in any way, he explained that the hurricane, however terrible, was by no means exceptional. He listed previous hurricanes in the region. He suggested there was no link between “climate change” (rising CO2) and hurricanes. There isn’t. What a pity DeSantis was not standing instead of Trump! What a pity Trump won’t learn from the likes of DeSantis.
Perhaps the greatest problem for the USA is never mentioned in the election campaign. This is her appalling state of public health, much worse than poorer countries with worse medical facilities.
The USA is suffering an epidemic of heart disease, obesity, diabetes, depression, and Crohn’s Disease among others. The main causes are twofold: an appalling diet by most Americans and the gross over-use of drugs. As far as I know, only one senior politician is trying to draw attention to this needless tragedy, and this is Robert Kennedy Jnr, nephew of the slain president. He is a strange figure. He harbours some elaborate conspiracy theories, including on the assassination of his uncle. He spoke nonsense about HIV and AIDS, and about the causes of autism.
But he is surely right to draw attention to the dire state of public health in the USA and the part played in it by the big food corporations and the big drug corporation, and he was right to point out the dangers of the Covid vaccines. A vast mass of data from official sources, including Pfizer itself, confirms that the Covid vaccines were quite different from all previous vaccines, by far the most dangerous and not particularly effective. Note his words on this: “I am pro-vaccine. I had all six of my children vaccinated. I believe that vaccines have saved the lives of hundreds of millions of humans over the past century and that broad vaccine coverage is critical to public health. But I want our vaccines to be as safe as possible.” This makes him an “anti-vaxxer”, “right-wing fanatic”, and so on.
Both Presidents Trump and Biden, neither of whom understood the first thing about medical science, followed disastrous policies on Covid, ignoring the traditional treatment by good, safe, proven medicines and instead were bulldozed by the giant drug corporations into forcing their awful vaccines on the public, with terrible consequences. Anyway at least Trump now has someone on his team who understands the huge problems of public health in the USA. I hope he listens to him carefully and checks up on him.
The subject of immigration came up early in the debate as it is of immense concern to the people. In 2019, the Democrats in the primaries including Harris were competing with each other as to who could have the most open border and who would shower on illegal immigrants the most rights and benefits including free medical care. In 2021, Vice-President Harris was asked when she was going to go to the southern border to witness the suffering there.
She said, “We’ve been to the border. We’ve been to the border.” The interviewer replied, “You haven’t been to the border.” She paused, taken aback at being exposed, and then said, “And I haven’t been to Europe.” This was followed by cackling laughter. In other words she is not only a blatant liar but seems surprised that anyone would find her lying a problem.
During the debate, she mumbled and prevaricated, and Trump refused to answer how he would find a way to deport tens of thousands of illegal immigrants. In a remark that has now become famous, he said that somewhere in the USA immigrants were eating cats and dogs. Oh, dear! By the way, it is possible that they were. In the West we think it is perfectly all right to eat cuddly little rabbits and sweet little lambs but quite wrong to eat cats and dogs. Elsewhere, notably China, they think differently. But it was a stupid thing to say, playing right into the hands of his delighted detractors.
Staggeringly unfunny
Unfortunately there was a repetition of this sort of stupid thing at a big Trump rally in Madison Square, New York. I have only seen abstracts. Apparently Trump’s speech was quite good, and speeches by Tulsi Gabbard and Dr Phil were excellent. But – sigh! – one of the acts was by a “roast comedian”, Tony Hinchcliffe. He was staggeringly unfunny and told a series of awful racist jokes, including one that compared Puerto Rico with trash. Naturally the anti-Trumps were overjoyed. I think this is the reason they described the whole occasion as a “Nazi rally’, “fascist”, etc.
One of my greatest fears over Trump is his economic protectionism and his wish to raise tariffs on a wide range of imported goods. It could be disastrous for the world economy. It was the sort of thing that led to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Trump wants to bring back manufacturing to the USA. Why? If it cannot come back of its own accord, any attempt to force it back would do far more harm than good. I’ve got no idea what Harris’s economic plans are, if anything.
On Tuesday, the American people decide between Harris and Trump. In 2019, senior Democrat politicians did decide on Harris. They decided she was utterly hopeless. She was the first to drop out of their primaries, after getting no support from anyone. Now she is their presidential candidate. I wonder how they really feel about this. Trump won all of his primaries easily, sometimes not even bothering to campaign for them. He’s an outsider, a rude thug, and a man with a good track record of performance. She is just plain useless and dishonest with it. I’d have to vote for Trump.
[Image: Jackie Ramirez from Pixabay]
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