Saturday, August 13, 2016

Liberal Hysteria Continues to Make Trump Look Semi-Rational

The uproar over Donald Trump's continued failure to spew out sound bites favored by U.S. policy elites has gone beyond comic absurdity to reach the heights of satire incarnate. Authenticity simply cannot be tolerated.

The question of the week is whether or not the unpredictable Donald "can be trusted with the nuclear codes." Note that the issue is not that the world can be incinerated at a moment's notice, but that a candidate who doesn't swear to uphold the dogmas that eventuated in this insanity might be voted into power. God help us.

Hardly anyone seems to realize that the United States is always already using nuclear weapons in the same way that a bank robber uses a gun without actually having to fire it. People get awfully cooperative when a gun is waved in their face, and governments do too when they hear Washington loudly proclaiming that "all options are on the table" in pursuit of "regime change." How much imagination do we need to realize that this is a threat to nuke entire countries off the map?

On the other hand, it takes considerable imagination to conclude that Trump was calling for the assassination of Clinton when he recently noted that "2nd amendment people" would be the only ones who might be able to stop her from "abolish[ing] the 2nd amendment" if she becomes president. While certainly no AIPAC, the NRA nevertheless does have considerable influence on U.S. political culture, which makes the overturning of the 2nd Amendment much more complicated than a president simply appointing gun control advocates to the bench. Recall that a previous Satan in the Oval Office (George W. Bush), though favoring a Constitutional amendment to ban abortion proved unable to overturn Roe. v. Wade, and liberals hardly needed to resort to arms to achieve their victory. And let's not even get started on how gunning down a sitting president would make it harder to implement a gun ban. Please liberals, take a tranquilizer.

Trump, let us also recall, is a voice of restraint on Ukraine, one of the world's hot spots most likely to erupt in a nuclear war. He was, in fact, called to task for asserting - correctly - that Vladimir Putin had not invaded the country, but rather, had troops in Crimea as part of international agreements, just as Washington has troops in Bahrain without being accused of invading that country.

And, of course, in the wake of a Washington supported coup in Ukraine, Crimeans voted by a 96% majority (with over 80% turn-out) to be part of Russia, with ethnic Tatars and Ukrainians voting overwhelmingly in favor along with ethnic Russians. A parallel poll in Russia showed that 90% of the Russian people also favored re-unification, confirming longstanding sentiment that the two territories are actually one.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton continues to label the democratically elected Vladimir Putin a "dictator," always a signal that a country has been targeted for regime change, while NATO moves nuclear weapons practically up to the Russian border, a provocation inviting a repeat of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Except maybe the outcome won't be so lucky this time.