Two Parties

This is a note for those who believe there is no difference between the Democratic and Republican parties. That will be true when Hillary goes on national television to boast about her bra size while Bernie cracks jokes about circumcisions. 


  

Is Trump a Racist?

Larry Wilmore's TV show developed a few thoughts on Trump last night. They answered the question some people ask: Is Trump only pretending to be a racist?  

Come on. No one pretends to be racist. (Trump might think he is pretending, of course.)

Is Trump one of the great American racists like Robert E. Lee? Wilmore pointed out (in my language, not his) that thoughtful American racists approached racism intellectually, vending deep philosophical nonsense about the Bible and pseudo-science about inferiors, etc. Trump just blurts out racist insults like a ten-year-old. His racism is--Wilmore said it--thoughtless.

The College Roommate

I was the first member of my family to have a college roommate, and I didn't know what to make of them in 1952. About four years ago I looked up one of those roommates on the 'net to find out what had happened to him. Jack, a political radical, had married the girl he'd been dating. The Yankees had offered him a pitching contract, but he hadn't signed. Then he'd become an alcoholic. Finally he'd become a professor at a university. (Nearly all my old friends, I found out, none of them bookish, had become professors, which was downright odd.) Anyway, Jack and I exchanged a few emails, and then he went silent about three years ago. That's often how it goes when you look up someone from your distant pass. But yesterday I looked him up again and found out that he hadn't gone silent. He'd died.

One of my roommates my freshman year was a kindly political refugee from El Salvador. I didn't know what to make of that and now do not remember his name. My third roommate, Pete, was a local guy and a friend of Jack. My fourth roommate only lasted three weeks, and I don't remember his name either, but I remember what happened to him. For some reason he would not use our shower. He was intelligent and friendly but smelled pretty ripe. Finally Pete proposed that we get some other guys in the dorm to help us give him a shower. Where he'd gotten that idea I don't know. We all had different ideas about what it was like to live in a dorm and what the rules were. I knew little but did tell Pete that pushing someone into a shower was a bad idea. I told him no. About a week later maybe four or five guys stormed into our room, grabbed the offending freshman and rammed him into the shower (first taking off his watch, I think). I had not participated, but I hadn't stopped it, either. The next day the victim packed his bags and left college. I tried to talk him out of it, but his mind was made up. 
    

I Come Out for Trump

If I were a Republican, this is how I would see the competition for their Presidential nomination.

John Kasich:  His asset is that he doesn't tell dirty jokes on national television. He's an awful right winger but not insane, and he's not a factor in this race. A vote for him is wasted.

Little Marco Rubio: By telling penis jokes on TV, he's proved himself more vulgar than Donald Trump. If you were a 12-year-old girl who was raped by your father, he would make you carry the fetus and give birth to the baby. He's as heartless as a shrimp.

Ted Cruz: he's a religious nut from some truly nasty farther-than-the-far-right sect. He appears to be a sociopath. His friends don't like him.

Donald Trump: he's a blowhard racist. For him, women--well, he claims that he wants to date his own daughter. What makes him different from the other genuine contenders is that he sometimes shows a tiny smidgen of empathy and he has no real political beliefs. This man is the best of the much touted deep Republican bench. His nomination would signal the capture of the main Wall Street party by low information voters. This would probably force a remaking of the Republican party, which is overdue.

Wall Street prefers to control both parties, covering all bases.

The Latino Vote

Among the top three Republican candidates for President, two are Latinos. I haven't heard this discussed much, but what will happen if the Republicans run Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz for President or Vice President? Will they win half or nearly half of the Latino vote (and the election)?  In the Nevada caucuses we got an answer.

Among Republican Latinos, Donald Trump beat both Rubio and Cruz in Nevada. And Trump is running a racist anti-Mexican campaign. Putting Cruz or Rubio on the ticket won't help the Republicans. I can guess that Latinos see Cruz and Rubio as men who sold out their own Spanish culture in order to pander to racists on immigration.

Both men have Cuban parents. Latinos don't see themselves as a block, and we don't treat them as a block. Cubans go to the head of the line for green cards, while Mexican families get rushed into deportation.  The histories of Cuba and Mexico with the United States are different. For whatever reason, the Republican Latinos of Nevada rejected Cruz and Rubio, and I assume that independent and Democratic Latinos, most of them of Mexican origin, would do the same--and also reject the racist Trump.

The old stone savage

     The poet wrote to Don Trump: “Something there is that does not love a wall, that sends the frozen ground swell under it, and spills the upper boulders in the sun, and makes gaps even two can pass abreast.”

     But what does the poet mean? The natural world does not love a wall? Then why do people build walls? To divide property, to separate themselves from others? 

     Consider another line about a wall-maker from the Poet. “I see him there bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top in each hand, like an old stone savage armed.”

The Pope vs. Donald Trump

I'm what one might call a cultural Christian. As a child I went to church and read the Bible and so on, but I'm not religious. I've been struck by how astoundingly ignorant talking heads on  TV (Joe Scarborough, for example) have been supporting Donald Trump in the exchange between Trump and the Pope about who is a Christian and who isn't. It's clear that political commentators have no idea at all what it takes to be a Christian.

The current Pope is a Christian. Many Popes have not followed the teachings of Christ, but this one tries. Yesterday, for example, he changed doctrine by saying that in some medical or health circumstances it isn't a terrible sin for someone to use birth control. That might not seem like much--most American Catholics already use birth control. My grandmother used birth control on the grounds that "what a priest don't know won't hurt him." But the doctrinal change is an example of the Pope's genuine caring for people faced with the Zika virus.

When the Pope indirectly indicated that Donald Trump is not a Christian, because he builds walls to shut people out when he should be building bridges to welcome them, the Pope was on firm ground. Every Pope has made comments with political implications. The Bible says that sooner shall a camel pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man enter Heaven. The Pope knows that Donald Trump is going to Hell, if there is one.

FDR vs the Clintons

For an explanation of the ideological split in the Democratic Party (FDR vs the Clintons), you can google "Why Bernie vs Hillary Matters." The New Deal descendants of FDR (Truman, JFK, LBJ) died out with the election of Jimmy Carter, a decent man who began deregulation--and dismantling the New Deal. Since then, the Democrats have elected Clinton (major deregulation) and President Obama, whose Clinton staff followed the Clinton program on many financial matters. (On other issues, Carter and Obama have been inspirational leaders, in my opinion.)

Wall Street Money

You might have seen Hillary Clinton on TV saying that Wall Street is out to get her by funding her opponents. Oddly enough, the candidate who has received the most funding from the financial services sector is not a Republican. It's Hillary (with Jeb! a close second).