In spite of the opinions voiced by pundits like Tucker Carlson, Mark Levin, Hannity etc etc the world is not going to come to an end if the two Democrats win the Georgia election.  All the talk of “radical socialist policies” are at best gross exaggerations. Even if the Democrats win,  battles in the Senate will continue as always.  Things change slowly in the US no matter who is in charge.  Perhaps that’s a good thing and what the framers wanted.  In any case Biden is a centrist and the Democrats have divisions within them.

1. The old adage: any press is good press just spell the name right. Seems staying in the news constantly keeps others from getting coverage.

2. Repeat a lie over and over and it becomes accepted as truth

3. Define the terms (as Lenin said) and you are 9/10ths on the way to winning the argument

4. People will believe what they want to believe. Truth does not matter.  Religions understood this thousands of years ago. People will gravitate to who or what tells them what they want to hear.

5. If it bleeds it leads. Outrageous gets coverage. Nice guys finish last. The more outrageous the more coverage.

6. Sex sells AND gets more coverage than hacking the government. “Grab them by the Pussy moved Russia off the front page. 

7. Repetition is the game or in advertising lingo “gross impressions” that’s why you see commercials over and over again. Don’t let people have time to forget.

8. Following from point 3: The importance of branding so all you have to do is show the logo and the message is delivered.

We live in a 30 second world of information so the sound bite is what it boils down to. Get that right and you win or sell or whatever. If you have to explain, you lose. People don’t have the attention span to listen to an explanation.  etc. etc. etc.

It’s hard to be angry at a person who is obviously psychologically sick. So I can no longer fume at the many Trump actions that seem so counterproductive and destructive. But at the same time I do not want that sick person running the country. The point to be angry about now is to be angry at the media that knows he is full of shit, the politicians who know that as well, yet still not only support him but push his crazy tantrums. Is it just for the money? Or is it stupidity?

Guys; the election is over! 60 courts threw out all the Trump bullshit.  Including the Supreme Court. The electors confirmed the election.  Republican governors and other Republican officials who voted for Trump have confirmed Biden as president and there was little or no election fraud.  Bill Barr, a Trump supporter also confirmed no election fraud. What more needs to be said? The only one who still thinks the election was fraudulent is Donald Trump – and he is sick. He is the political Covid 19 but worse.

The human being has believed untruths and even crazy stuff for thousands of years. For most of human history people believed the world was flat; that the sun went around the earth, if one disagreed one could be put to death.  Religions espouse one God over another, one messenger, son of god, guru, whatever and build beautiful temples, cathedrals, create great art works, songs and the like to celebrate these ideas. They can’t all be right – more likely they are all wrong yet they generate fervent, blind conviction and loyalty to the ideas.

One of the fundamental realities of these ideas is the understanding that one must accept the idea in its entirety and NOT allow any dissension.  No chink in the armor. Galileo was told to recant his discovery that the earth revolved around or he would be put to death. Today some groups in Islam believe it is the duty to kill anyone who disagrees with the tenants of the Koran, defames Mohamed etc etc. There is a reason for this – and a good one.  If one allows one belief to be questioned then a second one will follow and then a third and so on. Luther questioned only one practice of the Catholic church. The indulgences. It was not long until many more ideas were questioned and this led to the Protestant reformation.

Likewise authoritarian political leaders have followed the same path. Sadam, Hitler, Stalin, one can go down the list. The point is such a leader cannot admit a mistake because if he/she can make one mistake than what’s to say a second one can be made etc. Get rid of anyone who disagrees becomes standard. A person who disagrees is a potential danger. Give an inch and one can loose a mile. Sound familiar? Trump is not unique it turns out. Never admitting a mistake, never apologizing, fire anyone who questions or disagrees (even ones that are almost totally loyal like Jeff Sessions, Bill Barr etc). These facts are why so many commentators, books, etc say Trump is authoritarian. He demonstrates all the traits. Now his attempt to disrupt the democratic process in the US election is further proof of the danger he represents.

Meanwhile, his followers are immune to facts just as the many religions have pushed for thousands of years. It is so easy and comforting just to accept something as fact and refuse to have it challenged no matter what. Critical thinking can be confusing and unsettling. Belief is often far more comforting. People is so many cases will look for the reasons to believe and dismiss the reasons not to. Like the guy whose family of wife and 4 children are in a car crash and the wife and two children die, two survive. The guy says ‘thank god for the two who survived’.  What about the wife and two children that died?  If god saved two why did he not save the others as well?

The really stunning thing about believing stuff that is obviously so false or highly unlikely to be true is how strong such convictions that those beliefs are in fact totally true.  Wars have been fought, millions killed, hatreds created, going back thousands of years. To me what is even more stunning is how there are so many really bad people over the centuries that can generate such furverant support. Hitler, Stalin, Sadam to name a few.  Now even in the USA – a democratic, relatively educated, Christian, society – we see that people can fall pray to crazy stuff and follow a really bad guy.  And Trump is a really bad guy, and has always been. Now more than ever he proves it.

Make America Great Again?  Well from what I see now its not so great today.  A divided nation, rampant hatred, crazy stuff all around us.  More like “Make Trump Great” and the hell with the USA and what it stands for.  That a guy like Trump gets support from so many in the media (who are now just as much “mainstream” as the opposing side) and politicians in the Republican Party, and in the population generally is a really frightening thing to witness.  All I can think of is Germany when Hitler was taking over. I wish I could escape from that idea – but the analogy is just too similar so I can’t.

As we see US media people – especially on the right – talk about Chinese Students as potential spies for the Chinese government what they forget is that the Chinese Government worries that those same students might convert to the idea of democracy and become a fifth column to undermine the Communist party in China. In other words it cuts two ways.

The smart US response is to focus on a way to get those Chinese students to work for the US just as the Chinese Government fears. As the Chinese Government knows, the USA can give those students more than they can get in China. Aside from the negatives those Chinese students may see in America now with all the Trump nonsense, the future should make them think the USA is the far better way to go.

Watching Fox (which I do along with all the other media channels) I have to comment on two points that are currently being pushed. First Steve Levin finds it does not make sense that Biden would win the Presidency but the Republicans would win in the Congress. In fact it makes total sense.  This election was a rejection election. On one hand, just too many (over 8 million people) did not like Donald Trump. He could have won if he had been less nasty in his tweets, fired fewer people out of picq, and wore a mask.  But he couldn’t help himself.  Books were written about him that exposed is badness etc. Trump lost the Presidency – because of Trump pure and simple. The Republicans who were against him were not against the party, they were against him specifically. And let’s face it; he is a really bad guy.

On the other hand, the Democrats allowed themselves to be labeled as “socialists” akin to Cuba and Venezuela. They never corrected this rather silly view of what socialism in fact is. Worse, the Black Lives Matter people took up the “Defund the Police” slogan which scared just too many people. It will go down as the stupidest, shoot yourself in the foot, slogan of all time. Third the Portland situation and the looters gave too much visual fodder to the anti Democratic media like Fox etc.  Then one might also point to the lock down situation which is not Federal, it is local and State. So what happened was on one hand get rid of Trump and have a decent guy as President BUT keep the left out of controlling the Congress so there is a check on the President.

The thing that no one is talking about is just how difficult it would be to steel an election the way it has been suggested. Even in Republican controlled states.  When elections are fixed in other countries it is the President/dictator who controls the power who does it. So the Dems were not in a position to do a fixing even if they wanted to. Trump, with the large number of judicial appointments and controlling the Presidency might have been able to pull it off but even the President would find it virtually impossible. The fear of many is give him another 4 years and he might find a way to do it. Which is why many voted against him.

Then there is Laura Ingraham going on about Hunter Biden.  First he is under investigation and NOT accused or indeited. If the news was out that he was under investigation – when he might be totally innocent (in the US you are innocent until PROVEN guilty) it could be a repeat of the Hillary Clinton situation in the 2016 election. In that case the investigation was announced just before the election then dropped and many feel that FBI announcement was the blow that lost Clinton the election and got Trump elected.

Meanwhile, if we are concerned about knowing of an investigation before an election, we might add it would be nice to see Donald Trump’s tax returns. What is he hiding? Then there are the pending lawsuits he is facing in New York. What about the emoluments he never dealt with? And his children.  The list is long.

I should also say that I suspect that Laura Ingraham knows she is pushing bullshit which is why she has that sly smile on her face most of the time.  I came to the conclusion that she saw Hannity get away with nonsense and make tons of money so she thought ‘I can do that too.’  That’s my theory anyway.

No matter what side of the political spectrum one is on it is true that the amount of votes that Trump got was impressive. He says that this is proof that he won.  In truth it proves just how polarizing he is. He generates fanatical support – at the same time as he generates fanatical hatred. The mistake he made in this election is that his base was just not big enough to deliver him a win. His polizerizing generated more that hated him than supported him. Almost 8 million in fact. It also points to the fact that during his presidency he made little or no effort to expand that base. To have done so would not have been that hard. Perhaps simply wearing a mask would have done it.  It was a serious miscalculation.

Let’s keep in mind, given the low historical turn out there was a large gap in potential voters that was there to be had. It is not a great surprise therefore that a polarizing figure like Trump would have made turn out for BOTH sides larger than in the past so that the total turn out was super large.  People who never voted before voted this time. On both sides. Trump’s negative tweets, self congratulations, and ego got the better of him and came to bite him in the ass.

Meanwhile the Democrats did not help themselves either – as we see from what happened down ballet. The Public rejected both – for different reasons.  Trump has only himself to blame for his Presidential loss, the Democrats have only themselves to blame for their Congressional loss.

There are two facts that have to be at the forefront of any discussion of foreign policy. First is what my father always told me, There is a foreign foreign policy AND a domestic foreign policy. They are often not the same.  Actions are often made to appease or cater to some local group to get votes.  An example is Cuban Americans in Florida. The majority of those voters are strongly anti the Cuba regime so any politician that calls for normalization of relations – ending sanctions etc with Cuba is likely to lose those voters.

Second, the US economic system is market oriented (or capitalistic) in spite of the many socialist programs (social security, medicare, laws about safety, individual rights etc).  In such a system there is an orientation to bring costs down to enhance profits. It’s the American way. One of the major costs for most businesses is the cost of labor.  So if one can make a mask for 35 cents in China, or Pakistan or where ever, and the cost to make it in the US over one Dollar – then it stands to reason that company will go to the foreign source to make the mask. Thats capitalism. The only way to go around that is for the US to institute a tariff on that mask to make it the same price as one made in the US.  Net effect is the cost to the American consumer is greater.  That is not capitalism.

Another little realized fact is that low cost products manufactured overseas help those economies and make them more capable of buying higher cost items made in the US.  That’s the argument for free trade.  Everyone benefits overall but not in specific cases. Trying to save jobs like in the coal or steel industry where labor in the US is expensive but far cheaper overseas may sound good but it is a fools errand.  Trump played on the idea of helping coal workers and various manufacturing jobs in the US.  The idea was to bring jobs back to the US.  It never happened.  Our balance of payments increased over the Trump years.  Jobs did NOT come flooding back.  Tariffs were instituted but the net effect cost the American consumer NOT China.  The age old Republican mantra of free trade was abandoned to US detriment. 

Perhaps the worst foreign policy decisions were the canceling of agreements. Trump seems to have adopted a policy of the bully – sanctions etc.  As we have seen in country after country from Cuba to Iran, sanctions don’t work and often strengthen regimes we are trying to hurt.  Meanwhile, since he never read the Iran nuclear deal or the TPP deal but said they were terrible (because they sounded good to oppose and his believers never knew or attempted to find out the terms as well) the net effect is 1.  Iran has more nuclear material now than when he took office – a lot more and 2.  China has taken over and created its own TPP leaving the US out of the picture.  So much for America first. Meanwhile his touted foreign policy successes relating to Israel are really in one case an arms deal (UAE) and in the case of Morocco simply giving Morocco Western Sahara which it has been fighting over for years.

In the case of North Korea we got nothing for giving status to the NK leader.  We got nothing in Turkey.  The US is not looked as the world leader it was before he took office.  Respected more? The opposite is true and anyone who travels overseas will see that first hand. Trump has made the US a joke.  And now he is going after the very concept of democracy. The sooner he is out of office the better. Then we can only hope that Fox and the other right wing media will get some balls and start to show some responsibility and patriotism  Wishful thinking.

Not long ago President Trump stated that the US was rounding the corner of the Covid issue. Turns out he was way off base. One would think that might jolt some supporters to believe that all the stories about his lies, exaggerations, fabrications and wishful thinking might be true. If one can lie about something so fundamental as the health of the nation then one can surely lie about anything else as well – like the elections. One can only hope.

Meanwhile the list of Republicans and AGs supporting the attempts to overturn the election will come in useful. Now all will know who believes in democracy and who does not – who is a real Republican and who is not. It is shocking that so many would actually allow their names to join that list.  Concern for reputation and posterity seem to be a thing of the past.  Historians will have a lot to talk about and analyze in the future.