For the life of me, before the recent holiday party season I had been trying to get my head around the phenomena we all have been witnessing this election season best described as “the caricature called Donald Trump”!
Conventional wisdom by what seems to be a stunned MSM continues as it is both fascinated (akin to watching a NASCAR race on a rain soaked track) and shaken by his unapologetic candidacy. By all previous accounts of killer gaffe’s conjuring up memories of the "Dean Scream", or like father like son, Romney’s as George’s memorable statement upon returning from a tour of Vietnam telling WKB-TV in Detroit that he had;
"the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get."
Of course we all know of Mitt’s recorded revealing gaffe:
"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it -- that that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them.”
But Trump not only has a growing list of dozens and dozens of seemingly gaffes beginning with “ When Mexico sends its people … they are bringing drugs and they are bringing crime and their rapists.’” or “The beauty of me is that I’m very rich.” or “The point is, that you can never be too greedy.” and finally the most recent; “But she was going to beat -- she was favored to win -- and she got schlonged, she lost, I mean she lost,". Any one of these and others should have dispatched his leading candidacy long ago, like so many previous bat-shit Republican Party nominee hopefuls before yet in this time and place there are so political and social forces at play it would take Volumes I, II & III of the Rise and Fall of the American Empire to detail all of them. Behind all that it is now clearly self-evident that Trump has knocked the lid off of the mythical Pandora's Box, releasing all forms of greed, sloth, envy, anger, gluttony, jealousy and hate, (though at least by destroying Pandora’s lid, legend holds that it has also has released some measures of trust, self-restraint, modesty and hope as well).
But Trump's candidacy seems to live on breathing the air of Pandora's Americanized swirl, as now the recent Huffington Post pollster (elections.huffingtonpost.com/...) showing a national support of 37.5% to 18.3% (for Cruz). Yes, Trump is very dangerous, the possibility is real, he could end up being the Republican nominee and then get elected. Yet the reality is that the ever more dangerous element is his volatile asymmetrical political base, better described as an ‘ilk’ as Chris Hedges's recently described in his recent book: Wages of Rebellion;
“The language of violence always presages violence. I have watched this take place in the wars I covered as a foreign correspondent in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans. The impoverishment of the working class and the snuffing out of hope always produce angry mobs ready to kill and be killed. A discredited liberal gets swept aside. Thugs and demagogues play to the passions of the crowd. I know each act in the drama. I have heard in other tongues in other lands. I recognize the stock characters, the same buffoons, charlatans, and fools, the same confused, angry crowds, and the same despised impotent liberal class that deserves the hatred of engenders…
...The unraveling of America mirrors the unraveling of Yugoslavia. The Balkan War was not caused by ancient ethnic hatreds. It was caused by the economic collapse of Yugoslavia. The petty criminals and goons who took power harnessed the rage and despair of the unemployed and the desperate. They singled out convenient scapegoats...There is little difference between the ludicrous would be poet Radovan Karadzi, who was a figure of ridicule in Sarajevo before the war, and the moronic Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin. There is little difference between the Oath Keepers and the Serbian militias. We can laugh at these people. They are often idiots and buffoons. But they are also dangerous.”
But all that was still in the abstract for me until the other night when we happened to stop by our neighbors who were having a traditional Christmas open house party. He is [or was] a died in the wool Republican, a traditionalist, like so many whom I have known through my six decades of this human existence, but he is not an open authoritarian. My neighbor knows me as “his” local Democratic Precinct Committee-person, in one of the few Democratic voting precincts in Colorado Springs, CO. Our relationship starts with our dogs, then lawn care, and finally how we complain how the rest of our neighbors between us fail shovel their sidewalks, before we politely discuss politics. He is a retired local police officer who beforehand, was some kind of military or government police-intel officer [spook] following his Vietnam War tour in counter intelligence. On his smart phone he has personal portraits of himself standing proudly next to President Obama, (and also Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, President's Clinton, Bush I and Reagan), a testament to previously leading our local police VIP security details when visiting the local national defense facilities that surround our picturesque city. This particular evening he volunteered something odd after wishing us seasonal greetings---(his attempt at making fun of politically based humor), but then he dropped a bombshell that he was actually supporting Sanders, no more so, he was even volunteering in his campaign!
“Now is that interesting”, I said. But he went deeper, stating that he had heard from his Republican friends that Trump's candidacy is merely a dangerous strategic feint, part of a sophisticated strategy to trick America's electorate into the perception that Cruz is actually a reasonable moderate.
I was immediately stunned before being pulled into the party by my wife, so we could enjoy holiday treats and libations. As small talk milled through the air I tried to digest this new, seemingly radical perspective, from a person whom I considered quite rational, even though we rarely agreed upon any social policies or candidates. A short time later, as he and wife milled about entertaining their guests, my neighbor brought over another friend whom he introduced as a former County Republican party official---[a local political enemy!]. This new acquaintance began the conversation awkwardly by saying except for my hair needing a hair trim, I could pass as any Republican, not a Democrat, even though quite superficial it seems that is how so many on the right perceive the world in such surface judgmental-ism. [Guess I left my hippie-styled Grateful Dead tie-dyed T-shirts along with my old faded bell bottoms at home], but I took his comments in stride knowing that even my local liberal news rag Colorado Independent, (www.csindy.com/...) once described me similarly:
“Bob Nemanich gives nothing away in his appearance.
He dresses in slacks, a collared shirt and a sweater vest. He has a large frame, thick silvery hair and blue eyes so round and expressive they make the rest of his features look like afterthoughts. Book-cover intuition could peg him a Bill O'Reilly lapdog as easily as a Barack Obama enthusiast.
But just wait till he opens his mouth.
"I'm a wild, progressive liberal in town," he says, his tone deliberately prideful...He turns his eyes on you as if to add, "so watch yourself."
Anyway this essay is not about me. The two of us began to talk politics, not policies or rhetoric but power politics. He told me “he has had enough with The Party, beginning with Palin, but even before with so many radicals who proliferated into Colorado's and now the national Republican Party.” He now lives in the [State House] District represented by Klingenschmitt, [that super über fanatical religious zealot who openly calls Obama to a demon], but he said ,don't be fooled he told me, “Klingenschmitt is not that far off the fringe compared to many of his Republican voting circles.” (see: www.denverpost.com/... and www.9news.com/...)
Now this conflicted former party official lamented that, “it appears now that the only rational politicians appear to be Democrats”, (still enunciating the term Democrat with the snidely manner of serious lack of respect, something we all have come to know). “But what makes matters worse”, he stated; “that good Republicans were used and now are no longer wanted or needed, except for their automatic vote!”
[HOLY SHIT!] I exclaimed a bit too loud in this polite holiday company, immediately invoking my wife’s automatic scolding of my inappropriate social manners who was across the room visiting with our other neighbors. My new acquaintance laughed and said, “he was informed I was someone to get to know”, apparently enjoying my bursting emotion. I replied,“what are you trying to tell me and why? All politics and campaigns have a degree of usage.”
He then outlined said Republican campaigns no longer need money from the regulars or have volunteers, the mega donors and superpac's provide all the resources. “They don't need the party either, it is all a charade. But they still at least for now, seemingly need the votes.” He continued, “they [I interpreted this to mean the party’s power elite] are now not connected to the Constitution or the Republic anymore. But they have a problem, their political base has moved so far to the right—so militant—it is no longer conservative as if...we, the Republicans are now some coalition of religious fanatics aligned with militarist and loyalists living in some forlorn South American hump-hump country---you know a puppet , not the United States of America.” [I think he was referencing Jack Nickolson’s charactor in the movie As Good as it Gets]
He wanted to go on, but his wife came by and accused him of being such a bore talking politics to a stranger. He then went through the polite gestures of introducing me to his much younger well-groomed spouse, which he had already forgotten my name. When she asked me what I do, I told her I was a high school teacher which she surprisingly inquired whether it was public or private? When I told her public school her nose suddenly turned up and impolitely found some other more interesting circles to join. My new friend asked if he was boring? I replied directly, “no”, that I was finding this fascinating. “But what I don't understand is that there are not enough crazies to elect a president like Trump, let alone nominate one?”
Then retrospectively he cut to the chase. “Trump, he was told, is a reverse Perot.” '
Come again,' I responded.
“Do you remember Perot”?, he inquired. “Remember?” I replied, I was a Perot volunteer in '92 in Wisconsin.
He then let on; “Did, [my neighbor] tell me what about him?”
“No, I just met you today,” I said.
[Paraphrasing now from memory] He went on, that he had worked for Perot at IDS until it was sucked up by GM, then he joined with other international contractors throughout the world some projects legit and others, he can't talk about, them otherwise he would have to kill me, [that is such a common cliche around Colorado Springs I now think it might have a thread of truth.]
“Perot fell into running in '92 because he was totally aghast that 'Bush and friends' [his words not mine] were selling out the US to the internationalists, now after the Berlin Wall went down with the Soviets, that Perot a nationalist purposely undercut Bush's reelection and then those who backed Dole's and at least forestall the complete sell out. We were American nationalists first , but now the powers who are, are nothing but greedy soakers [his description] without any national allegiance but raping the entire system.”
He continued: “They are the real powers behind the entire Republican bench, starting with Cruz, a foreigner born to a Cuban and American actually he is a Canook refugee, actually was a Canadian citizen until 2014. “If challenged he could not successfully defend himself in the naturally born clause in most true conservative circles. Then there is Rubio essentially another internationalist, the son of Cubans, next is the Bush cut out Jeb, heir apparent to the old Prescott Bush-Herbert Walker' legacy, the actual old guard of Wall Street internationalists, then the new Wall Streeter's, Christie and Fiorina followed by the nobodies and pretenders then those religious zealots, [Huckabee, Santorum]. He was whispering now with his back turned to the room, me standing against wall trapped like a therapist or messenger.
He concluded; “Trump was there to make Cruz look reasonable, electable, to the stupid and fearful, so the crazier he went, the more it has backfired, now they are scheming for a brokered convention, that would make matters worse. Trump has become real, at least he could disrupt it all, a political sociopath or psychopathic, the ultimate buffoon and charlatan all rolled up into one! How many times bankrupt and then justifies it as part of the game, and his broke base is buying it. This was part of an old playbook, a psychological warfare ploy that we would use around the globe manipulating other puppet countries, now they are using it on ourselves! The only option,” he said, “ is to elect either another partial sell out [Clinton], or a socialist, the very political animal that we fought against around the globe for the sake of America.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I implored.
“Because,” he responded, “saving the Republic is on your side now?” I recall him pausing for effect. “Why have you been sitting on the sideline as our friend who is taking your advice of holding his nose is going to Sander’s meetings, he says you haven't been seen?”
“I have there, well once,” I retorted, “their organization is so disorganized, so dysfunctional and worse politically so naive that it is hard to participate.”
“So what, f*%& that is precisely what is needed, something American and pure. Why would they like you, you are of the old guard now, just do the stuff despite them and save this great Republic.” He stated in his most serious inflection. ”Get into the game Democrat.”
He then walked away glad-handling other people in the room like a connected politician. Later, as we decided to leave our host grabbed my arm and asked what were my thoughts. I told him I have to really ponder the details, but when is the next Sanders's organizational meeting?
This holiday reading David Talbot’s Devil Chessboard on top of so many other recent manifestations of the intrigue and real life of this era’s game of thrones that has embroiled our political nation turning it into a veiled global empire; Confession of an Economic Hitman to Kissinger’s Shadow,, Mary’s Mosaic , BLOWBACK, and Legacy of Ashes to Snowden’s revelations of the Five Eyes the question is whether democracy in this contorted and convoluted Republic could actually take place? Then it dawned on me as I completed reading the most recent Atlantic article, Why America is Moving Left? We only know if we try [again]. And if they authoritarian corporatist international powers that are the elite have to put up a total red herring in Trump trying to make Cruz moderate and therefore possibly electable, than the reality is this:
THEY ARE AFRAID DEMOCRACY MIGHT ACTUALLY WORK, ESPECIALLY WHEN FORMER AND RETIRED SPOOKS ARE VOLUNTEERING FOR THE OTHER SIDE.