The Mourning After The Morning After
"The Horror! The Horror!" (from Joseph Conrad's novella, "Heart of Darkness," 1899)
The mourning after the morning after the elections.
It had been a really, really raucous party. Well, more like a wake, than a party.
The music was loud. People screamed. People shouted. People cried.
Confetti and crushed paper cups lie strewn across the floor. Red, white and blue bunting hangs limply from the rafters.
The air has that heavy, stale stink of cigar smoke. There are cigarette butts and buds everywhere.
Empty beer and wine bottles litter the floor. Potato chips and Doritos have been ground into the carpet. There are icky stains on the rug and the upholstery.
You woke up in the morning completely hung over. What a Katzenjammer! Your head was throbbing. Your mouth was dry and pasty.
Where on earth are you? How did you get here? What day of the week is this?
You can barely open your eyes. They are puffy with dark circles. You turn your head... but... What?... Who's that!?!? You woke up in the same bed with... with... Donald Trump!
# # # #
Who won and who lost the 2024 elections?
No one asked me and I didn't express a preference for either Mr. Trump or Ms. Harris. We vote by cohorts in the U.S., which translates into the Electoral College. Washington is, essentially, a one party state and a colonial outpost of California. My vote in national elections doesn't count for much.
However, if I had my druthers, and if they had been Americans running for America's top office, I would have cast my solitary vote for Russia's Mr. Putin, China's Xi Jinping, Mexico's Claudia Scheinbaum, Germany's Sahra Wagenknecht or Syria's Bashar al-Assad. Despite his czarist sensibilities, Mr. Putin is, at least, historically literate and well spoken. Xi Jinping is sincere and humanistic. As is Syria's Mr. Assad. Ms. Scheinbaum and Ms. Wagenknecht are both articulate and intelligent. All of which are qualities, I believe, that fatally disqualify such persons from holding public office in the United States.
So looking at the actual contestants, who really won and lost the US 2024 elections?
WINNER - Donald Trump.
Clearly, Mr. Trump is the big winner. However, the second coming of Donald Trump is not The Second Coming (or even the first, depending on the spiritual opiate to which you are or are not addicted). Nevertheless, the 2024 election was a significant event. Exactly why, I'm not yet sure, except for the strong affirmation of that great American tradition to "THROW DA BUMS OUT!"
And, duh, bring that bum back? Well, whatever.
Those traumatized by Mr. Trump's victory and who have been self-medicating with liquor and sedatives should just get a grip (on something other than their security blankets and teddy bears). Keep in mind that now the Republicans are the incumbent bums who, next time around, can also be thrown out.
Remember this as well: Democracy ≠ Voting.
Democracy means rule by the people (which we clearly do not and never will have), whereas "voting" (as in Western style 'democracies') just means choosing between cobwebbed & spooky "Door A" versus cobwebbed & spooky "Door B." You never really know what monster lurks behind either door until you turn the handle and open one and......
Aaaaaaarrrgggghhhhhhhhh!!!
Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Leon Trotsky described "permanent revolution" as a stratagem for advancing the interests of the working class. The less dramatic practice of unelecting the incumbents might be the closest American analog to "permanent revolution." In France, the historical equivalent of "throw da bums out" was the guillotine. But that is another story for another day.
As for Mr. Trump himself, I have never figured out exactly what he stands for, other than his self-perception as a benevolent diamond-studded Daddy Warbucks tycoon looking out for us, the Little Orphan Annies of his comics world.
But, for that matter, neither did the Democratic Party stand for much other than its own comic book vision of the future. While staring reverently at their elitist belly-buttons, the Democrats simply patted themselves on the back for achievements strange and dubious and asserted that they lit the path toward a Hollywood type future.
Such were our choices in 2024! Oh woe is us!
As renegade Democrats Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy correctly observed, the current manifestation of the Party of Camelot is unrecognizable, if not downright nauseating, to anyone who recalls what it once was alleged to be. The same is true in Germany where the Orwellian Green Party, a member of the disintegrating ruling coalition, advocates War as Peace. Apparently, the German Greens support saving the environment through endless military conflict. Meanwhile, the mainstream German "conservative" and "social democrat" parties, the SPD and the CDU/CSU, immolate themselves in an economic auto-da-fé. In the U.K., since the ouster of its last worthwhile leader, Jeremy Corbin, the so-called "Labor Party" of Keir Starmer - just like the Democratic Party in the United States - has practically abandoned its blue collar roots and gotten into the sack with the bourgeoisie.
All of which demonstrates the complete bankruptcy of mainstream political parties in Europe and in the United States. All of which might also explain the allure of a U.S. presidential candidate who, himself, has so often filed for bankruptcy.
Not so very long ago, the Democrats in the U.S. at least pretended to represent the working class. Today, they no longer even pretend. Since the DNC machinations of President Bill Clinton (he who said he felt your pain as he inflicted more of it and cavorted with Jeffrey Epstein), the Democrats have followed the money. They became sycophants of the same pluts and oligarchs as the Republican Party. The Democrats' metamorphosis into a brain-eating party of well-educated zombies has been masked by a revolving kaleidoscope of freakish issues. That constantly revolving kaleidoscope, as intended, vented the accumulating steam of political discontent. It distracted the young, the impressionable and the historically illiterate from any movement that seriously challenged the status quo.
But the same may be true of Mr. Trump, too, who, as a billionaire real estate developer, failed as often as he succeeded. This is a truly odd person to champion the interests of the blue collar MAGA crowd.
Even though his "policies" might make some a little queasy, you have to appreciate Mr. Trump's pluck, his courage under fire (literally) and, his buoyancy. Despite means fair and foul (mostly foul, considering his opponents' assassination attempts and their abject abuse of the legal system), it seemed impossible to keep the Trump rubber ducky submerged in the bathtub. He just kept popping up over and over and over again. Love him or hate him, that kind of tenacity deserves respect. Moreover, the more his opponents tried to drown him, by means fair and foul, the greater Mr. Trump's aura became.
Mr. Trump's domestic enemies (of which he has many) tried to kill him at least twice in 2024 in addition to their countless efforts to discredit and imprison him. In a violent society like the United States, it is conceivable that the same class of powerful people who regularly coordinate the elimination of nonsubmissive and noncompliant people (foreign and domestic) will take another swipe (or two or three) at Mr. Trump.
As is customary in our times, if such a dirty deed happens, it would be immediately and falsely attributed to some hapless "lone wolf;" or to the terrorist flavor of the month; and/or to any one of the usual foreign state punching bags. You know the script, because you've already seen this movie so many times before. Most likely, however, is that Mr. Trump - now that he has been reelected - will forget all about his campaign rhetoric of "draining the swamp" (and probably many of his other campaign promises) and appoint the same old Beltway insiders to his retrograde cabinet. Thus will his next four years endure as the status quo ante until he exits the White House and is forgotten by history.
Here's an interesting note. If the Democrats and the Republican "Never-Trumpers" had not rigged the 2020 election -- which I believe they did; even though, truth be told, there has never been a free/fair/honest one in the United States, and there never will be -- but IF the 2020 election had not been finagled, then Mr. Trump would now be ENDING his second term and a Democrat would likely be sworn in as President in January 2025. Such are the practical jokes of Fate, I guess. Such also is decisive proof of the Democrats' hubris, their overbearing pride and arrogance. But to learn that lesson Democrats needed to have their heads handed to them on an election day platter.
Mr. Trump (version 2.0) is, effectively, a lame duck from the start because he is constitutionally prohibited from running again. That said, for at least the next two years (until the entire House of Representatives is, again, up for election), Mr. Trump will hold reign with majorities in both houses of Congress.
Unless… Mr. Trump repeats the amateur mistakes of his first administration when he filled his cabinet with lunatics, political climbers, incompetents, flatterers, back-stabbers and mad dogs.
LOSER - Ukraine.
Ukraine has been a loser since the western engineered Maidan Square "color revolution" (translation: coup d'etat) in 2014. Mr. Trump has promised to end the brutal NATO-Russia conflict within 24 hours. That was probably just campaign blather. Mr. Trump, in order to prove his personal cojones, may... or may not... lean on the Unbrainians in Kiev to dismount their warhorses and stop slaughtering their own people.
The business class in Europe and the United States, however, do not want to turn off the highly profitable war spigot. For them, Ukraine's resources are what's on the menu for lunch. The neoconservative war hawks here and in Europe still drool deliriously over their fantasy of militarily dismantling non-compliant Russia and China. Because that political-economic class remains Mr. Trump's primary constituent, it is as likely that he will prolong the NATO war in Ukraine as curtail it. Either way, the Ukrainian people lose, so long as they continue to treat "the West" as their savior.
WINNER - Elon Musk.
Mr. Trump and the Republicans won in the Electoral College. They won a majority in the Senate. They won a majority in the House of Representatives. They won the popular vote nationwide. But I doubt that either Mr. Trump or the Republicans would have fared nearly as well without the prominent support of Mr. Musk. Perhaps, without Elon Musk's prominence, the Republicans and Mr. Trump might not have prevailed at all.
I can't say that I like (or dislike) Elon Musk because I've never met him. I applaud many things he says and does. I criticize other things that he says and does.
Still, I respect someone who will jump into a fight wholeheartedly and put both his money AND his mouth on the line. Mr. Musk conspicuously tied his personal fortune (if not his personal safety!) to Mr. Trump's chariot before the race was won. Although the Republicans nailed the Electoral College and the popular vote nationwide, the data for the so-called "battleground states" show that the margins were really close. Really close! Undoubtedly, that margin of success was due, in large measure, to Mr. Musk's dramatic persona, his stunts, his unequivocal commitment, as well as the strategic investment of his campaign contributions.
Mr. Trump, however crappy his judgment has been in selecting subordinates, genuinely admires people wealthier than himself. He also genuinely admires the kind of all-or-nothing chutzpah that Elon Musk displays. Musk will have his reward. His investments in X and in Space-X will be protected. Whether inside or outside the Trump V.2 administration, Mr. Musk will have direct access to and, perhaps, a moderating influence on Mr. Trump.
LOSER - Kamala Harris.
According to the Peter Principle, Ms. Harris had already risen to her highest level of incompetence as Joe Biden's Vice President. It is just as well that she was not promoted to higher office. It would not have been a fun gig for her.
Precisely because Ms. Harris had no personal power base, she would have been at the mercy of a rather ruthless gang of investors and manipulators. They who mercilessly tossed mumbling old Joe Biden under the bus as soon as his "use by date" had expired would have had no compunction about similarly discarding Ms. Harris when she, too, may have become useless. This same pitiless gang sought to force "old and infirm" Justice Sonia Sotomayor to walk the plank because they want the "old and infirm" Joe Biden to appoint someone younger to replace her on the Supreme Court.
Pfui! These 21st Century Democratic Party power-brokers are all about imaging and they are all about power. They would have tossed Franklin Roosevelt overboard because of the "optics" of his paraplegia and his wheel-chair.
I commiserate with Ms. Harris. The Democrats have, after their wipe-out at the polls, now begun to scapegoat her. Paraphrasing Marc Anthony's eulogy of Julius Caesar, the Democrats have come to bury Kamala Harris, not to praise her. They are looking ahead to the next generation of comic book standard-bearers, by which time Ms. Harris will have been tossed by Democrats into the dustbin of broken dreams and promises.
WINNERS - Robert Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard.
Ms. Gabbard is a genuinely intelligent person with charisma. She should have been considered for the Defense Department or the State Department. Ms. Gabbard is both wiser and less obnoxious than many of the Deep State types who will be appointed. As a renegade Democrat who has joined the Republicans, Ms. Gabbard will be trusted by neither party's stalwarts. Notwithstanding his persona as an insightful employer, Mr. Trump has a penchant for hiring idiots, viz. his first administration. I expect him to do the same the second time around, which clearly means that Ms. Gabbard won't be a significant member of the team. I wish her well, however, even as I anticipate that she will be shunted to the sidelines
As for Mr. Kennedy, his quixotic campaign was absolutely sincere, which the Democratic and Republican standard-bearers were not. Significantly, Mr. Kennedy and other third party candidates like Jill Stein from the Greens, received just enough votes in key states to decide the issue for Mr. Trump. Undoubtedly, the Democrats will vilify Mr. Kennedy as another "spoiler," a saboteur a la Ralph Nader, as though certain demographics are OWNED by the Party, and how dare this vote rustler steal THEIR election!
But, in fact, Mr. Kennedy stole nothing from anyone. The dysphoria, the absolute indigestibility of the Democratic Party cuisine ultimately forced some key constituencies to head for the vomitorium. If many could not stomach voting for either mainstream candidate, then they could always cast a ballot for someone who spoke the truth, even if only about healthcare, Covid19 and Big Pharma's MRNA vaccines.
Mr. Kennedy, thus, proved a valuable asset for the Trump campaign and, I suppose, equally as valuable as the service rendered by Elon Musk. In addition to the obvious health-related cabinet possibilities, Mr. Kennedy would make for an interesting (but highly improbable) Attorney General or Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. As we remember, his uncle, John F. Kennedy, proposed to "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds..." In response to which, as many have come to understand, the CIA conspired to splinter JFK into pieces and scatter him to the winds.
WINNER - Benjamin Netanyahu.
Mr. Trump definitely will not rein in the Zionist conquistadors in Israel... but neither would have President Harris. As the head of one of the most barbaric governments in modern times, Mr. Netanyahu has played - and blatantly interfered with - the American electoral system. Israeli interest groups have openly stomped all over the 1st Amendment Rights of Americans. They have bullied and slimed universities, their students, the news media, and the Congress. They sought to censor anyone who disagreed with them. In so doing, Mr. Netanyahu essentially saved himself while sacrificing everyone and everything else. And he doesn't give a shit.
Despite Mr. Netanyahu's arrogance and brutality, the new Trump Administration will likely further abet Israel by hammering even harder on the more independent Islamic states (Syria and Iran), by further cheer-leading (or, at least ignoring) Israel's genocide of the Palestinian people, and by additionally greasing the palms of the invertebrate western satraps of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, the PLO and Egypt.
LOSER - the State of Israel.
Mr. Netanyahu personally has won, but Israel has lost. Israel has become a psychologically and politically disassociated state. It has lost its mind as it lost its soul. It has also lost its raison d'etre.
Israel, from its inception, was a European colony. The German Nazis sought to expel and/or exterminate European Jews, just like the Turks sought to expel and exterminate the Armenians from the Ottoman Empire in 1914. Now Israel, like the Germans and the Turks, seeks to expel and exterminate the Palestinians.
Many Europeans enthusiastically collaborated in the Nazi genocide of European Jewry, including citizens of France, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Romania, Ukraine, and Bulgaria. Many of these countries' citizens actively fought on the side of the Nazis in World War II, including French and Italian fascists. Finland's German-allied army willfully collaborated in the deadly siege of Stalingrad from 1941 to 1944. And if neither the U.K. nor the U.S. were allies of Nazi Germany, neither did either of them do much of anything to interfere with the extermination camps that they undoubtedly knew about.
Thus, when the fighting in Europe stopped in 1945, Europe and the United States supported a Zionist solution to the displaced surviving Jews: settle them someplace else.
Zionism was but one of many Jewish ideologies that flew around in 19th Century Europe. Like the brood parasite cuckoo bird, Zionism sought to lay its eggs in another specie’s nest. Then, like the cuckoo, the newly hatched Zionist chick would boot out the native bird eggs. Ironically, Zionism's focus on getting out of Europe and founding a separate existence someplace else is what the Nazis initially sought to do to European Jews before, ultimately, deciding on a policy of genocide.
Where the war victors agreed to send the displaced European Jews was... Palestine. Tragically, the plan to resettle Europe's Jews in a Middle East quasi-European colony came at the expense of indigenous people who, equally ironic, bore no responsibility for the Holocaust.
Judaism is a religion, not an ethnicity, just like Islam, Christianity or Buddhism. The notion of a secular ethnic Jewish state is ridiculous. Israel cannot be the self-proclaimed "Jewish State" and then, by its words and deeds, disgrace the religion of Judaism.
Everybody everywhere is a mutt.
To a greater or lesser degree we are all related. The mitochondria in our cells, with its separate genome, non-sexually reproducing, therefore non-mixing, and closest to what we like to call “pure blood”, are ironically the surest proof of common ancestry via matrilineality. Genes are for mixing, which is precisely what sex is all about. Over the millennia, humans have co-evolved into a complete global mishmash of Denisovans, Neanderthals, Homo Sapiens of every culture and phenotype, and God knows what else. We are a still evolving species that may, or may not, survive into the future.
Israel lost the 2024 elections precisely because in the understanding of a lot of people - particularly younger people worldwide who count the most - Israel has lost its halo and became a pariah among nations. It is just another law-breaker now, a country no better, and often much worse than all the others. It has also shown itself to be weaker than it pretended to be. It cannot defeat a poorly armed popular resistance movement without the extraordinary military and financial support of the United States and without resort to assassination, duplicity and criminality.
The cynic says all the moralizing is irrelevant. Nothing matters, the cynic says, except, at the end of the day, who stands on the top of the hill. To which I respond: that is not true. Empires and kingdoms collapse and disappear. The ancient religious texts from which the Zionists draw their imaginary legitimacy report the same history: hubris leads to a fall. That was the Democratic Party's lesson from the election of 2024 and it is also a lesson for Israel.
Winner or Loser - Palestine?
Since October 2023, many thousands were killed and many thousands lost everything in Gaza. The genocidal pattern repeats itself now in the West Bank and in South Lebanon. The Palestinians clearly lost the 2024 American election because both parties, their coffers brimming with pro-Israel contributions, would offer them nothing, and feckless Islamic states sat on the sidelines. In the near future, however, neither the Republicans nor the Democrats can take the Arab-American or the Muslim-American vote for granted. As the 2024 election proved, even small demographic shifts in political support can be decisive.
In the "best" scenario advocated by Kamala Harris, there would be a "cease fire" in Gaza and, possibly, somewhere, some time, some place, a Palestinian Homeland.
But a "cease fire" is a bad joke if it only occurs after Gaza has been bombed to the Stone Age and its people obliterated. Nor would a Palestinian Homeland be anything to shout about if it resembles the Indian Reservations of the American West or a polka-dot South Africa style Bantustan devoid of true sovereignty.
Palestine is a geographic whole that truly does reach from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, including Gaza, South Lebanon, the West Bank and Jordan; and it includes all of the assortment of peoples and religions residing there - Jews, Muslims, Druze, Arabs, Bedouins, Bahai, and Christians - who, undoubtedly, share a common ancestry as well as common cultural and religious roots.
Ultimately, the solution to the Middle East imbroglio is not grounded in 18th Century notions of "statehood" at all, especially not one based on religion or ethnicity. What the Middle East needs is what the whole world needs: not a one state solution, not a two state solution, but a no state solution based on Enlightenment principals that transcend the arbitrary lines of borders and ethnicity.
Winner or Loser - China?
Mr. Trump, like Joe Biden before him, has his head stuck in the Cold War 1950s. Both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are totally ahistorical if not also aliterate. Ms. Harris, in comparison, simply didn't know where her head was which left her at the mercy of her handlers.
Mr. Trump will likely escalate the ongoing assault on China. He professes to be a staunch supporter of capitalism and a virulent antagonist of socialism. Mr. Trump is given to silly anti-socialism burps and jeremiads, just like the current clown-president of Argentina, Javier Milei. Like so many in the western world, Mr. Trump understands neither one "ism" nor the other.
China is not, and never has been a military threat to the United States. It is the United States, and the Western World, that threaten China. People forget (or they never learned) that right up to the mid-20th Century, China was carved up, colonized, humiliated and bullied by every "Great Power" on Earth, including the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Portugal and Japan. But for the Maoists and the Communist Party wrenching China from western domination in 1949, China would still be a downtrodden colonial basket case.
The rhetoric notwithstanding, the American ruling class wants to take China down precisely because it wins as a socialist state playing capitalist poker with the West's own cards and chips.
I expect soon to read more lurid propaganda about fanciful "evidence" that Iran has targeted President Trump for assassination. Or, that China has "hacked" the otherwise "safe and reliable" digital records of American government, the American military and American businesses. In all likelihood, the propagandist accusations will simply project onto others our own agencies' penchant for misdeeds and malefactions. Thus will attention be deflected onto "others" for what "we" ourselves are and have been doing.
We know that throughout history, when times are tough... and we have entered some very, very tough times... political leaders gin up boogeymen and adversaries. A state in crisis needs ENEMIES to rouse the national spirit and patriotic flags to run up the pole and salute. In the Biden Administration, the "enemies" were Russia, Donald Trump... and China. In the Trump Administration, the enemies will be Iran, the Democrats... and China.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
China, not Russia, is the true target of Western machinations. The Russian Revolution ultimately failed because the Soviet Union derailed before the revolution could be fully metabolized. Russia today is not "communist," but an adumbrated federation of state-lets (rather like the early United States was after the War of Independence) ruled, in large part, by capitalist oligarchs, put in place by western financiers. To their chagrin, these oligarchs have not been admitted into the top tier clubs of the western ruling elite. The West covets Russian land and resources, and it is irritated by Russia's refusal to kowtow to the neoliberal cultural agenda. But Russia itself does not represent an existential threat.
China does. China is an existential threat precisely because it is a successful socialist state with its own cultural characteristics, one that embraces a flexible political-economic policy that can accommodate the aspirations of other peoples and cultures. China also demonstrates that it is possible to plan for and implement structural changes to adjust to a global climate that indubitably is in flux. All of which makes the Chinese alternative externally attractive... and a menace to the vestigial colonizing states of Europe and North America.
For that reason alone, China - in the short term - "lost" the American 2024 elections. In the long term, however, it is a contest between capitalism's hierarchical, totalitarian, class-based cupidity versus a more diffused brand of socialism with local characteristics.
Did China come out a "winner" in the 2024 elections? Not in the short run. In the long run, it's just too soon to tell.
Media Winners - Alternative News & Commentary
Legacy media - the major corporate networks, the national newspapers, and their high profile news analysts - all took a sharp kick to their soft corporate buttocks this election cycle. It's a good morning when non-traditional podcast venues such as those hosted by Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson carried greater influence than The New York Times editorial board. I am not always in sync with these podcasters' points of view, but I strongly endorse their right to share them. In any event, it was a matter of life or death for alternative media because, had the Democrats remained in power, it is almost certain that they would have burned the independents at the stake in a 21st Century Inquisition to enforce orthodox narratives suited to their agenda.
The losers, obviously, were the owners of the coordinated corporate media and the old standbys they employ as their mouthpieces: Rachel Maddow, Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, the silly ladies of The View, Wolf Blitzer, Van Jones, Joy Reid, Jake Tapper, etc. Also losers were a host of Hollywood movie stars and show biz celebrities whose endorsements, so it seems, carried as little weight as that of The New York Times.
Sundry Winners and Losers.
There were many individual winners and losers in the 2024 elections. Most of them will soon disappear from the public stage: Bill and Hilary Clinton, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, Michael Cohen, and others. Their fates shouldn't concern us.
The European Union and NATO are clear losers in the 2024 U.S. elections. I am no fan of either. NATO is simply a projection of the "threat" that it ascribes to others. It should be dissolved as a complete waste of resources. Europe has no one to fear except for the United States who blew up its natural gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea and who sabotages the European economies. The EU is undemocratic, autocratic, bureaucratic and problematic. Its governing counsel mostly fears "populism" of the type that EU wonks equate with Donald Trump. The EU sees Mr. Trump as a contemporary Robespierre carting them off to the political guillotine of popular elections. Hmm. Their nightmare might already be happening in Germany and in France!
The world economy was unaffected by the election of Mr. Trump. Either because of, or despite him, it's about to get worse. The giddy rise of the U.S. stock markets signifies nothing except as the harbinger of more inflation.
Stock markets are like cappuccinos: the cup is small and mostly filled with froth.
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Was what happened on Election Day a conservative revolution?
Likely not. My interpretation is that it was more a matter of revulsion than revolution, an anguished cry by the majority of U.S. voters to "Throw da Bums out!" This time, the bums were Democrats. Next time, they will be Republicans.
It's the morning after. Or the mourning after the morning after the elections.
It's a new dawn.
It's the end of the universe.
It's time to hide under the bed.
We are in shock. We are ecstatic. We are despondent.
Relax everyone! Donald Trump represents less a political movement of American style capitalism than a bowel movement of capitalist indigestion. Mr. Trump is a personalty cult, a Party of One. He has no enduring dogma and no coherent theory to bequeath to the future.
The Democrats, too, have no dogma or theory other than the mystical catechism of intersectional gobbledygook. Thus, Democrats, too, turn to personality cults and identity politics that have no more coherent theoretical underpinnings than the Republicans. Thus enters... and exits... the stage: the two dimensional image and powerlessness of Kamala Harris.
When the 2024 elections cycle began in earnest, I tried to research what, in a legal sense, the American political parties actually are. Are the political parties corporations? Partnerships? Limited liability companies? 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations? What exactly are these entities that many of the American Founders inveighed against letting in the door of the newly minted Republic? I found no answer anywhere that made any sense, except for a loosey goosey tradition of people who band together to further their own power and wealth by exploiting the State.
Mr. Trump represents the flailing of western civilization that no more knows what it is than where it is going. The Democrats, for now, are equally clueless.
So am I. But, at least, I understand why I don't understand.
For the moment, however, we are entertained.
Bon voyage. It will be an interesting trip.
Steven you’re on a roll! Can’t wait to read your commentaries over the next four years.
Sometimes I think you’re way out there and sometimes I find that you’re insightful and thought-provoking. I imagine that is your goal. 😏