After the rains, flowers in the Southwest are in full bloom. One highlight is purple, the color for The People’s Party. As for the east coast, things are frozen, both in weather and in politics. Lowering taxes could take time. Getting health care laws to lower health care prices and unshackle employers could take more time. The leading political party’s interests are divided and their opposition has no tactic beneath them. Democrats are filibustering every political appointee as Obama appointees persist; Trump fired 46 Obama-appointed prosecutors. Of course, opposition filibusters and firing federal prosecutors for any new, incoming president are both standard practice. Conservatives expected as much and don’t demonstrate any shock, yet Liberals usually think their loss deserves exception. Everything suggests that Republicans will gain ground in the Senate come 2018, thanks to the Democrats refusal on cloture. Therein lies the real danger: supermajority.
A group of professors had a wild idea: What if Trump had been a woman and Hillary had been a man? Surely that would have flipped election results. Actually, after a carefully-rehearsed reenactment of the presidential debates by one skilled actor and one skilled actress, Liberal supporters were in for another surprise. Hillary supporters adored Trump’s words when they came from a woman and hated Hillary’s words when they came from a man. After learning the truth, they didn’t change their political preferences, of course.
People rarely change their opinions, given new information, no matter what political party they are from. While Conservatives will tout the results of this little theatrical-political experiment, they reacted with much of the same blindness over news about Bush family dealings. Note, the term “Trump dissident” is important in describing this presidential term. Most of the people who voted for Hillary didn’t like her, supported Bernie Sanders, and liked Trump least of all, to say the least.
Hillary’s team met with the Russians before the election, according to the Kremlin. That will make the upcoming hearings even more interesting. The game of chairs keeps revolving. No political victory is final. No enemy is ultimate. And no pettiness evades anyone.
Pentagon waste topped $125 billion and someone tried to cover it up. Trump complained about $4 billion with Boeing. That could mean that he is focused on details too-small or that he is minding the pennies so the dollars will take care of themselves.
The Hillary-backed recount included the Republican House Speaker’s district and was shut-down by a Democratic White House controlled federal judge after Hillary’s Republican opponent gained votes—and no one thought the whole incident to be suspicious.
Casting doubt on Trump’s legitimacy is one suspicion that sits among others. If the Russians were so uncharacteristically sloppy in their appearance of an election hack, then Liberals, along with the Democratic White House controlled CIA, suspecting the hack are doing what the Russians wanted. The accusation that the Russians hacked the election would actually indite the incumbent administration.
Post-election opposition to Donald Trump is ripening into form. There are two ends of the “business man” spectrum: good and bad, both morally and effectively. The bad business leaders don’t make a good product and only make gains—or more often than not minimize losses—by strong arming, cutting smoke-filled back room deals, and hostile takeover methods. The good business leaders make a great product that people want to buy and lead a company that people want to work for.
We have Bill Gates at one end—with a company some people want to work for and a product no one looks forward to purchasing (let alone updating)—and then Steve Jobs at the other—with a company many people want to work for and a product even the competition idolizes. In the most recent presidential elections, the wealthy candidates had the Clintons and Bushes at one end, Trump at the other, and Ross Perrot in the middle.
The concept doesn’t only apply to business, but also non-profits and governments. Dishonest leaders have to be dishonest because they don’t have the work ethic or “market smarts” to make money the so-called “honest way”. The honest leaders prefer the “honest way” because it’s easier for them—that’s what they have gotten good at: building an organization that really does something well.
As with having bad credit, being bad at what someone does is a kind of “security risk”. Leaders who don’t know how to lead will tend to find alternative ways of getting the appearance of good results. But, leaders who know what they are doing are less likely to be dishonest, unethical, or corrupt.
Trump says things in public that he says to himself to keep himself motivated and on course. “Go-getters” and fired-up entrepreneurs recognized what Trump said in what they tell themselves daily: Don’t accept excuses for failure, especially from yourself.
Most people don’t see a difference from one wealthy man to the next. The loud voices complaining about Donald Trump especially can’t tell this difference. They thought they were so right in their theory that they couldn’t see that their theory lacked the ability to understand what made the candidates different nor to foresee who would win the election. Now that their theory has been proven wrong, some are listening while others are balling-up in panic so they can continue to tell themselves they are right in the face of mounting evidence.
The faithless electors vowing to vote against Trump even before the electoral college meets in mid December are making a big mistake. We can only break the glass once and they will be made examples of to maintain the integrity of future elections. Their concerns about foreign influence and making dangerous statements applied to many previous presidents much more so than Trump. But, that is difficult to identify for people who don’t see how apply the polarized relationship between Gates and Jobs.
Hillary’s involvement in a bid to recount the election results will lead to her indictment. Before, her indictment was in question. Perhaps Trump would be “magnanimous” and not persecute his political opponent. That would make sense since political retribution is a can of worms that few want to open—except perhaps Hillary. Then again, no one is sure what she wants from this post-concession recount.
Chris Wallace proved his dated journalism nose once again; he asked the wrong candidate about accepting election results. He really expected the tables to be reversed. He questioned Trump based on his speculation of the vote rather than on the character of the candidates.
Of course Hillary would contest the results after she conceded to them. From her retributive, venomous, retaliatory mode of operation—even with every indication of magnanimity from Trump—she thought surely she would be indicted because that’s what she would do. While some speculate that Hillary hopes to sow doubt about Trump’s legitimacy and stir chaos in the nation, she’s just a wolf trapped in a corner who doesn’t seem to know that she is driving nails into her own political coffin.
Michigan and Wisconsin both could see intervention from their own legislatures and State Supreme Courts. The States could determine that the request for a recount came too late to be completed before the electoral college meets. The US Supreme Court would be divided and bounce decisions back to the States. Other speculations include Congress choosing the President and Vice President, but it is doubtful to even get that far. The States are about to display their power. America’s adversaries will quietly watch and that will make them respect America more than anything we will read in the headlines over the next eight years.
Fidel Castro died at 90 years old. He even said goodbye at the most recent Communist Party Congress. Cubans celebrated in the streets of Miami while Black Lives Matter mourned.
WikiLeaks’s time ran out. So has a lot of people’s.
Extraditing Julian Assange for “rape” charges to Sweden, where he can then be extradited to the US, would reduce all future “sexual” allegations to being a potential fake tool in all future cases all over the world. The media made sure we are to that threshold. If the charges are real, then the extradition order would include clauses that he be returned to Ecuador once the case is cleared and any sentence served, but that probably won’t happen because that is probably not what is happening.
As we can see with the media’s assault against Trump, sexual charges have already been reduced to a mere means of a more deeply-motivated political assault. Remember, this happened after WikiLeaks attacked the incumbent’s political party during October Surprise season—but not back in September, after the FBI revealed that Obama was chatting with Hillary pseudononymously on her server. That’s curious. What is also curious is the incidentally well-coordinated release of emails from both the FBI and WL.
WikiLeaks may view their mission as holding governments accountable with conspiracy, which was never going to last, but the greater achievement is accountability to competence.
As with Snowden, the best response from governments would have been to ignore and deny. To attack is to notarize. Those seeking to prosecute Assange and Snowden are the real leak—proving they don’t know how to keep secrets, thinking that prosecuting the ones who outsmarted them would make up for the fact that they failed in their main task: to keep secrets secret. By prosecuting Snowden, the NIA pleads “guilty” to incompetence in front of the world. If the FBI director doesn’t know the simple Apple backdoor that any high school student knows, prudence says he won’t tell the press. But, we’re not looking at prudence—not from governments, not from WikiLeaks, not from big Internet companies, not from anyone.
If Trump wins the White House, he should honor Snowden and Assange. Notwithstanding that they both helped him get elected, they exposed the guards of government secrets as being too out of date for the tech age. Annoying, yes, but Snowden and Assange showed the US that the digital age needs tech-savvy people calling the shots where Intelligence is concerned. Anyone who saw public statements from the brass at NIA or FBI concerning Snowden or iPhones knows that they are being run by tech incompetence. Due to incompetent leadership, Snowden and Assange did not have high security clearance, but were given high-access information anyway, somehow; they told the public in public; they did not tell enemies in secret; they should receive honors as Good Samaritans.
WikiLeaks, however, was never going to last. It was always going to be a kamikaze mission. It was always going to be the focus of every attack. Everything seems to become a tool of something else, these days. If WikiLeaks lasted too long, it would become a tool of conspiracy and therefore no longer be useful.
More importantly, WikiLeaks is simply no longer necessary for its own purpose. Rather than having a web space or URL, the mases can use searchable tags. Publicizing WikiLeaks has already turned WikiLeaks into a meme, thanks to Federal action.
The entire topic opens up the discussion of news itself. While big media companies are consolidating, the clear results are that media outlets are multiplying. Even Verizon wants in on film making.
Anyone can have a YouTube channel. Anyone can have a blog. Private or public, corporate or individual, anonymous or identified, hacked or honest—anyone can post information. WikiLeaks gave the public an idea, the government validated it, now WikiLeaks has worked itself out of a job.
All WikiLeaks needs now is to get shut down, thereby promoted to eternal and immutable martyrdom, and then thousands of uncontrollable, less scrupulous, dangerous, and devious copycats will spring up across the globe. Everyone got more than he bargained for. WikiLeaks’s mission will soon be over-accomplished, thanks to the incompetent fogies managing the State who seem all to willing to help WikiLeaks with that last, vital promotion to godhood. By not understanding the notoriety of martyrdom, the all-time secret that all press is good press, and the basics of how technology works, responses from the State-media duo has handed the next election to Trump on a golden platter. This time, most of that news will be reported by individuals.
There is a point where moot meets mud. We are almost to that point. America is in danger because of both Trumpists and anti-Trumpists.
Anti-Trumpists—except “Cruzers”—despise every political opponent Trump cut down prior to the election. What anti-Trumpist likes the Bushes or Karl Rove? What Leftist or “pro-public sector expansionist” likes the Republican agenda? There is a lot of hate for Trump from the people who hate the people whose political careers Trump permanently ruined. They are quite ungrateful for all their enemies he has knocked down when their other “favorites” never did.
Why? The best explanation to this point is that anti-Trumpists live in worlds of “theory”. They aren’t founders of small business employers. They aren’t money-making, bread-winning, hard-working vertebra of the economy’s manufacturing backbone.
Anti-Trumpists include members of third parties who support politicians who lose every election, but somehow still pay their bills with campaign contributions. They work in an office of a company created by someone who is long decease where most of their “professionalism” is tied to “tone of voice” as they enjoy someone else’s wake, thinking it is the entire lake. Or, they live and work in the world of padded furniture, complements of big education. They theorize without ever making waves themselves, without ever cutting the top off the mustard, without having to prove whether their theories even work.
For too long, too many Americans have coached from the bleachers, instructed the driver from the back seat, and commented from the show’s peanut gallery. They criticize and say, “That’s the wrong way to do it,” while seeming to forget that doing a thing the “right way” involves the thing actually getting done. Perhaps, it wasn’t the right or wrong “way” that they were concerned about, but that the thing got done at all, and the “way” was their excuse to object. Or, perhaps they didn’t care whether the thing got done at all, but only about “the right way” exclusive of doing or not doing the thing that did or didn’t get done. And, our nation-wide lack of care for whether or not things get done has brought us to this election.
Trump’s worst is what he has said and how he says it. Both Clinton’s worst is in what they have done when they said the opposite. We all know who supports who. Of all possible criticisms, anti-Trumpists choose the arguments that appear to be most contradictory. One would think one would choose arguments that might hold up better. There are better arguments against Trump than anti-Trumpists give, such as “what would happen if he succeeds”. But, maybe Trump’s “tone” so angers “tone-lovers” that they lose their composure. Anti-Trumpists might be right, but if they knew why they were right, they have kept it a better secret than the contents of emails on a scrubbed email server.
Trumpism and anti-Trumpism are two symptoms of a disease in America—a disease which causes its victims to not know how to actually make stuff work, but to keep using proven-to-fail methods over and over again, expecting success. When some of them first and finally wake-up at last, they leap to the closest go-gettter they find: Trump. And, that’s true of Christians more than any other, both the White Religious Right and the Black Church Democrats, both who support the very poster-boy politicians who yank the football every November—at Thanksgiving, safely after the elections.
Trumpists, want “anything” that might change status quo. It’s almost dangerous. The biggest virtue Trump offers is that he is “different”, the second-biggest is that he has “done” what America needs done more of, namely infrastructure and job-creation. The danger is that Trump might succeed, which means shoes too big to fill and the quick downfall of America thereafter. For too long we have cared about manner more than results. Now, we want to elect someone who will hand us what results we wouldn’t work for.
If only the anti-Trumpists now and the pro-Bushists before had a little more awareness of the real world, the country’s situation would be different. Then, neither Trump nor Hillary could possibly be on the ballot. But, America has a disease of disconnecting theory with the reality it theorizes. So, 2016 has been condemned to a Trump-Hillary ticket.
The debate showed everyone whatever they were looking for. People who think that tone, speeches, and brand new plans determine good leadership loved Hillary for all those reasons. People who value portfolios more than resumes, and who don’t care much for “proper tone”, found what they wanted in Trump. Christians who test character by tone of voice didn’t like either candidate. Nearly everyone said of the debate, “See, I told you so.”
The interesting thing is the divide over conventional lines. Trump broke the mold. Now, non-Christian Liberals are voting for a non-Conservative Republican to make up for half of the Christians who don’t know what to think. The new unifying divider is the question of whether to judge promises by portfolio or resume.
Symphony predicts Trump will win. But, that is a prediction Symphony cares little about. The bigger prediction is that revival will return to America one way or another.
