2016 Election the Most Complicated Ever?

Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz compete for angry voters

Which kind of angry voter are you? Some would argue the Presidential primaries are simply sorting out people into categories of anger.

In every election cycle I can remember, the establishment of both political parties has argued that "this is the most important election ever." Importance keeps climbing a mountain, never looking backwards. I don't buy it, never did. More important than 1860, which led to the Civil War? More important than 1932, in the depth of the Great Depression?

But I will grant that this is the most complicated primary season ever. I grant it has historic competition, notably the 1952 Presidential Primaries, in which Senator Kefauver won the Democratic Primaries as an anti-corruption reformer, and Senator Taft won the Republican primaries as the darling of conservatives. Both were denied the nominations at the conventions.

How complicated? It begins with the difficulty many working class people, particularly white older men, have choosing between Senator Sanders and Realtor Trump. Both are adept at telling this group what they want to hear: that there will be a bigger piece of the economic pie for them. Sanders promises pie from the left-wing play book: he will simply tax the rich (more) and spend that on things like free medical care and free college tuition for all. Don't want to work? Go back to college on the taxpayers' dime. I'm planning on getting several degrees.

Donald Trump. What can I say that has not been said? He does not appear to be as angry on stage as Sanders, but he is just as good at whipping up a crowd. No college tuition program from Trump. Instead, his main message is that he will increase working class wages by kicking out the illegal immigrants who drive wages down for everything from construction work to babysitting. If he could drive them out that would certainly raise wages for those without college degrees, but I doubt he could do it. Neither a Democratic Congress nor a Republican Congress is going to vote enough funding for the immigration service to cut down on illegal residents substantially.

Black markets are what happens when people want something and the government makes it illegal (or even just too expensive through taxation). Illegal immigrants are a sort of double black market. Immigrants want higher pay than they can get at home (and sometime intangibles like safety), so our imperialist high pay scale creates an incentive for them to break the law and enter the nation illegally. At this end all sorts of employers want to pay less, and maybe even think a Hispanic nanny is sort of a racist step up from a black nanny, and so there is a black market here for people without work permits.

Given the double strength black market, it will take someone smarter than Trump to end the labor competition. Like most campaign promises, his is empty. At the Sanders end of spectrum, his nostrums like free college and higher government subsidies for the working class and poor will simply strengthen the magnetic pull. Resulting in more competition for U.S. jobs, not less.

Ted Cruz actually attacks Marco Rubio for not be anti-immigrant enough, and basically controls the Jesus Nutter vote, plus the end all spending that is not military in nature vote. Which makes Trump seem like a centrist, if you look at his vague policy positions instead of his insults.

The other centrist is Hillary Clinton. In a normal year she would be so far to the left as to endanger the Democratic Party's chances. This year she simply isn't angry enough for the electorate. Except that women in America are much better at hiding their anger than men. I think a lot of women are going to be really angry if she does not win the nomination. Will they desert the Democratic Party? I hope so. Maybe they will vote for Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate. Maybe they will form a new party for women and their allies. Probably they will just regroup and try again in 2020 with someone other than Hillary.

Why are so many people so angry? Why do so many people watch Walking Dead, possibly the most boring high-budget show ever produced for television?

In 2008 people were too busy trying to save their own asses to try to figure out who to lynch. Now most people have jobs and a place to live again, but they have not forgotten the promise of 2006 when all you had to do was lie about your income, buy a house with a 0% down, and live the rest of your life trying to take money out of the house's increase in value fast enough to keep up with your neighbors' lifestyles.

Bernie's people are mad at bankers. Trump's are mad at immigrants and Islam. Ted Cruz's hate Obama, liberals, Planned Parenthood, the IRS, and anyone who isn't packing a semi-automatic weapon and at least 100 rounds of ammo.

Hillary's people are not haters, for the most part, but I think they are being whipped into it. They are beginning to hate Bernie and his followers, Cruz and Trump and their followers, and probably becoming suspect of men in general. As they should be.

I'm guessing the angriest candidate will win. That would be Bernie. It would have been a lot easier if he just got himself a glock and started shooting it out with bankers on Wall Street, but if he wins the election, bankers beware.

The President is not supposed to make the laws, she is supposed to faithfully execute the laws written by Congress. Bernie indicated in the Miami debate that he does not intend to let that theory stop him, if elected. Maybe it won't matter if the incumbents win most of the seats of Congress again in 2016, as is usual. Bernie flapping his angry arms at Congress will do nothing. But Executive Orders are another matter entirely. Reminds me of 1932 in Germany.

On Hating President Obama

Precedents for Hating Barack

Feeling overworked, I decided to relax today with a copy I unearthed of United States Diplomatic History, Volume I, edited by Gerard Clarfield

Any history book is bound to have revealing details about the past. For instance, in the Chapter on the Jay Treaty with the British Empire (or Treaty of London of 1794), I learned that John Jay (who was already the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court), lacking instructions otherwise, decide to not demand payment to American slavers for their slaves that were freed by the British Army during the Revolutionary War.

But what struck me most was the hatred unleashed on President George Washington because of the treaty. The background is complex, but at that time the two major political factions in the U.S. were pro-French (and the French Revolution) or pro-British (and more conservative). The problem was the U.S. really needed a new treaty with the Empire because of unresolved issues from the Revolutionary War. President Washington did not particularly like the new treaty, but he needed it to keep the young nation out of war and with some chance to prosper economically.

One more detail before the main point: the U.S. Senate discussed the treaty in secret, and agreed that it would not be published. But anti-British Senators eventually made it available to the press.

How vitriolic was the hatred for Washington? There were riots against the treaty in Boston. The pro-French press said the President "had completed the destruction of American freedom." A series of articles accusing George Washington of theft was published. A common toast was "A speedy death to George Washington."

I certainly don't condone hatred of President Barack Obama. But I am not shocked that it exists. He is not my favorite President, but I would not slip from criticism (with occasional agreement or even praise) to hatred. But for many Americans, the vitriol of the 2008 campaign just rolled on into hatred of the man in office.

I think there is a racial component to Obama hating, but I don't think it is the main issue. Every President before Obama inspired hatred, at times, among certain people. The more famous an American President is now, the easier it is to find out why he was hated. Jefferson was hated for being pro-French and an atheist. Jackson was hated by the East Coast establishment. Lincoln was hated by the South, and so on down the line. Liberals have hated Conservative Presidents, and Conservatives have hated Liberal Presidents.

Several Presidents have been hated to the point of being assassinated, and attempts have been made on many more.

The political parties, of course, have been responsible for the whipping up of hatred. The Democrats hated Reagan and Bush. The fury unleashed by Republicans at Bill and Hillary Clinton was probably not unprecedented, but odd given that liberal Democrats considered them to be too conservative. Nor was Hillary the first First Lady to be hated. Many prior first ladies had their detractors (notably Eleanor Roosevelt). It probably started with Martha Washington, but that I have not read about, so far.

The President I hated the most was Richard Nixon. He was the President of my teen years, when I started rebelling against authority. I volunteered to campaign for George McGovern in 1972 (something Hillary and I have in common). My college roommate and I clipped pictures of Nixon and recaptioned them in nasty ways and attached them to our dorm door.

Now I see Nixon differently. He was a war criminal, sure, but I doubt he would have committed war crimes if Lyndon Johnson hadn't started the Vietnamese War. He was conservative, sure, but he accepted most of the New Deal. By today's standards he was to the left of Bernie Sanders. As Vice-President in the 1950s he had done much to advance civil rights. I could criticize him all day long, but I can no longer hate him.

Some people are just filled with hate, a few may not hate at all, but most of us live in the gray zone. We learn, over time, that most people are complicated. We can hate one thing they do, and love another. We can even disagree, or strongly disagree, without hating.

I hope Hillary becomes President, but I expect her to be the most hated President ... since Obama. I don't think she hates anyone, though I suspect she is not fond of Republicans or right-wing radio. She is the only candidate still standing who thrives on understanding complexity. And it's a complex world, so we want a President who can make decisions, understanding that the results can be complicated and even unexpected.

Good Riddance, Justice Antonin Scalia

Justice Scalia was a neo-fascist who tried to destroy America

Antonin Scalia (1936-2016) died yesterday, and good riddance. Our nation would have been better off if he had never been appointed to the Supreme Court. Scalia did his best to insert fascist ideology into the American legal system and Constitution. He was dishonest, manipulative, and unpatriotic. I only wish he had died sooner, preferably hanged like the Nuremberg criminals whose ideas he promoted.

Scalia was of Italian descent, and was the first-Italian American on the Supreme Court. Too bad, because there were many Italian-Americans with American values who would have made better Supreme Court judges. [disclaimer: I am of one-fourth Italian descent]

I do think being raised a Roman Catholic had a lot to do with his moral degeneracy. Roman Catholicism is at the root of fascism and other authoritarian political trends. But I should point out that many American Roman Catholics traded in their Dark Ages values for American rationalism during the very era that Scalia slimed his way through. [disclaimer: I was raised Roman Catholic and attended Catholic schools through the eighth grade. I have long been a atheist with a positive, nature-centric philosophy.]

Scalia became a committed ultra-conservative Catholic while attending a Jesuit-run school in New York City as a teenager. Depending on how you look at it, he either was smart or just spent a lot of time memorizing Jesuit nonsense. He then attended a Roman Catholic college, Georgetown University. By the time he reached Harvard Law School he was so deeply entrenched in lies and casuistry that he never emerged from the black pit. Instead, he worked hard all his life to suck American down into that pit.

I will leave it to others to try to analyze what was in Antonin's genes or childhood experiences that turned him to the dark side. Nor can I take on his opinions in thousands of Supreme Court cases in a short essay. What I want to convey to readers is his general method of attempting to destroy the Constitution. Contrary to his many eulogizers today, he did not invent these methods. They were conveyed to him. He simply reinvigorated them.

Suppose someone said to you: the right to bear arms, when the Second Amendment was added to the Constitution, meant only the right to own muzzle-loading weapons requiring those who wish to fire them to dump some gunpowder and a bullet into the barrel each time.

Scalia, when it was convenient, promoted "originalism" and "textualism" for interpreting the Constitution. In this theory the words of the Constitution mean exactly what they say and cannot be interpreted in modern terms. They have to be interpreted the way George Washington and crew interpreted them.

Except when originalism and textualism where inconvenient to right-wing agendas, as with gun control laws, which he consistently ruled against.

This enabled Scalia to deny that women have rights other than the right to vote. He denied that Congress could create good laws and programs, unless they were specifically listed by in the Constitution. He even ruled that Congress cannot regulate campaign donations as part of its duty to regulate elections, because that is trumped by the right of wealth individuals, corporations, and labor unions to spend all they want on an election.

But originalism and textualism were a phony agenda, a means to an end. Scalia did not rule that guns using technology more modern than that of 1780 could be used only the the U.S. military and police forces. No, he even voted to overturn parts of the Brady Bill.

Scalia's real agenda was to push the nation towards an authoritarian, right wing, Christian (and evenually Roman Catholic) government. Perhaps with slight variations from the Pope Pius, Mussolini, Hitler, General Franco model. But certainly in the direction of the fascist model.

Some people say Scalia could be charming in person. People said the same thing about Mussolini and Hitler.

Scalia denied the reality of the Evolution of Species. He tried to force religious theology to be taught in public schools.

Scalia denied the rights of people to affirmative action. Affirmative Action is Justice, because it makes up for past injustice. But Scalia wanted to steer the nation towards ever increasing injustice.

Scalia was un-american. He was against democracy and human rights, including the right to the pursuit of happiness, instead of misery under a Pope. He wanted to push America into a purposefully ignorant society of obedient religious nutters.

Scalia was a liar and a scumbag in a black robe, which is pretty much what his Jesuit teachers were aiming for.

Within the Catholic Church Scalia refused to accept the move away from fascism known as Vatican II. While we may be unfortunate that he was ever appointed to the Supreme Court, and to some point he did manage to persuade people to find ways to interpret our Constitution in a fascist manner, we are lucky he was just one of nine.

More on Antonin Scalia by William P. Meyers: Impeach Antonin Scalia [June 28, 2012]