The Duce Disappoints
http://ericpetersautos.com/2016/09/2...e-disappoints/
by eric • September 28, 2016
The “debate” earlier this week disabused me of hope that Trump might be something other than yet another authoritarian collectivist.
He basically agreed with would-be (and probably will be) Chairman Hillary on every substantive point – from not disputing “climate change” to amen’ing her calls for government direction of the economy.
They bickered over details.
He did not denounce Obamacare – or take issue at any level with either the police state at home or the warfare state abroad. If anything, he has become even more belligerent on the latter score. For example, his blood-curdling call for the death penalty for any person who shoots an armed government worker (i.e., a cop).
Trump – like all authoritarian collectivists – views the lives of those who enforce authoritarian collectivism as particularly valuable.
Ours less so.
He defended presumptive guilt “stop and frisk” policies, an outrage against not just the Fourth Amendment but the core tenet of a free society: That a man who hasn’t done anything to arouse suspicion he may have committed a crime should be left in peace to go about his business – without having to prove he hasn’t committed a crime.
Donald is earning his Fez.
It’s all pretty depressing.
Trump’s appeal to date has been fueled by popular hatred for a system – a government/corporate nexus – that has become economically exploitative to a brazen and insufferable degree and contemptuous, at the same time, of whatever scraps of our rights remain.
A government – and government officials – who do whatever they like, often profiting despicably from it – and never being held to account much less put behind bars.
So many examples.
Snowden, for instance. This guy leaked “state secrets” revealing criminal actions of the government … and was targeted for criminal prosecution by the government.
Hillary commits criminal acts – and runs for president.
A cop shoots an unarmed, hands-up, retreating-from-her man… and is eventually charged with manslaughter. Only because of popular outrcry, which occurred only because the summary execution was caught on tape.
An ordinary citizen who shot an unarmed man walking away from him, attempting to retreat, with his hands up in the air, would be looking at a murder charge and decades in prison.
On and on it goes…
Trump’s meteoric ascendance was fueled by the hope that, somehow, he might do something to ameliorate these and many other outrages. That he might be different. Not one of them. Not another authoritarian collectivist.
Well, it looks like those hopes were misplaced.
On Monday, Trump ran out of gas. It was a sad performance – for those of us who were hoping (indeed, praying) that Trump was going to upset the authoritarian collectivist apple cart.
Or at the very least, give it a try.
Instead, he gave it a pat on the back.
Makes me want to go back to bed. For the next ten or twenty years.
Trump’s selection of Mike Pence – a worse-than-boilerplate authoritarian collectivist – was unsettling. But it could be put down to the necessity of making nice with the GOP
partei establishment, which was necessary in order to secure the nomination.
I give him a pass on that.
But Trump’s refusal on Monday to disagree with Hillary in any fundamental way about the legitimate authority of the state – his piddling with her over how the state’s authority would be imposed by him rather than her – makes the idea of getting out of bed on Election Day seem pretty pointless.
They had elections in the old Soviet Union, too.
Team Red or Team Blue will win.
But the old American ideas of being left free to pursue our happiness as individuals, free from coercion to conform and submit to the “plans” of Dear Leader (and Chairperson) types in a far-away capital, their minions sent hither and yon to enforce these edicts…. well, they’ve been thrown in the woods.
Might as well vote for Chairman Hillary.
She’s more honest about her authoritarianism.
Now, perhaps Trump was merely unprepared – and fumbled. There will be another debate.
He has a second chance.
I would like to hear him question “climate change” orthodoxy and burst other politically correct bubbles. Talk about the problem of open borders and open-ended entitlements. That one – or the other – has got to be put a stop to.
But there are certain critical things he must do in order to recover from this debate which wasn’t (there must be disagreement for it to be a debate):
If he states unequivocally that the government of a free society has no business forcing people to purchase health insurance and, accordingly, will if elected do everything in his power to repeal – not replace – Obamacare, I will reconsider my decision to stay home on election day.
If he defends the principle that citizens of a free society have a right to not be stopped, searched or otherwise molested if they haven’t done something to indicate they’ve committed a crime, I will reconsider my decision to stay home on election day.
If he states unequivocally that individual citizens have an absolute right to armed self-defense (no quibbling about “sportsmen”) and that he will nominate only men and women who understand and support that principle, as enshrined in the Second Amendment, I will reconsider my decision to stay home on election day.
If he states unequivocally that the proper role of the armed forces is the defense of the United States – not offensive operations to establish global hegemony – I will reconsider my decision to stay home on election day.
These are the minimums Donald must deliver, if he means to have the support of people like myself who have had it with everything embodied by the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama regime – a singular entity that has ruled the country for a generation.
If he is no different, represents merely the extension of this regime, why get out of bed on election day?
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