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And so it begins. Does anyone really listen to what ‘celebrities’ have to say about politics? If so, I hope someone has hired a jumbo jet to take those anguished ‘celebs’ away from the agony of having to live under President Trump. Meanwhile the special snowflakes have taken to the streets to express the depths of their anguish; counselling services are probably fully-booked for months to come. Do American civics classes explain how the US system of government works? It isn’t fearfully complicated – people vote, the electoral college meets and then the President gets elected. If 46% of the electorate decide not to vote that’s their business – you can’t infer anything from it, and certainly not that the President-elect is not legitimately elected. Opinion polls have no constitutional status, and the fact that they all called this wrong suggests that they take up another line of work – entrail reading, perhaps?
The language used by the self-selecting liberal elite about Trump and his supporters is as bad as anything Trump has said – so if they think they are occupying some sort of moral high ground they might take a reality check. Trump will be the next President. If he’s as big an idiot as they say, tough, everyone will suffer; if he’s as good as he says he is, everyone will benefit. That’s how this democracy thing works. There isn’t some sort of limited liability here; we are all in it together. So, if you think the media are rubbish, don’t buy it – it will change or die. If you don’t like your politicians, get involved and try to change things; that’s how this democracy thing works. If your total involvement is you meant to vote but didn’t get round to it – tough. Rule of the people by the people demands the people get involved. Those who do get to influence the result. But they still have to run that past the vast majority who don’t really follow politics. Now you can, as the Clintonistas are doing, express your contempt for the great uneducated unwashed, but don’t be too shocked if they follow your example. Rainbow coalitions of minorities are fine, but if the majority get the idea that identity politics is where it is at, don’t be too shocked if they play that card back – and as there are more of them, they may just win. The take away here is that identity/grievance politics are divisive and corrosive and risk undermining democracy.
Here in the UK and there in the US there are a lot of liberals who appear to be giving the impression that democracy is acceptable only when it delivers what they want. Those for whom it has not been delivering have spoken, and there are more of them bothering to vote. The choice before our political classes is clear. One hopes, for all our sake they get the message.
All Along the Watchtower 
“Rainbow coalitions of minorities are fine, but if the majority get the idea that identity politics is where it is at, don’t be too shocked if they play that card back – and as there are more of them, they may just win.”
That was something that one of the BBC analysts picked up on, and I haven’t heard elsewhere. White men specifically, but whites generally, especially lower income ones, block voted, maybe for the first time, but at least since 1984, and when the majority acts like a minority, well it wins.
Every issue this year, Washington was the aggressor, attacking the rights of the citizenry, I just commented elsewhere that for many the alternative to Trump was “Burn it down and scatter the stones”. Anger at Washington and all its works is palpable out here. I surprised it popular vote wasn’t higher.
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Oh my Lord, YES!! Here I was thinking America was the only country who had this huge outbreak of people suffering from Cognitive Dissonance. Your post is 110% on point. It is truly sad to see the actions and words these kids are using(Yes kids, the astounding truth is most of these protesters and rioters are college aged millennials who believe they are entitled to everything with having to work for nothing). They are over here breaking laws (Burning our Flag) and simply being allowed to do so. It’s a very divided and heartbreaking time in the USA. I pray for us all to come together and I will keep the UK in my prayers as well.
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Thank you – glad that others feel this way. We have (some at least) raise a generation which knows all about rights and nothing about duty.
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You are certainly welcome. Mostly because we are the “silent majority”. We were taught to earn everything we work for and receive nothing for free, and that’s how I’m raising my children. Unfortunately half of my country is doing the exact opposite. Being a military wife makes me that much more passionate and very sad to see America being taken down to low she is hitting. Can’t the Monarchy do something? Or are they part of the problem as well?
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I wish it could – though the Queen provides a great example of public service and duty. Raising kids to have ‘high self esteem’ has produced a bunch of kids programmed to think it’s all about them – which is why they are finding the real world tough.
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Bleck! 😫 We must keep the faith if us like-minded folk stick together and do the right thing we shall prevail over the wicked. The entitled children will lose or go find their “safe place” eventually. One way or another. For when God is on your side, who can be against you? I have thoroughly enjoyed the intelligent conversation we have had.
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Me too – thank you.
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Great choice of poetry C. Perhaps you could get it published on the front page of the Washington Post on say, January 19, 2017. It would be most appropriate. God bless. Ginnyfree.
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What’s more, they are still at it!
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Hah, Ginny! You know that here, and mine as well, Kipling tends to be the poet of choice. If Hillary had won, my lead would have been either “Recessional” or Cavafy’s “The god abandons Antony”.
Caught me flatfooted, Trump did, and I’m very pleased, indeed.
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If I have learned anything simply as an observer of this world for the past 70 years it is:
1) that there is no substitute for the enforcement of law and swift justice for those who violate the law – which is a constitutional right.
2) you cannot ‘buy’ peace by appeasement or licentiousness or any other form of unequal justice.
3) welfare for the masses [starting most infamously with LBJ’s Great Society in 1064] creates a welfare state that is generational and destroys the stability of a family with both a father and a mother and leaves children to grow up more like pack animals; replacing the family with a pack of other ‘forgottens’ who have their own rule of law and dismiss all laws meant for the rest of the country.
4) that George Soros and the other ‘rich & famous’ liberal class are fomenting hatred and riots for their own aggrandizement and are willing to destroy the country in order to attain their own self-satisfaction and spend huge amounts of cash to finance these things.
5) that liberals need and rely upon the downtrodden, the poor, the disadvantaged and the ignorant to survive and therefore, for all their broken promises, it is not in their interest to actually do anything to help anyone other than themselves.
6) that anarchy reigns, and has reigned among the poor for decades due to number 5 and now they have almost completed their complete transformation of college students into a similar vigilante mindset that mimics that which they created in the slums of urban America.
7) that when almost 1/2 of a country is not working the other 1/2 is despised, envied and targeted for redistribution of their goods to the non-working.
8) that when this reaches critical mass there will be a collapse in civilization that will only be stabilized by brutal and forceful methods; an open door to a dictator of absolute power who kills his enemies and rewards his friends.
All of this proving that democratic governments are fragile and that the rule of law, once relaxed, is inimical to its ultimate failure.
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Note last line should have read: “destined to ultimate failure.”
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All I’d add to that, Scoop is the Salisbury quote from my sidebar:
“As I have said, there are two points or two characteristics of the Radical programme which it is your special duty to resist. One concerns the freedom of individuals. After all, the great characteristic of this country is that it is a free country, and by a free country I mean a country where people are allowed, so long as they do not hurt their neighbours, to do as they like. I do not mean a country where six men may make five men do exactly as they like. That is not my notion of freedom.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury,
Shoret Salisbury: “Get off my lawn!”
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“. . . so long as they do not hurt their neighbours . . .”
I agree, though the above contains some grey areas. In my mind, those who use their power, money or oratory skills to incite mob rule, or disobedience to the law are criminals and belong behind bars or worse. If I were President, George Soros might see the wrong end of a firing squad . . . and let the Hollywood and political elites take notice. 🙂
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Sure, but by definition, that is “hurting their neighbours”.
Yep, give him a fair trial, then hang him.
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After a few fair warnings, like Soros behind bars or looters being shot and rounded up for a prison camp [I’ll give sheriff Joe Arpaio a new job] most of this nonsense would end. They need to have the fear of God reinstilled within their internal makeup. Why should the majority of law abiding citizens have to live in fear of the very few who are actuall inciting and/or committing the violence on our people and our country?
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Exactly, Drudge has a link to black, shall I dare use the N word, thugs in Chicago beating a white man, after they drug him out of his car, just because he voted for Trump. They are very luck to live in the USA but seem to find nothing to feel lucky, hopeful, or thankful for. We, Trump voters, look at South Chicago and lots of inter-cities and wonder how it can be so bad. Why have not the police and city governments cleaned this up? The only answer is the one we can’t see happening. Corruption. The drug lords have bought off all involved. President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines has a great method, just start killing all drug lords. It worked so well that over 500K have turned themselves in to the authorities. Now, we are a long way from that, but an active military presence in US inter-cities would be at least a step in the right direction. This kind of lawlessness has to stop.
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It won’t in Chicago, at least, until the police get some backing from at least city hall. They’ve gone fetal.
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Yeah Baby cakes…..good brother Trump is president and I couldnt be happier. Hes a Bozo for sure, but hes not a career politician. We need to put all politicians on an island and either nuke it or set it on fire. Yeah baby yeah. Hey, if nothing else, we will have an entertaining next 4 years. I love it. Even that lazy good for nothing Queen Elizabeth volunteered to be our president. Everybody wants to get into the act. Yeah baby yeah.
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Could one of the American contributors enlighten me as to what has happened in American politics over the last 44 years?
My only real understanding of a presidential campaign comes from Hunter S. Thompson’s ‘Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972’ which I read cover to cover and found highly amusing – and very informative.
One feature important feature: George McGovern won the nomination for Democrat candidate. He was a fine and honourable man, but very much to the left – and it should have been completely clear that a candidate who was leftist and pacifist had zero chance of winning. Another candidate for nomination was George Wallace, very much to the right, who favoured segregation.
I’m wondering (a) what is the basic idea that is supposed to unite the Democrats? Is there some underlying theme – some political ideology that they all essentially share? Because I don’t honestly see any rhyme or reason here – how could George Wallace and George McGovern both belong to the same party. And (b) have there been political re-alignments over the last 44 years – in the sense that today’s Democrats are generally to the left of centre while the Republicans are generally to the right of centre?
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I’ll happily give you my two cents worth, Jock. My family was of solid Democratic roots; my Grandfather a delegate to the Democratic Conventions of his day and also a Democratic Representative in the State of Kentucky. But the Democratic party of his days was in many respects further to the right than is the Republican Party of today. There has been a steady, sometimes slow, but still, tectonic shift within the party which started all the way back with the election of JFK who brought us to the brink of atomic war. He and my father votedd for JFK but regretted it and JFK was the last Democrat my father ever voted for. My Grandfather would roll over in his grave with the changes that occured over the years and especially with the government’s intrusion into areas of our personal life and the issues that States were supposed to regulate; for states rights have been almost annihilated by Democratic [and to some extent today, by Republican] presidents, Congresses, and Courts.
The Republicans have had similar shifts over the years as the country became more and more indoctrinated into the progressive agendas that were foisted upon our populations; having created new centers of power and influence such as the Dept of Education, Commerce et al.
In order to gain enough votes to win they too have had to shift their center to the left and now we are faced with a two party system where both parties have veered to the left of the values and thinking of most ordinary working men and women of the US and all 3rd party bids to disrupt this drift to the left have failed due to our sometimes foolish insistence of a two party system. They are so entrenched that there is no money to be had for a 3rd party run and the established elites of both parties ensure that they continue their present course. Trump, no matter what folks may think of him personally, was probably, due to his wealth, the only person who did not fit into either party and yet resonated with the ordinary working stiff. It takes a billionaire to fund a run for office, that is opposed to the elites of both parties, to get elected. Thus we have a chance of taking the Republican Party helm and tacking to the right for a change.
Understand that each party has fringes that include the George Wallaces or David Dukes etc. on the right and some who are far more left than their own center . . . but the centers of both have moved markedly to the left in the last 50 years and seem to embrace globalism which seems to rub the spirit of Amercanism the wrong way. We like being independent and don’t take kindly to being nudged toward a world order that threatens our own independence. I suspect that the British Brexit move was much along that line of thinking as well.
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Concur with all that Scoop says here, although for me JFK eventually redeemed himself in the missile crisis, noting that he was quite reluctant to get more involved in Vietnam – sadly Johnson wasn’t. My dad was a New Dealer, and proud of it, and Mom’s dad was a fairly big wheel in the DFL (Minnesota variant of the Democratic Party). Both would be appalled at the party now.
For that matter, Reagan himself was a Democrat and a union president before he was governor of California. His comment was that he didn’t leave the party, the party left him. Pretty much true for a lot of us.
Trump is very much in line with Brexit, from all I read. Much of it is about the sovereignty of our countries. The next series of European elections, leading up to the German one, will be very interesting.
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Ask Google!!
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I did. The responses from Scoop and NEO are much more interesting and informative than anything that Google has to say.
I think the main point is: the House of Representatives used to be just that; representatives who represented the people who sent them there.
Nowadays, you have instead career politicians who start by going to university, soak up ‘political philosophy’ from some incredibly brainy politics professor (probably a leftist vegetarian with lentils on his beard and wearing sandals) and they have some theoretical political ideas which they believe in, but absolutely no connection with the people they are supposed to represent.
The U.S. of A. has traditionally been a conservative country with conservative values and it is still like that. The left-leaning career politicians have no relation to this culture. That is your main problem.
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Jockee Baby, ill tell you what has happened. American politics has become a “Free for all”
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