Politics Are Boring. The Media Makes It Interesting. Without Including Actual Information
It can be agreed upon that foreign policy, trade regulations, and economic structure are a real snooze-fest. Then, when you factor in the maudlin faces, the monochromatic outfits, and the deep oak parquet walls – you’ve got yourself the fine aesthetics of a nap waiting to take place. Rarely does anyone watch the political debates with wide-eyed elan, most preferring to just tune in to The Basics: Gay Marriage, Abortion, and Will I Be Paying More Taxes?. The reason people pick these specifics to cling onto is because they are personal, because they have a specific moral accompanying standpoint – but even more than that, they are topics of which opinions can be based on pre-conditioned instincts without having to do actual research.
Then everything else: the Syrian crisis, tax allocation, trade relations with China, mental health, what zero-based budget balancing is and how it is the real answer to so many problems – not high on the average citizen’s priority list. People were more interested in the photo of Kim Kardashian’s butt last November than the Ukraine and Crimean Crisis, the Al-Qaeda insurgency in Yemen, the Republican Party regaining control of the US House of Representatives/Senate, and the US Secretary of Defense resigning.
But, I mean, her butt did look fantastic.
Wanna know what else is interesting? Donald Trump. Everything about him just screams ‘notice me! Listen to me!’ Aren’t we all just waiting with baited breath for the next thing he’s going to say? He’s just right there in the spotlight, shaking things up, garnering hatred and interest, being a dazzling spectacle. He has rendered superfluous the need for actual knowledge about anything by merely presenting his opinions of the world as facts. It’s astounding, like you could just pull a string in his back and he will say the most offensive, uneducated thing he can, then give a thumbs up to assure you he knows what he’s doing, or point at the audience in rhythm to his words and figuratively beat them into submission with his club-finger. People hate the perfunctory, harbor animosity for the mundane, and this guy, well this freaking guy, is fun(ny). He has all the chaotic grace of an elephant in a china store.
Well, maybe not a china store, considering he hates China.
But here’s the thing: People who go into this democratic process, with only vague knowledge of…planet Earth, are going to be looking towards him to be their guiding light in the alleged dark that is our nation. This scares me a lot, considering, as it would appear, he has no level of human empathy.
II. “America Is a Mess” – And People Believe Trump Is Our Knight in Shining Armani
Were I to walk up to anyone in Yemen, Nigeria, Syria, Afghanistan or Bangladesh and tell them all about what a freaking MESS America is right now, they’d spit in my face. I’d say we’re comparatively sitting pretty to their daily terror and agony. This isn’t to say America doesn’t have its problems, but in Trump’s choosing to focus on complicated economic issues with equally complicated unknown solutions and capitalize on them for fear mongering and to perpetuate the notion that he is the solution to this perceived set of problems? I hate to pull the Hitler card here, as everyone knows it is typically a lack-of-argument cop-out, but that was, literally, Hitler’s exact tactical approach: Convince ze Germans that their economy was busted, and show them he was the only solution, that his radical ideas were finally going to be the change needed.
I like to believe nobody is stupid enough to allow another travesty equivalent to the Holocaust, but damn his immigration policy is really rubbing me the wrong way. Like a bad happy ending – because what seems to be lacking indiscriminately is any sense of empathy, compassion, or understanding for what our southern border brothers are going through down there. He’s comfortable relegating an entire sect of humans to the undesirable tier of society, so that they are not just the bottom of the barrel, but the spillover. He wants to wipe their “toxic” sludge from the country and off his thousand dollar shoes, because in his head, “otherness” is the problem – Mexico getting the spotlight because, apparently, “They are the drug dealers. They are the rapists. They are protected by lazy liberal safety-net programs.”
Let’s discuss the validity of his statements:
a) “The Drug Dealers”
The Spanish brought pot to America in 1545, and people thought it was awesome so they smoked it. In the 1850’s, when the Chinese were lured over here to build our railroads, they brought opiates with them, which people thought were awesome so they started taking them. Then the Incas used the Coca, and people realized Cocaine is awesome so they started doing it/writing songs about it. Then the Government went and took some party-pooping-anti-fun legislative maneuvers so people had to, ”outsource” their drug source. Now the main players in the supply of the drugs people think are awesome are the Columbian Drug Cartel, The Mexican Drug Cartel, Russian Gang Syndicates, and Chad from apartment 2b.
My point being: One way or another, a true staple of the American Way of Life is shutting off their brains and doing questionable things to their bodies, and no limitation on immigration is going to ever change that. People will find a way to rig the new Amazon drones to deliver that good’ good’ right to their doorsteps. Or they’ll huff paints. If it is the violence, Sir Trump, that you find contention with – then get rid of the guns, legalize drugs, or preach Buddhism. Nowhere listed in ‘logical solutions for the war on drugs’ will you find ‘pull out the middle man – that’ll yield the results you want’ Just ask Nancy Regan how that worked out for her.
b) “The Rapists”
Certainly, rape is a huge problem – on both a domestic and global scale. However, eliminating one race that allegedly partakes in the forced sex racket is like treating the bite without killing the venomous snake. The snake is the mentality that sex is something that is owed to one, something that can be forced upon another in self-indulgence and self-denial that what they are doing is wrong. There needs to be an intervening force in the male mind to delude the prior sense of entitlement to other people’s bodies which leads to rape in the first place. The intervening force meaning a different way of thinking – not a mass deportation of thousands of people. This will do nothing to lessen rape.
c) “The lazy liberals taking all our taxes”
Tax Allocation. Let’s discuss:
Everyone is losing their figurative shit about the 11% that goes towards Safety Net Programs. Safety Net Programs are in effect for individuals and families facing hardships, and has been receiving less funding between 2013 and 2014 as the economy is continuing to improve. Some of these programs include: the refundable portions of the Earned Income Tax Credit, Supplemental Security income for the elderly or disabled, food stamps, school meals, assistance in meeting home energy bills, and various other programs which aid abused and neglected children….
The perspective continues to portray safety net programs as such: “We just need people to get off their lazy kiesters and work hard like the rest of us, because 11% of my tax paying dollars are going towards helping those lazy sons of bitches and this compassion will not stand! Those abused and neglected children need to grow some cajones and stand up for themselves – and stop taking my taxes. The elderly and disabled need to realize the hour is nigh to sashay off this fine earth – and stop taking my taxes! Food stamps and school meals need to be stopped because if I have to sacrifice any of my bar-hopping, shoes-buying, mad-money for human beings to eat food then I will, seriously, have a cow. The government doesn’t deserve my money – I earned it! Those damn Mexicans don’t deserve my money – they’re lazy! Trump just wants an America where everyone is a hard worker! Is that so much to ask?”
All joking aside,
A majority of the people siphoning from the welfare programs are white (38.8 %) and black (39.8 %). Only 15.7% of recipients are Hispanic, and note that this could include, but is not limited to: Columbians, Brazilians, Spaniards, Argentinians, Cubans, and Mexicans. So call them lazy well-farers one more time, call them a damage to our society one more time, and I will just go ahead and do a double-backflip into the middle of traffic, because if this kind of mentality keeps spreading, all hope for our country will be lost.
To be clear: I’m not saying hand every illegal immigrant a Driver’s License and a hamburger, but unless they are a direct member of the cartel, then they are a human being who recognized, just like every one of our ancestors, that America can be pretty damn awesome. So don’t go blaming them for making the same move your grandparents or great grandparents made, because being born here is a Privilege. Having what we have with our freedom and our general ability to do what we want, is a goddamn blessing. You had no control over where you were born, and neither does anyone else in the world. Somehow you got lucky and you crash landed here, so show some compassion to those who weren’t. They are human beings. With this same line of thought: getting mad at the “anchor babies” who are technical U.S. Citizens is callous as hell. It makes my soul hurt.
They are human beings, and BABIES. Do you think they are floating around in Heaven waiting to jump into the uterus of someone en route to the good ol’ US? And what would you prefer, that they be aborted? Because that seems to run counter-positional vis-à-vis the whole “pro-life” thing. I suppose I just don’t get it. If you’re going to be pro-life, be pro-life all the way through to the day an individual starts collecting Social Security and gets their AARP card in the mail. Otherwise you are just pro-birth, but not pro-life on U.S. Soil on your dime.
III. He Ran His Own Business, Made Lots Of Money, So Let’s Make Him Our Leader? Because This Country Was Founded On…Money??
Alright, yes, the man is well endowed in the money department. He is a billionaire, and like any billionaire, he must have gotten it through hard work, ethical business decisions, and there’s no way he was handed a dime of his father’s fortune or partook in any shady practices.
Let’s not look any further into what he’s been up to, let’s take the $$$ at face value.
So I looked further and for as much as the man hates the Mexicans – he loves the Italians with unparalleled devotion, and it is not because their pasta is superb. It is because the Italian Mafia controlled the New York and New Jersey construction industry in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, which is right around the time him and his father began building in the area. Trump bought the property that his Atlantic City casino Trump Plaza would one day occupy from Salvatore Testa – a Philly mobster and son of the Philly mob boss Philip “Chicken Man” Testa.
It got real Godfather up in this bitch. Testa and a partner, who headed a Philly mafia hit-squad called the Young Executioners, bought the property for 200k in 1977, and Trump paid $1.1 million for it, then used the mob controlled company to build Plazas and Condos. He made them happy, which put them in his back pocket and in a continual cycle of appeasement. He built the Trump Tower out of concrete, instead of steel, at a time when his mafia buds controlled the concrete industry. A little quid-pro-quo if you will, only we don’t know what the mafia did for him in return – and I guess that’s the whole point. Leave the gun, take the cannoli, and keep on Trumpin’ on! But don’t ask questions and don’t get caught. He was a target of a 1979 bribery investigation, and was questioned in a 1981 racketeering probe, but neither led to criminal charges – huge shock there when a wealthy man evades criminal charges. This must mean he is the picture of innocence.
People admire Trump because he knows how to wheel n’ deal, even if it is in a dark underground room, surrounded by cigar smoke and men in pinstripes – he gets what he wants, he gets results. He says he’ll balance the budget, which we do need. I just would love to see a breakdown of how that will be done, or if he is just huffing and puffing and blowing promises out his ass. Many people say the reason he evades questions on the specifics pertaining to his plan is because he “doesn’t want to show his cards yet – he’s a business man!”. And sadly enough, people are content with this, and will continue supporting a candidate with vague notions of fixin’ things `round here. I really do think it is because budget balancing is boring, and people are very grateful he isn’t going to bore them with the specifics of our entire US Economy, so they’ll blindly trust him based on his business fame & glory – what’s the worst that can happen?
However, in terms of fiscal policy, there is one thing Trump did get right – corporate taxation is a disaster. Right now corporations get the bejeezus taxed out of them, so most have followed suit and outsourced their production and revenue to other countries so that they do not have to count it on the US Financial Books and pay US Taxes on it. This means other countries are benefiting from the revenue of our largest corporations, and the US is losing millions in potential tax dollars. It’s a Catch-22 to the furthest degree. Would lowering corporate taxes fix the problem? No, it wouldn’t, because I can’t see everyone pulling their inventory back into domestic territory without a significant decrease in taxes, namely a decrease to below Chinese rates. Therefore, it needs to be understood that Taxation rates are not the key to fixing the wealth disparity in this country. The Budget needs to be balanced, not by cutting programs, but by switching the form of evaluation system we use for determining which money in the budget goes where. As it is, the actual “Budget” is the most misunderstood thing since Nickelback.
I’ll say it. I loved Nickelback. I thought they rocked. Sometimes we all just want to be rockstars.
IV. He Has His Own Money, and Cannot Be Controlled By Lobbyists like “Crooked Hillary”…But What Does That Prove?
If our political system wasn’t so ridiculous to begin with, money wouldn’t be a deciding factor in choosing the best person to run the country. It would be based off of character, ideals, strategies, diplomacy, keen senses, great instincts, a firm backside, experience, and integrity. By making this point about his campaign, he highlighted how backwards the system is. The system, you ask? A candidate needs to run for office, but he needs publicity and people knowing about him, so he seeks funding. Once he receives funding he must keep the interest of those funding him in mind, promoting their causes, making sure not to say something which will offend them or their support base. Some of these causes are necessary, some of these causes are self-seeking business ventures (Ben Bernanke).
So the lobbyists essentially have the politicians by the balls, and that’s before they even makes it into the Oval Office. A morally upright politician will seek funding from causes he personally supports and believes in, and will present a united front of ideas – integrity. A politician who just wants the power will do anything, receive money from anywhere, to get where he wants to go. This whole system is very similar to the concepts of Athletic Sponsorships, which is to say that this whole system is another business/money jump n’ jive.
Donald Trump didn’t have to do any of this, which not only saved him a lot of work and the need to cultivate a decent personality to appease people, but it also means he gave the figurative middle finger to the pre-existing system. I do like this, but I am concerned that if he carries on with this reckless attitude in our foreign relations, our country will be flattened into a Costco parking lot faster than you can say “I’m really rich.” You simply can’t play “hard ball” with ISIS, and you can’t Fire! Al-Quada. He has claimed he is going to “learn all the foreign stuff” once he’s in office…and if that is his actual plan, I’d like to start by pointing out that his body language/tone of voice would offend most of Asia, and that his startling propensity for giving the thumbs up is actually saying to every Middle Eastern Country (and France) “stick it up yours”.
That’s diplomacy for you, folks.
CONCLUSION: Should I apply for Canadian Citizenship? I do like to ski…I hear Whistler is nice in January…
No, I shouldn’t. You shouldn’t. We can’t panic. We can’t be overly devastated by this political faux paus. We have to have faith in the people to rise together and not lose sight of what truly matters in this human experience (hint: NOT money) – it is loving and accepting people. We are all confused brothers and sisters, and right now it seems hard to see the light. But if we can all come together, we can stand as one in the dark and find the way to navigate through what seems to be a bleak future for our country. It is the only option right now – fear and hatred are not going to do anyone any good.
THE CONTRA POST 
