THE SACRIFICES OF THE SIBERIAN CANDIDATE

I have said elsewhere that I once swore I would vote for Zippy the Chimp before I would vote for a Clinton. Donald Trump is making me eat my words. As a presidential candidate, he is not only less attractive than Zippy the Chimp, he is less attractive than a Clinton. The man is a foreign policy nightmare who appears to me to be firmly in Vladimir Putin's pocket.

Donald Trump reminds me of a cross between Howdy Doody and Don Rickles. Putin pulls his puppet's strings and Trump blithely rewrites the Republican Platform to give Russia the Ukraine on a silver platter. And when Trump opens his mouth, nothing of substance comes out--just insults. Is that how he's going to conduct foreign policy? by hopping every time Putin says "Frog" and spewing insults at the leaders of other countries?

He can't even make sure his brain is loaded before he starts shooting off his mouth. Witness the Tim Kaine/Tom Keane fiasco. His latest venture into the realm of talking about that which he knows not is his demeaning statement about Khizr Khan's wife. And those who are in line to drink the koolaid are applauding Trump's comparing his sacrifice of a few dollars from of his millions of dollars to Khan's sacrifice of his son.

If Trump had taken the time to watch the MSNBC interview of Khan and his wife the day after the convention, he would have learned that Mrs. Khan, who is very shy, helped him write his speech. Watching the dynamic between husband and wife, it seemed apparent to me that she was far from the stereotypical submissive wive. She was the one who decided that they were going to stay in the USA after Khan got his degree.

In what universe does spending money to make money constitute a sacrifice? Especially if you actually make money from the investment. In what universe does making a tax deductible charitable contribution to help build a monument constitute a sacrifice when your bank balance has six zeroes? And how does that compare to the loss of a beloved son? To suggest that it does also suggests that in Donald Trump's world, love of money is greater than love of children.

I titled this piece THE SACRIFICES OF THE SIBERIAN CANDIDATE.  Last night it occurred to me that Trump was like the fictional Manchurian Candidate, so I dubbed Trump the Siberian Candidate. This morning I googled "Siberian Candidate" and found myriads of posts calling him the Siberian Candidate. This one, for example: "Donald Trump: The Siberian Candidate." I don't agree with everything the author says about Republicans in general, but I whole heartedly endorse what he says about Donald Trump in particular.

If you're a Republican and just can't bring yourself to vote Democrat, then vote for Gary Johnson, but please don't vote for Donald Dunce, I mean Trump. If you're a Bernie Sanders supporter, don't vote Green. Do what I'm going to do. On election day I'm going to go to the polls with a clothespin on my nose and vote for Hillary Clinton because (1) as bad as she is, she is nothing compared to Donald Trump, and (2) Clinton is the only candidate with a ghost of a chance of defeating Trump.

 

A FALSE DICHOTOMY

In the recent Democratic presidential debate, Bernie Sanders fielded a question from a viewer: "Do black lives matter? Or do all lives matter?" Sanders began his answer with a comment to the effect that "Of course, black lives matter," and then launched off into an impassioned monologue which, reduced to its bare essentials, said "The police of this country are a bunch of racists and we need to do something about it." Applause.

The question as worded seems to set up a false dichotomy: [a] Either black lives matter (implying that all other lives do not matter), or [b] All lives (except black lives) matter. Interpreted literally, the question makes no sense. It's not an either/or proposition. If all lives matter, then black lives matter because black lives are a subset of the set all lives.

A literally correct answer to the question, then, is:

Q: Do black lives matter, or do all lives matter?
A: Yes.

If we're simply looking at the surface meaning of the words, then Sanders' answer makes no sense:

Q: Do black lives matter, or do all lives matter?
A: Yes. The police are a bunch of racists!

The question doesn't seem to ask anything at all about the police. How did that become relevant? Apparently because Sanders and the questioner were either talking past each other or talking on code. 

It seems the "black lives matter" movement is generating more heat than light because the people who say "black lives matter" mean one thing and many people hear something else, and the people who say "all lives matter" mean one thing and many people hear something else.

Hopefully, what is meant by the words "black lives matter" is "black lives matter, too" not "black lives matter to the exclusion of other lives." Unfortunately, oftentimes what is heard is the latter statement rather than the former, which prompts the response "all lives matter," hopefully meaning "all lives, including black lives, matter." But then what is heard is "all lives matter except black lives."

I think  it is counterproductive when "black lives matter" slogan is spoken with one of the following two meanings: (a) "Black lives matter, and let's kill some police officers to prove it," as Louis Farrakhan seems to be saying, or (b) "Black lives matter and the police are a bunch of racists," as Bernie Sanders seems to be saying.

For a contrasting view on the issue of whether the police are a bunch of racists, see Heather Mac Donald's article in the City Journal, "The Myth of Criminal-Justice Racism."