The Trump Victory

Had Hillary Clinton won the election, I would not have written a post-election post.  But Donald Trump won, and I would like to offer my thoughts.

Donald Trump’s victory speech was gracious, and I appreciated the goals that he articulated in that speech.  He talked about tapping potential in the inner cities, vastly improving the nation’s infrastructure, and maintaining a spirit of peace and cooperation with other nations.  As a pundit on ABC observed, infrastructure was one of Barack Obama’s main issues.

Like many people, I am worried about what he will do as President.  In part, this is because he is Donald Trump.  He talks belligerently about bombing, for example, and I fear the civilian casualties abroad that may result from a Trump Presidency.  In part, my apprehension is on account of the policies that result when the Republicans are in power, policies that, in my opinion, can hurt the disadvantaged.

Yet, we do not know what kind of President Trump will be.  Trump, although he never apologized or backed down from his gaffes and extreme statements, did tend to qualify or moderate his positions when questioned or challenged.  Perhaps Trump will realize that maturity and responsibility are required for a heavy position such as the Presidency.  While this is my hope, my wish is also that Trump will maintain at least some of his independence of thought, some of his renegade tendencies.  If he continually fawns over the establishment and looks to it for ques and approval, then he will betray those who elected him to be a new voice in Washington, D.C.  Things will run as they have, but not much reform will result.

And maybe there can be at least some movement in a positive direction, with Republicans controlling the Congress and the Presidency.  Trump calls for improved infrastructure.  Perhaps he can work with Republicans in Congress on this, without the polarizing and poisonous partisanship that occurs when one party runs one branch, and another party runs another branch.

We should also remember that Trump has flip-flopped, and that may be a good thing.  What if Trump decides that climate change is a real problem and decides to take action, to show that he can be a competent leader on this issue?  Impossible, you say?  We do not know.

My attitudes this evening (election night) have been ambivalent.  On the one hand, as I said, I am afraid of what a President Trump might do.  On the other hand, I enjoyed seeing a lot of Trump’s critics getting knocked off their high horse.  The polls did not predict Trump’s victory.  Pundits were predicting a Hillary win.  My hope is that more people will take account of voters who feel disadvantaged by the system and voted for Trump in protest.

Many are attributing Trump’s victory to racism.  In my opinion, this concern about racism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia is legitimate.  At the same time, I do note that Trump’s campaign has sought to appeal to people of different races, nationalities, and religions.  The speaker-ship at the Republican convention was diverse, for example.  May a President Trump yield to whatever angels are in his nature.

Whatever anger I feel towards Trump’s critics and Hillary’s supporters (not all of them) was mollified by Trump’s gracious victory speech.

I do not know if I will be vote-shamed for voting for Jill Stein rather than Hillary Clinton.  I refuse to apologize for voting as I did.  As I said, I voted in Oregon, which is a solidly blue state.  But I voted according to who was closer to my values.  I hope I can keep some friendships, but I don’t plan on grovelling to people who want to vote-shame me.

The future is uncertain, but I will be praying for this country more than I have.  I will pray for our current President and our President-elect when he becomes President, that they might make righteous and wise decisions that benefit rather than harm people, both in the U.S. and in the world as a whole.  I will pray for this nation, that people, whatever their political persuasion, will listen to the better angels of their nature rather than giving in to hate.

A Tale of Two Ads (or Three, If You Count the Primaries)

The Trump and Hillary ads that I saw last night were the best political ads that I had seen in the 2016 general election.  I got goosebumps after watching both of them!  They were very well done.  In this post, I would like to comment on each ad, and add some side-comments.

A.  Here is a link to the Trump ad.  As a dramatic soundtrack plays, Trump is giving a speech against the elites, whom he claims are concerned for their own interests rather than the interests of American workers.  Images are shown of these elites, including Wall Street, Hillary Clinton, and Janet Yellen.  Trump says that the only one who can stop this is “you.”  Images appear of Americans from different races, looking into the camera, and Trump says that he is fighting for them.  There are images of Trump enjoying the campaign, as he gives a thumbs-up to supporters and claps (I think it was at an African-American church).

The anti-elite part of the ad reminded me of a John Birch Society documentary, since the JBS rails against rich globalist elites.  Indeed, Trump’s final ad is being called anti-Semitic, since it shows some Jews and supposedly echoes anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jewish international bankers running the system for their own benefit.  One need not draw this conclusion, though, since Trump may just be railing against elites, as Bernie Sanders railed against elites.  Plus, in considering the question of whether Trump is anti-Semitic, I do think the fact that Trump’s own son-in-law (Ivanka’s husband) is an Orthodox Jew is important; Ivanka even converted to modern Orthodox Judaism before marrying Jared Kushner.  Some may think that counts for nothing, but I disagree.

(I should note that The John Birch Society long denied being anti-Semitic, stating that several members of the conspiracy that it was criticizing, such as the Rockefellers, were Gentiles.)

As a side-comment, here is a link to Pat Buchanan’s latest column, “What Hath Trump Wrought.”  According to Buchanan, even if Trump loses, the Republican Party will have to deal with Trump’s challenge against the establishment.  The GOP cannot return to the Bush dynasty or the usual establishment Republicans, after Trump has come in, swept the primaries, and continued to receive sizeable support notwithstanding his numerous gaffes and scandals.

B.  Here is the link to the Hillary ad, entitled “Roar.”  The music is awesome.  And, while the ad is about Hillary, it focuses more on what she wants to accomplish: students being debt free (that resonates with me!), and the health of the climate.

That is something I have liked about Hillary.  Although she has run a lot of anti-Trump ads, she has also offered a positive vision of what she wants to do.  I was watching her on TV last night, and I liked that she said that she wants to be the President of all Americans, both those who vote for her, and also those who do not vote for her.  Behind the scenes, who knows what shenanigans go on?  But, on the surface, at least, her campaign has been rather positive.

I said that these were the two best ads of the general election this year.  If we want to include the primaries, I think Bernie Sanders’ “America ad” is awesome!

Election Reflections, and the Best Articles During the 2016 Presidential General Election

Introduction
I voted earlier this month, since Oregon sends out ballots by mail.  I decided to cast my vote early because I was vacillating all over the place about whom I should vote for, and I wanted closure in that area.

Believe it or not, I seriously contemplated voting for each candidate at some point in this election season.  Donald Trump attracted me because he is a renegade and people’s sanctimonious criticisms of him made me want to give him the benefit of a doubt, since I can be a defiant contrarian.  Yet, certain allegations against Trump ultimately discouraged me from voting for him.  Hillary attracted me because she is a policy wonk and her worldview is rather progressive, which resonates with my own worldview.  But her holier-than-thou attitude and her shadiness turned me off from voting for her.  Gary Johnson had good ideas, and he departed from conventional libertarianism in areas, but his unwillingness to display enough intellectual heft turned me off from him (not that I appreciate the condescending elitists who criticized him for not knowing about Aleppo).  I decided in the end to vote for Jill Stein.  I thought that her spray-painting a bulldozer was tacky, but at least she is out there fighting for Native Americans.  Plus, her values align most with my own.  As far as I can see, she has the least baggage of the Presidential candidates running (who were on my ballot, that is).  Don’t worry: I voted in Oregon, which (as far as I know) is a safely blue state, not a swing state!

What follows is a compilation of some of the articles or speeches that influenced my decision this election year.  Or they made points that I think are important.  I categorize them as “Pro-Trump,” “Anti-Trump,” “Pro-Clinton,” “Anti-Clinton,” “Pro-Jill Stein,” “Anti-Jill Stein,” “Pro-Gary Johnson,” “Anti-Gary Johnson,” and “Other.”  Please read the following carefully, because I can foresee people saying that these labels are not necessarily accurate when it comes to a lot of these articles.  Some of these articles fit the labels that I have assigned to them perfectly: they actually support the candidates in question.  Ann Coulter is definitely pro-Trump, to use an example!  Others do not fit the labels, but I have still categorized them as I have because they make points that, in my eyes, make the candidates in question look good.  The New York Times, the Washington Post, and PBS are NOT pro-Trump, but some of their articles have given Trump the benefit of a doubt, or have said things about Trump that elevate him in my eyes.  Thus, I included some of their material in the “Pro-Trump” category.

You may notice that the “Pro-Trump” category is the largest.  Some of this reflects my defiant contrarianism, which I mentioned above.  When lots of people gain up on someone and assert that he has done nothing good or that all of his ideas are stupid, that by itself makes me give him at least some benefit of a doubt, even if I acknowledge some validity to the criticisms.  I guess I have a soft spot in my heart for the underdog, especially when that underdog will not allow others to keep him down but gets back up and keeps on fighting!

I do not wear this conviction on my sleeve.  I have been quieter than usual during this Presidential election, largely because I have wanted to avoid the vitriol and the misunderstandings that can occur in acrimonious political debate.  This is the first election in which I have felt intimidated to voice my opinion, and I will be honest: While there are things that I respect about Trump, he has not elevated the tone of political discourse.

Please believe and remember this: I respect those who chose a different path from mine.  As the father who lost a son in Vietnam in that “All in the Family” episode said to the young man who went to Canada to avoid the draft: “My son did what he had to do, and you did what you had to do.”

You may disagree with what I say, and I accept that, but I will not engage in acrimonious political discussions.  These links are here, though, for those who are interested.

I will shut off comments for this post.  I voted as I did, I explained why, and that is that.  Don't try to sneak your comment about this post under another post.  It will not be accepted!  

Pro-Trump 

Trailer for the PBS Documentary “The Choice 2016”
I love the trailers for “The Choice” documentaries more than the documentaries themselves!  This year, both were good.  This documentary was not “pro-Trump,” but it said things about Trump that I think are positive.  It talks about his alienation from elites and his success as a promoter, even if he is not as good of a businessman.  (Note: A banker in the documentary made the point about Trump being a good promoter, but not as good of a businessman.)  It says that Trump hired a woman to a high position, which was rather noteworthy in that time.  It also interviews Omarosa Manigault, an African-American woman who directs outreach to African-American voters for Trump’s campaign.

New York Times fact check on the first Presidential debate between Trump and Hillary
This is probably my favorite post-debate fact-check that I read during the 2016 general election. Yes, it pointed out Trump’s inaccuracies. But it also noted that Secretary Clinton and President Obama had some of the same foreign policy concerns that Trump expressed in the debate. It shows where Trump is accurate on the judge who declared stop-and-frisk unconstitutional, rather than just saying that Trump was wrong, as other fact-check sites did. And it does not declare Trump as totally inaccurate, when there is room for doubt: on the allegations Trump was making about Sidney Blumenthal, for example, it is basically Blumenthal’s word against a reporter’s.

Factcheck.org on Trump and the Iraq War

“There is no evidence that we could find, however, that he spoke against the war before it started, although we did find he expressed early concerns about the cost and direction of the war a few months after it started.”

So Trump expressed reservations about the Iraq War soon after it started.  Why should the Howard Stern interview be the only thing that is considered when looking at Trump’s Iraq War stance?  I am tired of “fact-checkers” who do exactly that, and act as if they are making some profound observation.  They should observe more than they do!

Two articles by Pat Buchanan: Is Trump the Peace Candidate and Bibi Backs Trump, on Putin

Maybe Trump is not stupid on foreign policy, as a lot of people think!  Buchanan presents Trump as a non-interventionist, which may not be totally accurate, but it is still refreshing to read a defense of some of Trump’s foreign policy ideas.

CIA, State Department, Pentagon Take Their Civil War to the Campaign Trail, by Rachel Marsden

I’m not sure if I agree with the main thesis of this article: that the Pentagon generals tend to support Trump because Trump is against regime change in Syria, whereas State Department and CIA people tend to support Hillary because she was for it. After all, there are many generals who support Hillary and who criticize Trump! But I still like this article, and I like a lot of what I read by Rachel Marsden (not that I have an encyclopedic knowledge of her thought). When it comes to foreign policy, she seems to be one of the prudent, non-interventionist voices on the right.

The True Story: Donald Trump Did Not Mock a Reporter’s Disability

Did Trump really mock a reporter’s disability?  This article presents a convincing case that he did not.  When I posted this, even anti-Trump commenters acknowledged its points, yet they said that it did not matter because Trump is still a boor, or that Trump was wrong to make fun of anyone.  Fine, but Trump’s critics should at least make a factual accusation on this!  Instead, the claim is still parroted that Trump mocked a reporter’s disability.

Dogma Debate’s Interview with Dr. Robert Price

Robert Price is an atheist biblical scholar.   But he is also a conservative, and (what’s more) a Trump supporter!  This interview was interesting, in areas.  Of course, many of Price’s fans ask how he can be so smart and educated and vote for Trump.  To be honest, I get tired of people making those comments over and over!  I mean, somebody already made that comment, so how does it help for somebody else to make it, like it’s a fresh, original point?  In any case, I enjoy reading and listening to Dr. Price.

What I Learned on My Red State Book Tour, by Robert Reich

Just to be clear, Robert Reich is for Hillary, although he has been critical of her throughout the election, even when her main opponent was Trump.  I respect Reich’s honesty!  This post is from a year ago, and Reich says the following:

“I also began to understand why many of [the red state people Reich encountered] are attracted to Donald Trump. I had assumed they were attracted by Trump’s blunderbuss and his scapegoating of immigrants.  That’s part of it. But mostly, I think, they see Trump as someone who’ll stand up for them – a countervailing power against the perceived conspiracy of big corporations, Wall Street, and big government.  Trump isn’t saying what the moneyed interests in the GOP want to hear. He’d impose tariffs on American companies that send manufacturing overseas, for example.  He’d raise taxes on hedge-fund managers. (‘The hedge-fund guys didn’t build this country,’ Trump says. ‘They’re “getting away with murder.’)  He’d protect Social Security and Medicare.  I kept hearing ‘Trump is so rich he can’t be bought.'”

That’s something I have liked about Trump: that he breaks with Republican orthodoxy!  Did you know that, this year, not just the Democratic national platform, but also the Republican one, called for the return of Glass-Steagall?  Unfortunately, though, Trump has also embraced traditional Republican beliefs, such as tax cuts for the rich.

Vox: 3 Winners and 4 Losers from the Third Night of the Democratic National Convention

Michael Bloomberg tried to address moderates and independents, but who are the true moderates?  I loved this part of the article, which is similar to the point that Robert Reich makes above:

“Research from political scientists David Broockman and Doug Ahler suggests that most self-identified moderate voters aren’t [Bloomberg’s] kind of centrist at all. People who want lots of government programs but also are skeptical of abortion and immigration are a more typical kind of moderate. Indeed, Donald Trump is probably closer to most real American moderates than Bloomberg.”

Trump Spurns GOP Pieties to Meet with NRA on Terror List Gun Plan

When I heard that Trump wanted to meet with the NRA to get to the bottom of why they are against gun control for those on the no-fly list, I thought, “It is in times like this that I love this man!”  Trump wasn’t just swallowing the NRA spiel, as many Republicans do.  He was challenging them.  And, in the first Presidential debate, he actually agreed with Hillary on this issue, even though he also thought that the NRA expressed legitimate reservations that should be addressed (i.e., innocent people may be on the no-fly list).  By the way, the ACLU has similar reservations.

Donald Trump, a Champion of Women? His Female Employees Think So

This article was in the Washington Post, which is rather unfriendly towards Trump (to say the least)!  It talks about the women Trump hired to high-power positions.

The Bickersons II, by Cal Thomas

Cal Thomas is a conservative syndicated columnist.  “Well, that means he’s biased, so we can’t believe anything he says!”, some might say.  But Cal made noteworthy points about Hillary’s positions on taxes.  During this election season, I have been irritated by so-called “fact-checkers.”  They perform an important service, but they don’t always tell the whole story.  When Trump says that Hillary wants to raise taxes on the middle class, certain “fact-checkers” come back and say that she does not—-that she only wants to raise taxes on the rich.  But Cal Thomas makes the case that she has favored certain taxes that would hit the middle class: the soda tax, for example.  Some fact-checkers probe more deeply than others!

The Donald Lives!, by Pat Buchanan

This came out after the second debate between Trump and Hillary.  I liked this statement that Pat made: “Sometime this weekend, Trump made a decision: If he is going down to defeat, he will go out as Trump, not some sniveling penitent begging forgiveness from hypocrites who fear and loathe him.”

My Final Argument for Trump: Humiliate the Media!, by Ann Coulter

A funny thing happened to me in 2016.  I got back to reading Ann Coulter!  I hadn’t read her since 2012, I think.  I started again in 2016 because I wanted to see how she defended one whom many thought was indefensible: Trump!  I do not care for Ann Coulter’s vitriol or demonization of the other side.  At the same time, she has offered decent arguments for many of her positions.  This particular article responds to many of the common criticisms of Trump.  I do disagree with some of what Ann says.  For example, just because women did not come forward before to accuse Trump, that does not mean they are wrong in their accusations.  They may have kept silent out of fear of being sued or hurt professionally, and they came forward when there was strength in numbers.  These accusations and Trump’s threats of lawsuits against his accusers are reasons that I decided against voting for Trump, but, to be fair, I could not vote for Clinton either because there have been accusations against her husband about sexual assault.  (Note: I do believe that those who commit sexual assault, just like many criminals, should be able to be reintegrated into society and make a contribution, but they should pay their debts to society and learn about the consequences of their acts on their victims, taking steps of repentance.)  All of that said, I still appreciate some of the points that Ann makes: about Donald’s charity, about Hillary’s saber-rattling against Russia, and about the tendency of Democrats this election year to see conspiracies, though I would add that many Republicans, and Trump himself, have indulged in conspiracy theories, as well.  I believe that there is light and darkness in all of us, and that includes Trump and Hillary.

Trump’s Acceptance Speech at the Republican National Convention

I loved this speech!  Trump appealed to Bernie Sanders supporters, saying that the system was rigged against Bernie and that Bernie was right about Libya.  Trump advocated protection for homosexuals and said he was impressed when his Republican audience applauded that.  Yet, Trump expressed humble surprise that evangelicals have embraced him, perhaps because he feels that their acceptance of him is undeserved.  He says that he knows the system, and that is why he can fix it!  That reminds me of Joseph Kennedy when FDR appointed him to police Wall Street: Kennedy knew the tricks of the trade, so he could stop the shenanigans (see here)!

New York Times: For Donald Trump, Lessons from a Brother’s Suffering

Maybe this article does not belong in the “pro-Trump” category, but it did humanize Trump for me.  And the story is sad.

Trump’s Speech at Phyllis Schlafly’s Funeral

Prior to 2015, who would have guessed?  Trump, who is notorious for his luxury, affairs, and marriages, would be endorsed by Phyllis Schlafly, a towering figure of the religious right, back when endorsing Trump was radioactive.  And Trump showed gratitude by speaking at Schlafly’s funeral.

Clinton and Liberal Media Scandalized that Trump Explored Doing Business in Cuba, by Humberto Fontova

Remember when it came out that Trump explored doing business in Castro's Cuba?  A progressive friend of mine predicted that this would cost Trump a lot of Cuban votes in Florida!  We'll see what happens.  But anti-Castro Cuban Humberto Fontova still likes Trump.  And Humberto is seriously anti-Castro: the vast majority of his columns are about that topic!  People can probably narrate the events differently, but check out Humberto's narrative.  This column could be entitled "The Education of Donald Trump"! 

That Time Trump Spent $100,000 On an Ad Criticizing U.S. Foreign Policy in 1987

Hillary mentioned this in the third debate with Trump, and Trump replied that he did have criticisms of President Reagan at the time, including Reagan’s stance on trade.  Although by this point I had decided against voting for Trump, this exchange increased, rather than decreased, my opinion of him.  Trump was going against Republican orthodoxy by criticizing Reagan!  The ad itself focuses on how other countries should carry more of the burden for their own defense, a point that Trump has made repeatedly during the 2016 campaign.  Many, including myself, have probably wondered what Donald’s true positions are and which he has adopted for political convenience, with all of the shifts in positions that he has made.  Well, here is an area in which he has been consistent, and it shows that he has long had a concern about public policy, meaning he is not just some blowhard or reality TV star seeking to achieve the next level of fame and prominence.  And, believe it or not, I remember having a discussion with a liberal professor who made a similar point to what Donald made in that ad.  This professor was saying that U.S. soldiers were essentially mercenaries for the Japanese in the first Gulf War, since the Japanese got more oil from the Gulf than we did.  This professor and Trump would probably disagree more than agree, and they would probably even disagree on the rationale for their areas of agreement.  Still, the overlap is interesting.

Anti-Trump

Read What Donald Trump Did to His Wedding Caterer, It Will Make You Sick

It certainly made me sick, I can tell you that!  This is an article that turned me off from Trump.  According to this article, Trump refused to pay his caterer, then threatened to tie her case up in court if she sued him.  What a bully.  This article made me hope in karma, or God’s justice, or whatever you want to call it!

When Hillary and Donald Were Friends, by Maureen Dowd

And maybe Trump will get his come-uppance after he loses the election (assuming that he loses, which I think he will).  To quote Maureen:

“One friend of Trump’s from the real estate world is worried that Trump does not understand how the groups he has derogated and demeaned will wreak revenge on him. ‘He’s alienated women,’ the friend says. ‘He’s alienated wealthy people. He’s alienated people from the Middle East. He’s alienated people from Latin America. These are all fertile ground where people could buy condos from him.'”

Aside from that, the article is interesting because it is about how Trump and the Clintons helped each other when both were on the downs-and-outs.

New York Times: “No Vacancies” for Blacks: How Donald Trump Got His Start, and Was First Accused of Bias

This article provides context for the real estate discrimination lawsuit against Trump, and Trump looks pretty bad!  Trump’s past record on this should be considered.  Yet, Bill Clinton’s record is imperfect on civil rights, too, as you can see in the third article in the “Anti-Clinton” section of this post.  Plus, there is the possibility that people can change.

Pro-Clinton

So You’re Thinking of Voting for a Pro-Choice Candidate…, by Rachel Held Evans

Nowadays, there are not too many people who throw the abortion issue into my face when I say that I am a progressive.  Maybe I am just lucky!  If you are a progressive and are not so fortunate, you may want to read Rachel Held Evans’ defense of voting for Hillary Clinton.  She says that voting for Hillary is actually a pro-life choice, when it comes to the abortion issue.  In the comment section, Rachel gives the usual spiel discouraging people from voting for a third party because then that horrible Trump would get into office, a spiel that I came to find rather boring during the 2016 general election.  Still, her post makes good points and is well-documented.

Understanding Hillary: Why the Clinton America Sees Isn’t the Clinton Colleagues Know, by Ezra Klein

Hillary Clinton became a Senator not long after Bill Clinton’s impeachment, and she had a lot of enemies in the Senate!  But she won people over by listening to them, and she worked with them on causes.  Could a President Hillary do the same?  Or is Washington, D.C. so poisoned with rancorous partisanship, that this is no longer possible?

Honest and Unmerciful: An Open Letter to Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone Magazine

A friend with whom I attended high school linked to this.  We were in an evangelical youth group together.  This article came out when Hillary was battling Bernie, and people were criticizing Hillary for voting for the Iraq War.  This article provides context for her vote.  According to this article, Hillary was far from being a mindless hawk!

Anti-Clinton

No Friend of Immigrants: Democratic Presidents Have Been Responsible for Some of the Most Punitive Immigration Policies in Modern History

This is from a left-wing publication.  You think Trump is bad on immigration?  Well, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were not exactly progressive on this issue, either!  Actually, the opposite was the case!

Clinton Expresses Regret After Assassination Remark

This article came out in 2008, not 2016.  I found it during the backlash over Trump’s “Second Amendment people” comment.  Right-wing sites were referring to Hillary’s comments in 2008 to argue that Hillary is no better, but I wanted to post the article that says that she apologized for her remarks, to give a fuller and fairer portrait of Hillary.  Still, with all the righteous indignation against things that Trump says, it is good to ask: have Democratic candidates said similar things in the past?  Maybe Hillary comes across as more refined than Trump, but her comments were pretty cold, in my opinion.

Daily Mail Article on Dolly Kyle and Bill Clinton’s Poor Civil Rights Record as Governor
I did not write down the full title because it is long and has crass quotes.  People have criticized this article because it is based on what Dolly Kyle said (Kyle says she was a mistress of Bill Clinton), and why should we trust her word?  Good question.  But some of what she says about Bill Clinton concerns his record as Governor, and it is verifiable.  Bill Clinton was accused of violating the Voting Rights Act through a bill that he signed.  See here for the case.  I have not found independent confirmation that Bill Clinton supported racial profiling as Governor, though.  To be fair, Bill Clinton did do positive things for voting rights as President (see here).  Still, a case can be made that Bill Clinton’s Presidency helped the African-American community in areas, but also hurt it (see Michelle Alexander’s article here).

Pro-Jill Stein

“We Are On the Verge of a Nuclear War”: Jill Stein on Why Peace Is More Likely Under Trump and the Threat of an Emerging Demo-Republican Party

Believe it or not, this article actually inclined me to vote for Jill Stein, which is what I ultimately did!  Maybe the “nuclear war” rhetoric is extreme, but why should we assume that Hillary is the peace candidate, whereas Trump is the war candidate?  As Stein notes, Trump may be inclined to support peace, since he has so many holdings in other countries and would want to protect them!  Commenters on this article has argued that Stein has a political motive for demonizing Hillary rather than Trump, since Stein wants to take votes away from Hillary.  That may be, but I still thought that her analysis of world events was insightful and empathetic towards other countries’ interests.  I liked the non-interventionist aspects of Trump’s foreign policy, and the compassionate aspects of Hillary’s domestic policy, so I voted for Jill, who combined (and surpassed) the two.

Stein Calls Britain Vote a Wake-Up Call

Many progressives I know were demonizing the Brexit people, calling them ignorant rubes, racists, and xenophobes.  Jill Stein rejected the bigotry that motivated many to vote to leave the EU, but she also saw in the Brexit vote a legitimate cry against neo-liberalism and globalization.  I applaud her for this.  She was accused of backtracking from this position, but even an article that claims that seems to say that she still champions the same values that were in her original statement.

Anti-Jill Stein

Friends Don’t Let Friends Vote for Jill Stein

This article goes into Jill Stein’s weird ideas.  It also presents her as somewhat cozy with Putin.  The weird ideas concern me, but I actually like that she prefers diplomacy with Russia over war.

Pro-Gary Johnson

‘What Is Aleppo?’ Asks Gary Johnson—-And NYT Gives Three Wrong Answers

Remember when people were saying that Gary Johnson was stupid because he did not know what Aleppo was?  It turns out: neither did the New York Times!  This reminds me of those journalists who made fun of Dan Quayle for misspelling potato, but they themselves had to go to the dictionary to find out how it was spelled (or so Quayle says in his autobiography).

Gary Johnson Is Still Terrible On Religious Liberty

This article is actually anti-Johnson, but I am including it in the “pro” section because it makes me like Johnson more!  Do you feel discomfort when you hear libertarians criticize the Civil Rights Act, or say that companies have a right to discriminate?  Well, Gary Johnson is not that kind of libertarian, at least when it comes to wedding cakes.

Gary Johnson Is Open to Universal Basic Income, and That’s Not Bad

Personally, I would not want a universal basic income to replace welfare, for I doubt that a universal basic income would be enough to help poor people and families.  Still, I respect Johnson for being open to a universal basic income.  His libertarianism is not a political “every-man-for-himself” (or woman for herself)!

Anti-Gary Johnson

Washington Post Article: Years Before “Aleppo Moment,” Gary Johnson Showed Little Interest in Details of Governing 

This article turned me from voting for Gary Johnson.  That, and also because libertarianism does not resonate with me, and Johnson may have Koch connections (though Johnson disputes this).

Other

Forget the FBI Cache; the Podesta Emails Show How America Is Run

A left-leaning past professor of mine and Rush Limbaugh both linked to this article!  Essentially, it argues that elites look out for their own.  I hope Rush realizes that this goes for conservative elites, too!

Thesis Write-Up: "There Is Only the Fight..." An Analysis of the Alinsky Model, by Hillary D. Rodham

At Wellesley College in 1969, Hillary Rodham, now Hillary Rodham Clinton, submitted her thesis about Saul Alinsky, a notorious community organizer.

Hillary has been criticized in right-wing circles for doing this.  At the Republican National Convention in 2016, neurosurgeon Ben Carson referred to a time when Alinsky praised Lucifer, the rebelling archangel who became Satan.  This was part of Carson’s critique of Hillary Clinton.  In an online discussion, a right-winger was calling Hillary Clinton a devil worshiper on account of her support for Alinsky.  Not every conservative critic of Hillary Clinton would go that far.  Still, there are a number of conservatives who believe that Hillary supported Alinsky as a college student, and that this shows that she has radical, perhaps even Marxist, leanings.

Conversely, there are some on the Left who lament that Hillary has abandoned her earlier Alinsky leanings.  Now, she is part of the establishment, they claim, and she has sided with some of the powerful interests that Alinsky challenged.

I decided to read Hillary Clinton’s thesis after someone posted a quote from a September 5, 2007 New York Times article.  The article states regarding Hillary’s thesis: “Ms. Rodham endorsed Mr. Alinsky’s central critique of government antipoverty programs — that they tended to be too top-down and removed from the wishes of individuals. But the student leader split with Mr. Alinsky over a central point. He vowed to ‘rub raw the sores of discontent’ and compel action through agitation. This, she believed, ran counter to the notion of change within the system.”

This caught my attention and intrigued me for two reasons.  First of all, the article was saying that Hillary Clinton agreed with Alinsky in some areas, while disagreeing with Alinsky in other areas.  As far as this article was concerned, contrary to what critics on the right and the left may think, Hillary was not one-hundred percent supportive of Alinsky’s agenda.  She was more centrist than the radical Alinsky, in short.

Second, the article mentioned Alinsky’s critique of government anti-poverty programs, along with Hillary’s support for Alinsky’s stance.  Ordinarily, one would think that it is the right-wing that would criticize federal anti-poverty programs.  And, indeed, conservatives have employed a similar argument to that supposedly advanced by Alinsky: that government anti-poverty programs are administered from the top-down and ignore local concerns.  For a number of conservatives, problems such as poverty are best handled closest to the people involved, at the local level, rather than from a distant, inflexible bureaucracy in Washington, D.C.  Did Alinsky, and in turn Hillary, overlap somewhat with conservatives on this?  The times that conservatism and liberalism overlap and intersect are an interest of mine!

I read the thesis, and I arrived at my own conclusions. In this post, I will first talk about Hillary’s discussion of Alinsky’s stance towards government anti-poverty programs.  Then, I will engage the question of the extent to which Hillary was in agreement with Alinsky.

First, Hillary does discuss Alinsky’s criticism of federal anti-poverty programs.  Alinsky regarded them as rather patronizing, and he was attempting to help people to help themselves—-to have jobs, for example, so that they would not have to depend as much on federal anti-poverty programs.  He also wanted local people to have a say in how federal anti-poverty programs were run and administered.  And there was the problem of politics entering the picture when it came to government anti-poverty programs.  Alinsky supported having local gang leaders run a program for unemployed young people at the local level, for example, and the Office of Economic Development provided funds for that.  Hillary suggests that this program may have helped to reduce tensions in the community.  When conservative politicians and a conservative newspaper got wind of this, however, that threatened the program.

Although Alinsky was critical of government anti-poverty programs, he was not a complete libertarian.  One act of community organizing that he supported was for residents to withhold sales taxes after the Illinois legislature made cutbacks on ADC funds.  In addition, as the decline of neighborhoods made Alinsky’s model of local community organizing more obsolete, Alinsky pushed, unsuccessfully, for federal jobs programs to put people to work.

Hillary in her thesis does not criticize Alinsky’s reservations about federal anti-poverty programs.  At the same time, she does seem to advocate for a greater federal role.  The decline of the local neighborhood necessitates this, in her opinion.  Plus, she believes that decentralization has coincided with injustice and segregation.  While Hillary appears to think that Alinsky’s ideas on federal jobs programs (i.e., infrastructure) have merit, she doubted that they could pass in the American political system as it existed when she was writing.

Second, did Hillary agree with Alinsky, disagree with him, or both?  Hillary’s tone appears rather sympathetic, overall: she sees Alinsky as well-intentioned in his efforts to help the poor and the vulnerable to better their lives and to protect themselves against the powerful.  Alinsky apparently had a larger utopian vision, but Alinsky usually attempted to gain small victories: to help local African-Americans to get jobs at Kodak, to protect an African-American community from being displaced when the University of Chicago was expanding, to get some needed home repairs for poor tenements, and to get the local meat industry to house its garbage so that it did not pollute the air.

Alinsky’s methods included non-violent strikes and protests, alerting (or threatening to alert) the media about problems so as to embarrass the powerful, and hiring a consultant to present the authorities with logical proposals that could serve as an alternative to the University of Chicago expansion.  Alinsky’s groups received funding from supporters, especially churches.  The prominence of churches in supporting Alinsky’s groups prompted Alinsky to remark one time that he was the second most important Jew in Christianity, next to Jesus Christ!  That may sound pretty arrogant (what about the apostle Paul?).  Yet, Alinsky’s general approach did display humility, on his part.  Alinsky usually started groups and assisted with their initial organization, then stepped back.

In the bibliography, Hillary states: “[Alinsky’s] offer of a place in the new Institute was tempting but after spending a year trying to make sense of his inconsistency, I need three years of legal rigor.”  Hillary appears to have been open to working at Alinsky’s Institute, but she ultimately concluded that it was not for her.  She preferred the predictability of legal studies!

Hillary does mention and engage critiques of Alinsky’s thought.  One critique is that Alinsky had little national organization, and that deprived his local projects of clarity or an overarching context or goal.  Another critique is that Alinsky’s method of confrontation made a lot of noise but did not make things better, and even exasperated divisions within communities.  A third critique was that sometimes Alinsky’s model worked too well: once the model solved local problems, the communities became content with where they were rather rather than trying to change and grow, and this coincided with continued segregation.

Hillary argues that societal changes were making Alinsky’s model more and more obsolete.  Neighborhoods were declining, as people no longer worked where they lived.  Overlapping bureaucracies made it difficult to determine whom specifically to approach or to challenge when people had a grievance: they could approach one authority, and that authority would pass the buck to another authority.  According to Hillary, Alinsky himself was sensitive to criticisms.  In fact, Alinsky was contemplating challenging an organization that he himself established!

Hillary Rodham’s thesis is well-written and sophisticated, not just for a college senior, but by the general standards of writing.  I do question how obsolete Alinsky’s model is.  Neighborhoods may no longer be what they once were, but treating them as obsolete goes a bit too far.  Barack Obama was a community organizer in the 1980’s, over a decade after Hillary Rodham wrote her thesis, and apparently he saw Alinsky’s methods as still applicable, on some level!  Moreover, not all problems can be addressed on the federal level, which is why local community organizing is important.

Paul Krugman's Critique of Bernie Sanders

I want to pass on a couple of Paul Krugman’s recent blog posts.  They are critical of Bernie Sanders.  Paul Krugman is a notorious liberal economist who won a Nobel Prize.  He is an influential voice on the Left.

Weakened at Bernie’s

Health Reform Is Hard

I am not sharing these blog posts because I agree with them entirely, but I do think that they raise valid considerations.  I appreciate Krugman’s honesty in these posts.  Some of what Krugman says also overlaps with why I have a difficult time deciding between Hillary and Bernie.  If I had to judge, I would say that Bernie is better in terms of character.  But Hillary seems to me to be better at realistically assessing the political scene to determine what can get passed, and also at developing policy proposals that have nuance and substance.  Sanders often seems to me to be spouting cliches.  I have no doubt that he sincerely believes those cliches, and even that there is merit in them.  But what Hillary says sounds more substantive to me.
On the other hand, allow me to share a positive statement about Bernie by Robert Reich (see the January 17, 2016 status on Reich’s Facebook page):

“Hillary presented herself as an experienced politician who is prepared to assume the presidency, while Bernie presented himself as the leader of a political revolution. Both characterizations seem fair. If you assume Washington is not changeable and that the vicious cycle of wealth and power dominating our politics and economics is unalterable, Hillary’s experience is relevant; she will make a first-class president for the system we now have. But if you believe Washington must be changed, and that system can be altered for the benefit of the many and not the few, Bernie’s leadership is more relevant; he is heading up a political movement.”

Two Perspectives on Bernie Sanders' Health Care Plan

I want to share two articles about Bernie Sanders’ health care plan.  The first is opposed to it and agrees with Chelsea Clinton’s characterization of it.  The second offers a different perspective.

Chelsea Clinton Was Right: Everyone’s Health Care Is Threatened Under Bernie’s Plan

Bernie Sanders Has Released His Medicare-for-All Plan: Here’s How He Pays For It

Book Write-Up: Socialism, by Michael Harrington

Michael Harrington.  Socialism.  New York: Saturday Review Press, 1972.  See here to buy the book.

Michael Harrington was an American democratic socialist.  Some have argued that his book about American poverty, The Other America, helped inspire the Great Society in the 1960s.  I read The Other America in 1996.  I was a conservative at the time, and I read Marvin Orlasky’s The Tragedy of American Compassion, which some have claimed was an inspiration for President George W. Bush’s faith-based initiatives policy.  I read The Other America to get a left-leaning perspective on poverty.

I recently learned about Harrington’s book Socialism from a commenter on my blogger blog.  In 2013, I blogged through W.A. Swanberg’s award-winning biography of six-time Socialist Presidential candidate Norman Thomas.  Some of these posts have gotten a lot of views lately, and the reason may be that Bernie Sanders’ Presidential candidacy has made people curious about socialism.  I was struggling in reading Swanberg’s book to understand what exactly socialism was.  For example, is it totally against private property?  Many of the European countries labeled “socialist” have private industries.  Plus, even American socialist platforms have seemed to presume that, under the society that they advocated, people would own things.  The commenter mentioned Michael Harrington’s book on socialism.  Harrington dedicated his book to Norman Thomas.

A key point that comes out in Michael Harrington’s book on socialism is this: left-wing ideology is far from monolithic, and Michael Harrington is not entirely happy with how it has been implemented.  In prominent cases, Harrington notes, it has led to the oppression and exploitation of people by the government.  This is the case with many Communist regimes, and Harrington argues that these regimes actually violate the teachings of Karl Marx, who, Harrington argues, had more of a peaceful, democratic view of revolution and society than many might think.  In a number of cases, Harrington argues, socialism, social democracy, or left-wing policies have left in place the class system.  The result has been that society, including the leftist ideas as implemented, continue to benefit the wealthy, the powerful, and the well-connected rather than (or more than) the people who need help.  This has been the case with the nationalization of industries and the welfare state.

Harrington tries to diagnose what has gone wrong and offers suggestions on what may work.  According to Harrington, a reason that Communism has not worked well is that many countries in embracing it have skipped a key stage of Marx’s historical scenario: capitalism.  Although Marx believed that capitalism would self-collapse, he thought that it would generate abundance, and then the abundance would be equitably distributed under Communism.  For the proletariat to control the means of production and use them for society’s benefit, in short, there need to be means of production.  But a number of countries that embraced Communism did not really have a capitalist stage of economic development: they had many peasants, but not a lot of producers.  Some, such as the Soviet Union, tried to make up for that, and they did not exactly do so nicely or efficiently.  Harrington supports socialism in prosperous countries such as the U.S. and Europe.  Moreover, he wants to include the Third World in the world economy in a non-exploitative manner.  For example, he is critical of imposing high tariffs on products from the Third World.

Harrington believes that socialism can work.  He points to the Tennessee Valley Authority as an example of socialism at its best: it makes money that it uses for its capital, and it provides low-cost electricity to people.  Harrington states at one point that the TVA is a better socialistic model than the post office!  Harrington also is not so naive as to believe that the U.S. can transition to socialism cold-turkey, but he maintains that feasible steps can be taken in that direction.  Steps can be taken so that businesses answer more to people and communities than their shareholders.  The tax system can be structured so that money is redistributed more equitably.  Harrington responds to the Wall Street Journal‘s argument that such proposals stifle innovation, invention, and job creation by contending that a number of investors profit parasitically rather than contributing to the well-being of people and society.

Harrington mentions Dostoevsky’s statement that socialism is too idealistic and disregards human nature.  Harrington states that Westerners perhaps are as they are because they have been conditioned by capitalism for years.  Harrington notes what he considers to be steps in the right direction, such as young people living in communes and rejecting materialism.  Harrington is critical of the totalitarian Communist regimes that tried to re-educate people from their capitalist assumptions, but he still seems to think that re-education may need to occur.  Perhaps he thinks that it can occur peacefully.

This book was published in 1972, and it is interesting to see what was on people’s radar then, and to compare that with what is on people’s radar now.  Income inequality and the struggles of the middle class were issues then, as they are now.  Harrington also mentions global warming, which he says may result in floods in 2070.  Knowing the outcome of what Harrington mentions was also interesting.  Harrington states that we will have to see how Salvador Allende’s Chile turns out.  This was written before Pinochet took over in a coup.

This is a worthwhile book to read.  I appreciated Harrington’s honest critique of how socialism and left-wing policies have been implemented.  I am not a libertarian myself, but the libertarian argument that government intervention has its drawbacks does resonate with me, and some of what Harrington was saying spoke to the part of me that feels that way.  I do believe that socialism is rather idealistic, that people need a reward to create and produce.  At the same time, I also think that successful models can be implemented that benefit people and society.

Ben Carson on the National Sunday Law

I probably should have written this post when Ben Carson was higher up in the polls, but this is a topic of interest to me, so I will post it.

Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon who is running for the Republican nomination for U.S. President, is a Seventh-Day Adventist.  Carson has been gaining support from conservative evangelicals.

The reason that this has interested me is that Seventh-Day Adventism fears (or, at least, negatively anticipates) a National Sunday Law, which will require people to honor Sunday religiously and will supposedly persecute people who observe the Sabbath on other days, as the Seventh-Day Adventists observe the Sabbath on Saturday (or, more accurately, from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset).  Many Seventh-Day Adventists, due to their opposition to a National Sunday Law, tend to be critical of the religious right, fearing that it will erode the wall between church and state and lead to a National Sunday Law.  Carson, however, is supported by people who could be characterized as part of the religious right.  Is this an inconsistency?  How does Carson himself navigate this tension?

I found a YouTube video in which Carson talked about the National Sunday Law before a Seventh-Day Adventist church.  Carson said that he is opposed to political-correctness and the new world order, and their attempts to undermine the Judeo-Christian ethic in America.  Carson states that he is actively fighting political correctness.  Carson also predicted that, in accordance with Bible prophecy, there will be a religious awakening in America, and that things will get better as a result of that.  But, Carson continues, some will take that awakening in overly zealous directions, and that will lead to a National Sunday Law and the persecution of seventh-day sabbathkeepers.  According to Carson, persecution over the seventh-day Sabbath will come from the right rather than the left.  Finally, Carson jokingly remarked that he hopes he is not around by that time!

Carson seems to support a religious awakening, thinking that will result in good things for the country; this may explain why he supports a lot of what the religious right supports, notwithstanding his Seventh-Day Adventism.  But he still maintains his Seventh-Day Adventist belief that there will come a National Sunday Law, and he hopes that he will not be around to see it.

AP: Ben Carson Sometimes Deviates From GOP Health Care Thought

https://www.yahoo.com/health/ben-carson-sometimes-deviates-from-gop-health-care-144459046.html

Hopefully, he’ll continue being an independent thinker, rather than giving into the right wing.

Movie Write-Up: Gifted Hands, the Ben Carson Story

Amidst all the hubbub about Dr. Ben Carson’s life story, I decided to watch the 2009 movie in which Cuba Gooding, Jr. played Dr. Carson.  The movie is based on Ben Carson’s autobiography, and it is entitled, Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story.

I was surprised that I was able to get the movie as quickly as I did.  In light of the current controversy, I was expecting to see “long wait” or “very long wait” beside the title on my Netflix queue, but that was not the case.  I simply requested the movie, put it to the top of my queue, and got it a few days later.

There were aspects of the movie that I liked.  A mom tries to bring the best out of her son, even though she is experiencing problems herself (i.e., depression, illiteracy, the struggle to earn and save money).  An unpopular kid, whom many think is stupid, improves his grades through hard work and a growing love for learning.  A person turns to God for help in taming his temper, and when confronted with delicate challenges.  And one desires to learn through reading books rather than sitting through lectures. (I do both, but I can understand why one would prefer to read books.)

I also came to appreciate Ben Carson’s mind and his contributions to neurosurgery, as he came up with a way to separate siamese twins who were joined at the back of their head (a jarring sight), and as he helped cure a little girl of seizures by removing half of her brain.  In the movie, he seemed to know what he was doing.  He knew stuff, and he knew how to apply the stuff that he knew, and to navigate his way through delicate, life-threatening situations.  Of course, this is just a movie, but I think that part of the movie is believable, for Ben Carson is a reputable neurosurgeon (even though he has had some malpractice suits).  My impression, though, is that he does not display that same level of knowledge and ability to come up with solutions as a Presidential candidate.

My Mom was watching the movie with me, and she thought that the movie was a bit self-aggrandizing on Ben Carson’s part.  I can understand her perspective.  She was comparing the movie to The Grinder, a TV series that we watched right before watching the movie.  In The Grinder, Rob Lowe plays an actor who had played a lawyer on TV and is now working in his family’s law firm.  He is well-intentioned, but he is rather melodramatic and narcissistic.  Gifted Hands had its share of melodrama.  There is also a scene in which a fellow doctor tells Carson that Carson has to come up with a solution to the siamese twins (e.g., to separate them without killing one or both), since Carson is the greatest mind in pediatric neurosurgery, and, if he can’t come up with a solution, nobody can!  As my Mom said, had this movie been based on a biography of Carson, that would be one thing, but it was based on Carson’s own autobiography!  I can understand and appreciate that Dr. Carson wants for his life story to inspire people, but the movie could have toned things down a bit.  Plus, while Dr. Carson is obviously smart, should we really believe that he is the only person in the entire world who could come up with a solution to the siamese twins?  There are plenty of smart people in the world!

After watching the movie, I was thinking about the topic of pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps.  Some conservatives may point to Dr. Carson and say to African-Americans: “You see!  You’re holding yourselves back!  If you work hard, you can become anything you want!”  Progressives, by contrast, would tend to point to societal problems and injustice holding African-Americans back.  I definitely believe that people should try to be responsible: Ben Carson’s mom did well to turn off the TV and to have her sons read two books a week and write two book reports.  But, judging from what the movie itself depicted, Ben Carson did have some societal advantages.  As a child, he went to a good public school, which cannot be said of every African-American child.  He had access to a decent public library, which gave him an opportunity to expand his mind.  The movie did not mention affirmative action, but Dr. Carson did succeed in a time when affirmative action was significant.  That is not to imply that he was unqualified, for he did graduate third in his class (according to the movie).  Still, there were a lot of people who graduated third in their class, and they did not get into Yale.  My point is that Ben Carson succeeded through hard work, but also through societal advantages.  It was not either/or.

Robert Reich Visits the Red States

Robert Reich, a progressive who served in Bill Clinton’s cabinet, went on a tour of the red states.  Here is what he found:

“But something odd happened. It turned out that many of the conservative Republicans and Tea Partiers I met agreed with much of what I had to say, and I agreed with them.”

Also, Reich speculates about why many of them support Trump.

Good article.

http://robertreich.org/post/132819483625

The Seventh-Day Adventist Candidate

I’ve been wanting to blog about Presidential candidate Ben Carson being a Seventh-Day Adventist.  Now that it is in the news quite a bit, I figure that now is a good time to write this post.  Here are some ramblings.

A.  It interests me that Dr. Ben Carson is a Seventh-Day Adventist, because I myself have a background in seventh-day Sabbatarianism.  I grew up in an offshoot of Herbert Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God, and I attended Seventh-Day Adventist churches from my time in college until 2004.  People who observed the seventh-day Sabbath and went to church on Saturday were definitely a minority where I grew up: many people where we lived attended church on Sundays and scheduled events on Saturdays.  I was also aware of people in the U.S. who were forced to choose between keeping the Sabbath on Saturday and keeping their jobs, which pressured them to work on Saturdays.  We were marginal and considered strange; in some places, seventh-day Sabbatarians were persecuted.  That is why I feel somewhat of an affinity towards Dr. Ben Carson, even though I am no longer a seventh-day Sabbatarian, and I think that Dr. Carson says some pretty strange things.

B.  In New York City, I attended a liberal Seventh-Day Adventist church.  In 2004, Joe Lieberman was running for the Democratic nomination for President.  Lieberman, of course, is an orthodox Jew, who observes the Sabbath on Saturday.  Someone in my church was doing a presentation on how Lieberman’s Sabbath observance conflicted with his Presidential campaign: Lieberman, for example, could not participate in debates that took place on Saturdays.  Nowadays, it seems to me, that is not a big problem.  I do not know if Dr. Carson does anything for his presidential campaign on Saturdays, or if he takes a break from it on those days, but my understanding is that the Republican debates so far have not taken place on Saturdays, but rather during the week.

C.  Dr. Carson is winning support from evangelicals.  He speaks like he’s a part of the religious right.  From a certain standpoint, that is rather odd for a Seventh-Day Adventist.  For decades, Seventh-Day Adventists have feared that the United States would pass a National Sunday Law that would require people to honor Sunday.  They associate this with the Mark of the Beast of Revelation 13.  While some Seventh-Day Adventists have expected this to occur within a multicultural context of trying to bring the world’s religions together, a number of them have feared that the religious right would bring it about, with all of its attempts to make the United States a Christian nation.  Consequently, SDAs have supported the separation of church from state.  I remember my pastor at an SDA church that I attended in the 1990’s forecasting that the American electorate would be upset at President Bill Clinton on account of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and they would sweep the Republicans into power.  The Republicans then, to appease their religious base, would enact a National Sunday Law.  Well, the Republicans did have a lot of power from 2001-2009.  There was no National Sunday Law.

Is this characterization of the SDAs absolute, though?  Not exactly.  There are exceptions.  I know of someone who visited an SDA church shortly after 9/11, and the pastor there was preaching that 9/11 happened because America took prayer out of public schools.  I should also note that many SDAs are strict young-earth creationists and anti-evolutionists, and that overlaps with elements of the religious right.

In terms of Dr. Carson, he does express support for the separation of church and state.  Still, he speaks like he’s part of the religious right, in terms of the things that he says and the stances that he takes, and he has been gaining support from conservative evangelicals.

D.  I know a Roman Catholic who used to be a Seventh-Day Adventist.  One concern that she has about her former denomination is the performance of abortions at Seventh-Day Adventist hospitals (see here).  At the liberal SDA church that I attended, some lauded the SDA church for having a nuanced stance on abortion (see here), while expressing a wish that it would convey the same sort of thoughtfulness in its stance on homosexuality.  What this has to do with Ben Carson, well, I find it interesting to note.  I do not know how long Dr. Carson has been an SDA; this article says that his mother is an SDA, so maybe he has been an SDA for a long time.  I was watching the news yesterday, and Dr. Carson was talking about how he came to be pro-life on abortion.  I can envision an SDA physician performing abortions, only later to conclude that abortion is wrong because it is taking a human life.  Maybe that fits Dr. Carson, but I do not know for certain.

E.  I do not know for sure if SDA politicians tend to vote or to govern as liberals or as conservatives, but my impression is that there is diversity.  At the first SDA church that I attended, there were political liberals and political conservatives, though one of the political conservatives was concerned that the Christian Coalition could help bring about a National Sunday Law.  When I attended the liberal SDA church, an aide of the mayor of Philadelphia at the time, John F. Street, an SDA, came to speak to us.  My impression was that Mayor Street was liberal on economic issues, but rather conservative on same-sex marriage.

F.  I came across an article yesterday—-and, unfortunately, I cannot find it now—-and it said that it is ironic that Dr. Carson is gaining support from evangelicals, when his own denomination believes that many evangelicals will go to hell for not keeping the seventh-day Sabbath, and for observing Sunday.  There are SDAs who believe that way (of course, they would see hell as a future place of annihilation rather than a place of eternal torment); there are also SDAs, however, who are more tolerant than that, who believe that there are genuine Christians who observe Sunday.  Ellen G. White, the prophetess of early Adventism, expressed a belief in The Great Controversy that there were sincere Christians among Protestants and Catholics, who were keeping Sunday out of ignorance.  The Great Controversy, as a matter of fact, heroized many Protestant heroes in history, such as Martin Luther.   Did White write anything that could form the basis for the views of the SDAs who believe that true Christians observe the Sabbath, and that Sunday-keeping Christians are not true Christians?  It would not surprise me.

I’m sure that more can be written and researched about the relationship between SDAs and politics.  I just wrote this post to convey my own experiences and understanding, based on what I currently know.

Bernie Sanders at Liberty University, and Its Response Was Not Entirely Negative!

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/america-most-liberal-presidential-candidate-153100112.html

Would Biden Be a Formidable Candidate?

Would Joe Biden be a formidable Presidential candidate?  I have read more than one article that answers “no.”  These articles note that Biden ran for President in 1988 and 2008, and he did not do very well.

There are a lot of factors in whether a person does well in a Presidential race or not.  I think, though, that Biden could be a more effective and formidable candidate in 2016 than he was in 1988 and 2008.  The reason is that we have gotten to see more of Biden’s personal side—-his honesty, his human vulnerability, his sensitivity.  Speaking for myself as a voter, when Biden ran in the 2008 Democratic primaries, I saw him as a pompous jerk.  Nowadays, I appreciate his human side more.

Although Hillary has a larger political organization, she remains enmeshed in scandal, fairly or not.  She is, and will continue to be, an easy target by Republicans this election year.  Republicans will probably wear kid-gloves, however, when it comes to attacking Biden, or at least they will focus on the issues rather than attacking Biden personally.  The reason is all of the things that Biden has been through, and Republicans would look insensitive to attack him personally.

Paul Krugman: Trump Is Right About Economics

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/07/opinion/paul-krugman-trump-is-right-on-economics.html

John Kasich on ABC This Week: He Reminds Me of the Huckabee I Loved in 2008!

This morning, Republican Presidential candidate John Kasich was on ABC This Week.  He was on shortly after Republican Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who was defending Kim Davis.  Here is the interaction between George Stephanopoulos and Kasich on Kim Davis (see the transcript for the show here):

STEPHANOPOULOS: Finally, we saw Governor Huckabee earlier in the program say that he stands by Kim Davis, her decision not to issue those marriage licenses. Do you agree with that?

KASICH: No, I don’t agree with him. I think, you know, the court has spoken, the court has ruled as everyone know. I — or most people know, I believe in traditional marriage, but the court has ruled.

But George, there’s one other big issue here, we have a lot of young people who sit on the fence on an issue like this. And they also think about their, you know, their belief in god. And you know for me I think we need to talk a lot about the dos, about humility, about helping our neighbor, about the need to live a life bigger than ourselves. And when we see these kind of battles going on I get a little bit afraid that it turns people off to the idea of faith in god, what it means to be a Christian.

For me, it’s giving me a solid foundation to deal with the strong winds in life, to be a better person, a better guy.

Now, I respect the fact that this lady doesn’t agree, but she’s also a government employee. She’s not running a church. I wouldn’t force this on a church, but in terms of her responsibility I think she has to comply. I don’t think — I don’t like the fact that she’s sitting in a jail, that’s just absurd as well. But I think she should follow the law.

Kasich reminds me of what I liked about Mike Huckabee in 2008, before Huckabee became a Foxified cultural warrior.  Believe it or not, I was actually thinking of voting for Huckabee in 2008!  Huckabee in 2008 talked about faith, but it went beyond the usual culture war issues.  It entailed the type of people we are and the kind of country we should be.  Huckabee in 2008 struck me as a humble Christian man who served others, and whose Christianity led him to care about the vulnerable and to have a holistic and compassionate view of how faith could relate to public life.  That is my impression of John Kasich.

Huckabee in 2008 defended his decision as Governor of Arkansas to help expand health insurance for children, when conservative groups like the Club for Growth were questioning whether he was fiscally conservative for so doing.  Similarly, John Kasich supported Medicaid expansion and has been quoted as saying: “Now, when you die and get to the, get to the, uh, to the meeting with St. Peter, he’s probably not gonna ask you much about what you did about keeping government small, but he’s going to ask you what you did for the poor. Better have a good answer” (see here).  Mike Huckabee in 2008 pointed to the large number of African-Americans who voted for him when he was running in Arkansas gubernatorial races.  Kasich also has sensitivity towards racial issues.  In this video, Kasich talks with George about race and police brutality, and the need to make the excluded feel included, to give them a chance, and to make them feel that their grievances are heard.  Kasich then says that he believes that it was what the Lord wants us to do.  Amen to that!

I disagreed, somewhat, with Kasich’s statement that Kim Davis should be required to provide same-sex marriage licenses.  I do believe that her office should provide them, in compliance with the Supreme Court’s ruling.  If she has a problem personally providing them because that violates her own conscience, then someone else where she works should do so.  That is how a number of states handle this.  The thing is, I think that, for Kim Davis, this is about more than her own personal conscience: I suspect that, in her mind, she is performing an act of civil disobedience against a policy that she believes is wrong.  She believes that America was founded on godly, biblical principles, that America is a Christian nation, and that the Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage violates America’s Christian heritage.  She is right that religion has played a significant part in America’s heritage, but so has the separation of church and state and pluralism.

My comments on Kim Davis aside, will I vote for John Kasich?  I may in the primaries.  I was talking with my Mom, explaining Kasich’s expansion of Medicaid.  She asked me, “So he supports Obamacare?”  I responded that he most likely does not, and I doubt that he does: he is, after all, a Republican.  He is a better Republican, but a Republican nonetheless.

See this article for more on Kasich’s faith.  The article, interestingly, is entitled, “Does John Kasich’s religiosity turn off religious conservatives?”

Leaning Towards Darth Hillary?

I haven’t written a whole lot about the 2016 Presidential election.  This is unlike me, since I wrote a lot about the 2008 and 2012 Presidential elections when they were going on.

In this post, I would like to talk about Hillary.  Here are some thoughts.

1.  I was leaning towards voting for Bernie Sanders, and that may be what I end up doing.  I do think it’s cool that he’s drawing huge crowds and, at the moment at least, is posing a significant challenge to Hillary.  That makes the election interesting.  But, one night, I was flipping through channels.  I came to C-Span, and it was showing a town hall meeting in which Hillary was answering questions from the audience.  Hillary really impressed me.  Someone asked her about Medicare and what its policy should be towards people who take care of their elderly parents at home, and Hillary addressed that question intelligently, with bullet points, showing that she had thought about the issue.  A couple of leftist young people were trying to disrupt the town hall because they thought that Hillary did not go far enough on climate change, and Hillary took control of the meeting, expressed understanding towards their position, and said, logically, that we cannot simply stop using carbon-based fuels cold turkey, for so much of the economy depends on them.  She is still for addressing the problem of climate change, however.
2. Contrast how Hillary handled that Townhall with how Bernie Sanders handled the disruption at his event.  Bernie just let those Black Lives Matters activists take over his rally!  He just stood there!  At least that’s my understanding of what happened.  Sure, he should have let them have their say, but he also should have been present, somehow.  He should have gone to the microphone and said something, either responding to what they said, or entering into a dialogue with them, or expressing sympathy for their concerns.  Hillary, on the other hand, had a dialogue with Black Lives Matters activists.
3. In recent polls, Hillary does not get high marks for trustworthiness.  Do I trust Hillary?  Well, it depends on what I’m trusting her for.  Do I see her as thoroughly honest, ethical, transparent, and lovable?  No.  She is shady.  She stretches the truth.  I have heard that she can be mean.  I have called her “Darth Hillary.”  And, while she is an intelligent, sophisticated woman, that time when she left the White House with White House silverware seemed a bit white-trashy to me.  But I also believe that she has a social conscience and has manifested that during her years as a lawyer, as First Lady, and in public service.  I think that there is a part of her that cares for the vulnerable.  Some of that may be for show, but some of it, I suspect, is real.
4. One concern that I have about her being President is that her Administration will probably have scandals, and that will distract her and the government from the business of governing, unless she can find some way to surmount them.  She has a scandal right now.  What makes us think that she won’t as President?
5. What I like about primaries is that they give me an opportunity to vote for whom I want—-for the candidate who best represents my beliefs, or whom I like the most—-whether that person has a shot in hell or not.  I voted for Ron Paul in the 2008 and 2012 Republican primaries, mainly because I liked how he stood up to Rudy Giuliani and did not back down when Giuliani was getting on his sanctimonious 9/11 high horse.  That said, I am hesitant to vote for Hillary in the primary because I suspect that she will be the Democratic candidate in the general election, and I will probably vote for her then.  (I do not know what role Biden will play in this election.)  Part of me wants to do something different in the primaries.  So I am wondering if I should vote for Bernie Sanders, or one of the Republicans I like, such as John Kasich.  Or maybe I can continue my Paulite tradition and vote for Rand—-I like some of what he says, and some of what he says I find offensive.  The thing is, right now at least, Hillary is the candidate I like the most.

The Nation: Rand Paul's Eye-Roll Marked the End of the 9/11 Era

http://www.thenation.com/article/rand-pauls-eye-roll-marked-the-end-of-the-911-era/

Bullies (an Episode of The Newsroom)

I've been watching the first season of The Newsroom.  It is on HBO, and it was created and is largely written by Aaron Sorkin, who gave us The West Wing.  The Newsroom is about a news program, which is anchored by Will McAvoy, who (along with his producer, an ex-flame) has decided to shift his program from its less-than-serious nature to one that gives the "facts" and asks guests the hard questions.

I like the program because it is inspirational and funny, and McAvoy, while he is clearly an arrogant jerk, is still somehow loveable (as were all of the jerks on The West Wing).  My problem with the show has been that it has presented conservatives as mindless dunces.  When McAvoy has had conservative guests on his show, they usually had this deer-in-the-headlights look.  In my opinion, that is not only unrealistic, but it also does not make for good entertainment.  You may think that conservatives are not particularly bright and that their policies are damaging to the country, but I've seen and read plenty of conservatives who are well-read, who are able to convey an argument, and who do not have that deer-in-the-headlights look whenever they're challenged.  Moreover, it would be more entertaining to me to see McAvoy actually have to engage in rhetorical combat with formidable opponents rather than mowing his guests down on a regular basis.

I saw an exception to the rule in an episode that I watched last night, entitled "Bullies."  McAvoy has on his program an African-American homosexual professor who (surprise!) is an adviser to Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum.  In the style of Lawrence O'Donnell, McAvoy ties to mow the professor down with the same questions over and over: How can the professor defend Rick Santorum's comments regarding homosexuality?  The professor meekly replies that Santorum has treated him with the utmost respect over the years, and that he does not agree with everything Santorum has said.  As the professor is continually harangued by McAvoy, however, the professor eventually loses his cool.  The professor fights back, saying that he is not defined by his race, his sexual orientation, or even by McAvoy, who in his narrow-mindedness presumes to know what someone like the professor should believe and do.  The professor says that he does not need McAvoy's help, and that he is supporting Rick Santorum because he believes that Santorum is the best candidate in the race when it comes to protecting the lives of the unborn.

To his credit, McAvoy is silent as he is taken to the woodshed by the professor, but, as is often the case in Sorkin's political dramas, the left gets the last word.  McAvoy then asks the professor if Santorum believes that the professor is fit to teach, and the professor quietly and solemnly responds, "no."

When McAvoy is seeing a therapist, McAvoy eventually acknowledges that he was being a bully in that interview.  McAvoy also remarks that he managed to upset the religious right, African-Americans, and gays in one interview, and I got a laugh out of that!  In any case, I hope that there are more episodes of The Newsroom in which intelligent conservatives fight back----and both sides (if we can truly reduce people to "sides," which is doubtful) end up learning something in the process.

To watch the scene, see here.   

Non-Partisanship, Military Stimulus, and Kennedy's Religion

I have three items for my write-up today on W.A. Swanberg's biography of six-time Socialist candidate for President, Norman Thomas.  The biography is entitled Norman Thomas: The Last Idealist.

1.  Swanberg narrates that Thomas' newspaper column eventually came to lose its popularity, for Thomas criticized both Republicans and Democrats, which was a turn-off to newspapers and many of their readers.  Thomas did, however, praise politicians when they acted according to his principles of peace.  Thomas, for example, praised President Dwight Eisenhower's final speech as President, in which Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial complex.

Do I like partisan articles, or articles that criticize and praise both sides?  It depends.  One reason that I like partisan articles, particularly when they're partisan in accordance with my own political orientation, is that I would like to believe that simply voting for a political party will solve our nation's problems.  But life is more complex than that, for virtually every "solution" that politicians propose will have its strengths and weaknesses.  I feel that my role as a voter is to determine if the strengths outweigh the weaknesses, and to vote accordingly.  What really rocks my world is when I have a firm pro-Obama ideology set in my mind, along with my justifications for that ideology, and then I take the risk of reading conservative Townhall columns and encounter arguments that President Obama's policies are grossly problematic.  Are these conservatives correct?  I doubt that they are entirely.  But I don't think that simply dismissing their arguments as "lies" is the way to go.

Like Thomas, I do like to praise politicians who do what I consider to be the right thing, whatever political party they may be in.  When I read an article about Republican Governor Jan Brewer's decision to expand Medicaid, for example, I clicked "like".

2.  One reason that Thomas' message of disarmament was so unpopular, according to Swanberg, was that there were many people in the United States who made a decent living within the military-industrial complex.  I usually don't read this in liberal writings that glorify the 1950's-1960's as a time when the middle-class was strong and widespread.  They talk about unions, progressive tax rates, and government funding of highways, but they usually don't mention the role of the military-industrial complex in the existence of the middle-class.

In 2012, I occasionally wondered if voting for Mitt Romney would be better for the economy than voting for Barack Obama would be.  It wasn't because I believed that tax cuts for the rich would magically trickle down to the rest of us and stimulate economic growth.  Rather, it was because I thought that Mitt Romney's program of increasing government spending on the military would serve as stimulus.  Granted, it would probably also run up the deficit and the national debt, but at least it would give people jobs.  It does seem to me that government spending on defense has created more jobs than has government spending on infrastructure.  I've not seen statistics on this, so I'm open to correction, but I'm just stating my impression.  I wish, though, that the government could create more jobs by spending money on peaceful projects rather than weapons that we don't need.  I'm not saying that we don't need any weapons, but, in 2012, Obama said that even prominent people in the military were saying that they did not need all of the money that Mitt Romney wanted to spend on defense.

3.  John F. Kennedy's Catholic religion was controversial in the 1960 Presidential election, as a number of people feared that Kennedy as President would obey the pope.  Thomas himself shared that concern, for he wondered if Kennedy's Catholic religion would influence his policies on, say, birth control, an issue that was important to Thomas (though, as Thomas noted, he himself had lots of children and grandchildren!).  Thomas discussed the issue with Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, and she wrote to Kennedy to express her concern, only to receive no response.  But Thomas came to be satisfied with Kennedy's public statements about the religion issue, finding them to be honest and forthright.