I guess the Donald believes the adage “Any PR is good PR” (“the Donald” is the New Yorkers’ nickname for real estate mogul Donald Trump, who has his eye set on owning the White House—and turning it into a casino?)  As of today (7/21), he’s leading the other GOP presidential hopefuls in a poll taken after the anti-Mexican immigrant spiel but before the attack on John McCain.  Maybe that will change.  But the GOP has to be careful.  If Trump the Chump leaves the GOP to form a third party, they’re setting themselves up as victims for the third party jinx.  It’s probably more beneficial for them to leave him alone because he makes the other fifteen clowns almost look sane.

Of course, Trump is appealing to the dark side of the GOP with his anti-Mexican immigrant comments.  It’s clear a lot of frustrated, angry people blame immigrants, legal or otherwise, for all their financial woes.  “What the hell?” they say.  “I join a union that’s supposed to protect me, and if the company doesn’t ship my job overseas, they give it to some damn immigrant who’s not even American.”  Never mind that the immigrant works harder for less and is often exploited.  Never mind that the immigrant actually knows how his government functions when s/he becomes a citizen.  Never mind that the immigrants’ sons and daughters go overseas to fight for this country when Trump took five deferments.  Never mind that the disgruntled worker’s family tree contains members who were also immigrants at one time (the only native American is a Native American!)  Every political hack knows how to hide her/his failings by creating a scapegoat and pointing the finger.  And Trump is a political hack.

His attack on John McCain is absurd.  Trump says McCain isn’t a hero because he allowed himself to be shot down and taken prisoner.  How stupid is that?  I don’t like McCain—he’s a nasty old man who should have quietly rode off into his Arizona sunset after losing the presidential election.  He knows he basically blew it by choosing Mama Bear Palin as his running partner.  Like Trump, he takes his own advice over his handlers’ and advisors’, he makes a habit of running off at the mouth, and he’s the epitome of old money, power, and conservative arrogance.  But he’s still a veteran who was a POW.  I never agreed with the Viet Nam war, but I was never one to criticize our armed forces personnel who fought bravely in Johnson and Nixon’s folly—other people did at the time.  McCain served his country and served it well.  Insulting him is an insult to veterans across the land.

Trump’s apology amounts to saying that those not captured, those who fight bravely and return home, are lost in the shuffle.  While true, this is a typical sophism from this man and others like him—try to make a whole statement true by tacking on a recognized truism.  McCain has become an icon because he represents not only POWs, but MIAs, those who died, and the wounded in mind and body who returned from that terrible war—silent warriors lost in the shuffle.  John Kerry is a similar icon.  They’re vets in the public spotlight.  Trump might have gone to the Wharton School, but he doesn’t understand logic—he’s an iconoclast who represents the arrogance and stupidity of many rich and famous personalities.  Which is better?  Trump the iconoclast or McCain and Kerry the icons?  It’s pretty clear to me.

But that darker side of the GOP might be numerous enough that Trump thinks he can strike out on his own and form a third party.  That would be a good match to his sociopathic arrogance.  It would also hand the election to Hillary Clinton.  Remember Ralph Nader and Ross Perot?  The first, along with the hanging chads and SCOTUS, gave Dubya the victory over Gore.  The second affected both the 92 and 96 elections, but his performance in 92 certainly helped Hillary’s “first husband” win over Papa Bush.  Unlike Europe, where every country is governed by a parliamentary system, third candidates in the U.S. tend to make either the anointed Dem or GOP candidates lose.  That’s the jinx.

The Libertarians have often run independently.  So has Greenpeace.  Every vote they garner is generally a vote lost to the main party.  For example, the extreme left is trying to convince Bernie Sanders’ fans to not throw in with Hillary if he loses the primaries, but vote for Greenpeace.  In the U.S., that’s a losing strategy.  Splinter groups from one of the major parties going it alone might be satisfied that they’re making a statement, but they’re just damaging the party they’re splintering from.  In the U.S. system, they jinx the original party’s chances.  Libertarians know this.  With Rand Paul, their strategy this time is to try to take over the GOP.  Trump might stand in their way.  If he forms a third party, the GOP is jinxed.

Of course, to a European, this is very amusing until they stop and consider that those American presidential elections are determining the executive leader of a nation comparable to the entire EU and an economic and military power in the world.  That’s no laughing matter.  It’s peculiar that we have all those different versions of Dems and Republicans, both covering the middle to an extreme, when that broad spectrum is split into many smaller factions in most European countries.  In Europe, there’s a party for every political predilection; it’s after the parliamentary elections that some have to put their differences aside, form a coalition government, and actually govern.  In the U.S., our president is our prime minister and commander-in-chief; congressional members never have to put their differences aside.  To believe a third party can be successful in the U.S. is not only naïve, it’s akin to believing Area 51 contains alien bodies.  It just won’t happen in this system.

The U.S. system is like Las Vegas’ gaming tables—some people win big, but the casinos always win overall because the odds are rigged in their favor.  In government, the odds are rigged in favor of the two-party system.  In any particular election, a third party might have some success, but they won’t win.  Everything about the elections, from primaries to the Electoral College, is rigged so that one of the candidates from the two major parties wins the presidential election.  It’s like rats in the subway tunnels of NYC—a fact of life in America we have to live with.

We laugh at all those GOP candidates.  There are sixteen now.  Most of them could lead splinter parties.  Trump could lead the Know-It-Alls; Paul could lead the Libertarians; Cruz or Rubio could lead the Tea Party; Huckabee could lead the Evangelicals; Perry could lead the Texas Independent Party; Jeb! could lead the GOP Dynasty Lovers; and so forth.  For the Dems, Hillary could lead the Dem Dynasty Lovers; Sanders could lead the Socialist Progressives; and so forth.  In a parliamentary system, these leaders would all win some seats in a legislative body and the one capturing a majority would have to form a coalition government.  If that sounds confusing, just think about past American elections where confusion ruled the day.  We wouldn’t have had eight years and two wars from Dubya.  We might have had a few more years from Carter or Reagan.  We could have another term from Bill Clinton with more interns ripe for the picking.

A presidential election every four years, especially now that the campaign starts two years before the election, is inefficient and a waste of money.  English elections are short and sweet in contrast.  Are the limited debates and chaos of America’s two-party system, with its lack of compromises, more efficient than England’s parliamentary system so characterized by compromise?  Or, does it matter, when most systems are really run by the one-percenters and huge multinational corporations and their special interest groups and lobbyists?  History will be the judge.  You just know that our democracy is in trouble when we can only put up dynasty members and chumps like Trump as presidential candidates.  Life goes on, progress is slow, and logic and reason are scarce commodities among the nation’s electorate.

[Waiting for sci-fi?  More than Human: The Mensa Contagion is now available on Amazon, Smashwords, and other online retailers.  Kindle Countdown Deals: Soldiers of God will go on sale for $1.99, reduced from $2.99; Aristocrats and Assassins will go on sale for $0.99, reduced from $2.99.  Both sales run from July 31 through August 4 (note date correction).]

And so it goes….

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 28th, 2015 at 4:00 am and is filed under Government Waste & Inefficiency, Immigration, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.