President Trump could not exist without the Democratic Party. The vast majority of those who have voted for Trump in the past voted not FOR him but against the establishment parties. The reasoning behind it I’ve heard a hundred times: “I figured I’d vote for something different.” Without the Democratic Party and the reprehensible establishment failures in which they’ve played a crucial role, Donald Trump would be getting roughly the same amount of votes David Duke did decades ago. The people want something different. They’ve given up on establishment politics. And with good reason, although Trump might not be the solution they were hoping for.
The same can be said, I guess, about Kamala Harris. Nobody is voting for her policies because she DOESN’T EVEN HAVE A PLATFORM! Any justification for her bid to become president is nothing more than a string of vapid reasons as to why she is the best person for the job. Or, most succinctly, that she is not Donald Trump.
Let me throw out a few historical figures who were also not Trump. Adolf Eichmann wasn’t Trump. Pol Pot wasn’t Trump. Idi Amin was not Trump. Not being Trump does not automatically qualify one to be the leader of The United States. If that were the case, were he still alive, we might have people shouting for President Manson.
Kamala Harris is no Charles Manson, I’ll give her that. What she is, though, is a nincompoop. An utterly unserious candidate who has already been promoted WAY beyond her competency level. The media is forced to lower itself still further in its reporting by lobbing her the softest of softball questions. It’s like watching a parent throwing a ball to a child and letting the child run the bases when she never even hit the ball. Why she has been chosen by the powers that be in the Democratic Party is anybody’s guess, but it’s most likely because she was the closest thing at hand to plug into the position. It’s not like they give a lot of thought into who they choose any more.
The last person they chose as their answer to Trump was an elderly man with clear signs of age-related cognitive decline. He had already been forced to drop out of a prior presidential campaign due to his plagiarism and lying. He was fortunate enough to squeak out a win over Trump because the people had seen what four years of Trump looked like. Unfortunately for Biden, they have now had a chance to see what four years of Biden looks like. In that time he has failed to do anything for women seeking abortions and failed to raise the minimum wage. He has, however, managed to plunge our country into a proxy war with a nuclear power, abetted a genocide in Gaza, and has been busy working on a second proxy war, with China.
Joe Biden was that old, dust-covered fuse sitting in your basement that you screw into the fuse box because there’s nothing else at hand. Kamala Harris is like a penny that you put into the fuse box because you’re tired of blowing fuses. Harris is a conduit that offers no resistance to the flow of power.
Here is the real disconnect for me, the reason I can only watch the cheerleading of Harris/Walz with bemusement and disbelief: The United States is a dying empire. But unlike any other dying empire that has come before, it has a nuclear arsenal, and there is no indication it is going to decline gracefully. In fact, there is no indication it even has clue #1 it is a dying empire. It is behaving like Gloria Swanson’s character in Hollywood Boulevard, like an aged actress living in a fantasy that the world is clamoring for her comeback.
That’s what I see when I look at Kamala, someone so detached from reality that she fully believes she is not merely going to get a chance to run the world but that she has the tools required to succeed. I see the same deluded thinking when I look at her supporters, as well. They truly believe that Donald Trump is the only thing standing in their way from resurrecting the former (alleged) glories of empire. They have this nostalgic vision of what America’s past really was before Trump. Nothing that happened before Trump came along was bad. They are incapable of seeing Trump as being an inevitable result of the actions of an empire in decline. They believe him to be the cause and not the result of our decline.
Trump supporters are no less deluded, except that they see the past clearly enough. They’re aware of the racism and the sexism and the class disparities that have always existed but they are okay with it. There is no need for them to deny it, they embrace it.
The United States is a dying empire in complete denial and I find it impossible to engage in any debates between two sides that are unwilling to contemplate that reality. Anyone willing to point this out is banned from the media and hence from the discussion. The delusional thinking of those who are tied to the machinery, who are placed comfortably atop it, constricts the conversation to a tiny window between two candidates who are entirely unequal to the task of negotiating the U.S. into a new world of multi-polarity.
That the U.S. is an imploding empire is not merely my opinion. It is the opinion of Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief Of Staff to Secretary Of State Colin Powell. It is the conviction of Dr. Mohammad Marandi, a professor at the University of Iran. It is clear as day to Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges. This is not just a conservative or a liberal perspective. It is not the ill-informed opinion of deplorables nor is it the propaganda of Putin puppets. It is the consensus of those intelligent and principled people who are no longer permitted to speak the truth through establishment channels. A dying empire, apparently, has no interest in self-reflection. Those who are seated comfortably on a sinking ship are the last to notice the ship is sinking.
Were Trump to be confronted with the assertion that the U.S. is a dying empire, we could expect the same sort of bluster used when he was forced to declare the bankruptcy of his business. But unlike U.S. bankruptcy laws, which are very forgiving for people of wealth, the world will be less kind when the U.S. defaults on its debts. What Trump’s actions will be when the fantasy world we are living collides with reality is anybody’s guess. We would be right to be terrified at the thought.
No less frightening is having Kamala Harris at the helm. As I stated before, she is a penny shoved into the spot where a president should go. She is inherently incapable of disrupting the power that flows through Washington. It is a mindless power, directed only by greed, capable of any sort of violence or oppression. And there is NOTHING in Kamala Harris’ history to suggest that she is capable of standing up to power. Her career has been as a handmaiden to power, subservient and obedient to those who might forward her career. When she was tough, she was tough on relatively powerless criminals and the parents of truants. Kamala Harris is not what we need right now. Neither is Trump. Both will fail our nation in the time of crisis that is already upon us.
When given the choice between two unacceptable options, the only smart choice is to demand something better. Those who have convinced you otherwise are your enemy and the enemy of our nation. It is the reasoning of those who have the comfiest seats on a sinking ship.
