“Donald Trump — a ludicrous figure, but at least he’s lived it up a bit in the real world and at least he’s worked out how to cover 90 per cent of his skull with 30 percent of his hair.
Christopher Hitchens, London Review of Books, 2000
I didn’t vote for Trump in 2016.
Probably for the same reasons others havent. He is orange, brute, sounds like a car salesman, looks like Biff from Back to the Future, and the idea of this man holding the keys to nukes was terrifying.
But even in 2016, when this man won the Presidency, I saw it as a symptom of a larger problem. Trump was a product of a broken system, not the cause of it. He was a big orange explosive that detonated a house that was already due for collapse. The nation’s economic and political foundation was rotten.
Since 2016 election, the picture has became much clearer, the initial blur from the shellshock has sharpened, and a clear contrast has emerged between Trump and the people who are consistently afflicted with what may be called Trump Derangement Syndrome.
I have seen things that I have not seen before, or at least if I did see it, did not register its meaning.
This is a short summary of why I will vote for Trump in 2020.
I have divided it into 4 major sections
- News media is largely wrong and fraudulent
- Corruption and DC network Swamp is real
- Democrat party has become insane
- The “Experts” are wrong and overrated
Please read with an open mind.
1. The news media is cancer.
Whatever your political view on things, take a moment to think why an informed voting populace needs an independent body of journalists.
In a proper role, a journalist will investigate motives, abuse and misuse of power, corruption and illuminate the world to the reader. A journalist’s role is to be a candle in the dark, to bring forth the objective reality of a subject despite his own personal political biases. In “normal” times, this would be a noble and important profession.
But what is a journalist today?
For the vast majority of national reporters, it means being a propaganda arm of one single political party: Democrats.
The concept of “yellow journalism” isn’t new. Mark Twain remarked that if you don’t read the newspapers, you are uninformed. If you do read the newspapers, you are misinformed.
The media have always had bad apples and bad practices. Recall the disastrous NY Times reporter Walter Duranty — who lied and misled the US public about the Holodomor massacre and starvation of millions of people by the Communist regime in Russia.
So “fake news” is not a new concept. But the recent fusion of 24 hour news cycles and instant internet access to information has produced a truly frightening monster.
I will list a few examples, but this holds true for virtually any topic.
the Kavanaugh Show Trial
One of the most glaring examples of this was the 2018 Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation process.
This was one of the most disgusting and dishonest things I have ever seen in my life. For weeks the news media networks have peddled unsubstantiated hearsay regarding Kavanaugh’s life, accused him of being a gang-rapist, headlined accusers with zero credibility and zero evidence, constructed a Narrative of Kavanaugh being a beer-drinking rapist who at age of 15, possibly raped a woman (who herself could not provide any form of evidence to her claims)
Dozens of women who worked for years with Kavanaugh and confirmed his character were completely ignored and silenced, the focus for primetime was on wild accusatory stories, his “wild” beer drinking in college, the dramatic recitations of Kavanaugh’s high school journal and scouring of anything that could be weaponized to destroy his character and prospect of a nomination. It was a Stalinist kangaroo court.
This was all done with a veneer of MeToo-ism, All women were to be believed and accusations to be accepted, regardless of the credibility of the accuser. Yet when the same situation came up a year later, with Biden and Tara Reid, her story was buried and the very same “journalists” found the accusations against Biden to be “problematic”.
The contrast between the 2 cases is incredible. The news media networks protect Democrats regardless of their own obvious hypocrisy. All women are to be believed, but only if it benefits one political side.
another example, a Tale of Two Narratives:
You can also see the news media shifting and shaping public opinion in real time, and its incredible to observe;
this is a series of headlines put out by NY Times and Politico, after Democrats blocked coronavirus stimulus bills.
Notice the 1st version of the story tells the actual story, followed by a 2nd and 3rd edition of the same story; word-smithing the headline to cast and spin a pro-Democrat message
and you can see this cascade effect in real time, large media outlets pushing Democrat talking points in unison:
The “Fine People” Hoax
Another glaring example is a series of corrosive and destructive lies pushed by news networks. The lies are a mix of omissions, context-less quotes or manufactured Narratives that are factual, but not truthful.
One of the most destructive and persistent is whats now called, “The Fine People Hoax” — the repeated lie by the media that Trump referred to the Nazis at Charlotesville march as “fine people”.
At a news conference following the Charlottesville march by neo Nazis (and the tragic events that followed), Trump referred to people who were there to protest the removal of statues and history (and presciently predicted that George Washington would be toppled by far leftists for being a slave owner)
He followed this remark with a clear condemnation of Nazis, and again, repeated that he was referring “fine people” to normal people who were against destruction of statues.
“And I’m not talking about the neo Nazis and White Nationalists, who should be condemned totally”
To see how the media fabricates Narratives, watch the “Fine People” speech unedited, from 1.50 to 5.00 minute mark, to see the quote in context. This is a full unedited video, which the news networks selectively edited and cut, and framed a Narrative that Trump referred to Nazis as “fine people”.
This hoax was so toxic and pervasive, many people today still believe he called Nazis, “fine people” and subsequently view anyone supportive of Trump or his policies as Nazis themselves.
The hoax is kept alive by the constant barrage of headlines like “Why wont Trump condemn White Supremacists?”, when they know the actual truth, he has many times. The Narrative must be maintained.
It is incredible to me that corporate media can program people to literally believe Trump is a Nazi, despite Trump having a Jewish daughter, making multiple peace deals for Israel, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, and carriying out a death penalty of an actual bona-fide white supremacist.
All the Narratives Fit To Print
The public trust in news media is at an all time low. Traditional news companies cannot maintain their Narratives in real time with availability of alternative news sources on social media. But even here, the synthesis of Big Tech and Big Media has produced a terrifying Orwellian chimera.
Consider the recent case of Hunter Biden’s laptop. Whatever your opinion is on this story, the very basic elements of a headline story are there. Documented evidence, witnesses, video interviews, damaging evidence of corruption by a person who is a few votes away from a Presidency. All this must be investigated and vetted (and would be on every headline if this story was damaging to Trump)
Yet what has transpired is truly frightening.
Twitter has blocked every user from sharing a link to this story, and almost every large media outlet has run damage control for Joe Biden, either ignoring the story or framing it as “Russian disinformation”. Others like NPR called it a “distraction” and “not really a story”.
You can almost see Winston Smith, typing this from some room inside Ministry of Truth:
This is why a recent study found that over 93% of reporting on Trump is negative, regardless if Trump administration produced objectively positive results, like Middle East peace deals.
Consider the way the media covered Obama and Trump presidencies,
The people writing these stories will always get things wrong.
They were colossally wrong in 2016, so much so that many should have lost their jobs for not doing actual journalism.
Reporters write stories to impress other reporters, not to report reality. They dont bother travelling the country and speaking to people, nor balancing a different point of view thats contrary to their own Democrat biases.
In the words of Nicholas Nassim Taleb, they have no “skin in the game”. They don’t get demoted or fired for being wrong. They exist inside a network, a bubble of fellow ideological travelers whose job is not journalism, but pushing out a framed political Narrative to the masses.
2. The Swamp is real
Δωροδόκει χρησίμως. (Bribe effectively.)
- Periander of Corinth, 668–584 BC
As I wrote earlier, Trump is a symptom of a broken system, not its progenitor.
Ask yourself why so many people, so many groups, so many networks, so many special interest groups would all be aligned to take down an elected President. This includes Republicans and Democrats. Why would so many people, including many who are part of the “intelligence” community be so united in a single quest to impeach and bring down this president?
Yes, Trump is a cartoonish character who is “unpresidential” by past standards, but that is not the full picture. Many presidents before him acted and said inappropriate things. Many others like Bill Clinton, have credible sexual allegations stemming decades, Bill really did “grab them by the pussy”.
Yet none have generated the kind of firestorm of media onslaught that Trump has. There is another element at play here.
Trump represents a direct threat to the calcified structure of political favor system that has embedded itself into the bloodstream of the nation.
Think about the average Senator or an intelligence director, who will spend decades in their position, accumulating favors, backdoor deals, who enrich and engorge themselves and their families, often by peddling political access for cash. With this network, they will retire into a comfortable life of lobbying and news media “analysts” who then proceed to use their new media platforms to effect the news cycle and push for coups of elected presidents (ie, John Brennan and Michael Hayden, former CIA and NSA spooks, now rabid anti-Trump CNN “analysts”)
Then there is raw monetary corruption.
The latest Biden documents show a family business of selling access to foreign buyers who can purchase influence for the right price.
The Bidens are small-time version of the Clinton Foundation, an enterprise that has lost its value after Hillary’s 2016 loss made her irrelevant.
This corruption happens on both sides of the isle. It is the reason why children of Senators and Congress people are being appointed to lucrative posts on foreign oil boards.
These politicians do not have term limits, and are free to shore up influence and favors for decades, accumulating wealth through graft or by selling access and influence to other often hostile nations.
The Swamp sees Trump as an existential threat to their system. And he is.
3. Democrats have become insane
“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
When my family moved to America in 1991, I remember my father going to vote for Bill Clinton in the 1996. We werent Democrats or Republicans, we voted based on policy and whether we liked the candidate.
Bill was likable, affable, charming, his policy was moderate, focus on middle class, jobs and crime. The Lewinsky affair was a sideshow that didn’t sway people either way.
With time however, the nation began seeing massive swings in polarization, with “progressives” seeing the largest swings,
This has been driven by many factors, but in my opinion, the most important one being Critical Race Theory (CRT) and “Woke” ideology.
I wont take time to fully go into what CRT is, but at its core, its a political theory formulated by Marxist intellectuals known as the “Frankfurt School” — with the intent of dividing and toppling a nation by injecting a race-based narrative via schools, media and culture.
This ideology ranks people not by individual trait and merit, but by skin or “identity” group.
Where as previous generation of Marxists destabilized nations by injecting a class-based division narrative, today’s crop focuses exclusively on race, skin color and “identity”, characterizing a person as a cog in a larger group. This is known as Identity Politics.
Today, the Democrats have fully embraced this ideology and push it everywhere. And what this has meant is that raw, unfiltered racism is now in the open, across academia, popular culture, social media, corporate culture, and even the military and US government.
Never in my life have I thought that people would be segregated, judged and prosecuted by their skin color.
The madness is spreading. This ideological poison is spreading everywhere, including schools where children are being brainwashed by people who are insane.
“Diversity training” has also become a very lucrative business,
This poison is spreading into every facet of life. Its setting race relations back decades because identity politics always ends in blood. It does not solve racism, it does not lift people out of poverty, it does not bring people together.
Its a completely negative movement that is compounding hate and division by using race as an all-encompassing cudgel to dispense “justice”. The Left has defaced MLK’s dream, and is now pushing for open racism and segregation in name of stopping racism. Its dystopian.
Antifa & BLM
The support and defense of Marxist fascist groups like Antifa by Democrats is another sign of the deepening madness and radicalization of the party.
Antifa was a Communist creation to fight street warfare against Nazi gangs. Normally this would be a noble goal, yet Antifa fights for Communism and Marxism, the most deadly and fascistic ideology of the 20th century. This movement and its leaders has murdered millions in 20th century and has destabilized and depleted dozens of nations, by last count Venezuela, which used to be the wealthiest and stablest nation in South America, now — a poverty-stricken hellscape of suffering and shortages.
The continual spiral of anti-police violence was fueled by Democrat and news media support for BLM protests even during the pandemic. The Narrative projected to the public is that America is a racist nation, that cops routinely kill blacks because of racism and that riots and even pogroms and violence is justified in the name of “progress”.
The only problem is that the Narrative is a lie. Its based on a series of lies, 1st being that cops are killing more blacks than other racial groups, or that these shootings are driven by racism, and not other factors.
This is a complex topic that I should really write about in a full article, but the extent to which Democrats have excused and encouraged rioting, violence and looting in name of “social justice” makes it impossible to give them political power.
Another absolutely vile aspect of this is how news media constantly frames stories based on skin color of offender and victim. Its astounding.
When a victim of a story is black, the races of both offender and victim are mentioned upfront, they even capitalize B in “black” while making sure to lowercase W in white. When the story is reverse, the offender is black, the victim is white, races are erased, and the offender is not even mentioned. This happens all the time, its not a one-off editorial fluke.
And finally, the political extremism is becoming worse than ever. Both sides are becoming more extreme in rhetoric, which is leading to a cold Civil War.
Yet even here, Democrat leaders and media have taken things to the very extreme. I now see things like this routinely:
Four years of Orange Man Bad derangement by media and Hollywood have produced a climate where political murder is becoming socially acceptable. People genuinely believe Trump is a fascist white supremacist dictator who is controlled by Putin. This is how far down the rabbit hole we are.
Republicans were rightly criticized for idiotic Obama birther theories and other anti-Obama narratives. The same self-checking is not happening on the Left and its driving people to extremism.
4. The “Experts” are wrong
Finally, I will be voting Trump because the phalanx of Experts and “Adults in the Room” were wrong, disastrously.
The Nobel prize laureates, the think tankers, accredited “journalists”, lifelong bureaucrats, State Dept insiders, big time economists — all predicted a doomsday of nuclear war, global destabilization, sunk economy and market and bunch of other nonsense that never happened.
Trump is the first president in my lifetime that has actually kept his campaign promises.
In 4 years, there were no new foreign wars, and the never ending Afghan war is being brought to an end, despite the protest of generals who dont have a defined battle nor victory plan.
Trump promised to move Israeli embassy to Jerusalem, and unlike every other president before him, actually did this, despite the whining of media “experts” that this would cause regional instability.
He followed this up by tearing apart a disastrous Iran treaty that strengthened Iranian regime financially, and then by negotiating 3 (and counting) Arab-Israeli peace deals.
Think about this.
Never in my lifetime did I think there would be 1 single Arab Israeli peace deal, let alone 3. The regional mindset is shifting. And Trump did this after killing Iran’s head general, Sulemani (that the “experts” decried would lead to war and chaos). The media offcourse tried to minimize and ignore these massive events, but the results speak for themselves. Trump will win a Nobel peace prize for this, and he will deserve it a lot more than the empty Nobel that Obama received for doing nothing.
The Experts it seems are not only useless, they are worse than useless.
Take a look at career bureaucrat John Kerry predicting there was zero chance of Arab Israeli peace deals under Trump. This man ran our foreign policy under Obama administration. Disastrously.
This class of mandarins is what Nicholas Nassim Taleb refers to as IYI, the Intellectual Yet Idiot.
What we have been seeing worldwide, from India to the UK to the US, is the rebellion against the inner circle of no-skin-in-the-game policymaking “clerks” and journalists-insiders, that class of paternalistic semi-intellectual experts with some Ivy league, Oxford-Cambridge, or similar label-driven education who are telling the rest of us 1) what to do, 2) what to eat, 3) how to speak, 4) how to think… and 5) who to vote for.
…
More socially, the IYI subscribes to The New Yorker. He never curses on twitter. He speaks of “equality of races” and “economic equality” but never went out drinking with a minority cab driver (again, no real skin in the game as the concept is foreign to the IYI). Those in the U.K. have been taken for a ride by Tony Blair. The modern IYI has attended more than one TEDx talks in person or watched more than two TED talks on Youtube. Not only will he vote for Hillary Monsanto-Malmaison because she seems electable and some such circular reasoning, but holds that anyone who doesn’t do so is mentally ill.…
Typically, the IYI get the first order logic right, but not second-order (or higher) effects making him totally incompetent in complex domains. In the comfort of his suburban home with 2-car garage, he advocated the “removal” of Gadhafi because he was “a dictator”, not realizing that removals have consequences (recall that he has no skin in the game and doesn’t pay for results).
N. N. Taleb — Skin in the Game
This pattern of predictions of doom and gloom has been repeated constantly during last 4 years and they have been consistently proven wrong.
Recall the predictions of
- North Korea nuclear war
- Destruction of the economy and stock market
- Net Neutrality repeal would slow the internet
- killing Sulemani would start war with Iran
- withdrawing troops from Syria would lead to Kurdish genocide
- Arabs will never make peace deals
- moving Israel embassy to Jerusalem would make peace impossible
- bringing back manufacturing jobs would take a “magic wand” (Obama)
- asking NATO members for more funding would destroy alliances
None of these talking points came true, in fact the opposite.
In case of Net Neutrality, internet speeds became faster.
There is a lot more I wanted to write about, including Covid, BLM movement and police shootings, but I wanted to focus on these 4 main points.
There is no question Trump is a flawed character and has some very negative traits. Yet the mistake people are making is absorbing all the noise, and not picking up the signal. They focus on Trump’s bathroom tweets, and not the accomplishments or policy, which is directionally correct.
More than anything, the reason why Trump is in power is to be a bull in a china shop. He was elected to destroy the DC swamp, the power networks, the layers of corruption, the unelected “intelligence community” apparatchiks, the layers of graft and kickbacks and the selling of political influence. He is fighting against a massive and powerful machine that is throwing everything it has at him to stay alive.
I hope he succeeds.
