Friday, July 29, 2016

So You Really Think That Trump Is Worse Than Hillary?



So you’ve looked at all the variables, and you wish things were different, but now you’re scared out of your wits by the thought that Trump is going to be your next president. You’ve accepted that Hillary is your nominee, and even though she wasn’t your first choice and you’re not exactly dismissing her more sketchy history, it’s become a bitter pill you’re willing to swallow. 

Because at least she’s not Trump.

This will surely be the number one motivator for many people voting for Hillary in November. But is it enough? Do her misdeeds get a pass because the other guy is much, much worse?

I sure hope not.

Being afraid is what makes people take leaps in logic that don’t really add up. It is funny to see the DNC using the demagoguery of Trump to scare people into voting Hillary, apparently unaware that this is also demagoguery. It makes no sense, but it is Trump that is accused of using emotion to create “political facts.” 

In reality, everyone uses fear when it’s advantageous to do so. This is what the Hillary camp is doing, but you cannot give in.

It should go without saying that I’m no Trump supporter, but many will nonetheless conclude from this article that I am. I assure you I am not. I promise you I am not. 

By all the gods, the old and the new, I am not. 

Yet those with an axe to grind are free to conclude this, as they surely will, but I am on the side of facts and reason. A fair assessment of the facts, I believe, will reveal that Trump is probably not as bad as you thought, and that Hillary is probably worse than you thought. It’s somewhere in the middle, actually. 

Trump is a statist, and that is why I don’t like him. He thinks that more government — a Trump-led government, in particular — is the answer to all our problems. Single-payer, trade tariffs, walls, you name it. There’s a government solution to everything. 

But that is where my criticism of Trump ends. I actually don’t care about his rhetoric. I don’t care that people think he’s a bully because, quite frankly, some of his more inappropriate attacks were actually made in response to attacks on him. Not all, of course, but some. He’s a guy that stopped taking things lying down a long time ago, and it’s why he’s winning. 

Another reason I don’t care is that, if he really was a bully behind the scenes as well as on screen, he would get nothing done. But clearly, he’s a guy that can get things done. If his critics are being honest with themselves, they will surely admit that this is the source of their fear: he’s really effective. 

Those slighting him for his allegedly poor business acumen have no idea what they are talking about. Attack him on anything else and you have an argument. But the guy whose name is literally a multimillion-dollar brand isn’t going to be miffed a bit by your assessment of his character or record. 

There are so many good ways to attack Trump, but this gets drowned out by the voices of desperation that just want something to stick to this guy. Anything. So was it any surprise to find that the DNC was secretly participating in anti-Trump protests? This is so sketchy it borders on Watergate, but the anti-Trumpers don’t see it that way. They will never see it that way.

Hillary’s supporters likely find this sort of thing justified, but it’s childish. It’s the political equivalent of “he started it!” In fairness, many of those protesters were Bernie people, but you don’t exactly see Hillary out there condemning it the way Trump is expected to do whenever his supporters cross the line. But I’m digressing.

Are there any positives to Trump? Of course there are. 

Despite his jingoistic approach to Muslims coming to and living in this country, he’s actually promoting a non-interventionist approach to foreign policy. Aside from taking out ISIS, he thinks it’s foolish that we’re spending so much time and money overseas when we have crumbling infrastructure here at home.

He made enemies with all the same people that Hillary considers friends. He makes a mockery out of a media that has been consistently shown to misrepresent the interests of Americans, and helps them dig their own graves time and again. 

Everyone freaked out when he pulled the press passes for The Washington Post because he didn’t trust them, and imagine my amusement when it was revealed through Wikileaks that the DNC was colluding with reporters from the Washington Post, among others. The wooziness your feeling is actually Trump getting the moral high ground. 

He’s also known for random acts of kindness and generosity that you never ever hear about, even though it seemed like there was a new one being revealed every day throughout his campaign. If you don’t know about any of those things, it’s probably because you never bothered to look. 

Again, I’m not saying Trump is Mr. Cleaver. But if you’ve ever wondered just why he’s so damn popular, you really should ask yourself if there’s something else to it. If you really think that only bigots support Trump, then you have not been paying attention at all. 

Dana White supports Trump because he supported MMA at a time when no other major venue owners did, and when someone goes against the grain to help you do what you love to do, you’re bound to become a fan. And I can think of worse reasons to endorse someone.

For all this talk of Hillary’s coalition-building skills, don’t Trump’s coalition-building skills warrant an equally fair assessment?

If you haven’t pulled your hair out yet, and are still reading this, you’re undoubtedly thinking: “Stop defending him! Can’t you see that he’s the next Hitler?”

No, I really can’t.

Trump is not the person this country needs to be president, but I can reject him without going into hysterics. 

But let’s assume you’re assessment of Trump is accurate. He wants to close down the borders, round up all the brown people for processing, give power to white supremacists to institute more racist policies, and so on. Suppose it’s all true. 

What does it say that all the death and destruction we fear he would do here is suddenly ok when we do it on the other side of the planet in a country that most Americans couldn’t find on a map?

I will be accused of failing to check my white privilege if I don’t recognize the threat to my dark-skinned brothers and sisters and jump on the “Trump is Hitler” bandwagon, but every excuse will be made for the utter destruction that Hillary has already wrought upon millions of dark-skinned people in the middle east. 

It’s much worse than you probably think.

The State Department, under her watch, was responsible for arming child soldiers in Sudan.


And this wasn’t some Fast and Furious style accident, where our guns wound up in the hands of child soldiers. I mean, Hillary’s State Department thought it was a good idea to arm child soldiers in Sudan in an effort to end the arming of child soldiers in Sudan. Oh, and it had to actually break U.S. laws to do it, one of them being the aptly named Child Soldier Prevention Act. 

Hillary’s stint as Secretary of State left a trail of bodies everywhere she went. 

Not only does she seem to love the Bush Doctrine, and believes that nationbuilding and regime change are things we should be involved in, she’s not above threatening the life and family of dictators if it serves her purpose. If that sounds familiar, it’s because Trump advocated doing the same thing to the family of terrorists, and everyone flipped out. 

So why flip out when Trump advocates for these horrible policies, but not Hillary?

Her foreign policy record is a trail of tears and bloodshed, so what exactly is supposed to comfort me about a Hillary presidency? I suppose it’s the fact that all that terror and destruction is not going to happen in my backyard, so I don’t have to care. 

If you are hawkish on foreign policy, then fine. But if you call yourself an anti-war liberal, how in the world can you justify voting for this person?

Some will say I’m being unfair. “You don’t know how hard it is being a woman in politics.” 

That’s true. I certainly don’t know how hard it is to be a woman in politics, or in business, or in school, or in any other arena. But I also didn’t see Fiorina using that excuse when she was attacked. 

When Trump mocked her appearance, Fiorina handled it with class and just moved on. She’s given speeches about how she’s been referred to as a bimbo in actual board meetings, but it was more as a matter of fact and less as an emotional appeal to victimhood. 

Fiorina is not a robot, she’s a woman. She shows that you can acknowledge the awful crap that women have to deal with on a daily basis while choosing not to be a victim. Most conservative women in politics talk this way, actually.

So why does there seem to be a massive campaign underway to paint Hillary Clinton as a victim

It’s a distraction. 

She’s not making enemies because she’s a woman. She’s making enemies because people see her for who she is, and yet she still gets away with it. 

Others have researched the Clintons in depth, and if you are not convinced that she’s corrupt, my article is not going to convince you either. But you owe it to yourself one way or another to do the necessary digging. 

Discover the origin of her investment career with a bank that was being investigated for corruption. See how she uses the Clinton Foundation to accept bribes from special interests, both here and abroad, and how she reneged on her promise to be transparent about donations to the Foundation — a promise that played a pivotal role in determining whether or not she would be chosen as Secretary of State. 

It’s all there, you just have to open your eyes. For a quick overview, read this. For something a little more in depth, Stefan Molyneaux goes through the corrupt history of the Clintons in this video, and goes into detail on the email scandal in this video. I highly recommend watching both. 

Finally, if I’m being completely fair to Hillary supporters, I have to acknowledge at least one genuinely understandable reason why they support her. It is part of a picture of Hillary that those closest to her say is more accurate, which accentuates her better qualities.

Suppose in this alternate reality occupied by close friends of Hillary that, in fact, she is a decent, reasonable woman that really has been the target of unrelenting political shenanigans, and that all of this effort to smear her and her family has been going on for far too long. She is nothing more than a committed, smart, and genuinely considerate person. 

That’s what those close to her are saying. They’re saying that she actually listens to their concerns, and talks to people like they matter as human beings. 

Having never met Hillary Clinton, I suppose I just have to take their word for it. But where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and the evidence does not seem to support this characterization of her. 

She’s enjoyed support from the black community, for example, but there is evidence to suggest that this support is not deserved, and could deteriorate before November. 

In light of the DNC email leak, Hillary’s campaign has released one press release blaming the Russians and Trump for meddling, and another press release thanking Debbie Wasserman Shultz for her service to the DNC and welcoming her to the campaign. 

She has not, to my knowledge, actually condemned any of the things said in the emails, and does not even seem to care all that much about it. 

This would seem odd if she was the woman her fans claim her to be. Wouldn’t she want to address the bigotry and skullduggery in her own party’s ranks, if only to say that this is not what the Democrat Party stands for? Couldn’t she create that unity by condemning the lack of impartiality and downright shadiness of party leadership? 

It would certainly go far to show that she’s not the crook others say she is. I think it’s clear to anyone watching this play out that Hillary merely means to ride it out, as she always does. She has fixers to handle this sort of thing. They tell her not to address it, so she doesn’t address it. 

I suppose, in that sense, she does listen. 

There is another sort of person that is also really good at listening: sociopaths. A sociopath will hang on your every word, because knowledge is power. If you understand what people want, then it’s easier to manipulate them. So in this sense, I agree with her fans. 

She needs to listen to you, so that she can tell you what you want to hear. This is why Hillary is just as bad as Trump. She can manipulate people to get what she wants. She can escape prosecution in the courts, and she can cover her tracks. 

Only she can put lives at risk and get away with it. 

She’s toppled governments and ruined lives. She lectures gun-owners about guns winding up in the hands of kids, after actually helping to put guns in the hands of kids.

Unlike Trump, she has actually had the chance to use the strong arm of government to enact policies that have devastated communities a world away. And she did it because she’s effective at getting what she wants. 

Just like Trump.