When I hear the banter of the latest campaigns blaring across news channels, I shake my head and chuckle at the superficiality of both sides (not “on”, but “of” for such superficiality extends beyond the attacks to the aspirants themselves). Hillary Clinton and her attacks on everybody coincide with such shallow non-answers to the real issues impacting our lives it’s nauseating. I deem it appropriate to bring J.D. Salinger’s words into the discussion at this point. He wrote in Seymour- An Introduction, “I think on the whole, Sofya Tolstoy was a remarkably unbrilliant woman and my atoms, moreover, are arranged to make me constitutionally inclined to believe that where there’s smoke there’s usually strawberry Jell-O, seldom fire.”
Hillary accuses Donald Trump of being “racist, sexist, etc. etc., ad nauseam”. However, Donald Trump’s statements, when analyzed for what they are, are certainly no more racist than her husband appointing Sen. Robert Byrd, a former grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan who never went through the formal processes to leave the Klan, President Pro Tempre of the Senate in the first two years of his administration. That made a former grand dragon of the KKK the fourth most powerful man in American politics in terms of being in line to the Presidency by succession in the event of the untimely deaths of the President, Vice President and Speaker of the House. Trump’s words do not by any means make him sound “presidential”, but neither does anyone else’s. And, Obama has proven that “trying to sound presidential” doesn’t make you “presidential” or even have an ounce of leadership qualities to serve effectively as president. When it comes to sexism: better tread lightly on that one, Hillary or the Jeffery Epstein scandal, not to mention Bill’s will come back to haunt you!
Trump talks about a wall that Mexico is going to build, but ignores the fact that the causes of illegal immigration go much further than border security. The ineptitude of foreign aid programs and 100,000 dead bodies piling up in casualties from drug wars south of the Rio Grande have created such a massive state of hysteria people from Mexico will try to get to the United States by any means possible. Foreign aid, with rare exceptions, has not successfully taught people how to fish to feed them for a lifetime as it claims. In fact much of it has de-evolved into nothing more than false avatars of development aimed primarily at providing rent security for the employees of NGOs and government development agencies around the world. They paint their proposals with rhetorical masturbation to provide the image of success but with completely false metrics to prove it, much less result in enhancement of smallholder farmer net income, the only way to achieve food security.
The demand for cocaine and marijuana in the United States to get high, not just treat medical problems pays the bills for organized crime czars who murder and kill to satisfy their insatiable lust for power and sadism. They don’t become less sadistic simply because one legalizes their commodity. Trump seems to forget that Cubans came in by the boatloads (i.e. by sea) even before Castro cleaned out his jails. What’s to stop illegal aliens (yes, I said aliens, the term was used to describe illegal residents in a country before Jules Verne put pen to paper writing science fiction), from lashing inner-tubes together and sailing from the Baja Peninsula into the California coastline at night? Is Donald going to build a fence that extends clear up to Juneau, Alaska, too, and get Mexico, perhaps even the Canadians to pay for it as well? Doubtful.
However, Hilary’s plan to sue gun manufacturers for the irresponsible use of guns by patrons who buy them from independent retailers is even more absurd. AK-47s and other Kalashnikovs, the most popular assault weapons used in the world (including here in America), are made by a factory in Russia. When she hit the re-set button on U.S./Russian relations she set off a bomb which blew her and Obama out of the water. They haven’t been able to negotiate anything with Putin successfully in the last seven years. Add to that, the Podesta brothers (one of whom runs her campaign) who were on the payroll of SberBank, a corrupt bank owned and controlled largely by Putin, which controls 30% of the assets in Russia and the prospect of Hillary suing and collecting from Kalashnikov is sheer fantasy. Salinger would characterize Hillary in the same fashion he did Sofya Tolstoy, as “a remarkably unbrilliant woman”.
The real issues that will impact our lives are being dodged by those seeking the nation’s highest office. Both parties are blowing so much smoke you’d think that the Vatican moved to America and elected a new pope! Further, it is safe to say, that once you fan away the smoke, in most cases you’re liable to walk right into a huge bowl of strawberry Jell-O rather than fire!
