Lemmings

And so it begins.

The panicky scramble of the nice, well-intentioned, and feckless to get on board the Clinton bandwagon in time to…

To what, exactly?

Assuming you’re one of those people, please tell me.  To what end?

To save the country from Donald Trump?

Trump is disagreeable, absolutely.  Depending on your tastes, he might be the most disagreeable manifestation of political discontent since George Wallace.  Or Ross Perot.  Or Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura.

But he’s not a danger to the Constitution.  Really.

The people who support him are.  Those angry, frightened, and largely under-educated voters – the Tea Party types – are the Trump people.  And they are scary.

And, whether Trump wins or loses in November, those people aren’t going away.  They’re our fellow citizens – the products of the system of public education for which both major parties are equally responsible.

The products of the pathetic level of public discourse made possible because our public media is controlled by huge, profit-driven corporations which understand that in-depth analysis and outside-the-box thinking don’t sell. 

Which includes NPR, since it started accepting big money from the likes of the Koch brothers.

But back to my point:  Donald Trump is a symptom, not the disease.

And if you’re going to choose a manifestation, thank your lucky stars it’s Trump – a narcissistic windbag who lacks the experience, connections, and people skills to find and create the enormous team he would need to manage the White House – much less the country. 

Ted Cruz would have been infinitely worse, because he understand how government works.

As for Trump, the man isn’t stupid.  Far from it.  But he lacks the ability to listen to others long enough to fill a Cabinet and all the other posts he’ll need to run the country.

And he lacks the intellectual subtlety to absorb and weigh all the considerations necessary to make dozens of decisions on a daily basis.

So he’ll have no choice but to staff it out.  Someone else will do the real job.  Someone will be his Chief of Staff – of his Chief of Staff’s assistant – and that Someone will decide whom to hire, and what decisions reach the President’s desk, and what information to give him about the issues about which he’s allowed to make a decision. 

That’s what happened when Reagan started going dotty.

That’s probably what happened, most of the time, when the irreflective George W. Bush thought he was being guided by divine revelation – and it turned out to be coming from Dick Cheney.  [Insert wry comment here.]

The bottom-line, here, is that a President Trump would likely be, from Day One, the prisoner of a staff selected by someone else.

And, sooner or later, that staff will likely consist of the same people who would be running the White House for any conservative, Republican President.

And that massive, West Wing and departmental bureaucracy – which has been proof against all but the most focused, determined modern Presidents – will simply outlast a lazy-minded blowhard like the Donald.

I confess, I have some trepidation about Trump having his finger on “the button”, but Nixon was talking to himself in his final months, and Reagan should have ended his second term in a memory-care ward.  Owning the power to destroy humanity comes with certain risks.  

Perhaps four years of a Trump presidency will persuade us it’s time to do something about that.

None of this, by the way, is to make the case for Donald Trump.  It’s absurd to think of that man sitting in the seat of Washington, Lincoln and the Roosevelts.

But then, it’s equally revolting to think of Hillary Clinton and her “first gentleman” re-occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Why?

I’m not going to waste anyone’s time with the usual litany of accusations.  I don’t believe most of them – though, to be perfectly honest, I rather suspect Secretary Clinton was selling influence to foreign countries, through the Clinton Foundation, while she was supposed to be working for us as at the State Department.

And if she wasn’t, she certainly made it look that way, which is nearly as bad.

My fundamental problem with Hillary is that she represents – in the clearest possible sense – the ways in which our entire political system, as represented by the two major parties – is corrupt to the core. 

I disagreed with Bernie Sanders on about 80% of his specific policies, but I supported him.  Bernie was right on the big question.  We need to cleanse the Augean stables.  And that’s going to take – not just a Hercules – but a movement.

Almost certainly, at some point, that movement will have to become at least one new party.

Probably three:  the Greens, the Libertarians, and an entity representing what used to be the center-left, or “civic” wing, of the Republican Party.

I’ll get around to that in future essays. 

For now, let me just say that if you are/were for Bernie over related issues such as campaign finance reform, corruption in government, Wall Street irresponsibility, and global climate change, etc., then there is absolutely no reason you should be voting for Hillary Clinton, who is basically the poster child for all the things Bernie ran against.

And saying, “she’s right on the other issues” is just silly.  Until these problems are addressed, and solved, there are no other issues. 

Supporting Hillary, instead of voting third-party or just not voting at all, is – in a very real sense – giving your personal approval to the status quo.  You can prattle away about “maturity” or “prudence” or “acting like a grown-up”, but that’s just an excuse.

The folks who won’t sell out and join Hillary aren’t acting like children, or throwing a tantrum.  They’re saying that no one election matters as much as the long term, and that perpetually surrendering – by voting for “the lesser of two evils” – only postpones the day when we begin doing something about that long term.

Put simply, voting for the “lesser of two evils” is still voting for an evil. 

And, if you get into bed with Hillary – after fighting her for so long – that just what you’ll be doing.