Tag Archives: Johnson

Politics 2020, Trump

And on the other hand…

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Prudence has worked for 2 weeks on a response to the Democratic convention.  It is a topic that has piled up words faster and deeper than any other… and it’s not finished.  Whether it’s ever posted is a question.  Who on Earth would read it?

So, a lighter analysis of 2020 politics is in order.  Might be fun.

There are two distinct sets of philosophies vying for power in this presidential year – no news, there.  Summed up, one is generally in favor of our constitutional system of distributed power, installed as governance for the first time in 1789; one is in thrall to ultimate government control over the economy and not just the economy, but control over individuals: how they live, what medicines they are permitted – or MUST – take and how they educate their children and about what.

One recognizes that America succeeds within a culture that is worth strengthening and imparting to succeeding generations; one appears anxious to displace American culture and replace it with race-based socialism.  What has this to do with each of us?  Whichever philosophy wins the 2020 election is going to have a direct impact on the lives of many – not all, but many Americans.  It will also affect the lives of millions of people in other countries.  There aren’t many election decisions when that is true.  Why will it be so?

In the event that Trump is re-elected, and we do, historically, tend to re-elect presidents if they have not failed economically, primarily, but not always… in that event there are significant risks to both our culture and our economy – affecting most of us, but not all.  The forces arrayed to stop Trump in his first term will not have given up.  If anything they will be more sharply aimed with greater destructive intent.  It is sad but Prudent to consider the possibility that he will be assassinated.  His determination to undo the deep state and eventually the economic oligarchy has not abated, and will be sharpened, as well.

The upset to our culture will be significant, much like the Kennedy assassination that began a long process of distrust of government and the decades of sex, drugs… and rock-and-roll, but I repeat myself.  It opened the door to Johnson, the Great Society’s 60-year erosion of our family-centered culture, and led to the Viet-Nam War and to Richard Nixon, whose removal from power changed politics – and the media – forever.  It is impossible to predict the upheavals that would follow an assassination, but none would be positive from a Prudent point of view.

Trump’s re-election is perceived as dangerous by many, and will expose him and his family to danger.

If, on the other hand, Biden is dragged across the finish line in November, there are significant risks to both our culture and our economy – affecting most of us, but not all.  The radically left forces that have grasped the philosophy of the Democrat Party will be vindicated even as they celebrate their relatively cheap victory over tradition and constitutionalism.  Elements of the “Green new Deal” will be proposed for legislation almost immediately, as will proposals on how to pay “reparations” to some amorphous group of non-whites.  Green energy, so called, will be sold as an infrastructure plan; money in the defense budget will be diverted to pay for part of it.  “Climate change is an existential threat.”

Sexual aberration will be further codified and given taxpayer support for any treatments or operations needed.  Laws defending sexual identities and how everyone must accommodate them, will become more strict and widely enforced.  Public safety and policing in general will be softened, and sanctuary status allowed where municipally claimed or, God forbid, state-claimed.  The nullification of federal laws will become rampant.  It is hard to predict whether rioting and anti-capitalist / anti-white destruction of urban centers will continue.  Those who have permitted it in 2020 will also feel vindicated and their anti-Americanism rewarded; it’s possible.

Should Trump win and survive, there are positive changes he will promulgate, and among these are immigration enforcement and the eradication of “sanctuary” status everywhere.  There is the distinct possibility that riots will continue, but Trump will feel vindicated by re-election, and will more readily impose states of emergency or even martial law to stop them firmly.  This is a danger to everyone should martial law become acceptable for solving policing problems.  At first it will be welcomed, but it is at least extra-legal and a terrible precedent and habit.

The reactions of China, North Korea, Iran and, interestingly, Pakistan to the re-election of Trump, are hard to pin down.  Xi Jinping of China hates Trump for constantly calling out China over the Covid virus release, if not for several other reasons.  His desire is to embarrass Trump so as to put him in his place, as it were.  Xi naturally perceives his China as destined for global hegemony and sees Trump as his biggest impediment.  Trump must lose face for the world to recognize China’s ascendance.  This could take the form of North Korean provocation to near hot war with China’s declaration of support for North Korea including full military force, forcing humiliation on South Korea and the United States.  Many alliances will be strained or broken if Trump backs down or appears to.

Pakistan, particularly with the conclusion of a much anticipated “peace” treaty with the Taliban in Afghanistan, may be encouraged, again by China, to resume clandestine and, perhaps, direct operations against India.  All 3 states are nuclear armed.  China has had hot incidents with India, most recently in 2020.  It could serve China’s interests to see India tied down in the mountains of Kashmir, and to see the United States take India’s side.  This would provide opportunities for China to act aggressively elsewhere.  Whereas Trump has moved from treaty to agreement with abandon, re-making trade and other agreements to benefit the United States as he wished, in his second term he will be severely tested by China.

What would world leaders do with Biden in the White House?  He has shown himself willing to bribe and take bribes from other countries, as has his “buddy,” Obama.  He has supported softening relations with China for decades.  Would he suddenly be tough?  Doubtful.  He has shown himself unwilling to denounce “Black Lives Matter” or the rioting in several cities.  He appears to like top-down directives from government and would lock down the economy a second time if “experts” told him to.  The only bold moves he has described for his administration have concerned climate change and the green new deal… plus raising taxes.  For middle-class Americans, the Biden agenda, distorted by socialists, is unpleasant to contemplate.

As George Soros, evil globalist, recently stated, “The 2020 election will affect the entire world.”  Be Prudent when you vote.

Governance, Politics 2017

Tipping Point

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We are, evidently, at a tipping point for the American experiment. For myriad reasons, we who have been so blessedly comfortable (borrowed comfort, but still…) and never devastated by conquerors, bombing raids or economic destruction, have, for fifty years, been inviting unusual immigration in huge numbers, many of which immigrants are our cultural, if not actual, enemies. Rational nations don’t do this, but the U. S. and Europe have convinced themselves that there is some “rightness” to doing so.

Some are already howling about xenophobia and worse. How did we get here?

The larger source of hatred for the United States – domestically – is decades of dishonesty in government. Sad, that. It took time to convert basic graft into nationwide political power. What is required to move large numbers of voters is some sort of “national” crisis or threat… like war and threats of war. World War I, for example, was played slickly by Woodrow Wilson, a visionary Progressive who was tired of democratic populism and nationalism. First he declared his opposition to getting involved in “Europe’s war,” but once re-elected, sent General Pershing and the “American Expeditionary Force” to France with the message: “Lafayette, we are here,” hearkening back to France’s vital role in defeating the British in the American Revolution.

Following hostilities, Wilson strove to create a “League of Nations,” a large first step toward one-world government. America wasn’t quite as devolutionary as Wilson was and Congress never accepted the treaty of membership. But the trail was blazed, while the largest effects of the war to end all wars were festering, having ensconced Communism in Russia and Fascism in Italy and Germany. Not long before the Great War, the U. S. had adopted the 16th Amendment establishing the Income Tax, and passed a law establishing the misleadingly named Federal Reserve Bank. They, together, installed another form of fascism, perhaps not recognized even now, that has inexorably destroyed American independence financially… freedom-wise, too.

But that was a slow method; another crisis was needed and the Great Depression served perfectly. Suddenly big government was not a handy, righteous expense burden. Now it was salvation, a source of food, employment and confidence… dare we say, hope? This was new: government had a role in growing numbers of people’s lives, a role many could not live without. Another trail was blazed.

After WW-II, the U. S. became the world’s policeman, first keeping Communism contained (Truman Doctrine) and the Korean War, then establishing a C.I.A. that acted in place of stated foreign policy, toppling governments and embroiling us in wars and skirmishes around the globe.

Under Johnson we took two trails: the spirit-sapping Viet-Nam War and the Great Society – both expensive, both yet to be fully paid-for. The American fifth column, led by the New York times, Washington Post and others, flexed its muscles and destroyed President Nixon and the results of a legal and voluminously overwhelming rejection of progressivism in the 1972 elections: 49 states to 1. Nixon was no more or less perfect than most of his predecessors, but he was a threat to what liberals believe was the inexorable direction of history: one-world elite paternalism and the equality of mass mediocrity.

That subsequent presidents have routinely committed actual crimes against the Constitution far greater than what Nixon was accused of, has no meaning on their planet. Every domestic condition has become a “crisis” or a “war,” and worthy of planetary indebtedness. The U. S., for a multitude of reasons, has had the power to increase DEBT without practical limit, since Nixon closed the “gold window.” And, so we have, to the point that we can barely afford to defend ourselves or to prevent riots in the streets if anything threatens welfare. Our highly-paid congressional “leaders” got us here – let’s re-elect them!

Every congressional move is now, by fifth column caterwauls, a threat to life as we know it. Every presidential tweet is simply proof of that threat. Americans voted clearly, in their 50 state elections, to not continue fatuous liberal government, but as in 1974, the fifth column is gearing up to reverse that shift: Trump is an highly obvious threat to a “progressive” future. Progressive jurists and bureaucrats – everywhere – are doing their damnedest to help bring the elected government down. Our Fifth Column is happy to help.

Could tip either way.

Economics, Governance

Borrowing for Welfare?

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Nearly every day there is some article or letter in the newspapers that decries the fact that the United States’ “defense” budget is larger than the next 7 nations’ defense budgets, combined. Moreover, that “bloated” defense budget could be reduced significantly so that the “savings” can be used to feed the hungry and house the homeless right here in our own country, for Heaven’s sake.

None of these heartfelt concerns is based on the right perspectives or even the right data. That’s the trouble with statistics.

For example, 65% of fiscal 2017’s Federal Budget is committed to entitlements, pensions, health-care and education. From a Constitutional standpoint, most of that 65% is not the business of the federal government, whereas defense, now 16% of the budget, categorically IS.

Years ago welfare was strictly local… and recipients were a little ashamed of having to ask for it. Many, your grandparents or great-grandparents, and many of your parents, would do the most menial jobs to AVOID being on welfare and to get “off” of it as quickly as possible. Children learned this reaction and revulsion. Welfare was a handout when you needed it, as temporarily as possible.

Soon after World War II, though, states took over welfare from cities and towns, mainly under pressure from cities, which were buckling under the northward migration of blacks from the deep south. Almost immediately, states began prevailing on Washington to take the burden off of their backs. After all, weren’t the new Northerners crossing state lines because of “national” conditions in the economy?

After 13 years of the “New Deal,” we could have seen where this was going. There were votes to be gained in the impassioned cries for better – federal – welfare: codified compassion.

Truman blazed integration trails, Eisenhower enforced anti-segregation in schools, Kennedy hemmed and hawed but crawled toward full integration and voting rights legislation, Johnson, riding a wave of sympathy for his murdered predecessor, got civil rights legislation done, and then carried on further to create some wildly expensive – reckless – new “rights”: federal, unaccountable, politically charged, easily defrauded, vote-attractive welfare.

Smartly, though, Johnson couched the new largesse to which people were now entitled – not ashamed-of, in wonderfully sympathetic terms and names. Names like: Aid for Dependent Children (AFDC), Women, Infants and Children (WIC), Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP, ie. Food Stamps), Pell Grants (free college), Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), Rental Voucher Program (Section 8), Federal National Mortgage Administration (“Fannie-Mae”), Child Nutrition (School lunch, breakfast, dinner!), Head Start (very, very expensive day-care), Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), and, the granddaddy of them all: MEDICAID.

Current spending on these and more than ONE HUNDRED other federal “anti-poverty” programs (who could be PRO-poverty?) is nearly 900 BILLION dollars. That means that our virtually bankrupt federal government is BORROWING money to provide welfare.
Well, say unionized federal social workers and sympathizers, our defense budget is larger than the next 7 nations’ combined, let’s cut that, first!

Except… it isn’t.

When China, for example, builds sand islands in the South China Sea, and puts military airstrips and naval “bases” on them, and claims 200-mile territorial waters around these extensions of “China,” it’s not a military expenditure, but something else. For example.

When Russia directs a manufacturer to produce engines for new IRBM’s and ICBM’s, they aren’t military expenditures – they’re developments in space exploration. All peaceful. And subterranean military bunkers for both armament manufacture and survival are certainly construction projects… and expensive, but military? Not so you’d know.

And no other country carries the degree of personnel costs and benefits that are packed into the “Defense” budget of the United States. Simple ledger numbers are not comparable with other nations’ budgets.

Actually, under the Obama administration, defense has been cut a few times. One of his first steps was to fold tens of billions of retirement costs into the Defense Department budget. Logically, the cost of military retirements should not be measured as part of the Pentagon’s war-fighting / force-projection budget, should they? They certainly don’t threaten anyone but us.

Next, Obama forced the Congress into the “sequester” process, of which a large fraction of restrictions were imposed on defense – to be “fair.” Big cuts.

Finally, he walked out of Iraq, abandoning the very bloody, very costly gains we had made there. We are now paying to regain what had been won. His frothy, fraudulent Iran anti-nuclear “agreement” (cunningly not a treaty), will cost us many billions going forward – billions that need not have been spent had there been a different foreign policy.

The new president sees significant weakness that exists now or very shortly will, as normal refitting and reconditioning of hardware takes larger and larger fractions of critical military systems out of service. Warplanes are becoming antiques as our most experienced pilots are retiring; it is our phenomenal pilots who keep last-generation fighters useful in their 30th year of service. Now our latest fighter platform is too expensive to buy enough of!

If anyone thinks that McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried chicken are going to convince our potential enemies to not work – and fight – to destroy us, it is time for him or her to wake up. Maybe unrestricted immigration will make everybody love one another, but so far it is weakening the “West” and confusing our Constitutional rights with national suicide.