The American Mind

Sanders, Trump and the politics of distraction

William Hillman

(5/2016) What do the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street having in common? The answer is - almost everything, except maybe solutions. The Tea Party grew out of the disillusionment of the Wall Street bailout when Washington fell over itself throwing billions of dollars at big international banks who had all but destroyed the American economy. On the other side of the spectrum, Occupy Wall Street grew out of the disillusionment of the Wall Street bailout when Washington fell over itself throwing billions of dollars at big international banks who had all but destroyed the American economy.

The chosen candidate of Occupy Wall Street is Bernie Sanders and the chosen candidate of the Tea Party is Donald Trump. Like Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party, Trump and Sanders have far more in common than the media would like you to believe. Both of these unlikely candidates have been propelled onto the national stage and become legitimate presidential contenders by massive disillusionment and outright contempt for the ruling elite.

Unfortunately for the Sanders supporters, it was pre-determined that he could never be the democratic nominee. It doesn’t matter how well he does in the primaries - the Democrat’s selection system is designed to favor the candidate ordained by the party elite. The Republicans, on the other hand, only wish they could deny Trump as easly as the Democrats can deny Sanders. The Republicans are going to have to rely on good old-fashioned horse trading and back room deals to get their ordained candidate on the podium. The fear that Trump could be the Republican nominee, the expected mass suicide of party leadership, has forced the GOP to weld shut all the windows on the top floor of their DC headquarters.

Imagine, for a moment, the day after both conventions are over, after Hillary has taken her position as the democratic nominee and some unknown candidate has received the anointment of the Republican establishment, there is a press conference. At this press conference, stands Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Both Trump and Sanders address their supporters and say we may not agree with each other on everything. We certainly don’t agree with each other on the solution to this country’s problems, but the one thing we can all agree on is that those who currently control this country are more concerned with the interest of their Wall Street donors than the needs of the citizens.

I believe if those two forces ever came together it would be a perfect storm. Maybe this is why the ruling class is always ginning up issues to keep these groups knocking heads.

Are we really fighting over bathrooms?

File this under ginned-up pointless distractions. In North Carolina, there’s an epic battle going on as to who can use what bathrooms. The city of Charlotte recently passed an ordinance that provided protections based on sexual orientation, gender expression, and gender identity, including letting transgender people use the public bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity, not gender at birth, prohibiting schools, restaurants, and public buildings from stopping cross gender use of restrooms. The state government responded by passing the ordinance and the governor signed a law that required all persons to show a birth certificate before using a public restroom. This is just all a bunch of silliness. It’s government trying to legislate stupidity and bad manners out of society. Personally, I think it was an effort to distract the chattering class and once again insert a wedge in the American public.

I have a suggestion for a bathroom law. Require people to be considerate and use common sense. We have all been in restaurants where the woman’s room is occupied, and up walks a little girl doing the potty dance. The man waiting for the men’s room will step aside and insist that the little girl and her mother use the men’s room. It’s called being considerate. If little Johnny thinks he’s a girl and is afraid or uncomfortable using the boy’s room and wants to use the girl’s room, that’s between him and his parents, and no one should give it any mind other than to make sure that the girls also do not feel uncomfortable.

On the other side of the argument, if some creep sees a hot chick going into the bathroom and declares that, for the moment, he "identifies as a woman", somebody should be able to stop him without worrying about being charged with some civil right’s law.

My suggestion for a law concerning bathrooms follows: one, be considerate; two, use common sense.

Once again this is all distraction. I did a quick search on the Internet going back to the last two weeks and I can’t find a single incident of a news report where some cross gender person was prevented from using the bathroom or some creep used the gender confusion excuse to follow women into a bathroom. I can, however, find hundreds of stories concerning layoffs, drug overdose, the expanding opium epidemic, and the skyrocketing crime rate and murder rate in the cities.

In political news.

The burning question everyone wants to know is: will the Republican Party allow Donald Trump to be its candidate and can Donald Trump win enough delegates? He’s been accused of being too radical and unhinged. But that might all have come to an end the last week. As I write this, his campaign has undergone a complete change in tact. He has a new campaign manager, a new team of speech writers, and teleprompters have appeared at his rallies. In the last three days we’ve seen a more controlled and refined candidate.

Politics often makes strange bedfellows and who’s in bed with whom often changes. Back in January, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump looked like the dynamic duo. Neither would say a bad word about the other and on the debate stages they seemed to defend each other and become quite chummy. Now they act as mortal enemies.

Enter John Kasich. Governor Kasich has no mathematical way of winning the nomination. So why stay in it? His small collection of delegates might just be what Donald Trump needs to push him over 50% and stave off a brokered convention. Trump will need a running mate. Since he has no governing experience, to pick a VP canidate like Kasich would add legitimacy to his candidacy and deliver Ohio and Pennsylvania to Trump. The "water-cooler" chatter in the campaign offices says that backroom negotiations between the two camps are already happening. But before you get excited or upset about this possibility, there is still a long time before the convention and bedmates may very well change again.