Why Trump Could (and Maybe Should) Be President

canary in the mine blog donald trump president of united states of america

Everybody can agree that Donald Trump’s persistent lead in the Republican presidential race creates potential conflicts within Republican Party ranks. Trump has shown himself to be rhetorically divisive. He sources his popularity to some degree from being divisive; yet, in our opinion, the Republican Party actually has a potential presidential candidate in Trump for the first time since Ronald Reagan’s successful initial presidential campaign, because he can make significant inroads into core Democratic constituencies.

The Republican establishment is increasingly horrified by the fact that Trump could really become the Party’s nominee. The same competing candidates who attacked him for threatening a third party bid during earlier stages of the campaign are now are suggesting that they may not support him should he become the duly elected Republican presidential candidate. Due to increasingly frantic leaks from the establishment, the idea that their convention may be deadlocked serves as reassurance and threat to those who believe that Trump would have little chance of becoming the Republican candidate in a back-room-brokered convention managed by the political establishment of the Party.

Such a brokered convention last occurred on the Republican side in 1948 when the Party elected Thomas Dewey, who failed to defeat Franklin D. Roosevelt in his fourth election cycle.

Too smart and too sophisticated a tactician, Trump immediately countered the threat of the party’s establishment, threatening to go rogue and run a third-party candidacy, which would doom not only the Republican presidential candidate but also Republican Senate and House majorities.

This leaves few options for the Republican Party establishment, because Trump would view any organized opposition against him as a cause-celebre to go to war. He could do that at almost no cost because more than enough of his loyal followers would vote third party to assure a disastrous Republican election experience in 2016.

If we know that, so does The Donald and so does the Republican establishment. Anybody who does not see Donald Trump as the principal Republican candidate to beat should return to reality.

Which brings us back to the original purpose of this column, which was to explain why Donald Trump could actually rebuild a dominant Republican majority in the country in 2016: one that has not been seen since the days of Ronald Reagan.

Reagan’s electoral success was built on his unique ability (as a former Democrat and union president) to attract a core Democratic constituency, – the so-called “Reagan Democrats.” Those were mostly white, lower-middle class, blue-color workers without college education who had never voted for a Republican candidate (and have not since).

Trump appears to attract the same constituency: maybe more so than Reagan. There are good reasons for that, considering the disastrous economic effects of the Obama years on blue color workers and the middle class in general. Add to this Obama’s divisive race policy and disastrous foreign and security policy and one observes a huge block of traditional Democratic voters not only staying home, but also switching allegiance for the first time since 1981, when the choice was between reelecting Carter or electing Reagan.

But Trump’s and the Republicans’ opportunity looms even larger than that and, once again, Trump’s actions suggest that he is astutely aware of it: for the first time in decades, a significant block of African American voters is up for grasp by a smart Republican candidate, and nobody is rhetorically better suited to go after that vote on the Republican side than The Donald.

Like white, blue collar America, Black America experienced a rather disastrous times during the Obama years. Paradoxically, the county’s first Black president’s policies lead to the most significant economic deterioration within the American Black community in decades, with poverty reaching a new high, incomes declining, youth unemployment at record highs and race relationships the worst since the 60s. The Black community, which, based on their loyalties to the first Black U.S. president, voted almost 100 percent Democratic in the last two presidential elections, will not show the same allegiance to Hillary Clinton or any other Democrat candidate in 2016.

Increasingly, even liberal voices from amidst the African American community are reaching the conclusion that traditional liberal policies have not served their communities well.

And who can blame them?

If one looks around the country, cities under decade-long, one-party Democrat rule like Detroit, Chicago and Baltimore, African American communities are doing the worst. It is in those cities where most black youth are murdered every day, where schools are employment factories for union members but don’t offer even minimal education to children and the economic future of the youth is, therefore, the bleakest.

But the camel’s back was probably broken for the African American community with the apparent murder of the African American teenager Laquan McDonald by a white police officer in Chicago. It was not the murder itself that did it (after all, Chicago is the murder capital of the country for black youth), but the very obvious cover up by the decades-old Democratic administration of the city, which is run by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former Chief of Staff at the White House. Emanuel’s administration tried to silence McDonald’s family with a payoff of $5 million and attempted to hide an evidentiary video from the public for over a year out of fear that its disclosure could derail Emanuel’s reelection as major (does that sound like Benghazi deceptions before Obama’s reelection?).

The blatancy of this cover up demonstrated the decades-long abuse of Black America by the Democratic political establishment, which was never able to advance the community’s economic and social interests.

Mayor Emanuel’s administration’s behavior suddenly demonstrated to the world how little Democrats really cared about the African American experience. Just like classical Marxism, allegedly representing the best interests of the proletariat, they only used the proletariat to achieve ideological goals under a highly educated and privileged political elite. The liberal Democratic establishment always viewed African Americans as political fodder in their power struggles with the political right, guaranteeing them an almost unanimous voting block during election seasons.

By recently meeting with a group of African American ministers in New York City, Donald Trump demonstrated that he understands the political uproar that is currently ripping through traditional political relationships in Black communities all over the nation. Witnessing Black demonstrators in Chicago demanding the resignation of Obama’s prior Chief of Staff as mayor of Chicago is telling. Like everybody else, looking for a better future under true leadership, the African American community is ripe for the political picking by a Republican candidate who is convincing in persuading them that she/he offers new opportunities that will finally improve Black lives in America.

No Republican candidate is better suited to deliver this message than Donald Trump.

As we already noted in our last posting, barring completely self-destructive behavior by Trump or suicidal actions by the Republican establishment, it may be time to consider a Trump presidency a reasonable likelihood. As we also indirectly noted in our last posting, he would be well-advised to choose a female running mate. Considering Trump’s relative lack of foreign policy experience, we are increasingly betting on a Trump/Fiorina ticket. America could do worse than that!

The Left’s Increasing Trend toward Authoritarianism

CANARY IN THE MINE BLOG - The Left’s Increasing Trend toward Authoritarianism

The world was easy to understand during the Cold War: The evil power of Nazism had been defeated, but the other evil ideology of Bolshevik Communism had to be dealt with. While Stalin did not murder innocent people as viciously as Hitler did, his regime was still responsible for the death of millions, as was Mao Zedong’s in the People’s Republic of China, and as were other Communist leaders’, from Cambodia to North Korea and Cuba. For half a century, the struggle between Western democratic-capitalism and Soviet-style Communist dictatorship defined the two principal eco-political options in the world.

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 26, 1991, the ideology of Communism appeared largely defeated. In 1992 the prominent political scientists Francis Fukuyama published his now infamous book The End of History and The Last Man, in which he concluded that Western liberal democracy had “won” the culture war and likely “represented the final form of human government.”

Only 14 years later, it appears rather obvious that his conclusion was as premature as Karl Marx’s prediction that Communism would replace capitalism in his version of the end of history in his book Das Kapital, between 1867-1894.

During the years of Communist-capitalist ideological confrontations, Western capitalist societies were anything but homogenous. While united in support of a capitalist economic model, liberal democracies developed distinctly different social ideologies from the left (democratic socialism) to the right. Indeed, clearly influenced by Marxist principles, left-leaning, social-democratic parties all over Europe very quickly entered mainstream politics, establishing themselves as alternatives to right-leaning conservative/religious political parties.

In the U.S. a similar constellation evolved, with the Democratic Party representing the left and the Republican Party the more conservative and/or religious right. But until relatively recently the Democratic Party maintained a broad variety of opinions, including a distinctive “right wing” of the party. Since Bill Clinton’s presidency, this right wing of the party has progressively shrunk, and completely disappeared with the ascendancy of President Obama and his allies. As a consequence, the Democratic Party of today is practically indistinguishable from Europe’s social-democratic party model, with different degrees of Marxist leanings.

As long as Communist regimes ruled a significant part of the world, social-democratic political parties found it essential to differentiate their Socialist-Marxist ideologies from dialectic Communism/Marxism. With the defeat of Communism, this distinction became less important and less relevant for political success at the ballot box. As memories of Communist-run nations faded into history, the public’s short historical memory allowed for a rebirth of Marxist utopianism, especially among the young, who have never witnessed the catastrophic failures of the Socialist/Marxist economic model.

Even in the U.S., Socialism is no longer considered a “dirty” word, as so well demonstrated by the surprisingly successful current campaign of Bernie Sanders, a declared Socialist from Maine, for the Democratic presidential nomination. Other examples demonstrating a clear shift to the more radical left are very obvious all around the world in the election of Jeremy Corbyn, a radical Marxist outsider, as new head of the British Labour Party, and by explosive growth of radical leftish political parties in Greece, Spain and elsewhere in Europe.

Shifts toward the Marxist left are, however, rarely only dialectic. Indeed, likely the crucial step for Karl Marx’s transition from Socialism toward Communism was his conclusion that the world will not change simply based on ideas, and that any desired change requires proactive interventions. In other words, an inherent component of Marxist Socialism is the forceful intervention into the democratic process, because setbacks in personal freedoms are a small price to pay for the ultimate “good” of a Socialist utopia. An example of this is Castros’ Cuba, admired as a model for Socialist states across the globe.

So, any shift toward Marxist dialectic will automatically be accompanied by increasing trends toward authoritarianism. And this does not only apply to what we observe in third world countries, like Venezuela, where the political shift toward Marxism has led to a de facto dictatorship. Increasing authoritarianism can also be seen in democracies like Argentina and even in the U.S., where President Obama attempts to legalize hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens by decree, even though, as a constitutional lawyer, he must have known that such a step without Congress’s approval is likely unconstitutional (he, indeed, had made statements to that effect in public, and a judge’s temporary restraining order has halted the process).

An even more authoritarian political step was the agreement that the Obama administration signed with Iran, in which Obama circumvented Congress by inappropriately declaring it an Executive Agreement between governments rather than a “treaty” (only treaties require congressional approval). Then he also had his allies in Congress block a debate of a disapproval motion with only a minority of votes in both houses. In doing this, the president imposed what may turn out to be the most consequential international agreements for the nation’s security in decades, even though a majority of Congress in both houses opposed the agreement (and, indeed, based on opinion polls, two-thirds of the U.S. population did as well).

But, likely the most egregious evidence of authoritarianism is the selective interpretation of prosecutorial powers under the Obama administration. Not even under the Nixon and Clinton administrations was the Justice Department as politicized and corrupted as in the Obama administration in failing to prosecute very obvious abuses of power and in using the criminal justice system in pursuit of political goals. None of the scandals that have come to light during the administration were ever pursued by the Justice Department: not the IRS scandal, not the Veterans Affair Scandal, and not the Bengasi scandal (where, totally overlooked by the media, the real question is not where was Hillary Clinton and the degree of her involvement but where President Obama was, and the degree of his involvement). And yet on the other extremes, perfectly-timed threats of prosecutions or actual prosecutions have silenced political opponents more than once (General Petraeus and Senator Menendez are good examples, and Hillary Clinton may become one).

In order to equalize economic conditions for the underclass, the ultimate aim of all permeations of Socialism, of course including Marxism, has historically been “revolution.” Only a revolution of the masses can against the capitalist system can end their discrimination (under Communist dogma, the masses are represented by the “proletariat” under a professional leadership), and initiate the masses’ ascent to power. Since the power of the masses represents the ultimate achievement of any form of Socialism, it should not surprise that such revolutions rarely voluntarily transfers government power back to opposition forces. As contemporary Venezuela well demonstrates, once in power, Socialist/Marxist governments become increasingly authoritarian. They are supportive of liberal democracy as a tool to obtain power but, once in power, quickly dispose of democratic pretense.

Though these movements are often corrupt and outright anti-democratic within their own areas of power, even within the Western capitalistic system, political parties on the left demonstrate strong allegiances to revolutionary movements (see new York’s openly Socialist Mayor de Blasio, a longstanding supported of the Marxist Sandinista movement in Nicaragua or the new Labour Party’s Chief in the U.K., Jeremy Corbin, an avowed supported of Hamas, which is not only radically anti-democratic and homicidal, but also religiously fanatical). Allegiance to the internationalist Marxist view of worldwide solidarity between Marxists and poor, mostly brown and black exploited people, very obviously supersedes any defense of humanitarian and/or democratic principles on the extreme left. As class warfare all around the world appears to come into fashion again, the world will, therefore, witness increasing authoritarianism, while liberal democracies will find themselves under increasing siege.

Though in his upbringing and belief system he is very clearly a Marxist Socialist, President Obama avoided these labels in his election campaigns, and on multiple occasions even went so far as to demean opponents who described him as a Socialist. But in his very obvious contempt for Congress and especially the Republican opposition, he increasingly demonstrates the authoritarianism of his Marxist ideology, characterized by the dictum that ultimate goals have to be achieved by whatever means. His party appears to support him. The party discipline Democrats have exhibited in support of Obama’s policies is indeed remarkable, but better fits Soviet than U.S. parliamentary history. This country can expect considerable authoritarian tendencies from the president in his last 14 months in office.

The real motivations behind Obama’s deal with Tehran

CANARY IN THE MINE BLOG - Obama's deal with Teheran Iran

Former Vice President Cheney was not alone when he wondered what on earth had possessed President Obama to pursue a deal with Iran.

This is, indeed, an interesting question, especially since most commentators in the media are offering only superficial, and mostly irrelevant, answers. Yes, of course, like every president, Obama is concerned with his legacy. He views himself as a contemporary of Ronald Reagan, who significantly influenced the country beyond his two terms in office. In defending the agreement with Tehran, Obama claimed Reagan as an example in negotiating weapon reduction agreements with the hostile Soviet Union, when defending his own determination of reaching a “verifiable” agreement with Iran.

Obama is, however, historically wrong in comparing his Iran deal to either Reagan’s negotiations with the Soviets or to Nixon’s decision to develop a relationship with Mao Zedong’s China. While both, indeed, were hostile countries to the U.S., neither:

– supported worldwide terrorism
– held U.S. hostages
– publically threatened to exterminate another member state to the United Nations/close ally of the U.S.
– generated a street mob yelling “death to America” while negotiations took place

A much better analogy for Obama’s deal with the Iranian ayatollahs is, therefore, Chamberlain giving up the Czech Sudetenland to Hitler. History, of course, recorded the tragic consequences of Chamberlain’s appeasement of Nazi-Germany in the “name of peace.”

So, why would an obviously intelligent president who, one can hope, is aware of history, make such a tragically wrong decision?

The Canary’s has attempted to analyze President Obama’s psychological makeup based on his upbringing, ideological roots and formative teachers in previous posts. This approach allowed us to correctly predict his future behavior on a good number of occasions. A similar analysis, indeed, offers compelling explanations for his outrageous behavior in reaching the recent agreement with Tehran.

Before Obama’s reelection we suggested that though he was trying to obfuscate many of his true ideological believes to get reelected, Obama was basically a third-world multinationalist. Many colleagues, scholars and pundits strongly disagreed with our analysis, though by now, a good number among them have reached similar conclusions. Re-elected and facing a Republican-controlled Congress, Obama has since shaken off the restrictive shackles of an election-driven, political middle ground, and is increasingly willing to “come out of the closet” as the Afrocentric, multi-nationalistic, Marxist ideologue he is.

We also previously noted that in unique contrast to almost every president before him, Obama does not want as stronger, more self-assured America. He despises the fact that, since the Soviet Union’s collapse, America has become the only dominant world power. He was brought up to believe that a dominant America is a mortal threat to the rest of the world, especially the developing world. A principal goal of his foreign policy has been to “diminish America’s footprint” in the world.

For this reason, his administration established the policy of “leading from behind,” which explains why the U.S. military is facing unprecedented levels of military budget cuts.

To weaken the U.S. is, however, not enough if America’s footprint is to be significantly diminished: Other powers have to be concomitantly strengthened if competing power centers to the U.S. are to arise in the world. Internationalists like Obama and Secretary John Kerry, therefore, not only don’t mind that Iran will, ultimately, go nuclear and grow more powerful politically and militarily. They actually welcome a more powerful Iran with nuclear capabilities in the Middle East as a potential balancing force to what they currently perceive as the excessive power of the U.S.

Since the Soviet Union collapsed, scholars of international relations almost uniformly agree that the previously bipolar world has become unipolar, dominated by the unmatched economic and military power of the U.S. This can only be changed if the U.S. is weakened and other nations are given the opportunity to ascend. The ascent of an U.S. ally, like Israel, would be unsatisfactory. A multipolar world can only be reestablished through the ascent of nations inherently hostile to U.S. power.

This explains not only the otherwise completely irrational agreement with Iran but also the administration’s timid behavior towards an increasingly belligerent Russia and an overreaching China: both, of course, also future contenders for newly arising power centers. And it also explains why the Obama administration heavily invests in relations with Communist Cuba and Socialist Venezuela and Nicaragua.

Obama’s views himself as a visionary internationalist who is helping to establish a new world order that benefits the poor and oppressed all over the globe. In doing so, he not only attempts to match but also to exceed Ronald Reagan’s increasing historical importance as the U.S. president primarily responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent rise of the U.S. as the world’s single dominant power. Obama’s real goal for his presidency is, therefore, to outdo President Reagan’s achievements by reversing them and, in doing so, re-establish a multi-centric global power structure.

With such a worldview, the Iran deal, indeed, makes perfect sense. Time to realize what President Barack Hussein Obama’s foreign policy goals really are before it may be too late!

We Were Right: Obama Will Do Everything to Destroy Israel

Canary in the Mine: Obama 1

“We predicted outright confrontation between Obama and the Jewish state for the time period after the November elections in our pre-election profile series on Obama. We then also noted the considerable influence the Rev. Wright exerted on Obama’s worldview. However, even we underestimated the degree of antagonism Obama would publicly demonstrate against Israel and the country’s leadership. He very obviously cannot help himself.”

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Obama and the Marks of a Sociopath, Part Two

Canary in the Mine: Obama

An unusual lack of empathy, egocentricity and a lack of remorse or shame has become a recurrent theme and pattern of behavior of the +Barack Obama, something that has even started to worry his staff at the White House. Even more remarkably, the over the last six plus years, the overwhelmingly friendly national press core to the President has finally taken notice of it.

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Does Obama Want to be a Martyr in His War Against the West?

Canary in the mine: Obama martyr

Martyrdom is the selfless commitment to a cause, leading to one’s own demise. It has remained an essential concept in practically all religions. For example, in recent weeks, Catholic authorities repeatedly referred to the “martyrdom” of Christians in the Middle East at the hands of ISIS; and Islam, more than any other religion, still preaches the glory of martyrdom in expectation of a better afterworld.

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Why Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress Matters

Canary in the Mine: Netanyahu

While Democrats may feel blindsided by the arrangement, Netanyahu’s speech to Congress, planned secretly by Republicans, huge implications for American Jewry:  U.S. Jews, who have historically favored Democrats over Republicans, will not only be able to see where the Democratic Party really stands in regard to Israel but, by extension, toward Jewry in general.

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Israel in Crisis: Will the United States Continue to Support Netanyahu?

Canary in the Mine: Netanyahu

The Democratic Party started to shift away from supporting Israel during the 2012 Democratic Convention, when Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa faced fierce resistance from the floor in attempting to reinsert the longstanding recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel into the official Party Platform.

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A History of Judaism and the Political Left

Canary in the Mine: Judaism

The French journalist Jacques Mallet du Pan (1749-1800) is credited with coining the adage “la révolution dévore des enfants” or “the revolution devours its children.” This observation was initially made in commenting on the excesses of the French Revolution (1789-1799) and has been used repeatedly throughout history in times of upheaval.

Jews have been leading figures of social movements and social revolutions throughout history. Eli Barnavi, Professor of Jewish History at Tel Aviv University, recently noted in an article on Jewish Socialism in Europe that over the last 200 years, every generation of Jews has generated a small group of activists who fought for a type of social utopia: In Germany, Jews were the pioneers of the socialist workers’ movement after the industrial revolution, when Moses Hess introduced Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to Historical Materialism. Marx and Engels, of course, co-authored the Communist Manifesto in 1848, and Engels financially supported Marx while the latter wrote Das Kapital.

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Obama and the Marks of a Sociopath, Part One

Canary in the Mine: Obama

The decision to run for the office of President of the United States, alone, already indicates a significant degree of psychosocial pathology. Which person of sane mind would voluntary go through the typical abuses of an election campaign? Who would really want the responsibilities that come with the highest office in the land and, most importantly, what sane mind would consider himself/herself qualified to shoulder those responsibilities?

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