Principal questions about Comey’s firing and the alleged Trump-Russia Connection

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Remarkably, without even a shred of established evidence, rumors and innuendo about an inappropriate Trump-Russia relationship, exacerbated by the firing of FBI director James Comey, have now persisted for months, even though all major media companies, from the New York Times, over the Washington Post and all major television networks, have with unprecedented intensity searched for even the most minute evidence, and come up short. Like these media outlets, and you the reader of these pages, we, here at The Canary, therefore have currently absolutely no idea whether President Trump and/or his organization did or did not have an inappropriate relationship with agents of the Russian government.

While unable to offer the public even minimal evidence of such an inappropriate relationship, above referenced media organizations, nevertheless present evolving news to the public as if there could be no doubt about such a Trump-Russia conspiracy. Therefore the New York Times’s page-one headline on May 10 read not Trump fires Comey (Director of the FBI) but Trump fires Comey amid Russia inquiry.

Presenting factually true but otherwise unrelated (at least so far) associations to the public as fact, of course, is “fake-news,” and is meant to subconsciously reemphasize to the public, without need of proof it, that something very stinky must be going on in the Trump White House.  

We here at The Canary wish to again point out that we have no inside knowledge as to whether the Trump campaign had contacts with agents of the Russian government and, if so, what the nature of these contacts was. Since the possibility of inappropriate contacts has been raised in such a public fashion, we support that these rumors be properly investigated. Like every other U.S. citizen, the U.S. President (and his staff) are, however, presumed to be innocent until proven guilty. Based on behavior, a large majority of the national media, however, feels differently!

The principal allegation made against the Trump organization is that Trump’s campaign conspired in secret with agents of the Russian government in defeating Hillary Clinton in the last presidential election. We previously in these pages made the point that, even assuming this accusation to be correct, putting moral considerations aside, such coordinated efforts involving the Trump organization and the Russian government would not necessarily be criminal. It is well known that the U.S. government through a variety of agencies is constantly trying to influence elections in other countries.

President Obama, as has become known recently, supported in the last election cycle opposition parties to Israel’s prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, with staff and federal funds in a failed attempt to defeat him. President Putin’s strong dislike for Hillary Clinton, as has been widely reported in the media, is, likely, the consequence of Clinton actively supporting Putin’s opposition with U.S. federal funds as Secretary of State in the Obama administration during Putin’s most recent election.

In other words, accepting “help” from overseas sources, even from the Russian government, is in itself not necessarily a federal offense, – unless, of course, federal campaign laws were broken, the collaboration involves criminal activities (i.e., the hacking of computers and distribution of content obtained through illegal hacking), government secrets were revealed and/or quid pro quo arrangements were reached, obliging a future elected government.

Also, a campaign organization cannot necessarily be held responsible for potentially illegal acts of individuals committed out of self-interest. General Michael T. Flynn, Trump’s short-term first Security Advisor, may be a good example. Should he, indeed, as has been suggested, have received illegal payments from Russian and Turkish sources. One, of course, would still have to wonder how such an individual survived an allegedly serious vetting process, especially since he also does not appear to be particularly bright: How else could the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency not understand that every word he exchanges on an open phone line with the Russian ambassador would be picked up by U.S. intelligence?

That after months of investigations by FBI and committees of House and Senate, still, nothing concrete has been leaked to support increasingly bizarre daily rumors, spun by the media, therefore, to us suggests that, likely, nothing is there to be discovered. We may be wrong, and Trump’s Russia connections may morph into Watergate II. Proving that something does not exist is, however, almost impossible. Considering the current political atmosphere of absolute confrontation and “resistance” in Washington, it, therefore, appears increasingly likely that this affair will stay with us at least until the mid-term elections. Then, it will be again up to the nation’s voters to decide who is right and who is wrong.

Trump, in the meantime, has, however, to recognize that he, in the end, will not be judged based on what Democrats and the media are trying to concoct but on his performance as President. If he continues to allow relatively unimportant things to rule the news, and take up his valuable time, he will be a failed president. If he can concentrate on what is important, he will succeed.  

The Canary

Remaining Democratic government underground must also be drained from the swamp

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Draining the swamp means cleaning out the remaining Democratic government underground too. President Donald John Trump is reported to be furious with his communications staff for steadily being outsmarted by well-timed and –placed leaks from Democratic operatives, suggesting collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government agents in preventing Hillary Clinton’s election, even surmising that this may have involved treasonous activities by Trump operatives.

With so far not an iota of evidence in support of such collusion, and completely ignoring that not only Hillary Clinton lost the election but the Democrats all over the country by failing to achieve expected gains in Congress and local state elections, he has reason to be upset that his government is unable to control the message. Less than 24 hours after giving before a joint session of House and Senate one of the best presidential speeches in U.S. history, he found himself once again on the defense under relentless leaks from former members of the Obama administration and government bureaucrats in various agencies who very obviously oppose the Trump agenda.

The Canary predicted in several prior blogs that Obama and his “army” of organized supporters would be a dangerous and divisive political force in strident attempts at delegitimizing the Trump presidency. Increasing evidence now has become public that during the last two weeks in office, the Obama administration carefully planned and executed a strategy of not only delegitimizing President Donald J. Trump but by claiming he won the presidency illegitimately by colluding with the Russian government in treasonous fashion.

These largely Obama-driven attacks on Trump and his administration, therefore, go far beyond just attempts at political deligitimization; they are meant to introduce the concept of treasonous behavior by a sitting president and, therefore, are attempts at criminalizing the arguments against his presidency with the potential goal of impeachment.

The deviousness of this campaign is unprecedented because it was initiated while, publicly, President Obama was extending a helping hand to the incoming Trump administration since, as he himself stated, despite political differences, he had been at the receiving end of such a helping hand from President Bush when he moved into the Oval Office.

18 U.S. Code §2381 defines treason as: “Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall …..”

This definition is of importance when considering the allegations swirling around. While it is important to reemphasize that, as of this writing, there is not an iota of evidence to support any collusion, indeed, not even that discussions regarding the subject took place between Trump’s campaign and Russian government officials, let us for a moment assume that there, indeed, have been discussion between these two parties, in which Trump operatives were made aware that the Russian government was in possession of e-mails generated by Hillary Clinton’s and the Democratic National Committee. Let us further assume that the Trump team even encouraged their publication. Would that have constituted treason?

Since President Putin’s Russia is, rightly, widely considered a hostile nation to the U.S., this is basically the argument made by Trump bashers. Moreover, opponents of Trump further argued during the election campaign (and still do) that the involved e-mails not only came from a hostile power but, in addition, were “stolen.” Their use in the campaign, therefore, would establish complicity with the thieves (i.e., hackers).

On both issues the Canary disagrees with the underlying logic of the anti-Trump crowd , and here is why: Though Russia under its current government has, indeed, to be considered a political and military adversary, promises of favorable treatments, disclosures of national secrets or any other potentially harmful acts to the security and interests of the U.S. in return for publication of these e-mails by the Russian government (or a potential third party agent, like WikiLeaks) could, in fact, potentially be considered treasonous. But in absence of any quid pro quo, disclosures of political fraud, undermining the democratic election process (like the interventions in the Democratic primary process in favor of Hillary Clinton and to the disadvantage of Bernie Sanders by Democratic National Leadership) are, especially before a crucially important presidential election, in the best interest of the electorate. Opposition research, routinely pursued by both major parties, frequently involves “stolen” data. To offer just one example, the Clinton campaign, for example, had no hesitation to use Trump’s stolen tax returns in the campaign.

Even repeated contacts with the Russian government, if it did not involve any quid pro quos, therefore, would appear not only perfectly permissible but are routinely taking place before elections all over the world because all countries are proactively assessing who may be the next government leader they would have to face.

The Russian government, of course, is also perfectly entitled to favor candidates in U.S. elections and, indeed, even to support them. It is the responsibility of U.S. politicians to make sure that any such “help” does not contradict U.S. law. The U.S, rather routinely, intervenes in national elections by supporting favorite candidates politically and even financially. A principal motivation why President Putin apparently opposed Hillary Clinton’s election has been her active support as Secretary of State for opposition groups to Putin during the last presidential election. The Obama administration also quite openly intervened in Israeli elections when sending financial support (using U.S. tax dollars) as well as expert staff help from Obama’s own election campaign to Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s opposition in a blatant attempt to subvert Bibi’s reelection. The effort failed and, indeed, misfired once it became public but, if this is what the U.S. does to friends, imagine how much we, likely, meddle in elections of less friendly countries.

The furor expressed by Democrats and the media about Russian meddling in the recent U.S. presidential election, therefore, appears hypocritical and highly exaggerated.

Which returns the analysis to the recognition that there are significant differences between a presidential candidate, who may or may not assume the presidency in the future, and a sitting president, who already assumed all presidential powers. A candidate for the presidency, in principle, still only speaks for himself. Moreover, candidates are widely known to switch campaign positions on the journey from candidate to elected president. Representations and deeds of a sitting president, therefore, are, of much greater significance.

Exploring this thought further, it, therefore, would appear that the risk of treasonous acts is much higher for sitting presidents than for candidates for president, who still lack access to confidential government information and have no decision-making powers yet. In other words, candidate Trump had very little opportunity for being involved in treasonous situations with the Russians; Obama, however, as has been well documented, in highest government levels communication with Russia, meeting then Russian (temporary) President Dmitry Medvedev, in an open microphone gaffe on March 26, 2012, just before his reelection, revealed the message to Putin, “tell Vladimir that I’ll have more flexibility after the election.”

What Obama in those very few words communicated to the President of a hostile country could be, indeed, considered treasonous because he, basically, told him that, once the elections were over, he could give Russia concessions the American people, likely, would not approve of (because why would he, otherwise, wait with those concessions till after the election).

The irony is that, in contrast to current collusion rumors spread by the Obama propaganda machine, this event in 2012 really took place. It received minor media attention as a “gaffe,”- a more humorous than serious political occurrence; but, when closely examined, this event represented a truly astonishing statement from an American president in a one-on-one meeting with the president of a hostile country, and clearly evidence of collusions, – not only to the benefit of an election outcome but, in addition, behind the back of the American people.

For the Trump administration, it is high time to recognize that the Democratic Party establishment and many other well-financed interest groups are determined to prevent President Trump from completing his term and running again. In other words, the swamp Trump promised to drain is fighting back and, interestingly, is doing so with what psychologists call psychological projections, by accusing Trump of exactly the transgressions the Democrats have been guilty of over the last eight years. It is time for the Justice Department to take the gloves off, and open the public’s eyes to the corruption and abuse of state powers that pervaded the Obama administration for almost a decade. It, indeed, is a very deep swamp that needs to be drained!

 

  

 

The Democrat’s Dolchstoßlegende – A Post-WWI conspiracy & Russia’s email hacking

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After their defeat in WW1, Germany developed in the fall of 1918 a conspiracy theory, trying to explain the devastating loss of their seemingly unbeatable military, which presumed that their war efforts had been undermined by secretive domestic forces. In the German language it was called the Dolchstoßlegende or the Stab-in-the back Myth. Historians agree that this legend greatly destabilized the Weimar Republic, and contributed to the rise of National Socialism under the leadership of Adolf Hitler.

We are now witnessing as similar onslaught of conspiracy theories developing among the political left, trying to explain the devastating loss of the Democrat Party in the November elections. Among the many legends trying to whitewash the party’s totally unexpected defeat, none comes closer to the German legend than the accusation that Trump won the election only because the Russian Government actively interfered with the election process to secure his win.

None is also more dangerous to the democratic process in this country, – though not for the reasons most media want us to believe. It, of course, matters greatly whether the Russian government attempted to influence the democratic election process, and it even matters more to determine whether any such attempt had at its goal the defeat of Hillary Clinton and the win of Donald Trump. And it, of course, also matters whether the Russian government succeeded in these efforts in any way. This is, however, not why the Democrat Party has stopped talking about FBI Director James Comey, the internal divisions and scandals revealed by WikiLeaks’s e-mail disclosures and the party’s colossal strategic and analytical failures during the campaign.

The reasons why Democrats and the extreme left are concentrating on the Russian legend as an explanation for the lost election are obvious. First, it absolves the candidate and the leadership of the party from responsibility. But even more importantly, like the Dolchstoßlegende in Germany, this conspiracy theory has the potential of establishing a populist counter-movement to “Trumpism” because who would not be opposed to the Russian Bear determining the outcome of U.S. elections? Most importantly, however, it offers a great opportunity to delegitimize Donald Trump’s presidency from the get-go, especially since his quick rise in popularity after the election, and the complete collapse of the Democrat’s party leadership circle, offers a unique opportunity for Donald Trump to become one of the most powerful transformative post-WWII presidents, with potential decades-long impact on the direction of the country.

The Canary, of course, has no inside knowledge on whether the Russian government, indeed, was involved in WikiLeaks’s disclosures about all the monkey business at the Democratic Party headquarters. If leaks from the intelligence community are correct, then the Russians, likely, were involved. But those same leaks also claimed that there was no evidence that these leaks influenced the outcome of the election unless, of course, we want to assume that the public being made aware of all the lying and deceit, the manipulation of the Democratic Party’s primary election process, internal concerns about Hillary’s truthfulness in the campaign and other interesting vignettes influenced the electorate. And would anybody really argue that making the electorate aware of truth is condemnable, unrelated to whoever does it? We don’t think so! If that were the case, then the U.S. government would have been condemnable forever, since this country prides itself on broadcasting the truth into countries, and on supporting dissident groups all over the world, if we believe they are not privy to such truth from their own governments.

Obviously, illegal hacking is condemnable but we live in a world where adults, and especially those in politics and the government, should know that, unless they take appropriate precautionary defensive steps to protect their electronic communications, they will be vulnerable.

Which really raises the most interesting question of all: Let’s assume for a moment that the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians and, maybe all of them and, possibly, even a few more nation states, indeed, hacked into Democratic Party Headquarter e-mails. Who is then really responsible for the resulting damages?

This, of course, is a most relevant question, especially considering that Hillary Clinton’s by now notoriously infamous e-mail server, which according to FBI sources was hacked by at least five nation states, was so central to the failure of her campaign. We already noted above that, in principle, we all are the shepherds of our own confidential communications. But it is also important to note that, until only a relative few years ago, we never heard about hackings of major businesses and government offices. This, of course, does not mean that hacks did not occur; but it, certainly, did not happen at the current pace and with the same ease.

Something, therefore, happened to our nation’s cybersecurity over the last few years. After almost eight years of uninterrupted Democratic control of government during two Obama administrations, it, therefore, has become abundantly clear that the nation’s cybersecurity is yet another major area of national security where the administration has been caught sleeping at the wheel.

It, therefore, is truly remarkable that the Democrats now are developing their own Dolchstoßlegende about Russian government hackers being responsible for Hillary’s loss and Donald Trump’s election. Even if that were true, the Democrats have only themselves to blame that this could happen. Were it not for their administrative incompetence over the last eight years, it should not, it would not have happened. So here is one more thing to thank President Obama for on his way into retirement, together with Obamacare, the Iran deal, the gutting of the military, and so much more.

If it wasn’t so serious, it would be laughable!

The Canary

Trump’s vow to end mutual absolution between parties threatens Democrats

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Following the FBI’s resurrection of Hillary Clinton’s e-mail affair, the Democratic leadership, suddenly, less than a week before the presidential election, faces the previously almost inconceivable possibility of a Trump victory and, therefore, of a Trump presidency. This appears particularly ironic because during the Republican primaries, the Clinton team had literally prayed for the opportunity to run against Trump. Since they considered Trump the weakest Republican opponent, they, indeed, actively encouraged their media minions to favor Trump’s bid for the Republican nomination.

But once he won, something rather unexpected happened: True to his claim of being a political outsider, Trump broke with an unwritten rule that Republicans and Democrats historically had abided by. Under that understanding, administrations of both parties basically guaranteed implied amnesties for legal breaches to outgoing administrations. The best recent example for this implied agreement was the failure of the Bush Junior administration to pursue any of a number of potential criminal claims against members of the Clinton administration. In other words, any administration that made it through its term without being indicted, was basically assured of no further legal consequences.

The knowledge that one just had to survive till the end of an administration, has been at the core of quantitative and qualitative increases in government corruption this country has witnessed in recent decades, and nobody has been better in “surviving” than the last two Democratic administrations of Presidents Clinton and Obama.

It should not surprise that the years of the two Obama administrations, initiated with the promise of being the “most transparent ever,” turned out to be the least transparent ever (at least since the Nixon administration), and certainly the most corrupt. Combining the intimidating Chicago school of political corruption (which trained Obama) with the finesse of survival, developed to by the Democrats under the two prior Clinton administrations, resulted in the most egregious chain of corruption scandals the country has ever witnessed, from “Fast and Furious” to the IRS scandal, outright bribery to pass Obamacare, the Veterans Administration Scandal, corruption of State and Defense Departments in the Benghazi scandal, and unprecedented corruption of State Department and Justice in Hillary’s e-mail scandal. Never before has the Justice Department been as politicized as under Holder and, now, Loretta Lynch (Bill Clinton’s secrete date at an airport tarmac in Arizona).

Even the President, usually protected by multiple layers of deniability, has been implicated in repeatedly lying to the public in reference to Obamacare, the Benghazi affair and in his knowledge about Hillary’s e-mail server. How far the dirt in this White House reaches toward the skies was recently revealed when Bob Creamer, Founder of Democratic Partners, was revealed to the public by Project Veritas Action as a “dirty trickster” for the Democratic Party. Most remarkable about the whole story was, however, that the media almost unreported the fact that he had visited the White House over 350-times during both Obama administrations, – more frequently, indeed, than likely any other person in the country who was not employed at the White House. He, quite obviously, received his instruction directly out of the White House!

In no administration in recent memory have government employees without any consequences taken their Fifth Amendment rights as often as under Obama. After all, they had just to delay the legal process until the end of the administration, and all would be forgotten.

And then Trump in the second debate with Hillary Clinton, suddenly, made it clear that he had no intention of continuing this policy of mutual absolution between the two parties, should he be elected president. When he announced that he would ask his Attorney General to immediately appoint a special prosecutor to pursue “the truth” in regard to Hillary’s e-mail server and the Clinton Foundation, the Democratic leadership, suddenly, understood that circumstances had changed and that, should Trump win the presidency, they all may be subject to prosecution for illegal activities during the two Obama administrations. This, of course, made a Clinton win appear even that more urgent!

That six days before the election Trump has in national opinion polls pulled even with Clinton, therefore, set off alarm bells among the Democratic elites. The election, suddenly, has become an existential fight for survival, far exceeding the traditional conflict for power and the spoils of power.

We, therefore, can expect Clintonians and Democratic party, in cahoots with a majority of major media, in the last few days before the election to initiate a political bloodbath in attempts to derail Donald Trump. The election no longer is about who gains or retains the privileges of power but, as Trump stated, who goes to jail.

The Canary

 

The unprecedented election campaign of Clinton versus Trump

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The unprecedented election campaign of Clinton versus Trump

So here we are, barely three weeks from what, likely, will be the most consequential presidential election since WWII, and the descent into gutter politics by the campaigns of both major contenders has hit unprecedented lows. Both candidates are disliked by a majority of the public and their approval ratings in public opinion polls are unprecedentedly low.

As the Clinton campaign and the overwhelmingly liberal press that supports Clinton’s candidacy with unprecedented fervor suggest, Donald Trump has gone from just being a relatively benign BS artist (as we discussed in a prior communication) to being a disgusting sexual predator. Such attacks in at least recent election campaigns are unprecedented, and them coming from the Clinton camp can only be characterized as amazing political “chutzpah.” Yet, we are witnessing an, indeed, unprecedented presidential election campaign, which will not only rewrite standard campaign strategies but may also lead to unprecedented political consequences for party politics and even the two-party system, which has provided political stability for the country for so long.

Hillary, based on WikiLeaks, has again and again been exposed as what she already for decades has been known to be, – a conniving pathological liar, self-serving, unprincipled and ready to say and do anything to achieve power. How much she, indeed, strives for this power, and how much she is willing to sacrifice in the process became shockingly apparent when, after fainting at a public event, she refused to be taken to a hospital for fear that this could impede her election chances. Which person of sane mind would behave that way, – rather taking the chance of significant bodily harm than the risk negatively affecting her campaign for president?

At least subconsciously the public understands how sick a mind must be driving Hillary. Otherwise, it is unexplainable that she has not already “run away” with this election, considering Trump’s at times truly bizarre behavior and her enormous fund raising advantage. Her razor thin advantage in national poles is, in addition, likely exaggerated by biased media reports and, more importantly, by a Brexit-like effect on polling that, likely, underestimates Trump’s electoral following by four to five percentage points.

The, likely, most interesting opinion on this race came from David Gelernter, one of the country’s most original geniuses (and past victim of the Unabomber, whose explosive device, sent through the mail, mangled one of his hands). An artist, writer and professor of computer science at Yale University, he recently published in the Wall Street Journal an article, titled

“Trump and the Emasculated Voter” (October 15-16, 2016). Though also a Contributing Editor at the conservative Weekly Standard, which in its editorial policy strongly opposes Trump, he concluded that “there’s only one way to protect the nation from Hillary Clinton, and that is to vote for Donald Trump.”

And the reasons(s) why the nation needs to be protected from Hillary?

Gelernter astutely notes that over the last few decades the people’s opinions have grown increasingly irrelevant to the political class (whether Democratic or Republicans, though at greatly accelerated pace during the two Obama administrations). He offers examples when asking since when the American public, for example, endorsed affirmative action that has become integrated in our lives in schools and at work. Or since when did the American public accept the fact that men and women should have equal responsibilities in combat in the military. He poignantly asks why are women now in combat in the military but not allowed to play football in the NFL, and reaches the very troubling, though absolutely correct conclusion that we are led by a political class that takes football more seriously than the military.

The larger theme behind these examples is the rapidly increasing encroachment of political correctness, dictated by a political and judicial elite in cahoots with national media, liberal universities and an uber-liberal entertainment industry, telling the American public what can or cannot be said in schools, on campus and at work, who we have to share bathrooms with and, ultimately, how we have to think. Reading some of the ideas behind “safe-zones” in colleges, one is reminded of Communist reeducation camps. One is also reminded of Communism and other dictatorships when our children in college tell us that they cannot express their opinion freely to many of their professors because they would be downgraded if they did not agree with politically correct opinions, like affirmative action, safe spaces, black lives mater, Israel as an Apartheid state, global warming, open borders and others.

Gelernter describes the feeling like that of “encroaching numbness.,” and the American public has, simply, had it with being told how to talk, how to behave and especially how to think. This is where Trump’s popularity stems from, and why accusations against him have been largely ineffective. He is perceived as the only politician who does not play the “political correctness game,” and says it how he sees it. The more outlandish an accusation, the stronger the public, consciously or subconsciously, therefore, will perceive him as unfairly attacked by political correctness. This is also the reason why we here at The Canary believe that Trump under-polls by four to five points.

The third Trump Clinton debate will be important. If Trump manages as similar performance as in the second debate and after that, until November 8, does not self-destruct, we predict that the American public, contrary to what most media want us to believe, will elect Donald Trump as the next president. Using a static pool of representative voters who get interviewed serially, the Los Angeles Times poll is the only one, which has had Trump persistently ahead of Clinton. Considering the unprecedented nature of this upcoming election, we believe that this polling structure is superior to standard polling methods.

President Donald Trump is, as we previously noted in an earlier communication, undoubtedly a risky choice. But, as Gelernter, we also believe that, as of this point, he is the only choice that can protect the nation from Hillary. And nothing is more important than that!

Bullshit Artist versus Pathological Liar, that is the question!

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CNN’s liberal and usually measured commentator, Fareed Zakaria has let it been known for some time that he is not a fan of Donald Trump. Many of his past commentaries about Trump, indeed, suggested a deep personal dislike for the Republican nominee for the presidency, rather atypical for this, otherwise, fairly balanced commentator. At his last week’s Sunday morning program, The Global Square (GPS), his dislike for Trump, however, came to full blow, calling Trump on live TV (fully spelled out) a “bullshit artist.” One has to give it to Zakaria, though, no other political pundit can be that insulting with more serenity in tone, verbal eloquence and imposing screen presence. He first prepared his audience by warning about his impending use of usually taboo language. Then, in preparation for his assault on Trump, he defined the term he planned to assign to Trump literally and psychologically by quoting from an “important” book of a well-known “expert,” and only then did he reveal that this whole exercise had been preparation for calling Trump a bullshit artist on live TV.

One could not help but be impressed by Zakaria’s performance because, as he described the personality type of a bullshit artist, one, indeed, had to agree with him, – The Donald, likely, really fits that bill (a conclusion many voters, we are sure, instinctively have reached before, whether consciously or unconsciously). But does this mean that Hillary Clinton should, therefore, be the beneficiary of our votes? Contemplating this question, the idea for and title of this column was born.

Here we are, a country of roughly 325 million people, still considered the leading nation in the world, less than three months away from a historically crucial election, and our choices for president are an acknowledged bullshit artist and an equally widely acknowledged compulsive pathological liar. Two logical conclusions come immediately to mind: First, we, of course, deserve better; and that means we have to do something to prevent this from happening again in the future. Second, we, indeed, do have to choose between the bullshit artist and the pathological liar.

Let’s start by addressing the second point because this is where Zakaria’s presentation, ultimately, failed in its logic: Having other options than to vote for a bullshit artist would, of course, be greatly preferable. But if there is only one other option, the obvious next question to be answered is, what is this alternative? And if the only alternative is a pathological and proven corrupt liar, then we here at The Canary take the personality of a bullshit artist over that of a corrupt pathological liar any day and anytime.

And here is why: Much of what comes out of Trump’s mouth (please forgive our language) is, indeed, bullshit. Those who know the real estate business (especially in New York City) will agree that it often involves a considerable degree of hot air verbosity and exaggeration, in New York City slang often also referred to as “chutzpah.” Many years ago when, because the New York real estate market had collapsed, Trump was close to losing his whole (then much smaller) empire, he attended a crucial meeting with his bankers. One of those bankers tells the story that never in his professional career did he see more amazing “chutzpah” than exuded by The Donald as he walked into that meeting on the verge of bankruptcy. Convincing a large group of initially very hostile bankers that it was in their best financial interest to support him in saving his real estate empire, both, he and the bankers, ultimately walked out of that room as winners.

There is something important to learn from this story for the upcoming election: bullshit artists are not necessarily evil people. Like most of us, they, of course, are driven by self- interests. But because their personality traits usually make them strive for recognition (do you recognize The Donald?), they will do their best to succeed. And if they are smart, they often will do surprisingly well (do you recognize The Donald?).

Contrast that to the alternative that Hillary Clinton offers. She, of course, has a very different psychological profile; Even her supporters acknowledge that she is a compulsive liar but this is not where the negative ends. In over 30 years in politics she also has demonstrated complete callousness in defending her aspirations, whether as wife of a philandering husband, who had no hesitation of degrading his female victims, or as a political candidate herself, where her private server scandal says it all and, as appears increasingly likely, will offer many more surprises before the November election. Or look at her handling of the Benghazi scandal, the Clinton Foundation and the selling of favors to foreign interest, where also more can be expected to come to the surface before November.

Most importantly, however, she has failed in all of her positions. As First Lady her husband assigned her responsibility for revamping the country’s health care system. How she went about it in total secrecy resulted in one of the biggest failures of the Clinton administration. As a senator she was ineffective in achieving what she had promised Upstate New York, and as Secretary of State her tenure can only be viewed as catastrophic. This offers a remarkable contrast to Donald Trump who, as above noted episode so well demonstrates, very obviously earned his success in a very competitive industry.

Think about this comparison all of you “undecided!” Think about the difference between bullshit and evil; think about what went on throughout the Bill Clinton presidency, and I am not talking only about Monica Lewinsky. Remember the travel agency scandal? Remember that Clinton’s rented out Lincoln’s Bed Room in the While House for political contributions? And then there is, of course, now the Clinton Foundation; just wait, – there is much more to come on that front before November.

So, while we here at The Canary wish we had better choices, we any day will choose a capable bullshit artist over a pathological liar looser. Trump, hopefully, will surround himself with smart people and make more right than wrong decisions. Like all presidents before and after him, he will make mistakes because making mistakes is baked into the position. We, however, can be reasonably certain that he will do his best to “Make America Great Again.” The same cannot be said about Hillary Clinton, where the country at every moment would have to fear being sold out for even the most minute personal interests and/or simply falling victim to incompetence.

To those “Never Trumpers” who simply cannot bring themselves to vote for Donald Trump, all we can say is follow the thought processes we here outlined (and we did not even mention the Supreme Court). If you then still cannot bring yourself to vote for Trump, don’t complain if Hillary is elected. You deserve it!

The Canary very much would have preferred different choices on both sides of the isle. Therefore, the time is now to start thinking how a repeat of the current situation can be avoided in future presidential elections. The Canary will return to this issue with some ideas in the future. Only so much now: Is there anybody out there on the left or right who does not believe that our primary election system requires radical reorganization? The time to start thinking about how to do that is now!

The Canary

 

A new governing aristocracy made public deception acceptable

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We live in unprecedented times: With both conventions behind us, roughly three months to the November elections, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the political landscape has radically changed; and not only because both big parties selected highly flawed, even in their own parties relatively unpopular presidential nominees.

Disruptions of traditional American politics goes far beyond that point, and the selection of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump as standard bearers of their respective parties, indeed, increasingly looks like only the last step in a decades-long process of declining morality in public policy and politics. It also coincides with a rapidly expanding government, the concomitant growth and ever increasing power of a government-funded administrative “aristocracy,” made up of professional politicians and largely unaccountable government bureaucrats, who no longer listen to the people but believe to have the right to make choices on behalf of the people, while in actuality self-servingly expanding their own interests rather than those of the people.

Administrative “aristocracies” existed throughout history, from ancient Egypt, China and Japan to later European nation states, at times, indeed, similarly to current circumstances in the European Union (i.e. BREXIT) and the U.S. (ratification of the agreement with Teheran by the U.N. rather that the U.S. Congress), more loyal to their “aristocratic” cast members across-borders than to their own nations. This is how, for example, a German rather than British aristocratic family ascended to the British throne creating the House of Windsor or, as recently as in 1921, when a Saudi Arabian “aristocratic” family from Mecca was chosen by the British as rulers of Jordan, creating the Hashemite dynasty that has been in power ever since. Though formal aristocracies lost power in many countries, new administrative “aristocracies” almost always followed. Though, for example, end of aristocratic rule was a declared goal of the French Revolution, Napoleon established elite schools for future government administrators (and politicians), not too dissimilar to how Chinese emperors had ruled their vast empire already in early Chinese dynasties, and thus created a new ruling class (i.e., administrative aristocracy).

Napoleon’s schooling concept has survived in the so-called Grandes écoles of France over a number of French Republics, with the École national d’administration till today seeding governments and the nations administrative as well as business elites, whether from the left or right of the political spectrum. Post WWII, similar administrative “aristocracies” also developed in most other Western European democracies and, when the European Community was established, found its ultimate expression in the Union’s Brussel Bureaucracy, which can be viewed as the principle cause why the BREXIT vote led to the pending departure of the UK from the EU.

Primarily driven by an ever expanding federal government with increasing powers, and by diminished independence of individual states, such a federal administrative “aristocracy” has also been evolving in the U.S. Especially the last 30 years have witnessed exponential growth in the power of this ruling class, at least partially driven by the power of incumbency, offering politicians a high likelihood of reelection, and due to lifetime employment (with practically no legal option of dismissal) for government employees. United by common self-interests of incumbency and ever expanding financial as well as political power, politicians and government bureaucrats now represent our country’s administrative “aristocracy,” not dissimilar to the EU’s administrative “aristocracy” in Brussels. This is why, by income, some of the suburbs of Washington, DC, now are the richest counties in the nation.

Convinced of intellectual superiority, these “aristocratic” bureaucracies create self-perpetuating and self-serving government structures from the ground up by determining what is and what is not politically correct language (and, of course, politically correct thinking); by establishing educational curricula for schools and colleges that “educate” the young, following the old Jesuit dictum, “give me a child until age seven, and I’ll give you the man;” by interpreting laws in thousands of rules and regulations, many never intended by congress; in other words, by removing the administration of the country further and further from the direct will of the people.

Since ideologies throughout history never were able to co-exist with traditional religious believes, it is not surprising that these “aristocratic” bureaucracies are usually agnostic, and often even overtly hostile to the exercise of free religions. The empty space of religion is filled with “modern religiosity,” best defined as abstract concepts of thought, which share with religions the indisputable conviction of absolute and, therefore, indisputable truth; yet, like religions, they are also characterized by absence of all provability and, at times, are empirical illogical.

A good example for such illogical thinking is, for example, the laudable insistence on equality of all religions (i.e., Islam with Christianity and Judaism) while, at the same time restricting the ability of Christians to practice their religion freely. A good example for the results of such illogical thinking is that currently over 50% of U.S. college students allegedly favor socialism over capitalism, even though every student of history would know that in innumerable incarnations socialism has without exception always failed as an economic model, and more often than not, ended up leading to dictatorships and economic misery (see the current Venezuela, the country with the largest oil reserves in the world). This statistical fact is, however, also a good example how radically this new American “aristocracy” has changed America in recent decades. Even President Obama in his first election campaign, only eight years ago, still categorically rejected the label of being a “socialist” for fear of becoming unelectable. Only eight years later, Bernie Sanders, a declared Socialist would, likely, have become the elected Democratic presidential candidate, had the party leadership not undemocratically conspired against his election.

Looking back in history, considering the more recent political climate in the country, it is really quite remarkable that when the Watergate Scandal broke in the 1970s in the second Nixon administration, Republicans were on the forefront of those demanding his impeachment. Contrast that to what happened during the second Democratic Clinton administration, when the truth no longer mattered and relativity of values, suddenly, ruled the day.

Can anybody imagine that an earlier U.S. president would have politically survived a Lewinsky- like Scandal? And, yet in 1997, only a little over 20 years following Watergate, Bill Clinton not only survived, but became one of the country’s most popular ex-presidents. The political value system of the country in those short years had, obviously, radically changed: Doing the right thing for the country was out; and self-preservation of the ruling “aristocratic” class, based on the relativity of human values, was in. Not one Democratic member of the Senate supported Clinton’s impeachment, and many Republican politicians who had pushed for it, saw their political careers destroyed.

After Watergate, the Lewinsky Affair, likely, became the most decisive political event in recent American history because, for the first time, an American president in a televised broadcast literally looked into the eyes of the nation and outright lied, when stating “I have never had sex with this woman.”

Many, maybe even most presidents before Clinton, of course, also have on occasion been less than truthful; but nobody, except of course Nixon (“I am not a crook”), has in recent history so blatantly lied to the American people as Bill Clinton and, yet, gotten away with it, in the process changing American politics for ever by demonstrating that the modern multimedia world practically always offers the opportunity to relativize the truth of the message (to quote Bill Clinton, “it depends what the meaning of ‘is’ is.”).

The political “aristocracy” learned this lesson very quickly and, of course, nobody better than Hillary Clinton. She would never have dared to follow through with the absolute insane idea of establishing her own Internet server while serving as Secretary of State, had she not been convinced that she could manipulate the truth, should it be discovered. Piercing her words, as her husband had done so well during the Lewinsky Affair, she, indeed, has successfully avoided indictment by the Justice Department, even though a majority of Americans, likely, believe that she escaped because of special considerations by Obama’s Justice Department. Completely exposed in her deception by the FBI investigation, she, remarkably, still continues to lie in her statements to the public.

That Hillary Clinton was not indicted also explains why investigations of Fast and Furious and the IRS scandal never went anywhere, why six weeks before national presidential elections the first Obama administration could instruct senior administration officials to claim that the U.S. ambassador’s murder in Benghazi was not caused by terrorists but by a ridiculous irrelevant video produced in Los Angeles. This is also why Hillary Clinton is still a candidate for President of the U.S., even though common sense suggests that she should have been indicted, and why President Obama can with a straight face go on national television, telling the American people that sending 400 million dollars in foreign untraceable currencies on an unmarked plane in the middle of the night to Teheran represents just “routine” government relations between two governments, and had absolutely nothing to do with the concomitant release of four American hostages.

It has quite obviously become routine for senior government officials, including America’s current President, without fear of political or legal retributions, to blatantly lie to the American people. This, of course, does not happen by happenstance: it is a reflection of how much our country’s political morality has changed over the last three decades.

Within the ruling “aristocracy,” loyalty to the ruling class supersedes right and wrong, and even loyalty to the country is only, at best, second. This is why Ms. Lerner took the Fifth when questioned before Congress about the IRS scandal rather than inform Congress on who instructed her to discriminate against potential political opponents of the Obama administration. She knew that she could count on being protected, and that there would be no serious follow up investigation by the FBI. This is also why only one person was fired in the Veterans Affairs Scandal, the Justice Department decided not to defend a law suit this person filed about her dismissal, and the Obama administration announced that it would no longer implement a law Congress passed that allowed the Veterans Administrator to fire government employees for appropriate cause. And this is also why Hillary Clinton had no hesitation of appointing Ms. Wasserman-Schultz to the position of Honorary Chair of her campaign on the day she was forced to resign as Chair of the Democratic Party after public disclosure how the party under her leadership subverted the primary election process in favor of Ms. Clinton. One hand, of course, washes the other; the administrative “aristocracy” protects its own!

The public instinctively feels the growing divide between the ruling administrative “aristocracy” of both major parties and the American people. This is unquestionably a major reason why Congress and both parties have reached a nadir in popularity. The only question remaining is whether the public is upset enough about where the political “aristocracy” has taken the country to revolt, and take the risk in the upcoming election to consider the unknown over the unacceptable. If the answer is yes, then Donald Trump will be the next U.S. president; if the answer is no, then Hillary Clinton will not only be the first female president of the U.S. but, assuming the public’s anger with Washington continues to grow and finally boils over during her administration, she may end up being the first president since Richard Nixon not finishing a full term in the White House.