Vengeance Is Mine

The Second Coming of Reagan

When this column is published on Monday morning here on the Far Side, it will still be Sunday night for a major portion of the readership here, but it will be in all cases less than 24 hours from one of the most significant moments in modern political history - and certainly in modern histrionics.

By Tuesday morning, all things being equal, Donald J. Trump will be confirmed as the 45th president of the United States, and all hell will break loose.

Whether you support or revile Trump matters little.  The fact is that very few people have any real idea who he is and where he stands on a wide variety of issues.  With most politicians, one has a history of their voting record in office, a body of speeches and actions, and a relatively coherent history to go on.  With Trump, the world has none of that.

All we really have with Trump is his record of making money at a number of business ventures and a lot of campaign rhetoric that, given the long history of politics, means little when compared to what politicians actually do and achieve in public life.

Being a political atheist, I come down on the side of caution, which I believe is a rational and reasonable position when dealing with anyone in public life.  In my lifetime, I have never seen a politician ever live up to their promises.  What I have seen a lot of is people projecting their hopes and dreams onto certain charismatic individuals, based on little more than what religion offers: faith.  In fact, the most common outcome of elections is deep and bitter disappointment.

One need look no further than the vainglorious "hope" and empty "change" that Barack Obama offered.  In 2008, he was hailed as nothing short of the Second Coming - a modern political savior who would end racial discrimination and finally equal the playing field.  Instead, the country ended up in 2016 with deeper and more entrenched divides, and even a great number of US black people wondering what the hell happened to the Great Black Hope.

Politics is like an abusive spouse.  We keep thinking this time she's changed, this time she'll be different, only to find ourselves beat and battered for another term.  Despite centuries of history, we never seem to see the light that nothing changes and all our hopes and dreams end up in the same place - the hospital with friends and family clucking their tongues and wagging their heads saying, "When are you going to learn?"

I, for one, embrace candidates that I think will bring the most chaos and disappointment, since my hope is that he or she will finally be the straw that breaks the camel's back and we can collectively get over this love/hate relationship with politics and put an end to the deadliest, most abusive addiction humanity has ever suffered: government.  Alas!  That day still seems as far off as it did decades, even centuries, ago.

One thing is certain: Donald Trump is the most bombastic rhetorician the US has had since Theodore Roosevelt.  So far, the only major effect his election has had has been to push the dollar to new market highs, which ironically makes US exports unattractive, while making imported goods seem cheap and attractive - more of less the exact opposite of what he has said he wants.

To grant him the benefit of the doubt, several large companies have cancelled plans to move their factories out of the country, and others have announced intentions to move their factories back to the US.  This means saving or adding jobs that pay decent wages and support the middle class, which is the life-blood of any thriving economy.  A hearty clap on the back goes to Trump for that quick bit of PR.  Well done.

The problem remains, though, that a significant section of the US has been irreversibly brainwashed into servitude in exchange for scraps from the government table and "safe zones" for crying "nobody loves me, everybody hates me."  These children in adult bodies are beyond hope, and they are obviously a significant segment of the society.  They will never shut up because they know of no other way to behave than to demand conformity, which they mistakenly call diversity.

The biggest change I see coming is not in the System, but in the System's focus.  Trump will likely shift the focus of the protection racket called government from "Finance" to "Production."  This is not entirely bad, as Production is the basis of Capitalism.  For far too long, the focus has been on protecting the Financial sector, which produces nothing and functions largely as a parasite on the arse of society.  To the extent that Trump is successful in this effort, it will greatly enhance the pocket-money situation in the US middle class.

What I don't foresee is a true "swamp draining."  For those unfamiliar with this particularly American political catch-phrase, it is often used by politicians who promise to "go to (insert name of political body) and clean up the corruption."  I have seen a lot of "swamp drainers" come and go, and the primary result is that the System chews them up and spits them out, with some like Ron Paul being marginalized to the point of invisibility until they give up and go away.

In order for Trump to achieve the things that got him elected, he will need the Congress on his side.  Republican control of both houses of Congress notwithstanding, he must compromise with dozens of factions within the party to achieve even a fraction of what he claims to want.  Most importantly, he needs the Federal Reserve on his side, since it controls the economy and is a private corporation with only nominal oversight by Congress.

On top of those two major hurdles, Trump will need to pack the judiciary with like-minded judges, which will be near impossible, since (again) the Congress will need to approve the appointments and will want their own agendas met in exchange.

In the end, Trump is virtually powerless to achieve real change.  The System always wins.  It is designed that way.  Despite all the wailing and gnashing of teeth, about the only real change that he will, and has already achieved is to marginalize the Bush and Clinton crime families, but even there, short of prosecuting and jailing (even executing for treason) those folks, he has only sidelined them for a time.  Case in point is the current recounts, Electoral College drama and future efforts sure to follow.  For his part, Trump has already displayed a lack of stomach for that fight, as it would most likely consume his entire tenure in office - or at least the first term - though it would certainly be the greatest service he could perform for the nation, and the world at large.

In any event, I place very low expectations on the coming Trump years.  This will mean that I am either pleasantly surprised, spot on or minimally disappointed.  I would give anything in four years to eat my words, but I find no reason to run out and buy seasoning packets to make them more palatable.

Though I spent half of the Reagan Revolution living outside the US, I did see an economic benefit from those years.  The trade-off, though, was a culture so brilliantly captured by Oliver Stone's film Wall Street.  It seems Reagan forgot to corral the Financial sector before turning loose the Production folks.  If Trump goes this route, we are in for more of the same-old, Part 2.

Matriculating At The Electoral College

Most US citizens nowadays have not read the Constitution of the united States of America [sic], much less the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers.  For this reason, the Electoral College seems like an elitist and anachronistic vestige of a by-gone era.  Actually, the problem is that the System has been so monkeyed with, and the federal institutions completely re-tasked, since the founding of the country that the original intent of many of the country's institutions seem rather mysterious.

Thank you, American "education" system for dropping Civics classes in favor of LGBT studies.

In fact, if anyone bothered to read the US Constitution, the Senate, President and Vice President were never intended to be elected by the masses.  Only the House of Representatives was considered the People's forum, while the Senate was intended to be a deliberative body, the President's job was just to execute the laws passed by Congress, and the Supreme Court was an "untouchable" group of FIVE people who weighed laws against the Constitutional powers.

Since the original intent of the Federal government has been completely turned upside down, many of the national institutions seem bizarre by current standards, not the least of which is the Electoral College.

The Federal government was never intended to issue laws that affected the People of the States.  It was simply a body created to regulate relations between the States, issue and regulate a single currency, and unify trade regulations and foreign policy.  For this reason, most of the Federal government was NOT elected by the People, but rather by the States, which were the only entities affected by Federal law.

Originally, Senators were elected, not by general statewide elections, but by the Legislatures in each State.  The Legislatures were also tasked with selecting the Electors for each State, who in turn voted for the President.  The top vote in the Electoral College became the President, and second place became the Vice President.

Each State had a minimum of three Electors, one for each Senator (total two), and one for each Congressional seat.  The total number was based on population, determined by a decadal Census, which was only intended to count heads, not race, gender or number of toilets and flooring material in each house.

Over time, the Federal government began to insinuate more and more power over individual citizens, a function it was never intended to have.  After the Civil War, this usurpation of power was more or less cemented in place.

Let's take a minute to examine how the Electoral College was supposed to function.  The 12th Amendment, ratified in 1804, states that the Electors meet on the first Monday following the second Wednesday of December every four years.  The Electors vote separately for President and Vice President, with at least one of them being from a different State.  The Electors send a Certificate of their vote to the US Senate, where the current Vice President (President of the Senate) opens them in front of the full House and Senate and reads them aloud.  If no one gets a 2/3rds majority, then the House immediately votes for President, with a simple majority winning.  If a majority is not reached by the following March, then the current Vice President assumes the office.

No where in the Constitution does it mandate that the President and Vice President be elected by the citizenry.  That is actually a function of the party system, where popular vote selects the nominees.  Therefore, the popular vote for President is meaningless, except as allowed by law in the individual States, where all of them have locked the percentage of pledged Electors to the popular vote in some form or another.  In other words, the American public has never elected a President, either now or in the past.  They simply bind Electors to vote one way or another, with varying degrees of force (or none at all).

Basically, all the time and money spent on presidential elections in the US is really pointless.

The power (thought the Right is a contentious argument) of the Federal government to bypass the States and invade the lives of private citizens came with the creation of the Federal Reserve (Federal Reserve Act of 1913) and the Income Tax (16th Amendment).  Together, these laws removed the "power of the purse" from the people and tore down the barrier between them and the Federal government.

The next jiggering with the US System came right after the Income Tax amendment in 1913 (appropriately enough), when the 17th Amendment took the power to elect Senators away from the Legislatures and gave it to the rabble.  This further eroded the function of the Federal government as just a regulatory body among the States, and gave it more power over the individual citizens.

The Judiciary Act of 1869, combined with President Franklin Roosevelt's court stacking to ram his New Deal through Constitutional prohibitions were the final nail in the coffin of the Republic.  At this point, the Socialist agenda of the FDR administration solidified the democratic wave that had slowly overpowered the founding intent of the Federal government.  It now had the power to directly affect the lives of individual citizens, which was precisely the worry that the Founders had when they set up the system.

As it stands, the Electoral College seems like an anachronistic vestige of a bygone era because its intent has been destroyed over the past two centuries through the usurpation of States' Rights and the unbridled expansion of Federal powers.  The last remaining barriers against an all-powerful Federal beast are the 9th and 10th Amendments (Rights of the People, and the States), and the jury system, all of which have been under steady attack for decades now, in great part by the purposeful maleducation (to coin a term) instituted by the Federal government trying to centralize control over information through the school systems, in other words, the Common Core.

Since the American people no longer have any clue why and how their government works, it is becoming increasingly easy to run roughshod over the law without even bothering to change it.  Who would argue when no one understands it?  And besides, decades of maleducation have left people thinking that Democracy is pretty nifty, not realizing that these strange institutions were put in place to provide a barrier against centralize power and control over people's daily lives, which is where the US is today.

One of my biggest worries about the recent election is that neither Trump, or the people, have any clue that they have demanded from the office of the President actions and results that the office is not empowered to have.

I would be greatly encouraged if Trump's only act in office were to appoint strict constructionist justices to the Supreme Court and together begin dismantling the central power grab of the Federales.  This one act would eliminate 99% of all the problems that got people to the point of electing Trump in the first place.  The rest of his job would be dismantling the Federal Reserve and the Income Tax system and returning the country to the original form of government it was meant to have.

Unimaginable?  Yup  That's why I have never supported ANY candidate for President.