Trump is running a campaign empty of substance, which are the claims from the Establishment and the other Republican candidates opposing him. Trump getting red faced and frustrated when attacked simply feeds the everybody is out to get him, the same exact feeling which much of the populace also feels as their health costs have tripled, the coverage is so limited that it is the cause of much of the increased health costs because the system is not designed to deliver healthcare but to transfer funds to the lower third or even half of the population, the people on public support and who pay no taxes. Even if Trump or a Republican President with a Republican Congress redesign Obamacare into Republicare, the system will still become cumbersome and loaded down with regulations and impossible hurdles to get proper care because government does not do healthcare. Government does regulations and compartmentalization all of which is the antithesis of good healthcare which requires everyone to have access to one another and their opinions. Government had proven to be very poor at interfacing differing areas of every agency and healthcare will end up being no different. The lack of interconnectivity is a large part of the problem in Veterans Healthcare and the public version will be even worse as there will be that many more patients to tangle up in forms, requests and what we from the military knew as SNAFUs, Situation Normal All Fouled Up.
One of the main reasons that Donald Trump has won three primaries in a row and might well outperform his rivals today, Super Tuesday, has much to do with the Republican Party deciding that it was best to front-load many of the primary elections when states clamored to place their voting as early as possible. This was seen as important because everyone wanted their race to be the one which put the candidate over the threshold thus making their state appear to be the important and pivotal primary state. It was the race to the front a number of years ago which pressured the parties to change their primary as nobody wanted to have their state primary elections after one candidate had necessarily won making their election results meaningless. This has allowed Donald Trump to make a grab for delegates a viable stratagem by simply playing to the crowds as the one being ganged up and mugged by his apparent closest rivals, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Their tactic to reveal Trump as an empty suit would have had far greater effect had they started earlier and had the time to reveal his lack of any form of plan, as Trump has basically made a campaign around his phrase of, “I’m going to make America great again.” He is basically running a campaign as this election’s Hope and Change candidate offering change we will all hope will change the stuff needing change or the people will lose all hope. The other candidates would have served themselves far better had they come up with a theme around which they actually built their argument as that would have given them a rivaling theme and one with substance and not relying on hot air, something which has lifted Trump like a hot air balloon. The other two main rivals attempting to poke a hole in Trump’s balloon has left them standing on the ground while he soared to apparent victory.
Again, it is really possible that there will emerge a winner by the Ides of March and the United States will be left fearing two-thirds of a year of Trump being Trump. What is even more astounding has been the Republicans and not so insignificant number of Democrats who have claimed they want a president with substance and grit with an actual and explained plan to move the United States back to its preeminence in the world, and Donald Trump has captured their minds and left them giddy filled with some intoxicant. The intoxicant is a slogan which expresses the electorate’s desires which claiming “I’m going to make America great again,” fills that need and many believe that there is a real plan behind the slogan. The frightening thing is that President Obama had a plan to go along with his “Hope and Change” and “Yes We Can” sloganeering in 2008 elections. Those slogans and electing the first Black United States President simply intoxicated the American public and here we are two terms of Hope and Change later. The one thing many Americans are now claiming is that those Changes were not what they had Hoped they would be. Eight years ago nobody challenged President Obama to define the Change we were presumably Hoping for so that left it up to each individual to define the Change and that gave them Hope. Here we are eight years later and it appears that the presumed thinking party had fallen for a phrase and no plan, which may prove just as intoxicating as President Obama’s sloganeering. The question the Republicans need to ask themselves is will “I’m going to make America great again,” as a campaign slogan last through to the elections or will the balloon burst and the Republican hopes of taking the White House dwindle and completely blow away on the wind, the same wind they had hoped would change the ownership of the White House.
We have been hearing an argument that we do not need another sloganeering campaign despite its appeal and they have claimed that nobody has won based on a slogan before President Obama attempting to pin his election on Hope and Change as an illusion the nation cannot afford another such President. The sorry thing is there have been numerous Presidents elected simply due to an inspirational catch phrase, though often also filled with actual plans and positions deeper than “Make America great again.” President Eisenhower had a slogan which was festooned across the country and it proved accurate that, “I Like Ike,” won the nation’s hearts. The fact General Eisenhower managed the victory in Europe during World War II probably aided his run for the White House. There were cryptic slogans such as Theodore Roosevelt whose single word slogan, “Bully” both won him the White House and redefined that word to mean a winner, a successful achiever and to have the advantage in speaking giving us the terminology “Bully Pulpit.”
Through American history there have always been slogans, some of which proved memorable enough to outlast the campaign and even the candidate such as: ‘Don’t Change Horses in Mid-Stream,’ ‘All Power to the Imagination!,’ ‘Better Dead than Red,’ ‘Four More Years,’ ‘Vote for a Change,’ ‘Remember Pearl Harbor!,’ ‘Remember the Alamo!,’ ‘He Kept Us Out of War,’ ‘Think Globally, Act Locally,’ ‘We are the 99%,’ ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,’ ‘Tippecanoe and Tyler Too,’ ‘The Buck Stops Here,’ ‘There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch,’ ‘Workers of the World Unite,’ and one which sounds eerily applicable to one of the current campaigns, ‘No War but Class War.’ The idea of finding a catch phrase which resonates is as old as politics and even predates elections as slogans can be used to start or end revolutions or can be used to win wars and get the public roused. Rosie the Riveter was used to sell war bonds along with an entire and ongoing campaign which came from an actual advertising agency contracted by the government. Without slogans much of politics would simply be dry rhetoric stating facts, lying about facts, stretching and mutilating facts leaving at least a shred or two of truth in them and the other things as old as politics, mud-slinging. During the 1796 elections between Thomas Jefferson and Samuel Adams, Jefferson supporters described Adams in an article run in Philadelphia as, “old, querulous, bald, blind, crippled, toothless Adams.” In 1828 Presidential election Andrew Jackson was described in a Cincinnati newspaper by John Q. Adams supporter wrote, “General Jackson’s mother was a COMMON PROSTITUTE brought to this country by British soldiers. She afterwards married a MULATTO MAN, with whom she had several children, of which General JACKSON IS ONE!!!” and lastly from the 1800 Adams-Jefferson campaign we get this gem describing John Adams as a, “hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” The name-calling today is tame and respectful compared to the early years in politics where anything was fair game including big whoppers of lies.
The way to prevent sloganeering of winning the primary campaign in a single burst of well-planned buffoonery would be to spread the primary elections out with the states with sizeable numbers of delegates evenly spaced with them slightly weighted towards the middle to end of the season as they are the likely states where the fight will be the most revealing as we really need to know which candidate has the right stuff to survive an attack calling them a, “hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” Such a lengthening of the campaign such that it represents a solid four month campaign where the people could really get to compare and contrast the candidates and they will be pressed to give greater insight and depth, not that such things tend to actually matter any longer. Now the elections are decided by the media and the operatives with the people caught in the middle. “I’m going to make America great again.” That is a great slogan and would be even better if we knew how. With President Obama who won not just one but two Presidential campaigns on little if any substance we do not need another sloganeer. The first was sold as Hope and Change. Well, we all hope for better days to come and change is inevitable as the laws of physics explain all too muddled in the math for many of us to understand. Who doesn’t understand this Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann formula from Analytic Algebraic Geometry and Number Theory shown below?
The problem is obvious; most of us will start to pay attention to the primary elections in our respective states, if we even bother to vote, about a week, maybe two, before the election is held. Then we see who our equally clueless friends are supporting, maybe look up something on-line and then as all too many people too busy to take the time and carefully analyze each candidate’s positions and other pertinent items, not like all who read articles here as they obviously have done and followed since the first person announced over a year ago, thank you Dr. Ben Carson, and finally turn on the radio to hear the news and vote for whoever is ahead in the polls as they want to vote for the winner (yes, I knew somebody who voted with that exact reasoning, voted for the winner). This election in the United States, and if everything does not collapse, or worse, implode, then also the next few Presidential and Congressional elections will decide the fate of more than the United States. They may decide whether the world enters World War III before the United States has redeployed her military so as to have them dispersed and thus many surviving a preemptory strike which simply destroys the power generation grid leaving the people to die a slow death of starvation and Americans shooting each other over a piece of bread or a jar of peanut butter, chunky, of course. That also might decide where the remnants of Europe escape to as the tensions in Europe begin to boil over and fighting breaks out in the streets. What is important for all in the free world to remember was a one singular shameful event where people stood and watched and some shot pictures but nobody stepped forward to lead and prevent this gruesome event from the afternoon of May 22, 2013, a British Army soldier, Fusilier Lee Rigby of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, was attacked and killed by Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale near the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, southeast London and beheaded.
That a crowd watched and did nothing will be the critical moment when many of us discovered that the world we thought we knew was dead and soon a critical question will be imposed on the Western World, the question of will you stand for your privilege and way of life or will you as well surrender before the coming storm, before Islam. So, which will it be? We and many fear the answer might just be silence, the worst kind of silence which comes right before the storm, and it will be a storm like has been unheard for a very long time.
Beyond the Cusp
Writing thus article reminded me of a song which just keeps being pertinent and more applicable as time passes. The problem is we are getting near the point where the song will not apply as the whole mess will have gone as we named this site to express, “Beyond the Cusp” (or over the edge). The song is Steppenwolf’s Monster which can be viewed at this music video. Also here are the lyrics for those interested.
Steppenwolf – Monster Lyrics
Once the religious, the hunted and weary
Chasing the promise of freedom and hope
Came to this country to build a new vision
Far from the reaches of kingdom and pope
Like good Christians, some would burn the witches
Later some got slaves to gather riches
But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands to court the wild
But she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light
And once the ties with the crown had been broken
Westward in saddle and wagon it went
And ’til the railroad linked ocean to ocean
Many the lives which had come to an end
While we bullied, stole and bought our a homeland
We began the slaughter of the red man
But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands to court the wild
But she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light
The blue and gray they stomped it
They kicked it just like a dog
And when the war was over
They stuffed it just like a hog
And though the past has it’s share of injustice
Kind was the spirit in many a way
But it’s protectors and friends have been sleeping
Now it’s a monster and will not obey
The spirit was freedom and justice
And it’s keepers seem friendly and kind
It’s leaders were supposed to serve the country
But now they won’t pay it no mind
‘Cause the people got fat and grew lazy
Now their vote is like a meaningless joke
You know they talk about law, about order
But it’s all just an echo of what they’ve been told
‘Cause there’s a monster on the loose
It’s got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watchin’
Our cities have turned into jungles
And corruption is stranglin’ the land
The police force is watching the people
And the people just can’t understand
We don’t know how to mind our own business
‘Cause the whole worlds got to be just like us
Now we are fighting a war over there
No matter who wins, you know we can’t pay the cost
‘Cause there’s a monster on the loose
It’s got our heads into the noose
And it just sits there watching
America where are you now?
Don’t you care about your sons and daughters?
Don’t you know we need you now
We can’t fight alone against the monster
America where are you now?
Don’t you care about your sons and daughters?
Don’t you know we need you now
We can’t fight alone against the monster
America where are you now?
Don’t you care about your sons and daughters?
Don’t you know we need you now
We can’t fight alone against the monster
America where are you now?
Don’t you care about your sons and daughters?
Don’t you know we need you now
We can’t fight alone against the monster
America
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Comment by qwertster — March 1, 2016 @ 4:15 AM |
Reblogged this on Oyia Brown.
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Comment by OyiaBrown — March 2, 2016 @ 11:05 AM |