Eight Reasons Why Left-Leaning Voters Should Stop Touting the Legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt

      How corrupt, racist, and elitist our 32nd President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was, seems to have seriously evaded the notice of most American voters who describe themselves as liberals, progressives, and Democrats.

     Most of F.D.R.'s most popular achievements - like the "end" of child labor, the 40-hour work-week, and Social Security old-age and retirement benefits - should be credited to F.D.R.'s Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins, rather than to Roosevelt himself.

     But that aside, F.D.R. - and his advisor Henry Stimson - made some horrendous wartime decisions, most of which, liberals and modern Democrats seem to have completely forgotten.

     Let's review. We're talking about a man:

     1. Who imprisoned over 110,000 Japanese-Americans who did nothing wrong, nor criminal, of their own volition. Their only "crime" was the accident of being related to their former countrymen back home in Japan.

     Think about what it means, from the perspective of the Japanese, for the United States (under F.D.R.) to intern 110,000 innocent American citizens in good standing with the law. Imagine that you attack a country. Imagine that that country responds by placing all of your emigrants as prisoners of war. Imagine that the enemy country allows children (for example, Star Trek actor George Takei) to grow up as if they were prisoners and common criminals.

     This would give you all the reason to keep the war going, and - at that - longer than it needs to go on! You would have every reason to not only fight that country in the air and at sea, but additionally to mount a full-scale land invasion on that country, for the purposes of setting those 110,000 people free!

     Franklin D. Roosevelt thus arguably kept World War II going, for much longer than it "had to" go on, by imprisoning those innocent people.

     The fact that this was done in the interest of national security - and Bill Clinton's formal apology to Fred Korematsu - do not matter. The United States is a country of laws, and the Fourth Amendment should have prevented F.D.R.'s orders to exclude Japanese-Americans from the West Coast Military Area from ever becoming law in the first place. In fact, because the Fourth Amendment is still in place, those orders were never valid laws in the first place. Which is why they were struck down in Korematsu v. U.S..

     2. Who authorized the internment of thousands of German-Americans and Italian-Americans.
     Eleven thousand German-Americans and nearly two thousand Italian-Americans were unlawfully detained during World War II. The fact that they were white, and that Japanese-Americans were detained too, does not make this "equal misery" (to paraphrase a quote by Winston Churchill) acceptable, nor sufferable. It was wrong then, and it would be wrong now.

     3. Who listened to the advice of Secretary of War Henry Stimson, when Stimson advised him not to bomb the train tracks which led to the Auschwitz cluster of several dozen forced labor, concentration, and extermination camps.

     The fact that it would have been dangerous to fly U.S. Air Force bomber planes over the area, is no excuse for shelving the plan to bomb the tracks leading to Auschwitz. The fact that Air Force planes risked being shelled by the Nazis' surface-to-air missiles, is no excuse.

     If the U.S. Military used "it's too dangerous" as an excuse all the time, then it never would have fought World War II to begin with. If the plan was made, then it should have been attempted. If it had been attempted and then it had failed, then it should have been attempted a second time (and, if necessary, a third time).

     The U.S. Military does not award anybody a medal for lack of bravery or lack of courage.

     Henry Stimson advised F.D.R. against attempting this plan, not because it probably wouldn't have worked, but because Henry Stimson was an anti-Semite. How do I know this?

     4. Listened to Henry Stimson another time - prior to the shelving of the Auschwitz plan - when Stimson advised against allowing a ship full of Jewish refugees into the United States.

     The M.S. St. Louis held about 900 passengers, the vast majority of them Jewish refugees from Europe who were trying to escape from the Nazis. When the so-called "Ship of the Damned" arrived in Cuba, passengers discovered that they had been sold fraudulent tickets, and were not allowed to disembark.

     The ship was unable to unload passengers, who turned to the United States out of desperation. After Stimson advised F.D.R. against allowing the passengers to disembark in the United States, the ship sailed to Canada, and unloaded about 600 passengers.

     The ship was eventually forced to return to Nazi-occupied Europe with 300 passengers in tow. The majority of them were murdered at the hands of the Nazis.

     5. Who was not some poor boy, nor a dirt farmer, nor a union organizer, but a nepotist, being a cousin of former President Theodore Roosevelt.

     Teddy Roosevelt had previously served as President of the United States for nearly eight years. Teddy Roosevelt was no saint himself, having served as a general out west, massacring Indians, and as Assistant Secretary of the Navy.

     Another relative of theirs - Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. (born in 1916) - helped found the Office of Strategic Services (which eventually morphed into what is now the C.I.A.), and led America's coup against the democratically elected leader of Iran, Muhammad Mosaddegh, in 1953.

     Franklin D. Roosevelt also married his own cousin, Eleanor.

     Franklin D. Roosevelt is treated by Democrats today, as George W. Bush was treated by Republicans in the early 2000s; as a self-made man who pulled himself up by his own bootstraps and made a name for himself out of nothing. Nothing could be further from the truth.

     F.D.R. was nothing more than a spoiled, power-hungry elitist, who rode on the back of his cousin Teddy's accomplishments. Aside from being a nepotistic cousin-fucker whose parents were sixth-cousins.

     6. Who was the governor of the State of New York, prior to becoming president.

     F.D.R. served as governor of New York from 1929 to 1932. Before that, he was Assistant Secretary of the Navy (like his relative Teddy), and prior to that, he served in the New York State Legislature. Before that, he was a lawyer.

     Moreover, F.D.R.'s father James was a businessman and a horse breeder. James once took Franklin to meet Grover Cleveland while Cleveland was president. In fact, Cleveland told Franklin that he hoped Franklin would never become president.

     F.D.R. grew up playing polo and tennis, and received a free sailboat from his father at the age of sixteen. It would probably be fair to conclude that F.D.R. never performed a day of honest hard work in his whole life.

     

     7. Whose legacy was based on the myth that wartime spending can get a country out of a recession without many negative consequences.

     Sure, the United States emerged from World War II as the wealthiest country on the face of the Earth. But that was arguably due only to the facts that the other developed countries of the world were thoroughly bombed to rubble during the conflict, and because the U.S. was so far geographically removed from the other Allied nations that it never suffered significant military attacks.

     The U.S. may have recovered from the losses it suffered during World War II. But the number of people paying federal income taxes skyrocketed (from 7% to 64%) from 1940 to 1944. To the extent to which high income taxes discourage people from working and earning more, the economy has never recovered (in that regard). That number now sits at 44%.

     Additionally, the country has never recovered from the increased militarism which was brought about by its second major involvement in an international military conflagration. Prior to that, the U.S. had been relatively uninvolved in wars (that is, if you don't count its colonialism in the Philippines, Hawaii, and elsewhere). The people who settled America sailed across an entire ocean for a reason; to get away from Europe, its kings, and its endless conflicts (including religious wars).

     8. Was not an honest public servant, but rather, someone who knew how to do the bare minimum of what was required, in order to keep his power and his job. Richard Nixon could be described the same way.

     F.D.R. is credited for having lifted people out of poverty. But this came at the expense of the freedom of the interned Japanese, German, and Italian Americans. It came at the expense of forgetting the contributions of people like Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, and the legislators who wrote the laws that F.D.R. merely enforced.

     F.D.R.'s successes came at the expense of a legacy wherein modern-day Democrats "vote blue no matter who", despite all the indications that the Democratic Party is no longer interested in helping anybody other than wealthy professionals who live in wealthy suburbs which are growing so quickly that they resemble cancerous tumors on the face of the Earth more than they resemble livable human settlements.

     Don't even get me started on F.D.R.'s mischaracterization of the Philippines and Hawaii as if they were "American" in late 1941, in order to excuse American military involvement in the Pacific theater of World War II.
     For more information on this, please watch Daniel Immerwahr's presentation "How to Hide an Empire", available at the following link:
     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaKOOqXDnqA
     Or read this article on the same topic:
     http://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/feb/15/the-us-hidden-empire-overseas-territories-united-states-guam-puerto-rico-american-samoa

     Or his confiscation of gold from American citizens, after which he turned around and sold the gold to big banks at a 28% profit.

     Or his refusal to meet (or "snubbing") of African-American Olympic champion runner Jesse Owens, which genocidal dictator Adolf Hitler didn't even have the gall to do.

Based on a post titled

"Franklin D. Roosevelt Was an Elitist,

and He and His Adviser Henry Stimson

Were Anti-Semitic War Criminals",

originally posted to Facebook on August 8th, 2021

Edited and Expanded on September 9th, 2021

Originally published to this blog on September 9th, 2021

Thoughts on Immigration, Racial Violence, the 2018 Elections, and the National Debt

     On November 2^nd, 2018, I attended a round-table political discussion at the Highland Park Recreation Center in Highland Park, Illinois. Ralph Bernstein moderated the event, and e-mailed his questions to attendees prior to the event. Below are my responses to the questions I cared to answer.



Question #1

     President Donald Trump says he wants to order the end of the constitutional right to citizenship for babies of non-citizens and unauthorized immigrants born in the United States. The 14^th Amendment provides that anyone born in the U.S. is a citizen. Can a president, by executive order, change a provision of the constitution? What about changing the First Amendment regarding the press? Are such orders constitutional? If so, what does that do to the presidency, make the president “all powerful?” He has also said he wants to change the 22^nd Amendment to allow a term for the president to be 16 years.

Answer #1

     Amending the 14^th, or 1^st, amendment to the Constitution, cannot be done by the president. That is the executive-branch equivalent of “legislating from the bench”; legislation is Congress's job. Executive orders only allow the president to make minor recommendations as to how the law should be enforced, not to dictate what the law is. Amending an amendment requires the approval of majorities of Congress and 3/4 of the states to approve.

     If your goal is to stop aristocrats' and diplomats' children from becoming American citizens and having too many privileges, then you should be looking at the Emoluments Clause, not birthright citizenship. I'm worried that if Trump goes after birthright citizenship, the next thing he'll do is make it easier for the U.S. government to recognize titles and honors from foreign governments. As well as continuing to do business with governments after you've formed a political campaign; continuing down this route will likely result in a “post-game” rationalization of the legality of what the Trump campaign may have done in coordination with Russians.

     The current birthright citizenship controversy has nothing to do with keeping our country safe, and it has everything to do with cementing Trump's control and giving him dictatorial powers, which will eventually result in any and all citizens (even those born here to citizen parents) being deported, for any cause the president wishes.

Question #2

     When the president uses the word that he is “a nationalist,” what does he mean? Some say it’s a “dog whistle” about” white supremacy” others say it’s just a patriotic expression. Is it better to be a “nationalist” as the president says, or is “globalism” a better way to think? Your thoughts?

Answer #2

     I believe that Trump uses the term “nationalism” for several reasons: primarily to evoke patriotism, and to promote the idea of “American exceptionalism”. Trump wants you to think he believes all nations should put their own interests first (over other nations), but I think he's only referring to the nations he likes; specifically, the white-majority ones. Many worry – rightfully, I think - that “globalist” is being used as racist code for “Jew”.

     It's not wrong to be patriotic, or to put your country's needs before the needs of other countries. But Trump's brand of nationalism takes a perfectly good principle – from an economic school of thought called mercantilism – which says “each country should sell what it makes best”, and he adds an unnecessary social element to it. He attaches the idea that human beings are mere “products” of their home countries, and if you look at his “Mexican rapists” comment, he promotes the idea that these people's governments are deliberately sending everyone who's coming, and sending their worst. Which makes them look like tools, with no free will of their own. This is not only dehumanizing to foreigners, it also disparages America because it denies that an immigrant would have any reason of their own to come here, like freedom or opportunity (which we barely even have anymore).

     Globalism and nationalism, each, have good and bad things about them. I encourage you to look up the term “alter-globalization”. Rather than being simply anti-globalist, alter-globalization favors free travel, free exchange, and integration of economies across the globe; but without endorsing global governance, imperialism, centralization, command-and-control economics, or government-directed so-called “free” trade.

     Real free trade is possible, and if Trump wants zero tariffs, then he should eliminate them, instead of trying to bully, mock, intimidate, confuse, and humiliate foreign leaders into lowering theirs first.

Question #3

     There are thousands of persons who are in Mexico walking to the U.S. border. The president has said he will deploy 5,200 active-duty troops to the border, in what officials of his administration described as a necessary national security measure. Is the deployment necessary or not? Can the military prevent these persons from crossing the border? What about a claim for amnesty by any of such persons? What would be done in this event?

Answer #3

     I support amnesty for all migrants of whom there is no reasonable suspicion of having committed a corpus delicti crime against real persons who can claim victimization, or against their justly acquired property (please note that I did not say "legally" or "legitimately acquired property").
     The notion that non-citizen undocumented immigrants and the children of foreign nationals have less rights (or no rights at all) while in the United States - predicated on the 14th Amendment's clause reading "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" - implies that immigrants are not subject to American laws either, which would imply that they cannot be legally deported. This argument against birthright citizenship is self-defeating; anyone on U.S. soil, including at an embassy, can, and of right ought to be able to, apply for U.S. citizenship. Foreign nationals may even be entitled to taxpayer-funded legal representation, so it would not even be accurate to say that their legal rights are fewer or lesser than those of U.S. citizens (at least not in a legal, technical sense; this is not to say that immigrants' legal rights are never ignored, quite the contrary).
     The deployment of troops at the border to stop the migrant caravan from entering is unnecessary. Additionally, the use of military officers to enforce domestic policy is martial law, and the use of federal officers to enforce domestic policy is unconstitutional.

     The Posse Comitatus Act reads in part, “it shall not be lawful to employ any part of the Army of the United States, as a posse comitatus, or otherwise, for the purpose of executing the laws, except in such cases and under such circumstances as such employment of said force may be expressly authorized by the Constitution or by act of Congress...”.

     Subsequent modifications of that law have resulted in the designation of terrorist groups as people whom the president has some authority to dispatch federal troops to act against. That is why it is being claimed that members of al-Qaeda are present in the caravan. Not only is there no evidence of this, the influx of Honduran immigrants can be attributed to the C.I.A.'s recent backing of a coup there; this is just more of “America's chickens coming home to roost”, we only have ourselves to blame for this. If we don't want foreigners to come here, then we should stop bombing their countries, rigging their elections, and sabotaging their economies. Sure, it's possible, maybe even likely, that George Soros is funding the caravan. But people all around the world, who don't want the people in the caravan to die on their way here, are sending help too.

     We already have I.C.E. (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), which has only existed since 2003. America did without I.C.E. for 227 years, we can do it again, and deportations can still be carried out even if I.C.E. ceased to exist.

     I.C.E. is unconstitutional; the last thing we want to do is do is impose martial law on top of it, which is not only unnecessary and unconstitutional, it would also be a serious human rights violation, that could accelerate with curfews for adults, travel restrictions, conscripting young people into the military, relocation to settlements “for our own safety”, forced labor, or much much worse.

     If you support shooting people who cross the border, you are asking for an international incident, for a war to start, for martial law, and for a race war, as well as for the reputation, credibility, and moral authority of the United States government and its citizens to be ruined forever.

     If you want to go after al-Qaeda, don't go after the migrant caravan. Go after the people who founded al-Qaeda. And I'm not talking about Osama bin Laden, I'm talking about Carter, Reagan, and the Bushes. Jimmy Carter, who started this thoughtless involvement in Afghanistan, and agreed to find mujahideen ("freedom fighters") against the Soviets. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, who continued it. Bush's son George W., who founded the oil company Arbusto 88 with Salem bin Laden, the brother of Osama.

     After 9/11, rumors surfaced that numerous members of the bin Laden family, and other Saudi nationals, had been secretly airlifted out of the country for their own protection. This appears to have been denied by the National Commission on Terror Attacks, Snopes.com, and Osama bin Laden's brother Yeslam, but in truth, the only things they denied were the suggestions that the U.S. government helped, and that it happened before U.S. airspace re-opened. Yeslam bin Laden told Matt Lauer that it was the Saudi government, not the American government, that helped his family fly out of the United States; and that it occurred after airspace was re-opened, not before.

     If what bin Laden's brother said is the truth, then the Bushes would have been in prime positions to help (if they wanted to). Either way, the bin Ladens are among the wealthiest non-royals in Saudi Arabia, so their ability to use their political influence to enlist America's help conspiring to assist the Saudi government, and keep U.S.-Saudi ties strong, should not be underestimated. Especially now, after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and the revelations about the Saudi regime's brutal treatment of women and homosexuals (among others).

Question #4

     What role of the President’s warnings about the caravan of migrants headed toward the U.S. border from Central America played in inspiring the virulent anti-Semite who killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue and injured 4? Or was this person going to do violence without the migrants coming here because of his hatred toward Jews?

Answer #4

     I believe that the shooter might not have chosen that particular target (the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) if fewer immigrants were coming to America. Immigration and Judaism seemed to be two motivations for the attack, but there might be additional motivations, and we don't know whether there was any particular thing that was a “last straw” or a final trigger for him, so that's why I think it would be unwise to point to just one or two primary motivations.

     If what I have read about the shooter is true, then one of his motivations was his belief that Donald Trump has been compromised in his attempts to revive American nationalism, fight “globalism”, and reduce immigration. It seems likely that the shooter would agree with the statement that “liberal Democratic Jewish politicians are behind a push for more immigration to the U.S.”, and that they are responsible for compromising Trump. It would make sense if that line of logic led him to select for his target a Jewish group that supported immigrants and refugees.

     Many of the people who think that way, consider Jewish people non-white, or as potentially disloyal to America; and many feel that immigrants – Jews and Hispanics included – are part of a virus-like “infestation” that puts our public health and our values at risk. These notions are parts of a mindset that suspects Jewish people of trying to divide all nations of the world against each other, make dissimilar people live together, and compromise the genetic purity of distinct nations through encouraging inter-breeding and increases in the number of mixed-race people. Of course, this is textbook Nazi propaganda, and I don't mean to rationalize it; I only mean to explain how Nazi sympathizers think.

     I believe that the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter chose the target he did, because he believed that the organization was – in some way, however directly or indirectly - providing material assistance (or at least ideological support) for “the enemy”. That is to say, for “the enemy”, as the shooter defines it. Generally, that means foreign-born people, including the migrant caravan (which the shooter likely believes is harboring terrorists). But as I've explained, there's no evidence for that; it's propagandist fear-mongering from the Trump Administration, intended to allow the president to dispatch federal troops to enforce domestic immigration law on the grounds that al-Qaeda might be lurking around every corner, even behind every immigrant.

     We shouldn't assume that the shooter could have been dissuaded from doing what he did, if only there were fewer immigrants coming into the U.S., or if fewer Jewish-Americans supported allowing more people in. If fewer Jewish people approved of immigration, then sure, we might see less anti-Jewish violence from right-wingers, but we might also see more anti-Jewish violence, just coming from different people. That's because leftists, and anti-racists, might see Jewish people strongly criticizing immigration, and conclude from that, that the sentiment is motivated by racism, or perhaps even by a belief in Jewish supremacy. If they conclude the latter, then it is likely that they will come to associate the Jewish religion with racism, violence, or both, and assume that all Jewish people are violent or racist. Coupled with the shooter's belief that H.I.A.S. (the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society)'s assistance of the migrant caravan constitutes material assistance to terrorists, it would be understandable if the shooter felt under attack; by al-Qaeda, with the cover of Hondurans, funding from wealthy Jewish liberals, and housing and employment assistance from H.I.A.S.. (a refugee assistance network of synagogues, in which Tree of Life participates).

     I say this not to rationalize racists' line of logic, but in order to point out the worst things that left-wingers and right-wingers could be thinking about the Jewish people. If you want to defeat your enemy, you have to understand him. If your enemy tells you directly to your face why he hates you and why he attacked you, then you can disagree with the truth of those ideas, but to flat-out ignore them is to carelessly assume that your enemy is irrational. People can be full of hate, and hold opinions about people which are wholly unreasonable, but still make rational decisions in the battlefield. Don't underestimate your enemy by assuming that he is simply crazy, or by assuming that racism is his sole motivation. His reasons may seem backwards, and his logic may seem tortured and convoluted, but admitting that your enemy makes rational decisions in no way obligates you to accept or rationalize everything he says and does. It helps you avoid underestimating the horrors and deception he's capable of.

Question #5

     What has happened to the children who were separated from their parents? Are they still held in these “cages”? Will they be released to the custody of their parents, or what?

Answer #5

     I have heard rumors that some of the children separated from their parents have been essentially sold by the government to adoption agencies. This concerns me, since I have heard horror stories about emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of children; not only in the hands of adoption agencies, but in the hands of I.C.E. themselves. Not to mention police, soldiers, for-profit prisons, and teen boot camps.

     Some of you may have seen the pictures of Obama's and Trump's Homeland Security secretaries walking around in the I.C.E. detention facilities; “family detention centers”, they call them. One picture of the facilities showed a sign that said “males aged 16-18”. So they're separating people by gender, and by age, taking parents away from children, and immigrants are having their religious jewelry taken away. These facts should ring serious alarm bells for anyone paying attention to history and the times they're living in.

     If those facts don't, by themselves, evoke memories of what happened to Holocaust victims, then I implore you to look up “the Bath Riots”. Back in the 1930s, immigrants on their way into El Paso (from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico) were sprayed with harsh de-lousing chemicals, because American authorities thought they had typhus. This continued years after the typhus epidemic went away. One of those chemicals was Zyklon-B, which the Nazis used to poison Jewish people (and other minorities and political dissidents).

     People don't belong in cages. Children should not be taken from their parents without clear and present danger (that somebody else hasn't manufactured in order to whip people into a frenzy), and they certainly shouldn't be sold as commodities by government agencies. Selling human beings doesn't suddenly become “not slavery” just because it's the government who's doing it (instead of a “private” slave master).

     We must stop calling refugee encampments “tent cities”, stop calling forced internment facilities “family detention centers”. We are looking at literal military prisons, like the one at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, except they're in Texas; on American soil, within the contiguous 48 states. And they're being used to indefinitely detain people who ought to have their rights respected; their rights to legal representation, and to apply for citizenship. The existence of embassies does not prove that legal immigration is an easy and realistic solution everywhere; foreign governments are collapsing, and with them, their legitimacy, and thus, people become stateless. As far as I am aware, there is no Anarcho-American embassy at which stateless people can become American citizens (at least not yet).

     I want to say that “the inevitable result of this will be martial law”, but it would be difficult for me to argue that martial law has not already been in effect for 17, or 40, or 100, or 150, or even 230 years (respectively, since the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, or since REX84, or since World War I began, or since the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871, or since the imposition of the Constitution in 1789; however you want to measure it).

Question #6

     How will Congress – the Senate and the House – be formed as a result of the midterms? Any guesses? Who will be the leaders?

Answer #6

     I anticipate that the Democrats will retake the House with a noticeable majority, and that they will retake the Senate by a noticeable (but smaller) majority. Given Nancy Pelosi's promise that the Democrats will not pursue impeachment of Donald Trump (as she did with Bush when the Democrats regained the House in 2006), I expect that Nancy Pelosi will encounter a few difficulties convincing her cohorts to give her her old Speaker position back. But I also suspect that dirty tricks will be played, and that all opposition to her from within the party will be easily silenced.

     Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will win her election, and emerge as the new conscience of the progressive and farthest-left-leaning Democrats; or else she will be defeated amidst numerous accusations of dirty tricks on the part of her opponent Joe Crowley. Crowley, for those who don't know, is one of the Democratic congressmen thought most likely to become Speaker of the House, in the event that Democrats retake the House. Maxine Waters becoming Speaker of the House would be political suicide for Democrats, but I wouldn't put it past them, and I would understand their rationale for it.

     If Democrats retake the senate, then Dianne Feinstein, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Dick Durbin, Tammy Baldwin, Russ Feingold, and Bernie Sanders will comprise the core of the most respected members of Democratic Party leadership (which finally seems to have begun to loose itself from the grip of Hillary Clinton, neoliberalism, the New Democratic Coalition, and the corrupt Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee).

     Hopefully the Democrats will see that what will have made them successful in the 2018 midterm elections, is their recent embrace of the staunchly left-leaning ideas which are necessary to fully distance themselves from what Trump and his loyalists want. Hopefully soon the Democrats will admit, and not forget, that distancing themselves from progressivism, socialism, and leftism has not worked out. If they continue to do so, then they will keep losing elections.

     Giving up hope in places like West Virginia, the Midwest, and the Great Plains states, just sends the message that the party does not care about Democrats stuck in red states, even if they could be flipped to blue with just a little effort. But these states are not thought of as battleground states, by most popular media, in the same way that states like Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina are.

Question #7

     The treasury has announced that there will be an increase in the national debt for this year of approximately $1.2 trillion. How is this explained, when Trump in his campaign promised a substantial decrease?

Answer #7

     Trump can get away with having a $1.6 trillion deficit if he wanted, because he'll always be able to say that Obama's highest was $1.7. We should not underestimate Trump's ability to point to someone who's behaving worse than he is, and use that to make himself look good and moral by comparison (even if what they're doing is more or less equally terrible).

     Trump knows that giving the upper class bigger tax cuts than the ones he gave to ordinary working people, was only going to help the already well established entrenched business interests, which often buy and control our government. He calls them “The Swamp” to his voters, but he seems to think that the only path to economic growth – the only way to increase jobs - involves stealing your taxpayer money, and spending it on his cronies; in the form of bigger tax breaks, undeserved tax credits, stock buybacks, loans, intellectual property protections, trade promotions, subsidies, and even bailouts.

     Trump is illiterate constitutionally, economically, historically, and morally. He is an opportunist, and a narcissist, who has no regard for other people's needs. He seems to have no guiding political principle other than “make the trains run on time” and “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”. He cares much more about increasing his own wealth than he does about helping struggling people who are in need and can't afford to buy stocks. Trump has no respect for free markets or economic opportunity; and no desire for lower prices, or even an idea of how to bring prices down to something his cronies' indentured servants (the people) can afford.

     Everyone is focusing on how much we are spending, and what we're spending it on; but way fewer people are talking about where we get our revenue sources from: what we're taxing, why we're taxing it, and whether the people being taxed, (first) can afford it, and (second) did anything wrong in the first place to deserve that “tax” (or, as we Libertarians call it, “theft”).

     Taxing away all the rewards of making improvements to your own home, doesn't help people. Confiscating people's earned income doesn't help them. Confiscating the un-earned income, and ill-gotten profits, of businessmen who balance their books on the backs of taxpayers and government contracts instead of by selling a better product, will help ordinary working people.

     Paying-off the national debt is a lot easier than we think it is. If we want to pay-off $20 trillion dollars, we could pay-off $1 trillion a year for 20 years. If we start now, America can be debt-free by the end of 2038. All we have to do in order to make that happen, is take-in $1 trillion more each year than the amount we spend. As long as we do that, and total federal government revenue stays above $1 trillion a year (it's currently at $4 trillion), then we can have any size government we want, and still balance the budget.

     Nothing is impossible, as long as we don't start-out trying to solve it under the assumption that it's unsolvable. This is a simple mathematical equation, yet many of us have apparently lost the ability to think simply about our problems. Trump's inability to significantly reduce spending, is compounded by his refusal to lower taxes on those who need tax breaks most, and his refusal to tackle either the military-industrial complex, or “The Swamp” of corporate political donors. That's because he's willing to look the other way whenever battling America's demons is too risky for him or it doesn't boost his bottom line.

Originally Written and Published on November 2nd, 2018

Expanded on November 2nd, 2018