Category Archives: Ground Level Conditions

Ground Level Conditions Presidental Election

Shoe vs. Slipper Salute to Trump’s Inauguration

January 19, 2017 – 5:37 am

Thursday, January 19, 2017

Towards the end of George W. Bush’s second term of office, I recollect that he visited Iraq, and during a press conference suddenly found himself ducking a pair of shoes that were hurled his way by a man justifiably outraged at the havoc that Cheney and he had unleashed on his nation. “Iraq has weapons of mass destruction,” we were told, and and millions of us in the United States knew it was a lie, but we could not stop the war. As a final protest, this brave man offered Bush an insult better understood in the Arab world than here.

Such a gesture would seem appropriate for what is about to happen tomorrow, though of course the shoes should not be aimed at him as such, but only close enough to his entourage of wealthy cockroaches that he gets the hint. Given the weather, though, and the protective moat built around his accomplices, I’m sorry to say that throwing one’s shoes at the compass point of his filched election would only be a pathetic, futile gesture, even if 10,000 people were to do it.

Better to stay home, and if you cannot resist keeping your television set turned off, then get your bedroom slippers and practice on your screen. Soft toss lobs, only. This is spring training, after all. Save your arm for when we need to hurl our hiking boots to protest the despoilment of the Republic.

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Autobiography Books Ground Level Conditions Poetry Presidental Election

A New Year’s Sketch

January 1, 2017 – 7:10 am

January 1, 2017

I have only a little time this morning to jot a few quick notes, for Linda and I are heading to Ramona, California to visit her sisters and their families. We saw Anita and her grandson Brayden on the day after Christmas in Thousand Oaks, at Sharon Cleary’s home, but we haven’t seen Pam and Earl and her family in quite some time, and we are looking forward to the visit. I must admit that I feel nervous about the trip. My extended family has been involved in two serious automobile accidents in the past month, neither of which was their fault in any way. My mother handed in her driving license, at age 92, of her own volition and without any prompting whatsoever, because she said that she’d never been in any accidents during 70 years of driving and wanted to keep that perfect record. I doubt that many people in urban areas these days will be able to make the same claim at the end of this century.

I have a particularly challenging year awaiting my immediate attention: if I am up at 6:00 and writing my entry to this blog, it is because there is a long list of things to do to assist in my mother’s care. At this point, I am the one with power of attorney for a 95 year old woman. Each and every day there is some detail or a distinct errand to bear down on. Sometimes it is only a matter of luck that things get resolved. I was at my mother’s home branch of her bank in Imperial Beach this past Wednesday, and in talking with Ms. Hernandez I found out about a certain financial procedure, which two days later someone at my local branch of the bank in Long Beach said couldn’t be done. I suggested she call Ms. Hernandez, and the issue got resolved, but if I hadn’t visited my mother’s branch of the bank (over 100 miles from where I live) on Wednesday, I would have been out of luck in a very crucial matter on Friday.

I will be meeting with my brothers, Jim and John, later today to talk about my mother’s situation and what she can afford in terms of assisted care living. One other brother and two sisters are either cut off from the family or live elsewhere. There is a chance tomorrow that I will have a day without having to manage as aspect of my mother’s life. I have packed a couple of books to take with me, if that proves to be the case. One of them is James M. Cain’s Serenade, a novel about a down-and-outer in Mexico whose view of that nation and its citizens makes Donald Trump’s tweets seem diplomatically astute. I’ve long been a fan of Malcolm Lowery’s Under the Volcano; and Cain’s book in its own way is as equally well written. On a technical level, the control of tone and the rhythm of his sentence is masterful. Whether you want the narrator’s company for 200 pages is another matter. He certainly wins the Ancient Mariner award in my recent reading.

I hope to post reviews and commentary on several poets in the upcoming weeks, including Charles Harper Webb (in part three of a series on his editing and writing), Michael Hannon, and Kevin Opstedal. Opstedal’s collection of poems, Pacific Standard Time, is probably my favorite book of poems right now. I recommend that everyone get a copy of it right now and spend the first week of 2017 strengthening one’s imagination through an encounter with a poet who will enable you to alter the reality proposed by politicians and their compliant bureaucrats.

Finally, while we seek each other’s comfort in the struggles ahead, let us not forget that the divisions within this country are viewed as opportunities by nefarious individuals for their private profit. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by almost 3,000,000 votes. I had predicted a margin of almost 5,000,000 votes, so I was off considerably, but nevertheless this was not a close election, especially considering the Russian interference and complementary activism by agents within the Federal Bureau of Investigation. More people believed that Clinton was qualified to be President than Trump. That President-Elect Trump wants us to “move on with our lives” is a bit ridiculous, given his insistence on the need to investigate Hillary Clinton’s e-mail server.

Of the many concerns we should have about Trump, not least is his policy on nuclear weapons. That these weapons are intended to kill non-combatants, and in particular women and children, makes them immoral and evil beyond the reprehensible scale of ordinary war. If Trump does not care to remember what his advocacy of an increased number of these weapons means in regards to his moral well-being, then we will need to remind him in no uncertain terms that it is time for a reckoning with his conscience that cannot be tweeted away.

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Ground Level Conditions Presidental Election

Two Million Disenfranchised (aka “Illegal”) Voters: the 36th Largest State

November 30, 2016 – 5:17 am

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Two Million Nasty Voters: the 36th Largest State

The best comment I’ve read so far about the tendencies of the electorate, in November, 2016, was made by one of my favorite contemporary poets, Michael Lally: “Not everyone who voted for Trump is a racist, but every racist voted for Trump.” As perceptive as Lally’s chiastic analysis is, it occurred to me shortly after I read it to offer a friendly amendment: “Not everyone who voted for Trump is a racist, but every racist who voted voted for Trump.” I offer that amendment because not every racist voted. That’s obvious, isn’t it? After all, if every racist in this country had voted, would Donald Trump have lost the popular vote by an astonishing and unprecedented margin of 2,300,000 votes?

On the other hand, even if every racist had voted, maybe Trump still would have lost by a half-million votes. Regardless of the margin of Trump’s defeat in the popular vote, however, the fact that he lost the popular vote confirms a gap of public confidence that raises serious questions about his assumption of power. How appropriate is it to have the quality of life of tens of millions of people in this country determined by a man whose idea of political success is pandering to the wealthy? All one has to do to understand the oncoming catastrophe is look at the people Trump has nominated to serve in his cabinet.

At this point, though, we have learned the answer to one theoretical question about the outcome of the election. Should Trump have lost the electoral college vote, as well as the popular vote, and Hillary Clinton was about to become the next president, what would he be doing? The same thing he is doing now: He would be fomenting the public sphere, claiming that her victory was the outcome of millions of voters who marked ballots “illegally.” It would be non-stop fulmination, and as with many of his pronouncements in the past year and a year he would offer no evidence to back it up. That Trump won the Electoral College and feels compelled to assault the integrity of the election tell those who voted for Clinton how little he respects them. “Nasty voters are illegal voters,” seems to be his mantra.

Clinton is the second Democratic presidential candidate in the past two decades to win the popular vote and lose the electoral college. One difference between Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, however, is that the popular vote in 2000 was basically a statistical tie. There is no statistical tie in 2016’s presidential election. The gap between Clinton and Trump rounds off to two percent, which effectively means that “Disenfranchised” become the 36th largest state in the United States, larger than eight other states that voted for Trump.

I have heard a rumor that Trump is threatening the citizenship status of anyone who burns the American flag. As offensive as I find the burning of the flag, it is far more offensive to find our nation in a situation in which over 2,000,000 votes are for all intents and purposes put in an incinerator.

I predicted that Clinton would win the popular vote by 5,000,000. I was off in that estimate by over 50 percent, but she nevertheless won the popular vote. If Trump can’t bring himself to admit in a public statement that a woman candidate got millions of votes more than he did, then he is not worthy of taking the oath of office in January. Losing the popular vote is a minor crisis, relatively speaking, to the kinds of emergencies that Trump will face in the next four years. No president can ever hope to escape the crisis mode, and if he can’t handle this minor crisis, how can he ever hope to govern?

If President-Elect Catasterisk (Catastrophic Asterisk) wants to show leadership, then he should make the abolition of the Electoral College one of his immediate priorities. However, he is caught in a bind in doing so, for such leadership will only remind people of how he has benefited from a political arrangement that grew out of this nation’s racist history.

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Ground Level Conditions Presidental Election

Trump’s Wall: Side One of Camp Hercules

November 17, 2016 – 7:57 am

Thursday, November 17, 2016

Trump’s Wall: Side One of Camp Hercules

News outlets have reported that a public school teacher has been suspended for comparing Trump to Hitler. While that comparison obviously struck public school bureaucrats as being a nasty rush to judgment, the teacher was hardly breaking ground within the public sphere. Given the radical tenor of Trump’s campaign, the teacher’s juxtaposition of Trump and Hitler is a reasonable mock-up that is a well-worn trope by now.

In point of fact, Trump will soon have at his immediate disposal enough weaponry to eradicate all human life on this planet, and he has not shown sufficient composure in dealing with infinitely less stressful situations to reassure me about his command of this weaponry. In an attempt to quell public panic, Trump said in a “60 Minutes” interview that his opponents “should not be afraid.”

I am not afraid.

I am terrified.

I’ll grant you that Hitler’s track record will be difficult to surpass. But let’s be honest about the planet’s prospects: Hitler’s scale of evil is likely to have serious competition in the next decade or two, and Donald J. Trump has fashioned himself into a viable candidate to join the parade of potential competitors. The appointment of Steve Bannon is hardly a disqualifying move. Maybe we will be lucky, though, and Trump’s term(s) of office will only be an extraordinary disaster, such as the one that occurred at the end of George W. Bush’s terms of office.

This is to say that Trump’s administration may not end up making “The Killing Fields” look like a Sunday school picnic. What’s the value in being unduly pessimistic? Maybe I’m completely overreacting. After all, I am hardly the best prognosticator in Los Angeles. I certainly was not able to foresee, for instance, the consequences of a previous instance of a President who lost the popular vote, but won the Electoral College. I remember watching the 2000 debates between Gore and George W. Bush. The latter seemed earnest and intelligent enough to serve as governor of Texas. In closely listening to him, though, I didn’t believe that he possessed the acuity needed to be president of the United States. He didn’t strike me as profoundly incompetent, however. How wrong I was.

By the end of his second term, the overwhelming majority of my fellow citizens felt equally chagrined. Indeed, we all know how his presidency turned out: the United States invaded Iraq, without sufficient justification. That invasion was based, in part, on a lie. Furthermore, should anyone wonder whether I am exaggerating the case against Bush, the prolonged reiteration of deceitful propaganda leading up to the war was quite clearly established when Bush argued retrospectively in the 2004 Presidential debates that “They (i.e., Iraq) invaded us.”

I knew things were hopeless in this country, in 2004, when nothing in the polls budged after that particular, egregious lie. The people who supported Bush did not care that Bush distorted the war’s justification with a total fabrication. In conflating Al-Queda with Iraq, Bush engaged in a sleight of hand that was nothing short of contributing to a criminal conspiracy to generate profits for the war industry in this country.

As for the financial calamity that spun like an apocalyptic tornado into the American economy near the end of Bush’s second term, let me be blunt and say that this is not some abstraction that stirs me to righteous anger on behalf of other people. It’s much more local than that, for the Great Recession destroyed my family’s economic well-being, and while it has partially recovered, it will remain a hampered, depressed situation until I die. It is permanent damage. Economically speaking, I will never walk again.

Trump is far less qualified, in both intelligence and experience, to be President than George W. Bush. When I consider how Bush’s eight years in office led to an economic and global political catastrophe, then how can I not be terrified at the outcome of an election resulting in a president-elect far inferior in the ability to govern?

Friends, as well as the ideologically invested media businesses of this country’s infrastructure, urge me to stay calm. Our ecological crisis, however, is at the tipping point, and the planet’s ability to sustain human civilization is no longer merely struggling to breathe. An all-out asthma attack will soon begin, and will no doubt contribute to the need of the Trump administration to distract the population through starting a war with an enemy well primed to be the “bad guy.” Trump, for instance, could easily find ways to put enough pressure on North Korea that its tenterhooks leadership will launch a missile with a nuclear bomb at the U.S. mainland. If that attack vaporized an American city, Trump would not give it a second thought other than its propaganda value. Oh, he would cry crocodile tears, but it would all be a perfidious show.

Trump is as phony a patriot as any con artist politician who has ever run for office. I have seen nothing from Trump that indicates he cares about his fellow citizens as being anything other than exploitable customers. If he is offered the chance to “cash in” several million disposable chips, he will take it. Even if Trump were given advance warning from national intelligence services, he would first consider the advantages of not lifting a finger to prevent it. From Trump’s point of view, the death of a couple million Americans in a sneak attack would just be the cost of doing business and giving America a chance to be “great” again.

I am terrified, and to pretend otherwise requires an act of unparalleled self-control. If you should meet me in person, do not mistake my mien for my inner state of equilibrium. The late poet Don Gordon was correct: “We are only on leave from Auschwitz.”

I have no doubt that James Comey is already assembling a list of names to be in the first round of citizens shipped off to a camp currently on the drawing boards at FBI headquarters. My guess is that the first part of the camp is being built to take advantage of another construction project proposed by Trump. This is to say that the first part of this camp is being built under the guise of a “wall” designed to close the Southwestern border between the United States and Mexico. Let no one imagine that walls cannot have two uses. Side one of the four sides needed to construct a concentration camp: soon in place. Only three sides needed to complete the job.
It will be named Camp Hercules as a tribute to the strength demonstrated by President Trump in defeating Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose initials are prominent in the camp’s name.

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Ground Level Conditions Poetry Presidental Election

Fight or Flight — The Social Imaginary of “Canada”

November 13, 2016 – 7:57 am

Sunday, November 13, 2016

Substantial protests against Trump’s election have spontaneously begun in cities across the country, and I imagine that their participants are familiar enough with the outcome of protests to dismiss any hope of remediation. As of yesterday, the gap in the popular vote between Clinton and Trump had grown to over a half-million, thereby replicating the same disjuncture as in the election of 2000. This time, however, is far more foreboding: the continuing scandalous repression of the popular vote and the ability of fascist elements in the United States to control the outcome of elections on a national level is only slightly discomfiting compared to the dystopia about to be unleashed on us.

It is a fundamental question of fight or flight. Few of us have the resources to flee; as for fight, we can afford few mistakes, whereas those about to take power will be indulged regardless of the grievousness of their errors. If California suffers the long predicted earthquake during the next four years, it will marinate in the rubble indefinitely. Trump won’t lift a finger. George W. Bush was hardly a president that New Orleans could rely on, and the West Coast had better be prepared for a worst-case scenario.

In the meantime, I take solace in the capacity of poets to alleviate the immediate distress with ironic humor. One of my favorite poets is Richard Garcia, who is probably the best living poet published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Rattle magazine posted one of his poems this morning in its “Poets Respond” section.

http://www.rattle.com/canada-by-richard-garcia/ Poets Respond section of Rattle 11/13/16

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Ground Level Conditions Presidental Election

Votegate: On Thwarting the Popular Vote

November 10, 2016 – 9:45 am

Thursday, November 10, 2016

VOTEGATE: On Thwarting the Popular Vote

So, what went wrong? I take you back to the election of 2000, during which I remember a brief interview with a voter in Florida who expressed her disdain for Al Gore by saying, “He acts as if he’s smarter than me.” Her objection to his social graces was legitimate, but hiding behind her complaint was the petulant whine of those who were popular when they were young, but have lost ground to hard-working nerds. Being an athlete of the mind is resented, even though it requires as much discipline as the career of any figure in sports.

As returns came in on election night in 2000, especially from Florida, I kept thinking of that voter, and how her disdain of Al Gore was probably the tipping point of that election. The intellectual contrast between the candidates in the presidential election of 2016 was even greater than the Gore-Bush divide. Astonishingly greater. Hillary Clinton was obviously so much more qualified in knowledge and intelligence than Donald J. Trump that even stalwart Republican newspapers withdrew their support of Trump. In point of fact, if it had not been for the extraordinarily dubious interference of the FBI in this election, Trump would have lost the popular vote by a much greater margin than Bush lost to Gore.

I had predicted that Hillary Clinton would win the popular vote by 5,000,000 votes. Obviously, I was wrong. In fact, she received over 6,000,000 less votes than President Obama received in 2012. Despite massive amounts of money contributed to Clinton’s campaign, the vaunted “ground game” of the Democratic party proved to be a pathetic operation.

Trump’s supporters cannot claim, however, that these voters represent a massive number of citizens rejecting Obama’s legacy and choosing an ignorant, amateur politician instead. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by well over 200,000 votes, so one can hardly propose that professional politicians have lost their credibility.

In fact, what I have not seen any account of this election mention so far is that Trump received one million fewer votes than Mitt Romney. If Romney had run against Hillary Clinton this year, and the same number of people had voted for him in 2016 as voted in 2012, he would have won the popular vote by a margin of more than 1,000,000 votes, and no doubt handily won the electoral college.

If anyone should be shaking his head and thinking “What if…,” it’s Mitt Romney. To say that tens of millions of people in this country would lose less sleep with Mitt Romney in the White House, in late January, 2017, is to understate the case.

Instead, the denial of the principle of “one person, one vote” has happened yet once again. For every woman, in particular, who voted for Hillary Clinton, the failure of the popular vote to yield a political victory shows that indeed the system was rigged by the Founding Fathers, and will only serve as yet more hard evidence of the evil power grasping inclinations of patriarchal society.

George W. Bush lost the popular vote in 2000, and still ended up being inaugurated as President of the United States. Bush lost the popular vote because more people respected the thoughtful knowledge of Al Gore; Bush won the electoral college because more people such as the woman in Florida who resented intellectual acuity could not overcome their inferiority complex.

We know how badly George W. Bush’s regime turned out, and this time will be even worse. There is no use pretending otherwise. This next time, however, there may not be a politician able to replicate Obama’s success in defusing the anger of those who have been exploited and betrayed by their government. The famous anecdote in the election of 2008 is that Obama appeared before a large contingent of Wall Street figures and bluntly told them, “I am the only thing standing between you and the pitchforks.”

When the next collapse comes, the question of whether it will be a non-violent revolution or a violent revolution will be the unavoidable issue confronting those who believe in democracy as the rule of the popular vote. I would hope that my fellow citizens would join me in again rejecting pitchforks, but the brutal retaliation of the police state that Trump will soon set in motion, under the covert direction of his blatant FBI allies, might well cause protestors to decide that they have a legitimate right to defend themselves. I truly fear for this country and its young people, especially young women, who deserve so much better than this desultory future.

I should emphasize that I am not predicting an immediate economic implosion. Trump no doubt will launch the infrastructure repair program that the GOP congress denied to President Obama, and the benefits of this program will largely accrue to the states in the Electoral College that voted for Trump. He will most likely retain his initial popularity in those regions of the United States for the next two years or so.

A knowledge economy, however, depends on an economy of the daily goods we consume in international trade. Trump has no idea of how to generate a more equitable outcome to the integration of the knowledge economy and international trade in material goods. In the long run, his inability to coordinate the domestic, as well as international, knowledge economy and the international manufacturing economy will result in an unfathomably sad predicament. I profoundly wish I could say otherwise, but I cannot.

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Ground Level Conditions Presidental Election

Darkness at the Center of Wisconsin

October 30, 2016 – 9:17 am

Sunday, October 30, 2016

Darkness at the Center of Wisconsin

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/news/fan-wears-barack-obama-mask-with-a-noose-at-nebraska-wisconsin-040333264.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3887230/Football-fan-Wisconsin-Nebraska-game-asked-remove-offensive-costume-showing-President-Obama-noose-neck.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490

The story is that the fan was asked to remove the “offensive components” costume.

That’s all?

Why was the fan not immediately investigated for making a death threat against the President?

This is not a “costume,” but a death threat, and the specificity of advocating the execution of the President is made all the more clear by the fact that it is not the person wearing the costume whose hand is holding up the noose, but the arm of a person standing alongside the depiction of President Obama. In the photograph, an arm wearing a red sleeve juts into the air at an angle that can only mean that the white fist jerking the noose upwards belongs to another person. It is a blunt portrayal of a racist execution.

This is not an issue of free speech, which would include the right to wear a prison outfit with a mask of Obama, just as free speech includes the right to chant “Lock her up,” as Trump’s partisans do whenever Hillary Clinton’s name in mentioned. One may not like a message, but free speech allows messengers safe passage. Provocative and outrageous speech is protected by our Constitution. However, in depicting the execution of President Obama, the individuals at a football stadium in Wisconsin flagrantly transgressed the boundary of free speech.

Death threats are not free speech, especially in an image meant invoke the heyday of the KKK. Within the context of a newspaper associated with the KKK all but giving its straightforward endorsement to Donald Trump, this so-called costume represents crude propaganda at its most harrowing level.

If there is not at least a brief detention and interrogation of the fan and his “prop assistant” for making a death threat against President Obama, then it is fair to say that this costume represents the values of a cadre within the Secret Service; in this instance, the person in charge of the Secret Service has the obligation to act in a manner that proves otherwise.

I would note that a report that Secret Service conducted an investigation in an instance that involved a far less public venue.
http://law.marquette.edu/facultyblog/2010/05/26/playing-with-fire-and-an-obama-effigy/

Why should this incident in Wisconsin be treated with any less seriousness?

The failure of University of Wisconsin officials to understand the gravity of the image is quite remarkable. Simply asking a person to remove the “offensive parts” of the costume represents a lack of courage in standing up to a bully. In making a statement that was nothing short of a death threat against the President, the person wearing the costume and his assistant forfeited their right to remain at the game and should have been removed from the stadium.

The University was probably afraid of being accused of censorship. There is an easy answer. The people were removed from the stadium in order to have their identities firmly established by police officials so that the Secret Service could begin their investigation.

Finally, we should all take note: the desire expressed by these two people in the football stands in Wisconsin is not limited to President Obama. First him, then his supporters. If anyone is so naïve to think that the two people who concocted this outfit will be satisfied with President Obama’s death, then they need to review 20th century history. As the poet Don Gordon said, “We are only on leave from Auschwitz.”

As a postscript that occurred to me a couple hours after posting this, I think it is fair to say that those who doubted the legitimacy of President Obama’s birth certificate would most likely be the ones inclined to defend this person’s advocacy of a Presidential death certificate as free speech. “If attacking one end of a life spectrum doesn’t work, then try the other extreme,” would seem to be their preference.

I do look forward to the conclusion of the current general election, and the chance to concentrate on books of poetry again. To neglect the havoc generated by a fascist with international ambitions would be an unforgivable omission on my part, however.

CORRECTION: The original post for this commentary mistakenly stated that the football game took place in Nebraska, whereas the University of Nebraska was playing a road game in Wisconsin.

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Ground Level Conditions Presidental Election

No Longer “Secretly Waiting”: Election Spam

October 23, 2016 – 9:30 am

Sunday, October 23, 2016

No Longer “Secretly Waiting”: ELECTION SPAM (or why the Postal Service Is Grateful for Social Media)

After I found a parking spot in my neighborhood this past Wednesday, I noticed that the mail truck was one car behind mine. I hailed the postal worker and asked why she was still delivering mail so late in the day. “Did you have to cover another route today, too?” “Oh, no, it’s the election. I’ll be delivering mail til at least 7:00 p.m.”

As I walked to my rented residence, I thought of how workers at the Post Office must be grateful that social media has played an increasingly prominent role in recent elections. The Citizens United decision enabled even more money to flow into advertising revenue streams, and without social media the average postal delivery person would probably need a moving van to contain each day’s shipment of propaganda.

With barely more than a fortnight to go before the 2016 general election, the likelihood of Donald J. Trump becoming the next president has become a long-shot proposition. For the moment, a potential catastrophe has been averted, but it is only a temporary respite. Anyone who believes that Trump’s supporters will simply fade away and lose interest in politics is kidding themselves. One judicious reminder of the Trump Effect can be found in Adam Kirsch’s recent review of Volker Ullrich’s “Hitler: Ascent 1889-1939” (translated by Jefferson Chase; Alfred A. Knopf). Kirsch’s final sentences seem to be equally directed at the current political turbulence in the United States, in which one candidate openly decries his obligation to acknowledge the legitimacy of any process that does not result in his election.

“(I)n the end Germany decided to see Hitler just as he saw himself; the country matched his psychosis with its own. What is truly frightening, and admonitory, in Ullrich’s book is not that a Hitler could exist, but that so many people seemed to be secretly waiting for him.”

One aspect of social media that will help future historians recount a parallel development in the United States is how it reveals the transition between those who are “secretly waiting” and the open allegiance of public fanaticism. The first challenge, though, will be to preserve this material, since the electronic basis of these communications makes this material easily disposable. In the interests of preserving for future records one example of this election spam, I am posting an example of the appeals that are circulating within the ranks of those who are no longer “secretly waiting.” They are utterly unlikely to go back into hiding.

“Dear Fellow Lover of America,

“I am writing you because I trust you love this country as much as I do, and yearn for our government to restore the dignity of the Constitution. All Constitutions are not created equal, and the original Constitution of the United States is the best Constitution ever written. Unfortunately, over the past several decades, this original Constitution has suffered the equivalent of hacking by agents directed by the International Banking System. These setbacks, however, will soon stop, should we all come together and recognize the Hero in our midst. Donald J. Trump alone can save our Country, but it is up to us to anoint him. This is why I am asking you to join me in accepting his offer to become a Trump cardholder. On a personal level, I have to admit that this is what I have waited for ever since the mailman, in 1956, delivered my first “Magic Kingdom” card from the Mickey Mouse Club.

“That, however, was just a childhood fantasy. Now I have the chance to be part of a TRUE, GENUINE, ACTUAL “Magic Kingdom.” The TRUMP Black Card…. I’m …. I’m …. I’m at a loss for words. I am so grateful that our leader in the crusade against Crooked Hillary is never at a loss for words. Great words, in fact. Words so big and huge and chock-full of winning that all I have to do is to put this card in my wallet and I, too, discover…. well, in truth, I am not sure what will happen next, but I am sure it will be great.

“We just have to stand firm against the Liberal Media. Because they are the enablers. They have already rigged the election. It was rigged against Bernie Sanders. It was rigged against George McGovern. Real American heroes. They spoke out against the War, just like Trump did. And let me tell you, Trump is going to destroy ISIS. He is going to send them scurrying like rats to Aleppo. Which we know has already fallen. It’s toast. Like Crooked Hillary’s campaign to be president. And speaking of rats, we will take care of Paul Ryan afterwards.

“Forgive me for being so brief in praising our nation’s great fortune in having Trump as our next President. But it will take work. That’s why you need to join me in knocking on doors for the next two weeks and telling all those people with Hillary Clinton signs on their front lawns that they need to wake up and realize that they are voting for a LOSER. I can’t believe how many of these signs are popping up now. Where did all the Trump placards go? We know the answer to that question. Crooked Hillary has hired people (illegally here, of course) to steal our signs. Hey, they go low, we go lower. Let’s start by questioning the intelligence of the average Clinton voter. As I said, go lower.”

Lower and out,
Mike Rinse (Name changed to protect actual sender’s identity: any living person with this name is not to be confused with the author or disseminator of this message, which was not formally approved in any manner by the Donald J. Trump for President campaign.)

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Ground Level Conditions Presidental Election

A “Rigged” Ephebe Election: Q.E.D.

October 19, 2016 – 11:43 am

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

A “Rigged” Ephebe Election: Q.E.D.

When Donald Trump claims that the election is rigged, he is referring to the one that will conclude on Tuesday, November 8. “Large scale voter fraud” is taking place, according to Trump, although he has not offered any concrete evidence to support his allegation. But why should he provide any evidence? “Evidence” in Trump’s domain is simply reiterated accusations. Why bother with evidence when all one has to do is make grandiose statements along these lines: “Isn’t it painfully obvious to anyone not brainwashed by the ‘dishonest and distorted media’ that Clinton’s campaign is engaged in an unprecedented level of duplicity?” Trump’s campaign strategy is to keep asking questions phrased in that manner until people give up hope of ever getting an answer to their request for evidence.

Along with a growing majority of American voters, I myself remain immune to Trump’s contagion, but what if one were to succumb to it and find oneself being bombarded by such messages as the following, which I have obtained from (redacted) sources that must remain anonymous. With considerable trepidation for the consequences I might face for giving you this insight into the logic of the Trump campaign, I pass this document along to you. Please note that this is a piece of satire, and that the Scholastic company and the vote it conducts should be regarded with the highest possible respect.

* * * * * * * *

FROM: (Redacted)

TO: My Devoted Horde of Deplorables

SUBJECT: Voter Fraud in the Scholastic Survey

Since Hillary Clinton’s surrogates demand evidence of widespread civic corruption, the (redacted) will now provide it, and we need look no further than the recent mock election held by Scholastic, in which school children are asked to vote for their preferred candidate. This synchronic sampling of the general population’s currently ineligible voters is remarkably accurate: since 1964, its outcome has conformed to the pattern of their parents’ voting in the General Election.

The Scholastic survey is in lockstep with the larger conspiracy against (redacted). According to this so-called educational corporation, the current crop of ephebes is continuing to disregard the tradition of “Only white males need apply” for the job of President. After selecting Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, the nation’s K-12 voters have decisively chosen Hillary Clinton, or so Scholastic is claiming, though they provide no evidence whatsoever that the children voting in this survey are legally entitled to be in this great nation of ours. Without any attempt at verifying their voters’ legal status. Scholastic has given its imprimatur to the claim that schoolchildren have picked the winner for the 14th consecutive time.

One is loathe to spoil the happiness of Hollywood-addled liberals, but let’s be honest, before being honest becomes a crime under Crooked Hilary. Such a streak of prognostication defies credibility. Let’s take a quick look at the outcomes of the past Scholastic-sponsored elections. Since 1964, these young future voters have enthusiastically endorsed Richard Nixon twice (1968 and 1972), Ronald Reagan twice (1980 and 1984), and the Bush family three times (1988, 2000, and 2004). If given the opportunity to act as thoughtful citizens, schoolchildren born since 1950 have demonstrated, in the majority of instances (7 out of 13), that they recognize the right choice. How to account for deviations in the current election, as well as the past two? Three misfires in a row can only mean one thing: a nefarious hand is at work. Let us not be distracted from facts, folks: “She is the Devil, and she has tremendous hatred in her heart.” What more need be proved?

The (redacted) is not surprised that the schoolchildren have picked Hillary Clinton. (Redacted) saw it coming four years ago when Scholastic announced that students had selected Obama over Romney, and indeed their preference prevailed. According to “Business Insider,” (redacted) warned the American public that Romney’s defeat was a “total sham and a travesty.”

It is still not too late, however, for real Americans to stand up and stop this insanity in 2016. Though the Scholastic election most certainly was as rigged as what the Clintons and the mass media have in mind for the election on November 8, the schoolchildren’s vote is only another trapdoor in the Hall of Horrors run by the Democratic party.

Only adult votes ultimately count, and America is counting on us to act like adults and accept the wonderful paternal leadership offered to us by (redacted). Don’t be childish and fall into the trap of a rigged election.

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Ground Level Conditions Presidental Election

The No Handshake Honeymoon of the 45th Presidency

October 10, 2016 – 1:12 am

Monday, October 10, 2016

The Art Theater on Fourth Street in Long Beach graciously hosted a screening of the second debate on Sunday evening, and the theater was about two-thirds full. It was much more enjoyable, but also more sobering to watch the encounter on a big screen. Trump’s inordinate pacing around and his hint of physically stalking Clinton stirred up a palpable sense of discomfort in the audience, and it was reassuring to realize that I was not imagining Trump’s imperiousness.

We knew as we took our seats that it was not going to be a pleasant evening, and the event began with unusual awkwardness. The candidates came out on stage. Hillary nodded as they were about eight feet apart, and Trump then pivoted, and did a little skip step to move more center stage, which only made their refusal to greet each other formally more comic. There was considerable laughter at the theater, confirming my decision about the advantage of watching it with a larger community.

In commentary published after the debate, Chris Cillizza bewailed the lack of a handshake between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump as they commenced their second debate. “Maybe I am old-fashioned. But I thought it was tremendously depressing that Trump and Clinton couldn’t bring themselves to shake hands at the start of the debate.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/09/winners-and-losers-from-the-2nd-presidential-debate/

Call it an adumbration of the 45th Presidency of the United States: the no-handshake honeymoon. Why make a pretense of it? When Hillary takes office on January 20th, she’ll know what Barack Obama should have realized eight years ago: The GOP will do everything in its power to undermine her policies. Bi-partisanship is a bad joke at this point, and to expect anyone to act otherwise is being unrealistic.

Truly, Mr. Cillizza, why would you shake hands with someone who says that if he is elected, he will appoint a special prosecutor with the goal of sending you to prison? This is not a policy disagreement. This is a reprehensible fantasy of personal vindictiveness. The outrageous part is the larger context: how many bank officials have gone to prison after bankrupting the nation? The economy completely collapsed at the end of the Bush administration, and only the willingness of taxpayers to bear the burdens of redeeming this catastrophe saved the status quo. Bush and Cheney lied and started an unnecessary war, and yet no prosecution ensued. Does Trump want a special prosecutor to investigate Chris Christie for Bridgegate?

Let’s be blunt in reminding ourselves what we heard during the second debate. Trump called Hillary Clinton “the Devil” and said that she has “tremendous hatred in her heart.” The lack of a handshake is not depressing. It’s just common sense to keep your distance from someone who wishes you ill.

Post-script (Monday, mid-day): I am hardly the only one who is noticing that Hillary Clinton is preparing for a different kind of “First 100 days.” “The campaign against Trump seems to have deepened a trait of (Hillary) Clinton’s: a pessimism about the possibility of political persuasion.”
http://www.newyorker.com/news/benjamin-wallace-wells/clintons-coming-struggle-with-trump-supporters

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