We Need More Shovals: why would you ever consider voting for a moron? part 1

My friends in Canada will soon find me at their door. Met, Betta, I demand political asylum. Trump is now with in striking distance of Hilary, she is only 4 points ahead. This is a huge tragedy. Trump is an idiot, he's a member of the 1%. He's one of the guys Wallstreet needs taking back from. In 2012 Americans voted for Obama rejecting Romney because he seemed unable to relate to the problems of the common people. Yet they are totally oblivious to the fact that Trump was born into money, he's one of the richest men in America, he has never experienced the feelings most of us have about not seeing where the money will come from. His is not a rags to Riches story.

Pundits have said that people flock to his band wagon like lemings because he speaks his mind. They said it so many times people have began repeating it. Two things wrong with this. First, lots of people speak their minds. It's a total fallacy to think that Hillary and Sanders are not speaking their minds. Joan Baez spoke her mind, the Smother's brothers, Pete Seager and Muhammad Ali all spoke their minds, but they suffered for it. Secondly, the things Trump has been saying are moronic.

He said that prisoners of war are not heroes. Granted, if a prisoner conducts himself in a cowardly way and helps the enemy he/she is no hero. But the original context was about John McCain in Vietnam, he conducted himself admirably. He was clearly heroic. It's how one bears up in captivity not that one was captured that counts. Speaking your mind is one thing but saying stupid things because there is no mind there to speak is quite another. Moreover Trump had five deferments in the Vietnam years, while McCain volunteered to fight. See the article by Michael E. Miller comparing what the two di8d during those years.

Trump said he would bomb everyone in Iraq to get the oil. "I would bomb the hell out of the oil fiels in Iraq to fight Isis." He doesn't care who he kills. I am for fighting Isis but its insane to destroy Iraq to do it. Use the oil don't bomb it! We always think we have to destroy the village to save it. He also made statements painting most illegal aliens as criminals and rapists, "with a few good people."

He'a a bully who is so lacking in any substance at all. He responds to every criticism with name calling. All who disagree are "losers." His immigration program is silly.

NYT reports: After staking his early campaign on caustic and contentious remark
s about undocumented immigrants, Donald J. Trump on Sunday outlined his plan to fix the country’s immigration system and deal with people who are in the country illegally.


The position paper, published on Mr. Trump’s website, centered on three principles. The first stated that “a nation without borders is not a nation” — a theme Mr. Trump has made a constant in his stump speeches — and called for a wall to be built along the southern border.

He also repeated his promise to make Mexico pay for the wall and laid out how he would do it: largely through increasing fees on border movement between the United States and Mexico.

“We will not be taken advantage of anymore,” the plan states.

He's not going to make Mexico pay for the wall. Increasing fees on boarder movement might just make more people try the illegal way, or just over less. Walls never work. Great wall of China did not keep the Mongols out. Berlin wall did not keep everyone in nor did it last. Taking money from the aliens so they can't send it home would mean opening mail, and they get the money for real toil and labor. They still take the jobs no one wants. The American fruit industry wou8ld not survive without them.

One of the more insane aspects of his plan is the paranoid acuzation that illegals are flooding the boarders because of a plot by the Mexican government.

(Ibid NYT above) The crimes committed by undocumented immigrants have been a focus of Mr. Trump’s early campaign. He has accused Mexico of sending criminals and rapists to the United States, and has often infuriated Latinos with his remarks.

In his formal policy, as he has many times before, Mr. Trump maintains that “Mexico’s leaders have been taking advantage of the United States by using illegal immigration to export the crime and poverty in their own country.”

That's a peranoid idea started back in the 90s by the Arian Nations to work up fear and panic about foreigners. Its been brewing for a long time. I knew people into that back in the 80s. I don't know where Trump got it but it was coming up from Tax revolt groups and right wing extremists. If there were any truth to it Mexico should have done nothing or worked to increase the flow of children into the US. In fact, according to pew research Mexico helped reduce the flow.

The hysteria over illegal immigration is based upon the historical tendency to scapegoat immigrants when times are bad:

(Salon)

Historians have noted a strong correlation between large migrations of foreigners to the United States and increased acts of violence against immigrants. For example, riots and violence erupted in Philadelphia in the mid-1800s following a large influx of Irish Catholic immigrants. The KKK peaked in the 1920s with approximately five million members, at the time lessening its focus on African-Americans and shifting its attention to Catholic and Jewish immigrants. In Texas, during the 1980s, a Klan group systematically harassed and attacked Vietnamese fishermen in an effort to put them out of business and drive them from the town.

The imagined crisis over job loss is laughable. Commentary in Orlando Sentinal:

And, yes, they are taking jobs away from some hardworking folks who are U.S. citizens. But for the most part, they are simply taking jobs that no one else wants. Example: After a federal raid on the Swift plant in Iowa, a strong majority of Caucasians displaced a strong majority of Hispanics in the work force. The turnover rate then soared from 30 percent to 114 percent.

The Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan group, estimates that in 2005, illegal immigrants accounted for 24 percent of farm workers, 17 percent of cleaning workers and 14 percent of construction workers.

It's easy to beat up on the disenfranchised, especially when they can't speak the language and may be here illegally, trying to make a better life for themselves. So we humiliate them every which way, from employers who pay them less than minimum wage, to the vigilantes who try to rustle them up as if they were rabid cattle on a rampage.

Illegal immigrants in production and consruction have been falling since 2007 due to stresses of US economy:

(Pew ResearchBy Jeffrey S. Passel and D’Vera Cohn)

In a reflection of changes in the overall economy since the Great Recession, the U.S. unauthorized immigrant workforce now holds fewer blue-collar jobs and more white-collar ones than it did before the 2007-2009 recession, but a solid majority still works in low-skilled service, construction and production occupations, according to new Pew Research Center estimates.

Trump is capitalizing on the hysteria for his own ego. He saysthe country is goint to hell. That is insane, things are not perfect a lot of people still having hard times but we are much better off now than we were in 2008.

Trump is not popular because he speaks his mind. That is code its a dog whistle. I'll tell you the real reason in part 2.