Good Morning everyone. I say that obviously knowing that for the majority of you reading this, it won’t be morning at all, but most likely somewhere in the afternoon/evening area. But it is morning for me, which is to say that it is the start of my day, regardless of the time. You may have noticed a distinct lack of blog yesterday and for anyone who is super perturbed by that I can assure you that If you check the end of the last blog, you will see that all is explained there. Go ahead and check, I’ll wait. Good, now that that is all cleared up we can move on. But what to move on to? My current plan for what to write today is to just bullshit my way through the next 1000 words. You see one of the problems with writing everyday is that some days will be quite good and others will be…well less good than that. And so with all the pressure that comes with having to bang out 1000 words first thing in the morning, I can’t really promise that all my posts will be the best quality, although I invite you all to stop reading now because there will most likely be nothing of substance below.
My favorite blog is actually an Arsenal blog called Arseblog. I have read it almost every day for the last 5 years. I realized though that good old Blogs over there has the advantage of talking about everything that might be going on at Arsenal every day, as well as filling up the blog with other randomness. But I unfortunately do not have a specific entity with which to refer and dedicate hundreds of word to, to make up the thousand. It now strikes me as an impossible task, to write a piece of that length every day, unless I mention something that’s happening to sort of help propel me forward. Well I guess I will have to pick something at random to talk about every day. The most interesting thing I read yesterday was the New York times full transcript of their meeting with Donald Trump. I won’t post the link here because most people don’t click on links and also because you people need to learn how to search and find things for yourselves. Anyway, I’ll give you the 30 minutes you will need to find the transcript, read it and come back.
Wasn’t it just fascinating? Wait…I have to rethink this strategy…by making you read it I’ve given up the possible two full paragraphs of summary I could have written over here! FREE WORDS! NO STRINGS ATTACHED! Damn…well if you have read it by now my apologies, I’m going to have to discuss some of the finer points for the other 99% who definitely did not bother reading it. There are exactly 2 things in that transcript that to me, explain Donald Trump’s win in the election, and how in reality, it was not even close.
The first of these is Trump’s explanation of his campaign strategy, and especially how they felt they were going to win in the states that mattered. Hearing him say it makes it make much more sense, but he really was getting the types of crowds that Clinton just cannot muster, due to the fact the she is inherently unlikable. According to Trump, they were filling up stadiums, and had thousands of people standing outside who couldn’t get in, which was when they put up the monitors outside the stadium (something which the ‘liberal media’ found very funny). He describes their surprise at the amount of people they were drawing, and the fact that they just kept going back to the states they knew they had to win, and kept drawing big crowds. Trump also very rightly argues that the entire ‘Hilary won the popular vote’ narrative is a complete farce, because as he says, winning the popular vote is a different campaign altogether. Trump targeted the electoral college and hit the bulls-eye in every place that mattered. It’s true that he had more free media coverage, but it is also true, as we now know, that his campaign was just much better. He also spoke about the LA times poll that had him ahead due to the level of enthusiasm his supporters showed, something Clinton never had (but Bernie certainly did). I am 100% convinced that Bernie would have won the election if he were not forced out by Clinton’s corruption, and I am even more convinced after Trump laid down this bombshell: The USA have closed down 70,000 factories since 2008.
70,000 factories. What a number. Can you imagine the amount of pain and suffering caused across blue collar America caused by the loss of so many jobs? Suddenly this war against climate change makes sense as well. People don’t actually care whether or not climate change is happening. It’s the fact that climate-change initiatives took away all of their jobs that has Americans so convinced it is a falsehood. And why wouldn’t they? They just want their jobs back, and this is something Trump makes clear will be one of his big initiatives, to restore America’s factories. In any case, I think Bernie would have thrived with his more socialist platform, although we will never know just how close that race would have been.
Another important part of this meeting was Trump categorically condemning the Nazi-esque ‘Alt-right’ led by the deplorable Richard B.Spencer. This was, I think, an important stance for Trump to take. The fact that Steve Bannon is another Alt-right leader, and is in Trump’s team, is alarming. But Trump clearly states that if Bannon were to express any of these views, he would be fired. To assume that Trump himself is, or will become, some sort of Hitler figure is a bit too convenient in my opinion. Richard B. Spencer is one such figure, and he, thankfully, is not President of the United States. Nor should we be surprised that incidents of racism have increased across the US. For God’s sake, the white nationalist’s just had 8 years of a BLACK GUY (Much love Obama) as president of their country! It’s no wonder they feel emboldened and more confident to speak out in the wake of their ‘victory’. Let’s not forget however, that the majority of Americans are not ‘alt-right’ or outwardly racist. Those incidents simply travel farther and echo louder than the incidents of the reverse, which is nothing happening at all. Trump did not win because of race, he won because the American people felt, rightly, cheated and abused by their leadership, and because his campaign was extremely well run.
I expect these racist outbursts to die down, and for the good to triumph over the evil in the long-run. Although If I were living in the United states, I would have made sure I was living in a very, very blue state long before now.
More on something else tomorrow.
NoteWorthy 