Here it is, folks. The emblem for American politics for the presidential run in 2016. Donald Trump’s hair
Seriously?
This is the best the Republicans can do? Trump? The blowhard who is beating the supposed front runner – Jeb Bush – in all the polls? The dude with the strange hair whose foreign policy seems to consist of building a fence across the southern border of the country and nuking Iran? The racist who refers to Mexican immigrants as thieves and rapists? The guy who is on wife #3 and yet apparently hates women?
I make deals, plenty of deals, he yells at a recent rally. And the Iran deal is a very bad deal.
Gag.
American politics, more than a year away from the 2016 presidential election, is a carnival of mutants, with 16 or 17 candidates on the Repub side (I’ve lost the exact count). On the other side, Hilary is the supposed front runner for Democrats even though she’s losing in several recent polls to Bernie Sanders – a supposed outlier independent senator from Vermont,
The mainstream media refuses to take Bernie seriously and never mind that he draws larger crowds than Hilary everywhere he goes. (That’s a significant link!) Never mind that his populist message resonates. He couldn’t possibly win the nomination, could he? His role, after all, was supposed to be that of the outlier who pushes Hilary farther to the left. But oh, guess what. He has an incredible momentum all his own.
And then there’s the media manipulation in the Republican debates about who can appear in the real debates and who will be assigned to the “kid’s table.” Fox News started this format with the first Repub debate and CNN is continuing it – with some bending of the rules – for the second debate on September 16. Tonight.
Really? Why not let all 16 or 17 candidates duke it out in real time? Let people see the racism and misogynistic truth about the Republicans. Let them see how these bozos still hope to overturn ObamaCare and rip health coverage away from the millions who are already benefiting from it. And do they have a plan for these people once affordable health care is torn away from them? Well, yes. DIE.
Then there are the real extremes among the Repub candidates- like Senator Ted Cruz, who bears an eerie physical resemblance to Joseph McCarthy, and Mike Huckabee – who supported the wacko Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. Isn’t that like a law in the 60s that forbade the marriage between a black and a white? And oh, guess what. Even though she broke the law as an elected official, she was released from jail with Huckabee at her side.
Seriously?
Who are these guys? What retro era did they crawl out of?
If there’s a synchronicity in all of this, I think it lies in the paradigm shift this planet is going through. The old just isn’t going out with a whimper. It’s fighting hard to remain relevant and the stakes are huge. For the most part, Republicans are climate-change deniers; advocate war over diplomacy; love babies until they’re born and then, well, sorry, you’re on your own; dislike women and Latinos and anyone else who isn’t an aging white male; seek to defund Planned Parenthood, a woman’s health organization; and are locked in some early 19th century idea of how the world works and why.
Listen up, aging white guy politicos. You know who you are – Boehner, Cruz, Huckabee, Trump, Bush (not another one!), Chris Christie, Lindsey Graham, etc etc. Here are some statistics that should be quite sobering for you about the face of the electorate not too far down the road. Or about the plight of the planet now and in the very near future.
You Repubs have your minority candidates – Ben Carson, the neurosurgeon who believes that the Affordable Care Act is “the worst thing that has happened since slavery,” and Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett Packard who bankrupted the company. Hey, great. But I’m clueless about why any minority of any color or gender would choose to be associated with the Republican party.
My dog would do a better job of running this country than any of you.
If we are going to evolve as individuals of a collective humanity, of a species on a planet with resources stretched to the limit, then a new paradigm will be born. But it’s apparent that birth won’t be easy, that it may be breech, that it may require extraordinary measures.
I don’t think I can stomach watching the Repub presidential debates tonight. But if any of you are that brave, let us know what you think about what they said.















