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~ Thoughts on Red States and "Deplorables."

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Tag Archives: Hillary Clinton

The United States of Bananas

25 Wednesday Oct 2017

Posted by Jim Langcuster in The Passing Scene, Uncategorized

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Banana Republic, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Fusion, Hillary Clinton, Jim Langcuster, Russia, Russiagate

Hillary-clinton3

Hillary Clinton

We really seem to be living in a banana republic – the United States of Bananas, as I’ve come to call it.

A friend has upbraided me constantly for voting for Trump, characterizing him as a pathological liar and a narcissistic vulgarian. Say what you will about Trump – he ultimately may prove to be the most morally and ethically challenged chief executive since U.S. Grant – but he pales alongside the Clintonian crime syndicate, especially in light of what has been revealed in the last couple of days.

A year ago, I was set on supporting the Libertarian Johnson/Weld ticket purely as a protest vote. But the realization eventually dawned on me: How could I, in good conscious, even contemplate a protest vote when American freedom, at least what remains of it, seemed to be hanging by a thin and perilously frayed thread?

And, frankly, I don’t understand how anybody can read the latest news and not conclude that this country has come to resemble more and more a Latin American-style Banana republic.

Yes, Trump’s juvenile public statements and Tweets trouble me as much as the next guy.  They have arguably eroded American public discourse – I’ll readily concede that. But the alternative was even more unpalatable: a gang of criminals that not only seemed hellbent on constructing an ideological echo chamber – using the mainstream media and, increasingly, the federal judiciary and elements of the Deep State to marginalize or even silence dissent – but also running the government as something resembling an organized crime syndicate.

If there is any silver lining to this, it’s the prospect that our malignant ruling class may be washing its hands of the pernicious Clintons, who may soon go the way of Harvey Weinstein.

One can hope.

No More Lecturing about Blacklisting

11 Sunday Dec 2016

Posted by Jim Langcuster in American History, Mainstream Media, Uncategorized

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Blacklisting, Donald Trump, Election 2016, Fake News, Hillary Clinton, Jim Langcuster, McCarthyism, PropOrNot, Russian propagandists, The Washington Post

joseph-mccarthy
Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy

The Daily Beast’s title pretty much summarizes the situation: The Washington Post has placed itself, however unwittingly, on a fake news hot seat.  And it may emerge from this debacle not only with a badly reddened backside but also with a deeply tarnished reputation.

By now, most informed Americans know the drill: A Post article published over the Thanksgiving holidays maintains that deft Russian propagandists have actively colluded with or deluded certain news U.S. news sources to disseminate fake news and with the goal of destabilizing American democracy and, in the course of which, undermining Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and electing Donald Trump.

Several of the news sites targeted by the article are enraged and threatening legal action.

The focus of the outrage stems from the Post’s use of a highly specious and secretive source, PropOrNot, whose media blacklist was posted online only a few days after the group launched its Twitter feed, according to The Daily Beast.

From my prospective, what has transpired almost exceeds the bounds of belief. As a late Baby Boomer, I was brought up within an educational environment in which the whole premise of blacklisting was roundly condemned and characterized as one of the more odious penchants of the American Right.

Now, of all people, The Washington Post, which built a journalistic legacy reporting on and condemning McCarthyist blacklists and Nixonian enemies lists, appears to have employed slipshod journalism – if this even qualifies as conventional journalism – to construct a blacklist of its own.

In the aftermath of all of this, I’ll say this to my liberal friends and acquaintances and left-wing posters to this site: Please don’t lecture me anymore about the authoritarian proclivities of the right unless you are willing to concede an inconvenient truth, namely that the left-leaning Establishment appears to harbor a few authoritarian aspirations of its own.

Hillary, You Are No Richard Nixon

01 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by Jim Langcuster in Patriotism, U.S. Politics, Uncategorized

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Cook County, Election 2016, Election of 1968, Hillary Clinton, Jill Stein, Jim Langcuster, Patriotism, Richard Daley, Richard Nixon

richard-nixon-crowdOur 37th president, the late Richard M. Nixon, was a terribly flawed man – a fact corroborated by many of the people closely associated with him during his troubled presidency.

But, of course, Nixon was also a complicated man, capable of as many soaring acts of brilliance and selfless patriotism as he was of petty and, sometimes appallingly destructive partisanship.

Henry Kissinger, who endured a full immersion in Nixon’s manifold complexities, described him as a man who, despite his flaws, almost invariably put the interests of his country first.

One unusually compelling chapter of U.S. presidential history reveals Nixon’s capacity for selfless patriotism.  As The Washington Times opinion editor David A. Keene observes in a recent column, Nixon had acquired compelling evidence that the Kennedys, working through Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s manipulation of Cook County ballots, had stolen the 1960 presidential election.

Illinois Republican Senator Everett Dirksen urged Nixon to take action.

In the end, though, Nixon refused to contest the election, fearing the effect a recount would have in eroding  the standing of the United States vis-a-vis the Soviet Union, which was competing with the United States to carve out a following among the emerging developing nations of Africa and Asia.

How times and personal standards have changed.

Dr.Jill Stein, the nominee of the tiny Green Party, which garnered a mere 1 percent of the U.S. popular vote, has demanded a recount in the key swing stares, apparently not so much with the goal of changing the election’s outcome but rather to raise her visibility and that of her party.

Never mind the effect this recount may play in undermining what remains of this nation’s standing as the world’s leading democracy and model for democratic government. She apparently is interested solely in building her and her party’s political viability.

And to add insult to injury, the defeated Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, has joined the fray, apparently with the that hope that this recount could throw the election outcome into the House of Representatives.  Throwing the election into the House would likely not alter the inevitability of a Trump victory – Hillary and her staff are undoubtedly well aware of that fact. But it would have the effect of eroding what legitimacy is attached Trump’s presidency.

 We have come a long way from the politics of the 1960’s, when even the most fiercely competitive and morally flawed national politicians still felt compelled out of a sense of patriotism to put the interests of the nation first.

Dr. Stein,  I may be a deplorable, but you are despicable – and as for you, Mrs. Clinton, you are no Richard Nixon.

The Democrats’ Federalist Redux

10 Thursday Nov 2016

Posted by Jim Langcuster in U.S. Politics

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2016 Presidential Elections, Bi-Coastal Party, Democratic Party, Donald Trump, Federalists, Hillary Clinton, Jim Langcuster, National Republicans, Whigs

federalism

A depiction of Federalist support (Federalist States depicted in blue) in post-colonial America.

As my beloved 8th grade history teacher liked to say, history repeats itself.

One of the remarkable outcomes of Tuesday’s election is how the Democratic party seems to be transforming into a predominantly bi-coastal and urban party – a sort of 21st century updating of the Federalists and their successors, the National Republicans and Whigs.

Upscale, Gentrified and Urban

Much like them, the Democratic Party has become an upscale, gentrified  and urban party pitted against a country party, the GOP, which resembles in many respects Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans, though, to be sure, it still maintains a significant urban presence throughout the American heartland.

Earlier this year, a number of astute pundits pointed out that the Democrats would be in exceedingly dire straits if they lost, which,at the time, of course, was considered a far-flung possibility.

A Democratic Reckoning?

Last Tuesday’s upset does portend a reckoning for the Democrats.  The bi-coastal and urban makeup of the Democrats was not so much a pressing concern while they were in power.  But without the patronage associated with the presidency and a sufficient foothold within the vast American heartland, they face acute competitive disadvantages for the foreseeable future.
I was reminded of the Democrats’ hard reality viewing the splendid interactive post-election map posted by the New York Times, depicting presidential voting patterns on a county-by-county basis. Running my cursor across a wide swath of “Flyover Country” from the Shenandoah Valley region of northern Virginia to the upper northwest corner of Nevada I crossed many counties with Trump support as high or even higher than 70 percent.

From Yellow Dog to Ruby-Red Pachyderm

Incidentally, in my native northwest Alabama, which used to be one of the most solidly and assertively Democratic enclaves in America, those margins ran even higher.  Seventy-nine percent of voters supported Trump in my native county of Franklin.  In neighboring Colbert County, once a heavily unionized and arguably the state’s most consistently Yellow Dog Democratic county, Trump support exceeded 69 percent.

The Democrats dominated local politics when I attended high school in the region in the late 70’s, though large percentages of people supported GOP nominees in presidential elections, notably in 1964, 1972 and 1980.

Now even that has changed.  The GOP in northwest Alabama and in most of the rest of the state dominates politics at all levels, municipal to the federal.

What remains of the Democratic presence Alabama Alabama is in the predominantly African-American sections of Black Belt Alabama and Jefferson County, of which Birmingham serves as the county seat. Most of the rest of the state is deep-dyed red. And that holds true for virtually all of the South – deep red heartlands, punctuated by large urban, predominately African-American areas, though, to be sure, cultural creatives with strong Democratic sympathies are evident in many of these areas.

This steep demographic decline isn’t limited to the South. Throughout much of Red State America, state Democratic parties are coming to resemble the GOP patronage parties that soldiered on in the South from the end of Reconstruction until the Reagan Revolution in 1980.

It is even possible to travel thousands of miles across the breadth of the American heartland without even passing through a blue county. And this brings me back to my original premise:  The present-day American political party system bears a remarkable resemblance to the emerging political system of post-colonial America. We are increasingly divided between blue cities comprised of highly educated cultural creatives and the deep-dyed red rural heartland.

Federalist Redux?

The short-term problem for them, at least, as I see it, is that they are currently shut out of some states in the South, parts of the Midwest and large parts of the Far West. To be sure, the GOP faces its own demographic challenges: the decline of its main base, whites,  its reputation among millions of millennials as an obscurantist know-nothing party and its comparative failure to make inroads into emerging demographic groups.

Even so, the Democratic party seems to face the biggest challenge – at least, in the short term: It’s separation from much of the American heartland and it’s all but total reliance on a coalition of affluent, highly educated urban elites and minorities.

For now, it seems, the Democratic party’s great Federalist redux doesn’t bode well for it’s future – it’s immediate future, at least.

The End of Clintonism

10 Thursday Nov 2016

Posted by Jim Langcuster in U.S. Politics

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Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Jim Langcuster, Richard Nixon

nixon-and-clinton

Former President Nixon conferring with President Bill Clinton in the White House in 1993.

The Clintons arrived at her headquarters Tuesday night with high hopes of victory, possibly  even a resounding one that would shape the American political landscape for decades to come.

They left facing the bitter reality that Trump’s electoral upset had likely rendered the Clinton dynasty, if not Clintonism in general, extinct.

In many ways, the Clinton legacy bears remarkable parallels to  that of Richard Nixon – and in this case, I’m focusing entirely on Bill’s presidential legacy.  Both Nixon and Clinton were gifted intellectuals, though Clinton was able to indulge his intellectual gifts publicly in a way that Nixon wasn’t, largely  due to his rather impeccable elite educational credentials and the fact that he had been largely adopted into the U.S. political Establishment. Nixon, largely because of his nonelite educational and provincial Republican pedigree, was denied acceptance – a factor that fed his deep-seated and self-destructive bitterness and paranoia, but that’s another story.

Along with keen intellects, both men also possessed razor sharp, incisive political minds able to perceive and quickly seize on fleeting political opportunities.  Indeed it was out of a sense of deep political necessity that both undertook moderate transformations of their respective political parties.

Both strategies were alike in the sense that they focused on winning voters in what is now known as Red State America, and the South played a particularly significant role in both efforts. In fact, both men will be remembered as architects of Southern political strategies.  Likewise, both Nixon and Clinton were political moderates who reluctantly tacked their parties to the right to capitalize on the South, though Nixon was at heart far more of a centrist than Clinton, a Baby Boomer who possessed the soul of a maverick New South liberal.

In time, historians may discern interesting parallel.

Both men were unusually perceptive and astute political gamesmen and improvizers. They knew how to exploit political opportunities when they arose, even in those instances when these ran against their political temperaments.

In Nixon’s case, Sen. Barry Goldwater’s disastrous 1964 presidential campaign nevertheless opened up a major opportunity for Republican prospects in the South.  And this provided Nixon, a pragmatic centrist like his predecessor and political patron, Dwight Eisenhower, with a strong incentive to capitalize on this opening by moving his party to the right.  The Red State populism of George C. Wallace as well as the need for Nixon’s need to protect his right flank from an internal insurgency provided additional impetus.

In the end, though, Nixon’s pragmatic centrist vision of the GOP, leavened a bit by hardcore-sounding conservative rhetoric to appease the post-Civil Rights Southern voters, was ultimately supplanted by Reagan’s modified Goldwater model.

Likewise, Clinton’s brilliant re-tooling of the Democratic Party in the early 90’s ultimately may be superseded by a considerably more left-leaning model inspired to one degree or another by the Bernie Sanders insurgency against Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Democratic primaries.

That is why in the end, both Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton may be as brilliant strategists whose visions for their respective parties supplied valuable but only temporary solutions for their parties’ political fortunes.

To put it another way, they may be remembered as two of American history’s most gifted political strategists, though not  as the architects of enduring political traditions as Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan were.

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