The International Writers Magazine: US Politics

No Rhyme or Reason • Dean Borok Just because the Republicans are indulging in their Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown does not mean that the Democrats still do not have time to step on their own dicks and mess up the election. Photo: Dean Borok in full cry

Like what happened in 2010, when the Republicans reduced themselves to shambles over their last government shutdown. They were a complete mess, on top of which Obama was getting set to roll out his new health plan, which was hugely anticipated. He had every opportunity to crush the Republicans with the successful inauguration of his health insurance web site, when the whole system crashed on the first day. I’m reminded of the old Peter Sellers film comedy, “The Mouse That Roared”, where, at the conclusion, the scientist drops the rugby ball-shaped atomic bomb and, instead of a cataclysmic explosion, a mouse emerges from the freakin thing and runs away. That was Obama’s health plan haha!

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice in this whole scenario was HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, a dull and idiotic kind of an “I Love Lucy” administrator who didn’t know jack-shit about setting up systems, and who concealed her total ignorance from Obama and from the rest of the Cabinet right up to the day that the whole mess collapsed. The Republicans went into furious attack mode, succeeded in changing the conversation from the government shutdown to the healthcare breakdown and ended up sweeping Congress in the 2012 election.

Liberal principles can cost you plenty. When Brazil was run by Pres. Lula da Silva, the country was rolling in money. They were giving it away! So, when his term was up, he handed the control over to a lady president, Dilma Rousseff, who has been unable to contain the corruption, as Lula was able to do, and is seriously fighting impeachment, except for the fact that the country is in such a mess that none of the opposition candidates want the job either.

That’s what can happen in a prosperous country in just the space of a few years. We certainly don’t want to see the huge advances of the Obama Administration undermined and the chances for a future coalition for social progress wasted because of a lack of resolve.

Which is a quality that is not lacking in Donald Trump. He is Elmer Fudd, the Nearsighted Mr. Magoo and Wiley Coyote all wrapped up in Daffy Duck. But, actually, his principles don’t diverge very far from any established Republican precepts. He could be the next Teddy Roosevelt, for better or for worse. The real reason Republicans disdain him is that he is a New Yorker, and he is wayyyy too advanced for flyover country. They want Andy of Mayberry, and not some wiseguy city slicker. The schisms in this country are more regional than ideological, which is why New York governor Al Smith never had a chance of winning the 1928 election, because when Ma and Pa Kettle heard him speak on the radio they shot the damn thing full of holes.

I seriously don’t know if Donald Trump has ever earned a nickel in his entire life. He is Gatsby, a New York fortune with no rhyme or reason to it. When you’re rich, it’s easy to convince the world that you are a success. The greediest people are the ones who are born rich and then haunted that they have to justify their worth by somehow making MORE money.

Rich men do not count for shit in human history. It’s the art that survives, the flowering of civilizations built on the detritus of countless generations of human endurance and suffering that has fertilized the terrain throughout the ages and evolved the emergence of blooms of unimaginable beauty. That is the reason we are all here.
© Dean Borok Oct 12th 2015
dean@200motels.net

New York Trumps Everybody
Dean Borok
I vote the straight Democratic line. It wouldn’t matter to me if the Democrats put up Pee Wee Herman or Lassie at the top of the ticket, they have got my vote.

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