Category: Grandes Pensées

SOME MEN JUST WANT TO WATCH THE WORLD BURN—ALFRED PENNYWORTH (MICHAEL CAINE, AS BRUCE WAYNE’S BUTLER IN “THE DARK KNIGHT”)

This is my final commentary (most of which are on my Facebook page) on the personality and morality (the lack thereof) of Donald J Trump. From now on, I will focus on matters of importance rather than personalities.  Everyone who has read my Facebook posts on Trump know I consider him beneath contempt.   He is a professional grifter, the only “business” in which he has been successful.  He failed miserably as a casino owner.  What success he has had since then is due to his grifting or by schmoozing Russian oligarchs.  A grifter knows when to bully and when to “schmooze”.  If he cannot control the situation, he will turn on his “persecuted” act and project his own misdeeds onto others.  Beyond that Trump is a complete buffoon, womanizer, extreme narcissist, sociopath, and lover of dictators.

Trump is like The Joker  in “The Dark Knight”.  Bruce Wayne’s (Batman) butler Pennyworth (Michael Caine) is speaking specifically about The Joker when he states that some people want to watch the world burn.  The Joker acts out of a mysterious revenge, tells varying stories of his disfigurement and how he became a person who cared only for destruction.  He is consumed with manipulating and controlling others to exact his destruction.  Likewise, Trump made his decision to run for President based on an implausible and vindictive reason. In 2011 at the White House Correspondents’ dinner, Trump was in attendance when Obama roasted him in front of everyone there.  (Roger Stone has publicly stated this was the turning point for Trump.) His whole reason for being President was one of revenge to undo all of the programs Obama managed to have enacted.  Trump deserved the ridicule for his continual lies about Obama not being a native born US citizen.

When Trump started his campaign for President in 2015, immigrants were a convenient scapegoat to gain the loyalty of people who saw the American “dream” fall apart when jobs moved overseas. The undocumented were taking benefits and jobs when they have been left out. Trump’s wholesale attack on Muslims appealed to the fundamentalist Christians who believe all non-believers as agents of Satan.  (Fundamentalist Muslims have the same viewpoint of anyone who is not part of their belief system. Fundamentalist, ultra-orthodox Jews likewise harbor beliefs they are God’s only special people and have an absolute right to all of the historical land of Israel.) Making these groups the object of his attacks was his first move to burn down what was left of liberty and democracy in America.  A love for power must exclude dissenting voices. Trump loves burning things down even more than he loves power and wealth.

Trump’s recent appointments to high posts in his incoming administration confirm Trump’s political pyromania.  Matt Gaetz, totally unqualified to be Attorney General, is Trump’s “weaponization” of the Department of Justice to the point of destroying it as an institution to establish justice. The Department of Justice will be only a weapon to enforce loyalty to Trump. Is the next step to change the name to The Gestapo?

Trumpet’s appointment of the Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence is a gift to Vladimir Putin.  A Russian state TV host called Gabbard “our girlfriend”.  

Tom Homan is Trump’s “border czar” and “deportation czar”.  He has said no one here illegally is “off the table” for deportation.  He calls eleven million undocumented immigrants criminals, even though most of them have committed only one crime—being here illegally.  He calls the Trump “family separation policy” a “zero tolerance policy.  He helped implement the “stay in Mexico” policy, which subjected about 70,000 migrants to numerous crimes including murder, assault, and rape.  Many immigrants were forced to pay Mexican police to avoid deportation. He claims he wants to stop the deaths of immigrants, but his actions in ICE led to the opposite.  He is in favor of deporting whole families, including ones who have members who are American citizens by birth.  Biden may be blamed for having an unclear border policy, but Trump’s was inhumane. When Biden offered Congress a path to change immigration policy, Trump stopped it solely because of the Biden administration’s willingness to enact it.  Groups, like the union of border control officers and the Chamber of Commerce, generally critical of Biden supported the enactment of the law.   The border problem is a failure of nothing being done by the Congress. 

Trump loves burning things down even more than he loves power and wealth. “Drill baby, drill” will lead to a burning of this planet not different from another apocalypse, only no Messiah will be there when it happens.

CLOSING THOUGHT: TED CRUZ HAD ONE CLEAR MOMENT IN HIS LIFE DESCRIBING TRUMP:  

“… if you hooked him up to a lie detector test, he could say one thing in the morning, one thing at noon, and one thing in the evening, all contradictory, and he would pass the lie detector each time. Whatever lie he is telling at that minute, he believes it. But the man is utterly amoral. Morality does not exist for him.”—Ted Cruz, May 2016

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Statistics involve data collection and making an analysis of it. While one can complain about an incomplete or misleading analysis, accurate numbers cannot be ignored. Trump and his enablers have focused on invalidating all votes in Wayne County, Michigan, the state’s most populous county. So far, they have failed in this vicious action. The vote in Wayne County and the three other most populous counties shows common patterns and proof of the reliability of all the votes. It makes one wonder why Republicans decided to attack only the Wayne County vote. The voting patterns in all these counties for three elections (2012, 2016, and 2020) establish that Trump’s screaming about fraudulent mail-in votes is without any basis in fact. The people who voted in Wayne County were real voters, just as real as the voters in these other three counties—Macomb, Kent, and Oakland.
What is different about Wayne County? It has a much higher Black population than the other three, most of it in the City of Detroit. Unsurprisingly, it had the largest pro-Democratic vote in 2020. That was also true in 2012 and 2016. In 2012, Obama’s margin of victory over Romney was 382,000. In 2016, Clinton won Wayne County by only 289,000. Part of the decrease in the margin was due Trump getting 16,000 more votes than Romney had in 2012, but the main reason was due to people not voting for either of the major candidates. Overall, the number of votes for both major party candidates was 61,000 less in 2016. In 2020, Biden received 2,000 more votes than Obama received in 2012 Although 53,000 more votes were cast in 2020 over 2012 for the two main candidates, the vast majority of additional votes went to Trump (51,000), leaving Biden’s margin at 333,000, or 49,000 fewer than Obama’s in 2012. So, how could mail-in ballots be some proof of fraud?
Oakland County, primarily a prosperous suburb (with the highest median household income of the four counties in question) of Detroit and a large percentage white population, voted for Obama by a 52,000 vote margin in 2012. In 2016, Clinton won with a slight increase in margin to 54,000. Yet, there were 14,000 fewer voters for both candidates. One can surmise that the increase for Clinton was the result of a movement of moderate, well-off Republicans moving away from Trump. In 2020, Biden won by 108,000 votes, with 114,000 more people voting than had voted in 2012. Was this change fraud or a tidal wave of moderate Republicans and Independents voting against Trump? Why did Republicans not attack this vote as well?
Macomb County is sometimes called the home base of the “Reagan Democrat”, with a substantial population of working class whites. It also has the highest percentage white population of these four counties. It voted twice for Obama, with a 16,000 vote margin in 2012. In 2016, it switched substantially to a 48,000 vote margin for Trump. The total number of votes for the two presidential candidates remained the same as in 2012. In 2020, Trump once again won it, but the margin was 8,000 fewer than in 2016, even with an increase of 88,000 voters in total numbers for the two candidates. Where is the outcry of fraud?
Kent County is the home of the “moderate” Republican. President Gerald Ford was from here and represented this area in the House of Representatives. His presidential library is here. The white population is 75% of its total. In 2012, Romney won it by 23,000, but in 2016, Trump’s margin was only 10,000. In addition in 2016, 7,000 fewer voters voted than in 2012 voted for the two main parties’ candidates.. In 2020, Biden won Kent county by 22,000 votes, a turnaround of 45,000 votes from 2012. The number of people voting for both of the presidential candidates went up substantially (61,000) from 2012 to 2020. Why has the Republican Party and Trump not claimed fraud here?
Common patterns in all four counties support the validity of the votes in all Three counties had decreased turnout for the main candidates in 2016 versus 2012, with Oakland remaining the same. Where one is likely to find moderate Republicans and Independents (Kent and Oakland Counties), Trump did less well than Romney. Wayne County remains solidly Democratic in all three elections, but 2016 was much worse than 2012. Despite the substantial increase in 2020, Wayne County’s margin for Biden is less favorable to Trump than was Obama’s to Romney’s. How can anyone claim that all of these votes were fraudulent or at least so much so that it requires removing all of Wayne County’s votes from the total for Michigan? It is an illusion, all based on racism. If one looked at the votes in Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Atlanta, it likely will reveal a similar picture. As Trump has done throughout his four years, he has fomented chaos and distrust during this period after the election. It is hoped that most people who voted for Trump will stop siding with this lie and accept the fact that the vote in 2020 was accurate, just as Hillary Clinton accepted the outcome in 2016 and made no claim of voter fraud. (Do not mix up Russian interference with a claim of voter fraud. Very few people claimed the Russians actually manipulated the votes. The claim has always been Russian attempts to influence the election with disinformation.)

TABLES

MICHIGAN STATEWIDE

POPULATION 9,987,000

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS

Party/Year	2012	2016	2020
Dem	2562000	2268000	2804000
Rep	2113000	2228000	2650000

REGISTERED VOTERS STATEWIDE

2012	7400000
2016	7500000
2020	8000000

ETHNIC MAKEUP: 76% White 14% Black

FOUR MOST POPULOUS COUNTIES

POPULATION

COUNTY	POPULATION
Wayne	1750000
Oakland	1257000
Macomb	874000
Kent	657000

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS

WAYNE COUNTY

Year	2012	2016	2020
Dem	595000	518000	597000
Rep	213000	229000	264000

OAKLAND COUNTY

Year	2012	2016	2020
Dem	349000	343000	434000
Rep	297000	289000	325000

MACOMB COUNTY

Year	2012	2016	2020
Dem	208000	176000	224000
Rep	192000	2224000	264000

KENT COUNTY

Year	2012	2016	2020
Dem	135000	138000	188000
Rep	158000	148000	166000

MEDIAN INCOME

Wayne	$45,000
Oakland	$80,000
Macomb	$62,000
Kent	$60,000

Ethnic makeup (2010 Census)

            Wayne  49% White
                   38% Black
            Oakland:  71% White
                      14% Black
            Macomb:  85% White
                      9% Black
             Kent:  76% White
                    10% Black

(The vast majority of the Wayne County Black Population is in the City of Detroit, which is 79% Black and 15% White. The Black population of Wayne County makes up about 75% of the Black population in all of Michigan.)

Sources: Politico on-line news magazine archives; Wikipedia; Census Bureau (from the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis)

Copyright © 2020 All rights reserved.

A statement about Trump, his lies, lack of humor, and how his party, the Party of Trump, is a cult of personality, leading to the end of representative democracy.

To see the full essay: https://bertrandspensees.com/?s=suspension+of+disbelief

Having read many posts and statements in the media about the NFL players kneeling during the national anthem, I decided, after seeing this article below in a post by a Facebook friend, to add some thoughts.  It saddens me that many people think of kneeling at this point as some sort of serious crime and an attack on the national anthem.  The Politifact article about the history of the national anthem at sporting events provides some very important insight into this whole issue.  It also points out that Kaepernick actually changed his protest from sitting to kneeling on the advice of a fellow NFL player and former green beret as a way to respect the military with his protest.

I think of kneeling as showing a sign of respect and humility.  So, I find it incredible that people are getting so angry about the matter.  The report below on Shepard Smith’s statements, from Fox News of all places, should make for some serious reflection and, I hope, a reevaluation of one’s emotions.

The Snopes web site provides more detailed information on the contact between Kaepernick and Nate Boyer, who led Kaepernick to kneel as part of his protest.  One other web site on this part of the story included a picture of a soldier kneeling on one knee with a folded flag in his arms and about to give it to the grieving family of a deceased soldier at the soldier’s funeral.  This is standard military practice at such funerals.

http://splinternews.com/fox-news-host-shep-smith-uh-actually-described-nfl-1818767388

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/sep/25/short-history-national-anthem-and-sports/

http://www.snopes.com/veteran-kaepernick-take-a-knee-anthem/

This essay constitutes my “rant” about Donald Trump.  It does not contain sources for all of the factual assertions about him.  Although I intend in other writings to have sources presented for all assertions, it is not necessary here. Every assertion can be located on the Internet by doing a “Google” search.  The title of the essay references his behavior throughout his life.  Lying and cheating are how he has conducted his entire business career.  Unfit refers to his disdain for democracy and his mental instability.  Unredeeming simply means that he is devoid of any eternal, spiritual values.

See essay:  https://bertrandspensees.com/donald-trump-lying-cheating-unfit-and-unredeeming/