Week of 10/12/2020

It’s Still About Voting Your Conscience
– by David Matthews 2

Eight years ago, I wrote an election-eve article telling my fellow Americans that they need to not only vote in 2012, but to vote their conscience.  Sadly, I knew it would never really convince anyone, because a lot of us back then had already early-voted, and the rest of us pretty much made up our minds as to who we were voting for.

This article is being posted one month prior to the 2020 Presidential Election and/or Coup, with millions of Americans already early-voting either in-person or by mail in numbers unheard of before.  But there is still time for my words to get into the heads of my fellow American voters before they cast their vote between this article’s posting and Election Day.

First and foremost, I am asking those of you who are registered to vote to please do that between now and Election Day.  Whether it is by early voting, vote-by-mail, absentee vote, or showing up on Election Day and waiting in line to cast your vote, please do.  I know that it’s difficult because of the global pandemic still going on, that that’s primarily on us and those who failed to do their jobs at all levels of government.  But if you are an American and you are registered to vote, then it is your responsibility as an American citizen to vote.

Second, I am asking again that you vote according to your conscience.  I know that is difficult given the options before us.  I know there are people who are firmly in the cult of Narcissist President Donald Trump.  And, yes, it is a cult, even and especially if they themselves don’t see it as such.  And there are those who do not like former Vice President Joe Biden and/or his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris.  The so-called “Bernie Bros” have once again reared their ugly heads and have it in their minds that anyone except Senator Bernie Sanders will not do.

Look, Bernie Bros, I get it.  You want your guy in.  You want his ideas enacted.  The problem is that there was a time when that was possible.  But that time is over.  Bernie didn’t get the nomination.  Even he has said that it’s time to vote for the one that is on the ballot, and, yes, he is stumping for Biden in a way that he never could do four years ago.

And that brings me to the third thing... Yes, vote.  Yes, vote according to your conscience.  But also ask yourself this question that I asked eight years ago:

Are you willing to live with the consequences of your vote?

I have come across a few folks who knew what kind of person Narcissist Trump was even in 2016 and still actively voted for him because they did not like Hillary Clinton.  If you are one of them, then you share a portion of the blame for what followed.  The ineptitude, the broken treaties, the ego-wall that was supposed to be paid for by Mexico but instead is being paid for through our tax money, the broken families, the ineptitude concerning the global pandemic, the economic collapse still going on today... that is on you just as much as it is on Narcissist Trump and his Trump Party.

Voting has consequences.  Not voting also has consequences.  A majority of registered voters failed in their responsibilities as Americans back in 2016.  It was not a horserace as the media has always proclaimed it to be.  Half of the registered Americans did not vote at all.  They defaulted their choice to those that did vote, and that included the ones that voted for third-party or independent candidates.

Imagine what would happen if even half of the non-voters from 2016 actually voted.  If they did, then it is entirely possible that there would have been someone different in the White House four years ago and I don’t necessarily mean Hillary Clinton.

But, of course, they didn’t vote.  So they had to endure the horrors and travesties of Narcissist Trump and his army of enablers and sycophants along with the rest of us.  Something for them to think about this time around.

Let’s get brutally honest here... each of us as registered voters have a chance in these next few weeks to do something about Narcissist Trump and his criminal operation.  Something that the courts have not been able to do.  Something that Congress has not been able to do.  We are the only ones that can.  If we do not like what Narcissist Trump and his cohorts have been doing, we can and we must vote them all out of office.  That is our responsibility as Americans.

Yes, Narcissist Trump and his gang of thugs and terrorists can try to rig the elections.  They’ve been trying to stop voting by mail, even though it’s been going on since the Civil War without any problems.  There are threats of voter intimidation by self-appointed “poll watchers” determined to prevent votes for anyone other than Narcissist Trump.  But they only win if we let them.  They are not the majority in America.  They never have been.  They are a very active and very vocal minority who have figured out that if we don’t vote and they do, they win.

That’s the secret to their dominance.  If we don’t vote and they do, they win.

Can you live with that?  I can’t.  I haven’t.  That’s why I vote every time.

In all the years that I’ve been able to vote, this commentator only made the mistake of voting party over principle once.  Ever since then, I have voted according to my conscience and I have not regretted it even the slightest.  They may not have won, but I never lost sleep over my choices.  And the same can be said about my choices this year. 

I will not tell you who I will be voting for, but you can guess who I will certainly not vote for, and my choices will leave no doubt as to who will not get my vote.  And I know that, win or lose, my conscience will be clear.

What about the rest of you?

 

Week of 04/06/2020

What if Hillary Won?
– by David Matthews 2

For almost the past four years, we have been engaged in a surreal demonstration of what happens when the wrong person gets put in the White House.  And by “wrong”, I don’t mean partisan favorites.  I mean someone who has demonstrated with his actions, antics, and words that he really should never have been elected, regardless of party affiliation or political leanings.

But... what if things turned out differently in 2016?

While this columnist was celebrating 24 years of his weekly column, a YouTube personality that specializes in speculative alternate histories came up with a timely video talking about how differently things would be if “the right” person won the 2016 Farce.  And, no, he wasn’t talking about Hillary Rodham Clinton.  Rather, he was speculating how different things would be if the actual “presumed” nominee for the GOP won.  Specifically, Jeb Bush.

The video was an absolute farce, which was appropriate since it was released on April Fool’s Day.  It showed that Jeb’s bland centrist approach would not only heal the nation, but would eventually take over the world, and then the galaxy.  It didn’t take long for viewers to realize that the video’s creator was pulling a prank, and that this was nothing like the usual somber and calculated speculation of a truly alternative timeline.

But that led this columnist and a few other people to begin to speculate in earnest.

What if Narcissist Donald Trump had lost the 2016 Presidential Election?

Now, before we do that, let’s get a few things out of the way...

First, I did not vote for or support Hillary Clinton.  If you read my column back then, you’d know that I thought she was also the wrong person for the job.  Not because she’s a woman, but because she carried on as though she was entitled to be president, and she tried too damn hard to convince people of that.

But the fact of the matter is that it was going to be either her or Narcissist Trump in 2016.  That was it.  So there is no talk of a third party savior that would sweep in and somehow win, because there wasn’t one in our history, so therefore we can’t assume one in an alternate history where the results would be different.  Sorry, Libertarians and Greens.

Second, there are many outlying events that happened regardless of who would be in the White House.  Natural disasters, certain deaths, and certainly a global pandemic.  The election results would not change any of those things.  Hurricanes and earthquakes would still devastate the land.  Certain people would still die.  The COVID-19 global pandemic would still happen.  These all still happen.  It’s just that our response to them would differ with someone other than an unstable malignant narcissist in the White House.

So... what would happen on that November in an alternate history if Hillary Rodham Clinton won the 2016 Farce and became the first female President of the United States?

For starters, the GOP would challenge it.  Narcissist Trump himself laid down the groundwork just before the election, saying over and over again that it was a “rigged system”.  Bear in mind, this was just after the Democratic Party was exposed rigging their nomination system so that Hillary would be the nominee.  The party’s process was clearly rigged against Senator Bernie Sanders, so it should be no stretch of the imagination to consider that the presidential election could be rigged as well.

Plus this is the same goddamned party that spent eight years questioning and challenging the legitimacy of President Barack Obama’s tenure.  They never got over their delusion that Obama was born anywhere but inside the United States.  So, yes, of course they would throw temper tantrums over Hillary!  Screaming Walmart-level tantrums.  It’s just what they do now.

But those tantrums would still not get them anywhere.  Calls for recounts and claims of voter interference would not stop the Electoral College, and they would not get help from the United States Supreme Court like they did in 2001.

Narcissist Donald Trump, in this alternate timeline, would most likely fade away once the challenges to the election peter out.  His reality TV show would be cancelled following the infamous “grab ‘em” video, which Narcissist Trump would claim was political retaliation.  He would continue to sell books, which his followers would lap up like Harry Potter stories, and eventually he would join the conservative and alt-right media by becoming a regular contributor to the Fox News and Fox Business cable channels.  He would then join the choir of conspiracy nuts peddling every possible theory and be lost in all the inane insanity.

The inauguration of President Hillary Rodham Clinton would be at best a lukewarm one.  While the media would be hyping this as a major historical event, attendance-wise it would be about average.  It certainly would not be on the same level as Obama’s first inauguration, and some might even compare it to that of her husband’s, who would now be the very first “First Husband”.

She would give a boisterous speech, talking about a new day for America and offering an opportunity to work with Congress and to end the partisan division that had stalled the federal government.  There would be some applause from the audience but almost none from those members of Congress in attendance.

Pretty much any chance of cooperation between her White House and the Congress were null and void even before she took office.  This is because the GOP would still be in control of both houses, and they would not be willing to work with her any more than they did with her predecessor.

Their first order of the day would be to neuter President Hillary’s Administration.  Senate Majority Leader “Moscow Mitch” McConnell would claim that the Senate would give Hillary’s cabinet nominees “extra scrutiny”, but in practice they would stonewall every nomination she puts forth.  Her first year would be to fight hard just to get her cabinet in place.

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives under Speaker Paul Ryan would openly begin investigations on the 2016 Farce, with special focus on allegations of voter fraud by the Democrats.  They would also be continuing their Benghazi investigations, demanding the President give up the infamous emails, and laying the groundwork for articles of impeachment.  They would also make it clear that any budgetary ideas from the White House would be dead on arrival.  Speaker Ryan and the rest of his faction would be thumping on their pocket copies of the U.S. Constitution and proclaiming that they and only they are in charge of the budget, and their favorite word is, once again, “deficit”.

“Pizzagate” would be one of the subjects brought up during these House investigations, and it would still culminate with someone showing up at the Comet Ping-Pong pizza place with assault weapons to supposedly “liberate” children that did not exist from a dungeon that did not exist in a basement that did not physically exist.  President Hillary would be upset, scold the nation, and then that part of the witch-hunt would end.  But it would be the exception, as every other crackpot conspiracy theory ginned up by both the GOP and Russia saboteurs would still be discussed and investigated and rehashed over and over until they get the answers that the GOP want to hear.

Hurricane Maria would still devastate Puerto Rico in 2017.  However, while President Hillary would do everything in her power to provide essential aid, she would be hamstrung by the Congress and their continual insistence of only allowing funding connected to drastic cuts to domestic spending.  There would be talk of statehood for the commonwealth to provide actual representation and better aid, however all talk of statehood would die with said GOP-dominated Congress.

The economy would also be a sore subject during the early years of President Hillary’s tenure.  Rumors of a Hillary recession would start floating about as news of shutdowns and layoffs would begin to mount, just as they did in our normal timeline.  The White House would eventually agree to a tax cut for wealthy corporations, but only on the promise that Congress would stop trying to attack the Affordable Care Act, previously dubbed “Obamacare” but later rechristened as “Hillarycare”.  It would be a promise that the GOP would later renege on.

The Judicial Branch of the U.S. government would be decimated during this time.  At the start of her tenure, there would be over 100 judicial vacancies that were left open because of McConnell’s partisan stonewalling, and one key vacancy in the Supreme Court.  Because the GOP lost the White House, again, McConnell would make it clear that those vacancies would remain indefinitely, including his prized vacancy in the Supreme Court. That would soon become 2 vacancies following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. 

President Hillary would nominate people to fill those vacancies, but, again, McConnell would refuse to bring any of them up for consideration, just like he did with Obama’s nominees.  Conservative and neo-conservative think tanks would send out columns praising the vacancies and claim that America is somehow “better” with an overwhelmed and undermanned judicial system.

A third Supreme Court vacancy would most likely happen as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would announce her retirement due to her many health issues at the time.  The judicial scales would still be in moderate favor for the White House, so there would be no strong emphasis to fill these vacancies at this point.  The push, instead, would be to break the GOP dominance in the Congress so they would be able to get these vacancies filled.

However, unlike the results of 2018 in our time, the Democrats in our alternate timeline would lose the mid-term elections.  While the GOP would continue the partisan extremism of the past eight years, they would not be driven to the abusive levels that were seen in our normal timeline under Narcissist Trump.  Plus, many people would see the GOP control of Congress as a way to keep President Hillary in check, even while they hate the hyperpartisan stagnation.

With their dominance in Congress assured in this alternative timeline, the GOP would move forward with the impeachment of President Hillary Clinton on the charges of destruction of evidence and contempt of Congress over the Benghazi investigation.  President Hillary would be only the third president impeached by Congress, and, just like during her husband’s impeachment, she would not be convicted by the Senate.  Everyone in the nation, including diehard GOP supporters, would be saying that the charges were nothing more than ginned-up partisanship.  Unlike the impeachment of Narcissist Trump in our timeline, there would be no actual evidence in President Hillary’s impeachment.  There would be no “smoking gun”, no whistleblower, no witnesses, no proof to even deny, never mind contradict.  Only theories and conspiracies.  But there would still be a complete and prolonged impeachment trail in this alternate history, unlike that in our own timeline.

The impeachment in this alternative timeline would end up hurting the GOP, and with the 2020 election coming up, many GOP members of Congress would announce their retirement, opening the door for more extreme conservative and alt-right members to run in their place.

The start of the 2020 Presidential Fraud in this alternative timeline would be eerily familiar to 2016, with many of the same wannabes resuming their campaigns.  Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, Rick Perry, and Rudy Giuliani would be quick to run, joined by the likes of Speaker Paul Ryan, former Governor Sarah Palin and twice-removed disgraced judge Roy Moore.  For the Democrats, Senator Bernie Sanders would once again challenge President Hillary and would once again be shut out of many primaries and caucuses as state party leaders would rally around the president.

That would bring us to the big one... the Coronavirus Global Pandemic.  Unlike the presidential incompetence of early 2020 in our timeline, the White House in this alternative timeline would try to address the spread of the virus quickly and to keep it from spreading to the United States.  There would be talk of providing medical aid, which would again be shot down by a GOP-controlled Congress, insisting that any testing or protective equipment or ventilators remain in America.  President Hillary would have the help of a pandemic response team, which was created during Obama’s time, and would not be dismantled in this alternate history.  Whether or not it would be effective would be speculative as our alternative timeline has now caught up to the posting of this column.

Let’s get brutally honest here... in all likelihood, things would not be any better under a hypothetical White House run by President Hillary Clinton.  If anything, the hyperpartisan gamesmanship that we saw from the GOP under President Obama would continue, and it would get worse.  But there wouldn’t be a sudden surge to fascism as seen under Narcissist President Trump and his alt-right advisors and supporters in those early years.

Political stagnation and sabotage would still go on, and it would hamstring the federal government in this alternate timeline, as opposed to our own reality, where the newly-assimilated Trump Party would literally break every rule and procedure to get their way.  But past treaties and agreements would still be honored with a different president.  There would be no pulling out from the Paris Accord.  The North American Free Trade Act would remain in place between the US, Mexico, and Canada.  Trade deals with China would still go on, and the economy would not be driven to sudden rises and falls.

What you would not see in an alternate timeline would be a president that would be an embarrassment on the world stage.  President Hillary would not parade herself like a spoiled princess at places like the G-8 Summit.  If anything, she would blend right in with Germany’s Angela Merkle and France’s Emmanuel Macron.  North Korea would still cause problems, but it would be handled no differently than under Obama’s tenure.  Russia would still cause problems, but nobody would claim that the White House was compromised as they do in our timeline.

We would still face economic challenges, no matter who was president.  They would just be handled differently.  The coronavirus would still devastate the world, but how it is approached would possibly limit that devastation and the number of deaths in America.

This is, of course, one person’s hypothetical look at alternative events, taking into account the prevailing attitudes of the time.  Your views might differ.  But those who think that life would be better under someone other Narcissist Trump need to remember that there was more going on in America’s political scene than just the aspirations and antics of some boisterous orange-skinned clown.

Week of 03/09/2020

The Demise of the Presidential Wannabes
– by David Matthews 2

This column originally began during the 1996 Presidential Election.  The 2020 Fraud will be the seventh presidential cycle this commentator will be commenting on.  And during that time, this commentator has noticed a few things about the people who would wish to be the next President of the United States.

First, there always seem to be a lot of wannabes.  But not all of them will make a go of it.  There will always be some names that would be floated about as to who “should” run but would then decide not to.  If there are a lot, the air-fluffed, ego-driven media will throw tantrums about there being “too many”.  They will characterize the field as being absolutely mobbed by a nameless and faceless horde.

The air-fluffed, ego-driven media love a horserace.  They want to be the ones to quickly define the contest as being one versus the other and carry that narrative all the way through to the November elections.  It makes for great theater, especially if they’re the ones that create the horserace.

In early 2008, the media wanted the election to be a “New York Subway” race between Senator Hillary Clinton and the cheap Italian thug Rudy Giuliani.  They were the ones that continually hyped it up early in the race.  They kept on pairing Clinton and Giuliani in their fantasy political polls and speculated endlessly on who would prevail.  No other candidates counted in their minds. 

Unfortunately, they didn’t get that.  Instead, it was between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain.  The upstart “hope and change” guy versus the entitled “it’s my turn” establishment, and two people that nobody in the media ever thought had a chance save for Oprah Winfrey.

Eight years later, it was a mob for the GOP and the handful of Democratic wannabes.  And, again, the media wanted it to be Clinton and anyone not named Donald Trump.  We all know how that turned out.

So here we are again, 2020, and a whole mob for the Democrats and... just the orange-skinned narcissist who is now the President.  I would say there are few others running against the narcissist, however the bosses of the party that used to be the GOP have pretty much ruled that there are no other challengers to him, going so far as to outright cancelling primaries and caucuses.

And now, as of March of 2020, we go from a mob to... three wannabes.  Two old white guys and a woman.  All the other diverse faces, races, and genders have gone by the wayside thanks to the early primaries and caucuses.

Yes, I said three wannabes for the Democrats right now, even though you won’t hear too much of the one remaining female wannabe named Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard.  And that is a shame, because for all the screaming and bitching from the media about the “lack of diversity”, they’re saying almost nothing about the one woman left in the running (as of this column’s posting).

So... what happened?

Simple: reality happened.

This is a case where you have too many people running and nothing about them really stands out.  All of that diversity, different races, genders, ethnicity, and the only thing about them is they don’t like the narcissist in the White House to stay there one more year never mind four.

The success of Barack Obama in 2008 came because he was relative novice going up against the presumed entitled candidate in Hillary Clinton and he had a lot of people who saw something in that and pushed for it even as the Democratic Party kept on trying to shut him down in favor of their girl Hillary.  And then, when he got the nomination, he had the luck of going up against yet another entitled candidate in John McCain in November.  That’s not something that could be repeated this time around because there were simply too many “relative unknowns” in the running and an entitled candidate whose campaign was pretty much written off by people even before a vote was cast.  Everyone was trying to be another Barack Obama, and not only were they not him, but there were too many of them in the running for there to be anyone unique.

Also, there were two billionaires in the running.  One was Tom Steyer, whose strength was working behind the scenes.  The other was former New York City Mayor and businessman Mike Bloomberg, who came in late and then spent a half-a-billion on campaign commercials for the later primaries and caucuses.  A half-a-billion dollars, and all he won was the American Samoa.

Now contrast that with former Vice President Joe Biden, who had almost no budget for campaigning or commercials because everyone wrote him off, and yet now, after “Super Tuesday”, he’s the man to beat.  People voted for him because of his name recognition and the fact that he’s establishment through-and-through.

So it’s not just a matter of money or diversity, it’s a matter of recognition.

Bernie Sanders is another perpetual candidate in a crowd of relative neophytes that gained traction because people know who he is and what he stands for.  I’ve talked about him in my column four years ago and understands who he is and the appeal of his movement.  Quite simply, he’s too good for the Democratic Party.  He exposes them as being complicit.  That’s why the media has been hyping him and fearmongering him.  Be afraid, they say.  Be afraid of the man whose policies would not get past even an all-blue Congress!

And that brings us back to the woman you’re not hearing about... Congresswoman Gabbard.  If I would venture a guess why you’re not hearing too much about her in the media, this commentator would suspect it is because her name is not Hillary Rodham Clinton, the one female that members of the media really wanted to have elected.  It’s like they’re saying: “Joe is in the running, Bernie is in the running, Hillary is not running, screw it, let’s pick one of the other two.”

Let’s get brutally honest here... the reason why a lot of wannabe candidates don’t have a shot is because they pretty much do themselves in even before a single primary or caucus starts.  Sometimes there are too many people.  Sometimes people come in too late for voters to notice.  Sometimes they just don’t stand out.  And sometimes the establishment and the air-fluffed ego-driven media simply do not want them in the running.

This is precisely why I refer to every election, every campaign season (and goddamn the fact that there is one every year now) as a fraud, a fiasco, a hoax, a con-job, and a screw-job.  Because it really is.  And this is also part of the reason why we have a corrupt orange-skinned malignant narcissist in the White House today.  Someone who campaigned on saying it’s a “rigged system” even as he was taking advantage of it and is still working today to keep it rigged so he can stay in office.

And yet... if you want this to change, you need to do the one thing a lot of you don’t want to do.  Vote.  Not just in November, but in every primary or caucus, and not just for the big races, but also for the local and state ones too.  You just saw a whole bunch of people who wanted to be President drop away.  Any one of them could have been “your guy” or “your girl” if you put your vote behind them.  Don’t like what you see?  If your state allows it, then write someone else in, even if it’s yourself.  That becomes a public record and lets people know we don’t like our choices.

Just be thankful you have choices.  A certain orange-skinned narcissist would rather you didn’t.