Friday, November 11, 2016

Trump and the "Fly-Over" People.

What went wrong? This question is being asked repeatedly by the people who thought that they had all the answers.
I'm talking about the pollsters, the pundits, the reporters and the politicians. The ones who REALLY know what's going on in the world.
The outcome of the US election 2016 shows that, in fact, they really didn't HAVE A CLUE.
According to all the polls Hilary Clinton was a "Shoe-in" for the presidency but pollsters, as arrogant as the rest of the experts, were wrong. They had overlooked the people who were actually going to affect the outcome and vote in huge numbers for Donald Trump.
These people are not the coastal urbanites that populate both east and west shores of America: no, they are the "fly-over people", the ones who live in the thousands of miles in BETWEEN Los Angeles and New York. Rural Americans who don't have their daily Starbucks or shuffle around Washington D.C in their hushpuppies and baggy sweaters.
They actually have minds of their own and decided (in their own strange way) that the brave new world offered to them by Secretary Clinton, a world where men could marry men and women women, where LGBT would be as common as ABC, where male and female washrooms would be available to both sexes, where refugees could come in unrestricted droves from all parts of the earth and where all religions could live in peace and harmony under the flag of 'Old Glory'.... they actually decided that they did not embrace this Utopian vision and voted instead for Donald Trump.
How terrible!   Yes indeed and get ready for more 'terrible' things to take place in the next four years.
Jubilate.

Ian

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Oops. The Donald is the President.

A few hours ago I retired to bed early. Before I put my head on the pillow I wrote a post titled "Hilary: now what?" (you can read it below)
I ended the blog by saying that after four years on the job, Hilary may be only too happy to relinquish it.

I was wrong. Hilary was only four HOURS on the job. They were the hours between 8:00 pm and midnight when she was ahead in the polls. Then REALITY forced her to resign as a America's first female president as the GLASS CEILING over her Jarvis Centre Head quarters remained solidly intact.
 Pauline, my wife, hauled me out of bed to behold the stunned expressions of the media types and the "we-know-better-than-you people" and I spent the rest of the night viewing the results with relish.
Everything I said about the state of America still stands.
The only change I have to make is to delete the name of Hilary  Clinton and replace it with President Elect, Donald Trump.
Enjoy the moment.
I'm going back to bed.

Ian

Tuesday, November 8, 2016

Hilary. Now what?

There was never any suspense about the outcome of the 2016 election in America. The issue was decided way back in August after a series of blunders and blathers by Donald Trump that squandered whatever good will he may have built up with main street U.S.A. 
But with the first female president elected in the history of America we ask the question "Now what?"
This once great nation is bitterly divided not just between democrats and republicans, nor between black and white nor even between rich and poor (these demographics have existed for a century with the States still the United States.)
No, the great divide that has emerged is that of millions of disillusioned and embittered white male voters who feel that their nation, worked for and fought for by their fore fathers, is in decline. That they themselves no longer enjoy the pride and prestige that was automatically theirs by birth and that the standard of living experienced by the previous generation is increasingly beyond their reach. These are facts that exist beyond the realm of politics, and cannot, therefore, be solved BY politics.
What was once the throbbing heart of industrial America is now rightly described as The Rust Belt. What was once the great auto city of Detroit is largely a derelict ghost town and the mighty force of King Coal in West Virginia and Kentucky is being whittled down by windmills and solar panels as Green Energy challenges Fossil fuel.
These and other unassailable factors have produced a deep current of anger among millions of blue collar workers that will never be assuaged by the smooth rhetoric of any politician, least of all Hillary Clinton.
For the next four years America will have a woman democratic president scarcely tolerated by 50 % of the country and a congress and senate dominated by angry and disaffected Republicans.
Who would envy Clinton her job? A job that she has fiercely fought for all her life and one that she may be only too glad to relinquish in 2020.

Jubilate.

ian