At last the awful day is here. What to make of it?
The full-scale regional war in the Middle East has not broken out, rather a carefully choreographed exchange of attacks and reprisals continues to threaten that result while mass death has been limited to Gaza and Lebanon, all of it caused by Washington and Tel Aviv. Completely wedded to Jewish supremacy, neither Trump nor Harris will put a stop to it.
On war as a general issue, Trump at least articulates how awful it is, while Democrats distance themselves from the carnage and blindly embrace permanent war as the natural companion to a presumed eternally good USA. Trump is not averse to negotiating an end to the Ukraine war; in fact, he holds himself uniquely qualified to do so, whereas the Democrats will push more pointless death and destruction until Putin wins the war outright.
But Trump is hardly anti-war - he bombed Syria (twice), assassinated Iranian General Suleimani, vastly increased drone strikes, and fully backed the Saudi "genocide" on Yemen; nevertheless, he is not as compulsively pro-war as the Democrats are. He is thin-skinned, erratic, and impulsive, however, hardly the best qualities for the head of a nuclear state. He nearly touched off a nuclear war with North Korea before putting North-South peace negotiations on a positive footing. It would be nice to be able to get the second result without risking the first, but the (Dick Cheney) Democrats have blocked the possibility by re-classifying North Korea as part of the "axis of Evil."
The Democrats are said to be far preferable to Trump-Vance on domestic policy, but their decades-long support for offshoring production has made a mockery of any alleged commitment they have to workers and their families, who simply must have full-time jobs with good pay and benefits if American families, let alone communities, are to have any chance of flourishing. In practice, the Democrats are anti-family, as they direct ameliorative measures at children only after targeting the economic viability of their parents and communities for destruction. J. D. Vance has some idea about family, and has at least diagnosed the job problem correctly, whereas the Democrats are exclusively committed to professional success, remaining deaf to the appeals of labor, especially hard-hat labor, which is gravitating to the GOP. Vance has proposed $5000 a year per child in government support; Harris has proposed a one-time payment of $6000 per baby.
The decline of unions to a now puny six percent of the private sector workforce is a far more significant indicator of Democratic labor policy than composition of the National Labor Relations board. Harris is loathe to even discuss the issue of jobs, and the DNC only cares about professionals, not the vast majority of workers. Power and freedom are pre-requisites to the good life, but Democrats only dangle trivial bribes to mislead workers into embracing the "goods life," which leaves them permanently in debt, so without the ability to author autonomous lives. Meanwhile, Vance at least talks about wage subsidies, work, and production, essential topics in any full discussion of labor issues, which Democrats ignore in favor of their preferred policy of pricing the vast majority of the population out of housing, child care, medical care, university, and retirement. Their constituency is well-pensioned and enjoys ample private inheritance; it doesn't need to care about labor and it doesn't.
If the Democrats win, anti-war culture will disappear and the future will be war, war, war until the next election season, and then it will be abortion, abortion, abortion, but always as an electoral and fund-raising issue, never as a reasonable policy solution. Michelle Obama lectures men that they "owe more" to the women in their lives than voting for a third party or sitting the election out, because the right to an abortion is foundational. With all due respect for a woman's right to choose, Michelle Obama is the last person with moral standing to lecture on this issue. She did nothing to make sure her husband fulfilled his campaign promise to codify Roe V. Wade in law when he was elected president with a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress in 2008. Her clueless liberal earnestness is nauseating.
In any event, it is a sure bet that anyone with concerns about anti-family economics wedded to abortion on demand being a sinister fetal killing syndrome will be dismissed as a "misogynist," just as anyone with concerns about loss of community control when unauthorized immigrants flood particular areas is dismissed as a "racist." So expect more hysterical conflicts between "Christian nationalist racists" and satanic "globalists" while the private owners of the economy rake off more profits than they could spend in dozens of lifetimes.
On climate break-down, Trump is the absolute worst, blowing off the concern as a "hoax," whereas the Democrats acknowledge reality while leaving policy in aspirational mode, as opposed to realistically treating it as an issue of unprecedented emergency.
Vote your conscience, if you still have one, and can figure out which candidate stands the best chance of leading us in a direction that deserves the name "forward."
Source:
Irami Osei-Frimpong, "Harris/Wals Dems vs. Trump/Nance GOP (Election Eve Special)" The Funky Academic, November 4, 2024