Friday 1 November 2024

The making of a Trump supporter

Oz and Forse, anti-Vietnam war demo, Canberra, 18 September 1970
See my comment at the bottom of this post
Or: "How I became anti the anti-democracy Democratic Party."

[Part of an irregular series: "What's an important issue that you've changed your mind on?]

I've changed my mind on voting for Trump instead of voting for a Democrat. 

Reasons below:

An "anti-democracy Democratic Party" in the United States is a party which says it's keen on democracy, as does the Democratic Party, but which is not democratic. 

Like the Democratic Party of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and countless others in the Congress, like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Shumer

And I'm anti that. So, anti the anti-democracy Democratic Party. That's me. 

I realise that a case has to be made. Many on the Left won't accept that they are, in fact, the anti-democracy party. 

I'll come to that. Which is also going to come to the conclusion of why I would vote Trump. Were I American. 

Hells bells I'm not American, but I can still vote in the US, from here overseas, as there's no voter ID required and no checking on my bogus address in the US.  Check out "I'm Australian but I just registered to vote in the US elections!"

But still. And backing up a bit. 

In my home of Australia, I'd always voted for the Labor Party of the soft(ish) left. I voted for Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating. If I'd been voting in the US in the past, I'd have voted for Bill Clinton, for Al Gore, for Barack Obama and for Hillary Clinton. "Why I hate Hillary, but...", of 6 November 2016, on why I would have held my nose and voted for Hillary. 

A pretty solid voting record on the Left. 

But then, in 2020, I would have voted for Trump. 

Why that?

For two reasons: 

1. Trump did a pretty good job. He got the border under control, he reduced crime, he kept inflation low, he increased working class wages for the first time in decades, including for Black Americans, and he kept the US out of foreign wars. Accomplishments of Trump's first term. @robbystarbuck.

2. Hillary Clinton never recognised the legitimacy of Trump's presidency. Not until today. In the process of finding excuses for her deplorable loss, she gave us the Russian Collusion hoax. Which I learned was a hoax by reading the Mueller Report. And then the Durham Report

That she and Barack Obama weaponised the FBI against a sitting  president I found deeply shocking. Wrong. Corrupt. 

Some on the left don't accept that it was a hoax. To them I don't know what to say. They were counting on the Mueller Report, staffed with 20 mostly Democratic lawyers, to find that Trump had colluded. When the report found -- unequivocally -- that he had not, they simply forgot about the Report and continued with their Russian Collusion. 

That's crazy, wrong, corrupt, and plain wrong. 

That major tentpole hoax was joined by others: the "Fine People hoax", the "drinking the bleach hoax". 

And now we have the Biden-Harris administration.  Which carried on the hoaxes:the "dictator from day one, hoax", the "Trump and Agenda 25 hoax", the "Trump will make abortion illegal at the federal level, hoax". There are others.  

The result of their four years has been a fourfold increase in illegal immigration; an increase in crime; an increase in the inflation rate; a softening of the economy; and two wars. 

Then I ask myself: which of these two parties, on the basis of their performance, been the best for the United States and the world. 

And my answer to myself; clearly the Trump administration has done better. 

I don't buy for one minute the idea that Trump is Hitler. That's just hysteria. His rallies have people of all races, creeds and religions. As in a recent post. Notably there are far more references to Israel and Jews at Trump rallies than there are at Kamala rallies. At Kamala's last rally there were people chanting "Intifada, intifada, world wide intifada" who were welcomed, while Jews were hassled. At Trump's MSG rally there were plenty of Israeli flags and none hassled. Also, Trump has Jewish kids and grandkids. If he's an anti-semite, a Hitler, he's pretty bad at it. 

I've still missed a huge lot of stuff that made me a Trump supporter instead of Harris. And which argue for this: that the Democratic Party of the United States is not a democratic party. The party defending democracy is not the Democrat, but the Republican. 

  • The Lawfare against Trump. Which is recognised not just by experts on the Right, but also many on the Left, like CNN editor Fareed Zakaria who has said that the Alvin Bragg case against Trump would not have gone ahead if it had been anyone not named Trump. 
  • Efforts to get Trump off the ballot before he even had a chance to campaign. 
  • Flouting of the Constitution: failed effort to institute a national Covid vaccine mandate. Cancelling $US 1.7 Trillion in student debt, against the clear Constitutional requirement that such should be done only by an Act of Congress. 
  • Plans to cancel the filibuster; stack the Supreme Court and creating of two more states which would give the Democratic party an unassailable majority in the Senate. 
  • Deliberately opening the southern border to allow in tens of millions of illegal immigrants and then bussing them to swing states. This one sounds like a conspiracy theory, but is not. It's what the Democratic Party proudly claims it's doing; and it's what we see them doing. If this leads to unassailable Democratic majorities then the whole of the United States becomes like California: where crime in major cities is rampant and drug crime uncontrolled. 
Have I gone too far? Am I too crazy? Am I in a far-right bubble/ I don't think so, but if you do, Occasional Reader, do let me know your reasoning. 

For me, for now, the Democrats in the US are the ones that are a danger to democracy. Not the GOP. Thus do I hope for a Trump win next Tuesday. 

I'm not the only one who's changed my mind, and voting against the anti anti-democracy Democratic Party; 

==============================

The photo at top is of me and my mate Oz, at an anti-war demo in 1970. But -- something I've nearly changed my mind on -- Victory in the Vitenam war may have been possible. So say some Vietnamese experts. And may have been better for the region. As Communism didn't work out too well for Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.