Op Ed: I still vividly recall being harassed by fellow college seniors for volunteering to work for Bobby Kennedy. They strongly supported Eugene McCarthy because he confronted President Lyndon Johnson months before RFK. What is happening today, at least in my eyes, is similar to 1968. McCarthy’s troops, led by students, hated Bobby for waiting so long. The fact that politicians would hate him for challenging LBJ did not matter to these students. To a certain degree Hillary Clinton is in a similar fix. And so is the country. If Sanders’ cadres drop her it could elect Donald Trump. In 1968, after Bobby was killed, I couldn’t bring myself to vote for Hubert Humphrey. Richard Nixon was elected. No more need be said. So should Bernie back off, or even consider running as Hillary’s vice president? That is what it looks like to me. The Daily Beast suggested Sanders is not a candidate suited for minorities because he does not understand them. It’s not just about poverty. Some minorities are middle class are doing even better. But they face constant insults and in some cases, are targets for police. This raises the philosophical question an individual can only answer for herself or himself. Should I vote for the lesser of all the evils or not vote and take what happens. At least then the voter can not be blamed. Or can he/she? Then there is the question of whether citizens should abandon the ballot box or if that is a sort of treason. It is unreasonable to say this is not the same issue because we do not have 500,000 mostly drafted soldiers in Vietnam. Trump and most of the leading Republicans are ready to carpetbomb the Middle East and any other area they fear. More bombs were dropped on Laos alone than the U.S. dumped in World War 2. Though it is not being mentioned much, if at all, by the mainstream media the declining living standards may not be the only thing angering people. Some of these people willing to ignore outrageous statements by Trump may be so angry because they are upset with court decisions allowing gays to marry and continuing to allow women to have abortions and many other issues that are not being decided the way they would prefer.
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Op-ed: Reports are circulating that Donald Trump has told the New York Times in private not to worry about his racist, xenophobic, anti-abortion, anti-gay statements. The word is that he is just responding to what his supporters want to hear. Using his own logic then, he needs to be asked whether he might be impeached if elected when his supporters realize he used them. That could bring some unnamed vice-president to power who would do what Trump has promised to do. It is the same logic he uses every day of his campaign when he says Hillary Clinton might not be able to service because she will be indicted in her “email scandal.” She has been under investigation for an entire year with no indictment. Of course Trump has been under fire for three years for his “Trump University Scandal” and may be forced to testify about fraud allegations later this year. TV networks, meanwhile, claim Trump is the choice of a majority of Republicans, based on what has been seen in primaries and caucuses. Polling expert Nate Silver said today that “Trump has received only 34 per cent of the Republican vote, aggregated across all primaries and caucuses to have voted so far. He did not really improve on that figure on Super Tuesday; Trump had a combined 33 percent of the vote through the first four states (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada); he got 34 percent in Super Tuesday states themselves.” Do Trump supporters represent what the majority of Americans believe. Polls are constantly being used to support this view. But the same kinds of polls show that a majority of Americans support causes rejected by these people: gay and transgender rights, abortion rights, women’s rights, high minimum wages and more. Trump supporters say this is merely the view of Hollywood. In my experience art has often represented where a country is headed, both in the U.S. and in countries I covered as a journalist around the world. South Africa was a classic example. I often watched plays and heard music that I knew was going to tear apartheid down. I wondered why the government allowed it. I later felt that it wasn’t so much that they allowed, in some cases people were jailed and banned, but that they knew they couldn’t stop it. To try too hard would cause some of their best people to leave the country. They wanted more than just servants and swimming pools. It was impossible for me to watch this year’s Oscars without seeing that the people who run the art world have decided to support human rights. This is not new. Give them an inch and they will take a mile. These films, plays and music make money. That is the bottom line. |
Robert Weller
2016 US election news and other news from the USA
Bio
Worked in journalism, including on the Internet, for more than 40 years. Started as a news editor at the Colorado Daily at the University of Colorado, joined a small Montana newspaper, the Helena Independent-Record, and then United Press International. Archives
November 2016
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