TRUMP

What bothers me is that people who have read Art of the Deal believe they know Trump. The writer says no — they read a book designed to sell a lot of copies and make money, which a ghost writer penned. (The writer was Schwartz himself.) 

Tony Schwartz didn’t seem to believe that Trump would run for president someday. He now regrets the bad thing he did for money.

It’s too late. But it’s good that he is sorry.

Can I spend a few moments discussing the race riots that occurred in Milwaukee this summer? Milwaukee is relevent to this essay. 

I spent four weeks in 1974 living within the limits of this Wisconsin city. Being a Navy kid, I had spent time in many places both inside the USA and outside — in Europe and Asia. I remember thinking at the time that Milwaukee was the most racist place I’d ever seen. I couldn’t understand why people didn’t object.

Here are some reasons:

In 1974 socialist Germans who hated minorities ran the city. They would have loved their fellow German, Donald Trump, if they knew him, which is possible  because he was the son of Fred Trump, the German billionaire developer who built 27,000 segregated rental units in Queens NYC and was rumored to be the richest American. His son — in his late twenties at the time — was already wealthy and making a name for himself in Manhattan.

The people I worked for in Milwaukee told me that the police were able to prevent blacks from coming into the white areas by using traffic stops. I never saw a black person while I was there. But I heard a lot of racist talk from whites.

Blacks made nearly half the city’s population.  I heard white people talk about how bad they (the blacks) were, but I never saw any in the month I lived and worked in Milwaukee. Remember: 1974 was six years after an assassin murdered Martin Luther King and  ten years after Congress passed the Civil Rights Act. Segregation was illegal.

Today — 43 years after — only one city in America has more poor or more homeless than Milwaukee. It doesn’t shock me that the city experienced race-war this summer. It doesn’t surprise me that the city crushed the insurrection and that we no longer remember it, most of us.

America’s beer supply remains safe and sound. 

I am afraid for the black people in Milwaukee, because as bad as the national-socialists mistreated minorities when I visited, the current leadership demonstrated this summer that they are capable of worse. 

The election of Donald Trump to the presidency will reduce risk to racist supporters who hope to suppress minorities. 

Like I said earlier, I’ve been on Twitter. I’ve read the feeds. Under the right leadership, a genocide is possible. Some would say we have a slow-burning genocide unfolding right now.

Trump is unleashing the dogs of war; dogs who destroy civilizations. With almost three months to go, how will anyone patch the breach in the dam that holds back barbarians armed to the teeth with weapons of war? Go to any gun range and watch Americans practice. 

Wake up. Everyone. Take a stand now. It will be impossible to make a difference once we are standing behind razor wire waiting for our turn in microwave ovens. These monsters are not going to stop with blacks.

They will move on to the journalists and people they think are radicals. Eventually, they’ll burn the unfit, the retarded, the disadvantaged and of course, the Muslims.

Then they’ll show their true colors: they’ll go after the Jews; people with birth defects; autism; bad breath; body odor; torn jeans; the list of defects and moral failings that bother them will get longer, not shorter.

Somewhere along the line, the attacks on Christians will begin. Some say the attacks have already started. The take-downs of Ted Cruz and John Kasich were the first of many to come; operatives will sprinkle the suppression of Christians into the mix like salt; no one will notice — not until it’s too late to do anything about it.

We’ve seen this movie before. It is the natural course of empires like Germany, Japan, Russia, ancient Egypt, Persia; and of course, ancient Rome — the list is long. We in America will be living in it soon if we don’t vote to stop it.

A billionaire candidate staffed by paranoids to advise him doesn’t need GOP money; he doesn’t need anyone’s approval; he doesn’t need to buy television time.

He has access to communication networks involving AM radio stations, private mailers, internet ads, and e-mailers to spread whatever conspiratorial excrement he chooses to dispel; he can easily discredit and defame reasonable people who might dare to defend our country and the shared values enshrined by our constitution.

Fox News, OAN, and Rush Limbaugh among others in this network have driven their stupid listeners into a psychosis of evil. It’s disturbing; I would say it’s terrifying. Even our CIA worries.

Evan McMullin, former CIA officer who is running for president, told Thomas Roberts of MSNBC that providing security briefings to Trump …is a threat to [national security], because he has been co-opted by Vladimir Putin, he is aligned with Vladimir Putin; he would not be able to secure a security clearance at even the lowest levels…he doesn’t know the first thing about fighting terrorism…

David Preiss, former longtime CIA briefer to the presidential candidates, told Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC that after the 2000 election the CIA continued briefings to Al Gore who they believed won, and suspended briefings to George W. Bush until a few weeks later when the Supreme Court stopped the election-law mandated recount of votes in Florida to give the presidency to Bush who CIA analysts believed was the loser.

If the CIA was correct about the election, it must have irritated its directors when Bush falsely claimed that the CIA told his staffers that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction — a lie that some believe began the unraveling of our country. The Great Recession that followed the stolen election and illegal war wiped out one-third of the accumulated wealth of the middle-class; you know, folks like me and my life-partner Bevy Mae.

I hope our readers will have the common sense to vote against Republicans at every level of government so we can set things right.

This summer in Dimondale, Michigan Trump told white confederate militia members from nearby Charlotte about black people. Speaking directly to blacks, none in the audience, he said: You live in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs. What the hell do you have to lose?

The answer is: everything. The New York Times reported a few weeks later that Trump might be 650 million dollars in debt. No one really knows. Could they be right?  If true, it means that every black person in the USA has a higher net worth than the Donald.

Aren’t folks tired of predators running everything, ruining everything, wrecking everything, taking everything, and playing everyone?

As our Editorial staff has advocated for two years now, the United States must establish an internationally enforced limit to personal incomes and estate sizes — for the simple reason that unlimited wealth destroys self-governance, democracy, and the benefits of civilization which ordinary citizens want and deserve.

The limits can be very high and do no harm. My suggestion has been to link the minimum wage to a maximum income and estate size; my recommendation is 1,000 to one for income and 20,000 to one for estate size; we’re talking about an estimated $20 million per year income limit; $400 million maximum estate sizes; inheritances might be limited to $5 million per inheritor.

Limits like these will encourage entrepreneurs but discourage looting like the kind we see going on in our financial sector. During the Bush administration a director of one of the stock exchanges drew an annual salary of $150 million. That’s crazy wicked.

Limits prevent isolated individuals who lack supporters from unduly influencing elections. Wealthy men like Trump won’t be able to get off the ground their drive-for-ultimate-power unless many other (hopefully reasonable) people get behind them at the start. Healthy democracies don’t need a Lone Ranger to rescue them.

The process we are witnessing now — where fawners and sycophants leap on board the choo-choo train after it has already left the station — shouldn’t happen in a democracy like ours. The stakes are too high.

The apparent nepotism of the Trump campaign demeans and insults the brave and free people of the most exciting country on Earth — the one country where ordinary people govern themselves; where the wealthy and the powerful don’t rule over us until we are able to thoroughly vet them; until they earn our consent by becoming transparent under scrutiny.  

Otherwise, it’s not right. We all know it.

Possession of wealth beyond certain agreed-upon, international norms should be a felony enforced by national and international courts. People who exceed limits could be given one (or possibly two) grace-years to turn over the excessive portion of their wealth to charities or the government — otherwise they spend a year in prison while the courts trim their assets to the lawful limits.

No one runs for public office after a lifetime of plundering and taking until they divest themselves to the lawful limits. 

How can anyone trust someone to hold high office who says they have accumulated 14,000 piles of a million dollars each? The person is either a liar or they aren’t. If they are telling the truth, someone should be asking, how does a person accumulate that much money without cheating people; without hoarding; without recognizing the needs of the poor and miserable who are all around; who refuses to help by sharing what they plundered?

The truth is — for anyone who has the courage to face it — behind every great fortune is a dark secret; sometimes many dark secrets. It’s true. Folks can believe it, or not.