Keeping in mind my earlier assertions that the Left's inability to fight back makes any idea of resistance null and void, I am changing my advice for US-Americans from "don't vote for either of the two rotten front-runners" to "oppose the system that gave you two such rotten candidates."
That is the proper position for non-US-American progressives as well.
Yes. Donald Trump is a nasty man. A rapist. A racist. Corrupt. Insane. And many of his supporters are deplorable neo-Nazi, misogynist idiots. But stop debasing yourselves into saying how Hillary Clinton is the "lesser evil."
In the first place; just because Hillary doesn't burp and fart and scratch her crotch on stage, and (being a woman) tends not to sexually assault people, it doesn't mean she isn't thoroughly vile. US-American liberals (like Canadian liberals) are often seemingly intelligent, decent people. But these people are blinded by partisanship into excusing Obama's professed legal power to assassinate US-American citizens. They call Edward Snowden a traitor to his country for revealing Obama's illegal mass-surveillance of everyone on the face of the planet. Obama's slavish devotion to the 1% is obvious for all to see. He illegally crushed the Occupy movement. He's done nothing to rein-in murderously racist police forces. (Could he at least halt the military's program of giving surplus war toys to urban police?) He's done next to nothing on global warming. He's prolonged and expanded the slaughter in the Middle East. On and on I could go. But it is suffice to say that he's a monster.
And now, US and Canadian liberals are uniting in trying to convince themselves and everyone else that Hillary Clinton isn't a monster too. In fact, for all his killing, Obama showed himself to be less bellicose than Clinton when she was his secretary of state. Obama negotiated a very harsh treaty with Iran whereas Clinton wants to destroy Iran. It was Hillary who pushed for the destruction of Libya. Hillary Clinton has an insane level of animus towards Russia's Vladimir Putin. She's talking like a mad woman about imposing a no-fly zone in Syria, whether Russia likes it or not. People talk with some justification about an unstable idiot like Trump with his hands on the nuclear button. But given that Trump has said (among other things) that he thinks it's stupid for the USA to be antagonizing nuclear-armed Russia and China, how can we pretend that he is the greater threat than Hillary? If anything, it will be Hillary Rodham Clinton, the first female US president, who is likelier to get you and all your loved ones vaporized.
How insane our political culture is that we sincerely see a lunatic like Hillary Clinton as the "lesser evil" to Donald Trump!
Who are Donald Trump's supporters? Mostly stupid, and/or ignorant people. Most of them are "deplorable." Progressive, anti-Hillary writers would do well not to downplay this reality and ascribe criticisms of Trump's base to elitism and snobbery. They really are noxious. Take, for example, the babbling idiot neo-nazi Davis Aurini. A complete moron. An utter incompetent at the role he's chosen for himself; that of film-maker. A stupid, nasty, racist, sexist piece of sludge. This is the sort of intellectual excrement that Trump attracts. Giving them a victory would be horrible.
What would a Trump presidency be like? Trump, not being beholden to anyone, says whatever he thinks. When he first started this process, apparently he got some people to find out what the Republican base was all fired-up about. (Besides his own "birther" activism about Obama being a Kenyan usurper.) He found out that ordinary Republicans are angry about losing manufacturing jobs to other countries. They're angry about stagnant wages. They're angry about Wall Street corruption. They're angry about the excesses of for-profit health care.
Of course, being ignorant and/or stupid, they blame much of their predicament on poor people, immigrants, Jews, Blacks (who they deem to have jumped ahead of them in the line-up for the "American Dream") and a whole host of other things, including attacks on their brainless, "social conservative" hypocrisies.
But regardless, Trump decided to pander to that. I don't think he had any real hopes of winning at first. Unfortunately for the world, the USA's culture has been debased for decades by right-wing garbage culture like FOX News and the vapid, celebrity-worshipping mentality of the mainstream corporate media in general. Trump is a rich, white man who had his own television show and he's speaking in ways that line-up with their thinking, so despite that he's actually a full-time con-man, they gravitated to him like moths to a flame.
When he won the Republican candidacy, Trump realized he'd need more resources to actually win. Now, being a huge egotist, Trump can't bring himself to lose to a WOMAN. So, he gets funding from other scum-bags like Sheldon Addison, and there goes whatever reasonable stuff he'd said about Israel. Thankfully for his nazi supporters, Trump still says enough nasty things about Blacks and Latinos that they (being imbeciles) can overlook his new pandering to Israel and delude themselves that he'll still go after "the Jews" once he's president.
Trump will probably abandon any pretences about controlling the avariciousness of corporate America if faced with their genuine opposition. He'll only be allowed to retain those policies that benefit capitalists or those to which they are indifferent too. This means his mass deportations, police harassment of Blacks, slashing taxes, and generally making the world safe for billionaires.
Make no mistake about it; a Trump presidency will be horrible. His racist, drooling moronic followers will revel in their moment and all sorts of abuses will result. Given the fact that they're all staggeringly ignorant of how the world works, they'll also push for he most idiotic, counter-productive policies to be imposed upon ordinary people. When these cause the economic misery that they inevitably will, the Trump-fans will blame it all on feminists and minorities and atheists (who bring down he wrath of god upon the earth).
But a Clinton presidency will be horrible too. Because her husband's was horrible. ("Three Strikes You're Out" prison policy, "Ending Welfare As We Know It," de-regulating the financial sector "Financial Modernization Act," and one corporate rights "free trade" deal after another.) Obama's presidency has been a failure. And Hillary's will be even worse. Because unlike Obama, Hillary is psychotically obsessed with using the military against other countries.
Hillary will mean more war, more corporate free trade deals, more profit-friendly health care, more coddling of the rich and corrupt. And more of the stuff that makes Trump's angry, ignorant, bigoted followers angry. Here's the thing about stupid people: Don't make them angry. For reasons known only to themselves, when corporate America takes their jobs away from them, they lash-out at immigrants and GLBT people.
We on the left have to articulate an actual program that makes everyone's lives better, sensible and stupid alike. And cravenly cozying-up to corrupt, psychotic monsters such as are offered by the Democratic Party USA (or the Liberal Party of Canada) is the exact opposite of that. A vote for Hillary or an endorsement of Hillary is an endorsement of mass-murder. It means support for the policies that have created millions of miserable refugees. It means support for the bloody coup in Honduras.
Canadian and US liberals; please, at long last, pull your fucking heads out of your asses and realize that people like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Justin Trudeau, Paul Martin, Dalton McGuinty, Kathleen Wynne, are the scum of the earth and that association with them is defiling.
