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Another Perot, the Other Clinton?

Scott Holleran notes a serious lack of substance in the Trump candidacy:

... Trump has no serious, tenable positions on the most critical issues of this dark moment in history. To the extent his positions, sense of purpose and reliability are known, he is mixed, anti-capitalist, unserious and unsteady or shaky, the opposite qualities needed for a good or even decent president at this pivotal point...

To this unseriousness, add either a sense of entitlement or malice aforethought. Trump has threatened a third-party run should the Republican establishment not treat him "fairly".

"... I know Hillary very well...," he says in another part of the article. Great.

Weekend Reading

"Rather than relying on objective, rational facts, [people pleasers] place themselves totally at the mercy of others' judgments." -- Michael Hurd, in "'People Pleasing' Backfires On Its Own Terms" at The Delaware Wave

"[Y]ou're entirely right to take offense at ... unsolicited advice, no matter the source." -- Michael Hurd, in "How to Give GOOD Advice" at The Delaware Coast Press

Thallium in Greens?

I have often heard extolled the virtues of leafy, green vegetables, but caution may be warranted, if the work of California scientist Ernie Hubbard is to be believed:

As the tests progressed, the detoxification regimens seemed to prove effective (and with no side-effects), but thallium kept showing up. Then, in July of 2014, he stumbled on a 2006 study out of the Czech Republic showing how the "cruciferous" family of vegetables behave as "hyperaccumulators" of thallium. Crucifers include many of our more intense green vegetables such as kale, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, mustard and collard greens. These are also the vegetables often touted -- and consumed -- most heavily these days, supposedly for their outsized health benefits.

Kale, which I fortunately dislike, seems to be a top suspect.

-- CAV

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From Scott Holleran’s article: 
“Trump ... brings nothing essential to the arena and should be dismissed as the clown or carnival barker many have said he is.”
 
“a sideshow”
 
“insane”
Well, Trump does come with baggage.  Everyone should remember his colluding with New Jersey’s state government in an attempt to steal someone’s home, so he could build another casino parking lot.  Fortunately he lost in court.
 
Though Trump is no Objectivist capitalist I wouldn’t call him anti-capitalist either, as Scott Holleran does at one point.  If Trump is anti-capitalist what on earth are  Hillary and the other candidates?  As Scott Holleran says in a more temperate part of his article, Trump is a “mixed” economy type.
 
But even if a president Trump made the U.S. more statist instead of less, and probably it would be less, eventually we could recover from the damage inflicted.  The Pilgrims began their first year in America by imposing out-and-out communism, with the every man’s farm production owned by every other man.  After the ensuing disaster they reversed course and became more capitalist than in their former country.  
 
They had one thing going for them.  The Pilgrims were the same men before and after their experiment with communism, they hadn’t been overwhelmed by Haitians, Guatemalans, Vietnamese, Nigerians, etc.  Today we could recover from statism if it were imposed by Americans on Americans, we will never recover from replacement by Third World migrants.
 
Trump is the candidate most consistently opposed to unrestricted immigration.   Bringing the issue front and center has made his support among grassroots Republicans soar.  People are fed up with our immigration disaster.
 
Despite the substantial Republican grassroot support, Republican leaders oppose his candidacy.  They hate him for the very reason the grassroots loves him:  his daring to point out what is obvious to everyone.  
 
Now they are trying to keep him out of the debates.  If Trump must threaten to run as a third party candidate to get treated fairly the responsibility lies with the Republican machine.
 
If it comes down to the Republican machine freezing out Trump we should welcome him as a third party candidate.  The Republican machine would get what it deserves, complete destruction, then the third party would become the second. 
 
Without Trump there isn’t much difference between the Republicans and the Democrats.  These days, to borrow a line, the parties are two wings of the same bird of prey.  
 
Voting for “the lesser of two evils” is getting monotonous.
 
 
 
 
 
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I submitted post #2 to Gus Van Horn’s blog.  He replied beginning with a question:
 
“... you regard someone who didn't use the state to steal someone else's property only because a court stopped him as not anticapitalist AND fit to serve as chief executive?”
 
Only?  Of course not.  Trump is not a consistent advocate of capitalism but there is more to him than two failed attempts to use eminent domain in the 1990’s.  They’re a stain on his record but don’t brand him an all around anti-capitalist.  By now his enemies have done a lot of digging and these two items are all they’ve uncovered in a career spanning over three decades.  
 
They push this stain and ignore everything else because they hate his stand on immigration.
 
Trump isn’t running his campaign on a platform of eminent domain.  He’s focused on three issues:  the immigration disaster, NAFTA-like trade deals and foreign policy.  Because he dares speak the truth about the most important issue of our day, immigration, his popularity has soared.  Among Republican primary voters, in six weeks it rose to 19% while Jeb Bush’s sank from 22 to 14%.  And who wants Jeb Bush.
 
Suppose, contrary to fact, Trump were a thorough-going statist.  The U.S. eventually could recover from him if its people remained Western at heart.  If the U.S. were made up of the Americans of yesteryear the door to Mussolini could be gone through both ways.  Today the demographic is changing.  The door to conquest by Third World migrants is a trap door, one way only.
 
Horn concludes his brief reply with:
 
“... I disagree with his [Trump’s] anti-immigration views and regard a third party (even if he somehow managed to attract pro-capitalists) as an impediment to the cause of liberty.”
 
For explanation Horn provides links to two of his earlier articles, under the words “disagree” and “impediment.”  Before I get to them, first a comment on his parenthetical claim that Trump cannot attract pro-capitalists.  Given Trump’s meteoric rise in the polls, just who does GVH think he *is* attracting?  Who is more likely to choose Trump over Bernie Sanders:  Marxists or Capitalists, welfare/grant recipients or people who work for a living without benefit of SNAP, EITC or affirmative action?
 
GVH’s first article is “Treat the Cause, Not the Symptom: Welfare State Is Draw for Illegals” (30 April 2010).  At the time of publication the governor of Arizona had just signed law SB 1070 under which Arizona would identify, prosecute and deport illegal migrants by enforcing federal law.
 
Horn disapproves of such laws.  He argues as follows.  Taking advantage of welfare (public services etc.) is the only thing wrong with those illegal migrants who take advantage of it.  Therefore do not fight illegal immigration, fight welfare.  Then, he concludes, “the lazy and shiftless will stay home.”  I’m not making this up.
 
His is a recipe for the suicide of the West.  We ought to fight both welfare *and* illegal immigration *and* legal immigration from the Third World.  Otherwise the U.S. will reach a point where it becomes a total welfare state no matter what we do.
 
Ultimately culture, not laws, determines the nature of government.  We’ll end up like Haiti forever if our immigration disaster continues much longer.
 
Mr. Horn’s second article is titled “‘Indeed’ Indeed” (21 January 2008).  Somehow he makes a distinction between a politician and the ideas he stands for.  Horn claims that if you support  a man’s candidacy you support the man, that is, everything about him.   By supporting his candidacy he no longer has a reason to obey your wishes; he can and will do anything he wants.
 
Horn’s argument is hard to follow.  In fact Trump’s candidacy is not divorced from the issues he brings up.  People support his fight against the immigration disaster, they don’t support some abstract person.  So far Trump is the best candidate who is really in the immigration fight.  That we can’t support everything he does and says, or has ever done and said, is too bad, but not something that should automatically make us reject what is all in all a good thing.
 
Our situation is desperate and help has come from an unlikely quarter.
 
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You make no argument for the causation that makes US born people better in some way than third world folk, so it comes across as basically racist. 

 

Being against deals like NAFTA is also a negative against Trump. And his foreign policy will probably be nationalistic too. 

 

He's Buzz Windrip in the flesh.

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Buzz Windrip was the villain of Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here.  His hick-like appearance – back-slapping and humble-sounding – concealed the master villain Lee Sarason who controlled him.  Windrip wins the presidency by making speeches larded with patriotic bromides.  Then, with Sarason’s help, he proceeds to crown himself dictator of the country!
 
Trump is no hick, he’s as humble as a fireworks display, and it’s rather doubtful he’s another man’s puppet.  There’s no evidence he would set up a dictatorship if elected.  He’s not perfect but Windrip he’s not.
 
About NAFTA and other such trade agreements, American labor shouldn’t have to compete with partial slave labor on their terms, even if doing so increases the U.S. GNP – for obvious moral reasons and also because generally American labor doesn’t partake of the increase, almost all of which goes to the suits.  
 
A nationalistic foreign policy, as in the Monroe Doctrine, means keeping out of other countries’ business unless genuinely provoked.  Sounds good to me.
 
But NAFTA and the Monroe Doctrine are minor points, the main issue is our immigration disaster.  SoftwareNerd says that I 
 
... make no argument for the causation that makes US born people better in some way than third world folk, so it comes across as basically racist. 
 
In other words,  Third Worlders – considering any characteristic (intelligence, criminal tendency, ability, thrift, honesty, industry, etc.) – are on average just as good or better than native Americans.  To say otherwise is racist.
 
I must be a racist.
 
To borrow a line from Hans-Hermann Hoppe, when you say Italians eat more Spaghetti than Germans you don’t mean every Italian eats more Spaghetti than every German. You mean that on average Italians eat more Spaghetti than Germans.
 
Third World immigrants commit much more “stranger violent crime” – the kind of crime you worry about – than native Americans do, especially whites.  Likewise they are more likely to take advantage of welfare, SNAP, EITC, affirmative action, housing non-discrimination laws, etc.  They are less intelligent.  Whether working or not they vote socialist.  Again, on average.  These are just facts.  
 
The facts are racist.
 
We can look at individuals too.  But when it comes to mass immigration averages do matter.  Take one characteristic, intelligence.  Suppose a country’s average IQ dropped 15 points.  Would it change the country’s character?  Of course it would.
 
What if immigrants came with truth-in-labeling stickers and the stupid (dishonest, criminal, etc.) could be filtered out.  Then ask yourself this question:  “Do I want to be surrounded by Nigerians, Guatemalans, Vietnamese, etc, whenever I leave my house, no matter how honest and intelligent they are?”  It would take a high order of self-abnegation to reply:  “Yes, that’s just what I want!”
 
Yet that’s where we’re headed.  Take the state of Virginia.  It’s not the most desired destination for migrants yet even there the demographic has changed drastically over the years.  In 1970 only one in a hundred people were foreign-born, by 2012 one in nine, almost all the additions from the Third World.   Considering both Third World immigrants and their children, the number is much more than one in nine.  Tell me they are capitalists!  See “New California: Mass Immigration Turning Virginia Blue,” blue meaning Democrat.
 
A preference isn’t racist in the bad sense.  If it were, a white man’s preference for marrying a white woman would make him evil.
 
Merely having a preference doesn’t mean you think the non-preferred is immoral, stupid, or any other negative thing.  It’s just your personal preference.  You have a natural right (since 1964 violated by federal law) to discriminate and associate as you please.  Many Objectivists have lost sight of that simple truth. 
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