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| "I paid my money to the Clinton Foundation. You owe me the presidency. We had a deal, lady." |
The US election has now entered its final stage, the battle between Trump and Hillary. Thanks to the insurgent nature of Trump's campaign, we are now in unfamiliar territory. We have never had anything quite like this before. For this reason, it is extremely difficult to say how things will pan out and who will win. Looked at one way, it must be Trump, but, looked at from another angle, suddenly Hillary looks certain to be installed as President by the powerful forces backing—and presumably controlling—her (right now cooked polls are putting her seven points ahead). In short, the overall picture is confusing.
In order to get a better grasp of things, we need to apply various criteria to the candidates and their battle. The following categories should help:
If we consider the personalities, Trump is clearly far more intelligent than Hillary. He has already made some incredibly astute moves. One that springs to mind is the way he soft-pedalled his disavowal of David Duke at a time when he was neck and neck in a lot of key Southern States with his main Republican challenger Ted Cruz, in effect taking a hit in the general media in order to shore up support among White Republican voters in key battlefield states.
Another crafty move was his recent comments about the Russians hacking Hillary’s emails, which baited the media into attacking him, while also pushing Hillary’s main scandal to the top of the news cycle just after her DNC coronation.
There are several other moves that seem to suggest that Trump is playing the game with great mastery. By contrast, Hillary’s mind seems to be crude, rigid, and lumpen, although she must be congratulated for finally finding a way to get Bernie out of the game.
In terms of energy, charisma, and raw likeability, Trump also seems to score much better than his opponent, whose personality comes across as shrill and inauthentic. Her only advantage is that she seems more boring and therefore “safe” to many voters, which is why the main attacks on Trump are centering on his “temperament.” Trump seems to be well aware of this potential weakness and has tried to appear “presidential” since winning the Republican nomination, but in a heated and negative campaign there is always the danger of him veering away from this image. But overall he has an enormous advantage.
At this level the battle is between a party in which a grassroots rebellion succeeded and one in which the party establishment crushed a grassroots movement. A successful rebellion can work in several ways. Firstly, it can introduce instability, and there were indications of this in the Republican Party, but Trump has been effective in uniting and stabilizing the party with a VP choice that threw oil on the troubled waters. In the case of the Democrats, the rebellion was crushed using underhanded methods -- now being exposed thanks to Wikileaks. While Bernie seems to have gone along with things, many of his supporters remain extremely irked and are likely to either remain a thorn in Hillary's side or simply lapse into political apathy.
Rebellions impact the energy level of a party, with successful rebellions energizing a party, while unsuccessful ones result in a party becoming demotivated and "low energy." The Democrats therefore will have to resort to gimmickry to raise energy levels. With Bernie supporters, now alienated, there is little to build a base of energized activism on. This is also a longstanding problem for the Democrats, which has pushed them down the path of identity politics. Without the Bernie base, their options are to build an activist base by whipping up the Black identity, Feminist, and the LGBT demographics.
Trump has managed to head off Dem appeal to LGBTs to some extent; while unleashing Black identitarianism is extremely dangerous for Hillary, as it essentially means Black Lives Matter, which in turn means dead cops and alienated White voters, a group that Hillary is now trying to patronise.
Trump has a more energized party, but he needs to find a way to mobilize and focus that energy into greater activism. Right now he is in a position of outsourcing much of that activism, especially the online variety, to non-Republicans, essentially the Alt-Right.
Overall, Trump is in a better position with regard to party than Hillary, although the positive element remains relatively nebulous and disorganized. Large parts of the Democratic party are disillusioned and the base is low-energy except for cat ladies and Black activists (a bad image).
In political terms, the candidates represent interesting complementary opposites. Trump essentially represents a form of right-wing socialism, namely socialism—or the old English ideal of the “Common Weal”—shorn of its egalitarian absurdities and inefficiencies. Hillary, by contrast, stands for what can best be described as left-wing capitalism, namely a leftism gutted of its grass roots economic dimension, with so-called pet “victim” groups bribed to serve as fake moral window dressing, all in the service of a form vacuous globalism.
For these reasons, Trump is in an extremely strong position with enormous populist potential. If he can utilize and project this effectively he will win by a landslide. Hillary’s best hope lies in obfuscating this advantage as much as possible by using propaganda targetted at the stupidity of the average voter, something she will receive a lot of help with from the elites and the mainstream media.
Amongst other things, this election is a referendum on the nature and power of the media, with Hillary being the candidate of old media and Trump being the candidate of new media (and also non-media). We can talk about three groups here—those who get their information mainly from the mainstream media, those who get their information mainly from the internet, and those who have a limited interest in getting any information. Tied as it is to the globalist elites, the old media is anti-Trump (as we saw with the publication by the Murdoch owned New York Post of nude pictures of Mrs Trump from 20 years ago), the internet is more even-handed, but favours Trump for various reasons (mainly because it allows greater truth and frankness and the Alt-Right’s meme game is far stronger than that of the cat lady Left).
Those with a limited interest in the media, either online or mainstream, will be swayed by vibes and general impressions they pick up, rather than detailed narratives. For example, the leftist attempt to portray Trump as “insensitive” over comments he made about the parents of a dead Muslim GI, who attacked him at the DNC, will be lost on them. Instead they will just see Trump being attacked by Muslims and therefore side with Trump or not, depending on how they feel about Muslims or appearing "racist."
Thanks to the internet and the Alt-Right, Trump is in a stronger position than any candidate of his kind could ever be in. The Leftist grip on the MSM has effectively been negated, but because of this they are now trying to use their sympathizers in corporate social media to skew things against Trump by shadow banning or shutting down Trump’s social media storm troopers—the banning of Milo Yiannopoulos is emblematic of this.
Any prolonged clampdown would be self-destructive to the companies involved, and merely clear the way for other social media companies to elbow in, but they only have to do it for the next 100 days or at key points in the next 100 days. This will be an important battlefield but at the end of it, we are likely to learn (a) that the MSM has weakened considerably, and (b) that its successor is a lot harder to control and shape.
With her globalist and Wall Street donors, Hillary will have the advantage here, but money will have less impact on this election than others, because Trump has mastered new ways to get his message out and is also making the nature of Hillary's donations a populist issue (too-big-to-fail backing too-big-to-jail).
Also, Hillary is a brand that suffers in the marketplace the more that it is pushed. Most of her money will thus go on attack ads against Trump, while she attempts to maintain as low a profile as possible—an extremely off way to fight an election. Trump’s counterattacks will ensure that this does not succeed. Hillary will then seek to detoxify her image. This will create tremendous opportunities for ridicule and should ultimately backfire.
Looked at metaphysically—i.e. at a fundamental or transcendent level beyond the realm of Beltway talking points—Trump is the man of the moment in the same way that Obama was in 2008, i.e the only candidate who actually “means” something. In 2008 it could be argued that Obama was in a sense "historically necessary"—not as America’s “First Black President,” an essentially hollow distinction—but as much needed corrective to the Neocon stupidity of the Bush years and to the world’s growing distrust and distaste with America, especially among the Europeans.
Hillary would like us to think that her candidacy—“the first women president”—is incredibly meaningful. This again is an essentially hollow distinction that means nothing more than “vagina” (or ex-vagina, as she is now well beyond the menopause). Clinton does nothing to address any of the big issues that need addressing, issues like the identity of America and the need for a correction to what is clearly a dysfunctional globalist economic system built on America exporting debt and importing unemployment in various forms (mass incarceration, fake jobs, bloated military sector, unnecessarily enlarged education system, etc.).
All this has to be addressed eventually, and eventually it will be—out of historical necessity if nothing else. The only question is will it be Trump or will it be someone who comes after him. The system is dysfunctional but it is still hanging together, so is the country ready to deal with this now, or is Trump simply too early? This remains to be seen.
Whatever the answer, it is clear that Hillary is not the meaningful candidate, and, if elected, would mainly be a postponement of the reckoning, and the continuation of an inherently unstable state of suspended animation or rigor mortis. On the metaphysical level Trump is everything and Hillary is nothing. The key then is to connect this metaphysical level to the mass political level. If Trump can do that he will win. Hillary's strategy by contrast is the opposite—to avoid the big issues and present herself as the safe continuity candidate.
These various criteria offer hope to both candidates, but overall Trump is in a stronger position, and seems to have the intelligence and energy to take full advantage of this inherent advantage.
In order to get a better grasp of things, we need to apply various criteria to the candidates and their battle. The following categories should help:
- The Personal
- The Party Political
- The Ideological
- The Nature of the Media
- Money and Advertising
- The Metaphysical
The Personal
Another crafty move was his recent comments about the Russians hacking Hillary’s emails, which baited the media into attacking him, while also pushing Hillary’s main scandal to the top of the news cycle just after her DNC coronation.
There are several other moves that seem to suggest that Trump is playing the game with great mastery. By contrast, Hillary’s mind seems to be crude, rigid, and lumpen, although she must be congratulated for finally finding a way to get Bernie out of the game.
In terms of energy, charisma, and raw likeability, Trump also seems to score much better than his opponent, whose personality comes across as shrill and inauthentic. Her only advantage is that she seems more boring and therefore “safe” to many voters, which is why the main attacks on Trump are centering on his “temperament.” Trump seems to be well aware of this potential weakness and has tried to appear “presidential” since winning the Republican nomination, but in a heated and negative campaign there is always the danger of him veering away from this image. But overall he has an enormous advantage.
The Party
At this level the battle is between a party in which a grassroots rebellion succeeded and one in which the party establishment crushed a grassroots movement. A successful rebellion can work in several ways. Firstly, it can introduce instability, and there were indications of this in the Republican Party, but Trump has been effective in uniting and stabilizing the party with a VP choice that threw oil on the troubled waters. In the case of the Democrats, the rebellion was crushed using underhanded methods -- now being exposed thanks to Wikileaks. While Bernie seems to have gone along with things, many of his supporters remain extremely irked and are likely to either remain a thorn in Hillary's side or simply lapse into political apathy.
Trump has managed to head off Dem appeal to LGBTs to some extent; while unleashing Black identitarianism is extremely dangerous for Hillary, as it essentially means Black Lives Matter, which in turn means dead cops and alienated White voters, a group that Hillary is now trying to patronise.
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| Bernie supporters enjoying their free education at the DNC |
Overall, Trump is in a better position with regard to party than Hillary, although the positive element remains relatively nebulous and disorganized. Large parts of the Democratic party are disillusioned and the base is low-energy except for cat ladies and Black activists (a bad image).
The Ideological
In political terms, the candidates represent interesting complementary opposites. Trump essentially represents a form of right-wing socialism, namely socialism—or the old English ideal of the “Common Weal”—shorn of its egalitarian absurdities and inefficiencies. Hillary, by contrast, stands for what can best be described as left-wing capitalism, namely a leftism gutted of its grass roots economic dimension, with so-called pet “victim” groups bribed to serve as fake moral window dressing, all in the service of a form vacuous globalism.
For these reasons, Trump is in an extremely strong position with enormous populist potential. If he can utilize and project this effectively he will win by a landslide. Hillary’s best hope lies in obfuscating this advantage as much as possible by using propaganda targetted at the stupidity of the average voter, something she will receive a lot of help with from the elites and the mainstream media.
The Media
Amongst other things, this election is a referendum on the nature and power of the media, with Hillary being the candidate of old media and Trump being the candidate of new media (and also non-media). We can talk about three groups here—those who get their information mainly from the mainstream media, those who get their information mainly from the internet, and those who have a limited interest in getting any information. Tied as it is to the globalist elites, the old media is anti-Trump (as we saw with the publication by the Murdoch owned New York Post of nude pictures of Mrs Trump from 20 years ago), the internet is more even-handed, but favours Trump for various reasons (mainly because it allows greater truth and frankness and the Alt-Right’s meme game is far stronger than that of the cat lady Left).
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| Today, you are never more than three feet from a Trump meme. |
Thanks to the internet and the Alt-Right, Trump is in a stronger position than any candidate of his kind could ever be in. The Leftist grip on the MSM has effectively been negated, but because of this they are now trying to use their sympathizers in corporate social media to skew things against Trump by shadow banning or shutting down Trump’s social media storm troopers—the banning of Milo Yiannopoulos is emblematic of this.
Any prolonged clampdown would be self-destructive to the companies involved, and merely clear the way for other social media companies to elbow in, but they only have to do it for the next 100 days or at key points in the next 100 days. This will be an important battlefield but at the end of it, we are likely to learn (a) that the MSM has weakened considerably, and (b) that its successor is a lot harder to control and shape.
Money and Advertising
With her globalist and Wall Street donors, Hillary will have the advantage here, but money will have less impact on this election than others, because Trump has mastered new ways to get his message out and is also making the nature of Hillary's donations a populist issue (too-big-to-fail backing too-big-to-jail).
Also, Hillary is a brand that suffers in the marketplace the more that it is pushed. Most of her money will thus go on attack ads against Trump, while she attempts to maintain as low a profile as possible—an extremely off way to fight an election. Trump’s counterattacks will ensure that this does not succeed. Hillary will then seek to detoxify her image. This will create tremendous opportunities for ridicule and should ultimately backfire.
Metaphysics
Looked at metaphysically—i.e. at a fundamental or transcendent level beyond the realm of Beltway talking points—Trump is the man of the moment in the same way that Obama was in 2008, i.e the only candidate who actually “means” something. In 2008 it could be argued that Obama was in a sense "historically necessary"—not as America’s “First Black President,” an essentially hollow distinction—but as much needed corrective to the Neocon stupidity of the Bush years and to the world’s growing distrust and distaste with America, especially among the Europeans.
Hillary would like us to think that her candidacy—“the first women president”—is incredibly meaningful. This again is an essentially hollow distinction that means nothing more than “vagina” (or ex-vagina, as she is now well beyond the menopause). Clinton does nothing to address any of the big issues that need addressing, issues like the identity of America and the need for a correction to what is clearly a dysfunctional globalist economic system built on America exporting debt and importing unemployment in various forms (mass incarceration, fake jobs, bloated military sector, unnecessarily enlarged education system, etc.).
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| The well-oiled cat lady machine springs into action. |
Whatever the answer, it is clear that Hillary is not the meaningful candidate, and, if elected, would mainly be a postponement of the reckoning, and the continuation of an inherently unstable state of suspended animation or rigor mortis. On the metaphysical level Trump is everything and Hillary is nothing. The key then is to connect this metaphysical level to the mass political level. If Trump can do that he will win. Hillary's strategy by contrast is the opposite—to avoid the big issues and present herself as the safe continuity candidate.
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These various criteria offer hope to both candidates, but overall Trump is in a stronger position, and seems to have the intelligence and energy to take full advantage of this inherent advantage.
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