Dear America,
Last week, the de facto leader of the Republican Party, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, met with the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, the self-styled-redoubtable Donald Trump: a meeting equivalent to an attempt to reconcile fire and ice...in inverse order. I detest Trump, which I cannot claim as a singular distinction. I don't recall another presidential candidate raising such umbrage among voters with the possible exception of Barry Goldwater, and there are some parallels between Goldwater's candidacy and that of Donald Trump, but they're well discussed already, and there's not much I can add. It should be noted that in many respects, however, Goldwater was a better human being than Trump, but we can go into that some other time. For now, I am struck by the fact that in terms of the relative humanity of the two men, Trump and Ryan, Trump actually seems the more noble of the two, which says a lot about Ryan. Ryan is still harping on prevention of tax increases for the rich while Trump at least gives lip-service to the roll that taxation of the rich can play in diminishing income and wealth inequality. And coded into Ryan's tough anti-tax, anti-spending palaver is his adherence to the conservative Republican, rigidly free market creed. At its core, Republican economic conservatism relies on the premise that anyone who shows up for work and dedicates himself to the task will prosper. Apparently Ryan doesn't read the human interest stories in the newspapers about people who have worked...and none-the-less struggled...all their lives for people who have prospered on their labor. He doesn't seem aware of the fact that while entrepreneurial spirit may be admirable, more than half of all business start-ups fail within five years, and with those failures go foreclosures, bankruptcies, divorces, and yes, even suicides. He also doesn't seem to recognize that if you are a member of a minority group, you are far less likely to get a good job coming out of college than is a white person--that in consequence, while a college degree might pay for itself for a white man, it may well not for a black one. He loves to tell everyone how he worked at McDonald's himself to pay for college because his father had died when he was younger, but he ignores the fact that not everyone wants to be, or is even capable of becoming a politician, which is how he has made his living for the majority of his working life. He doesn't recognize that for millions of Americans, Social Security is all that keeps them off the streets, and for millions of others , the WIC program and what little benefit welfare has turned into are the only ways in which to feed their children because a single mother cannot work and pay for child-care at the same time as feeding, clothing and housing her children...at McDonald's or elsewhere if she has no education.
While the adumbration of Ryan's callous political philosophy could easily continue for a long while, it's time to mention Trump in comparison. He claims to want to equalize the federal income tax system so that we all pay the same proportions of our incomes in taxes. True, his plan to implement a slightly stratified flat tax rate actually seems to favor the rich still, he has again at least paid the proverbial lip-service to seeking to reduce the disparity between our government's treatment of the rich and its treatment of the middle class. And though Trump's callousness relative to the immigration of Mexicans, Muslims and Syrians is despicable whereas Ryan and the Republicans condemn him for it, it must be noted that a fair immigration system--one that respects the fact that undocumented aliens do much of the honest, but undesirable work that needs to be done to put food on our tables--has been in the offing since 2010 when the Republicans took over The House of Representatives, it still hasn't emerged...not even now that they have also taken over The Senate. Thus, the Republican denunciation of Trump on immigration issues rings hollow, not just a little, but a lot. And when it comes to foreign policy, Trump's vision for the United States is more like a pipe dream than coherent policy based on reasoned desiderata. Those in control of the Mexican government have already scoffed at Trump's claim that he can make them build a wall between our two countries, and as to his nakedly irrational claim that he can sit down with Vladimir Putin to bring him to heel, it's just like the real basis of his campaign; he thinks he is the art of the deal. To sum it all up, his favorite trope--I'm going to make such great deals that American will be great again--are virtually meaningless, but Ryan's conservatism is not just fatuous, it's malevolent, so Trump's even got him there.
I guess it comes to this: I am scared to death about the prospect of a Trump presidency, but Paul Ryan becoming president would be like the ascension of the anti-Christ if you ask me. So maybe we should count ourselves lucky that the Republicans are nominating a bombastic, bloviating buffoon of a blatherskite rather than a fascist ideologue like Paul Ryan. I suppose it's better to have someone get us into trouble because he's a fool than because he's an evil genius...better a jovial clown than a mean spirited one.
Your friend,
Mike
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