Hard to keep in mind with the scandal- and personality-obsessed media, but Trump has the issues on his side.

By Robert Gore at Straight Line Logic

There would be a certain justice if Hillary Clinton won the election. In its unprincipled arrogance and lust for domination, the kleptocratic class to which she has ascended, and which so fulsomely supports her candidacy, has erected an unsustainable, teetering edifice. Built as it is on an inherently flawed foundation—belief in US government omnipotence—the structure must fall. Nothing would be more fitting than its collapse during her prospective tenure as president, which would expose not just her felonious personality and policies, but the criminality of her class.

That possibility has led some commentators, notably Brandon Smith at alt-market.com, to conclude that the fix is in and Trump will win the election. Trump and his supporters, who have virtually no responsibility for the parlous state of the world and who have in many cases resisted, to the best of their abilities, those who are responsible, will be the scapegoats for the impending collapse. Opposition to kleptocracy discredited and the masses crying out for someone to do something (always interpreted as a clarion call for more government), the malevolent cabal and its supranational organizations will attempt to assume control of the planet.

PRIME DECEIT

COMING SOON

Trump may well win, but the risks are enormous. Teetering edifices eventually fall. It would be more surprising than not if this one stood for the next four years. Effecting collapse is probably well within the power of the cabal. If central banks take their thumbs off the interest rate scales and allow their balance sheets to shrink, pop goes history’s greatest financial bubble. Nominal heads of the world’s governments will be blamed unfairly for that bubble—blown over decades—and for failures stemming from centuries of philosophical muddle. Fairness will be the last thing on the minds of those blaming Trump.

Enormous as the risks of scapegoating are for Trump, they are outweighed by the risks of a Clinton victory. The dangers of Clinton’s hawkish record and views have been extensively reviewed (see “The Most Dangerous Candidate,” SLL), but several considerations bear repeating.

She has been a full-throated supporter of US interventionism and cannot escape blame for the Libya, Syria, and Ukraine fiascos. More importantly, the US-Russian relationship deteriorated dangerously during her tenure. Fomenting rebellion and making an issue of Russian doorstep Ukraine, labelling Vladimir Putin a “Hitler,” proposing a no-fly zone in Syria, which would put the US in direct combat with Russia, and blaming Russia for email disclosures without a shred of proof are rank idiocies. Trump’s willingness to engage and negotiate with the leader of the second most militarily powerful nation is rational; Clinton’s adversarial posture is not. Nuclear war being the ultimate downside of that posture, the difference is sufficient reason to vote for Trump.

Not to be overlooked, however, are the other substantial reasons. The Clintons have defenestrated impartial justice and the rule of law. FBI Director Comey’s decision to recommend against prosecuting Hillary for her emails was the latest in a long line of scandals whereby Clintons are granted a more lenient legal standard than everyone else. Reopening the investigation had to have been in part motivated by recognition that his concession to Hillary was indefensible. It had subjected him and the FBI to an unprecedented barrage of justified criticism, and the newly discovered emails give him a do-over.

In a Trump presidency, that might serve as the first step back to impartial justice and the rule of law. During the second debate, he vowed to appoint a special prosecutor. Who knows where a vigorous investigation of Hillary Clinton might lead? There is never just one cockroach, and nobody can predict which cockroaches skedaddle upon exposure or give up their fellow vermin to avoid prosecution and jail. The powers that be can accommodate themselves to a superficial squirt of pesticide, but if Trump attacks the infestation no holds barred, it could upend a very comfortable status quo. Nothing would be better for America and its government. Beneficiaries of the present corruption will fight Trump with everything they’ve got.

Trump appears to be less beholden to the existing power structure than any major party presidential candidate in the last fifty years. He has his own money and has been refreshingly fearless in his public utterances. One can make fun of some of those utterances, but even without the threat of investigations, a man who can’t be bought and says what he thinks may be a man capable of resisting Washington’s army of interest groups, lobbyists, contractors, and captive media. No surprise that he’s received almost no support from them.

Filling the open Supreme Court vacancy is more momentous than usual because of the current ideological cleft in the court. There may be more than one vacancy. The next appointees will hold the deciding votes on a variety of key issues, including the interpretation of the Second Amendment. Justin Antonin Scalia’s caustic dissent in the King v. Burwell Obamacare case ensures his place in the pantheon of great justices. Trump admires Scalia and has promised to pick jurists in that mold.

Importantly, Trump appears to believe, with Scalia, that words, especially the words found in the Constitution, mean what they say. The Constitution is not a perfect document, but it specifies its own amendment process. That process does not involve judges inventing new rights. Nor does it involve judicially disregarding the clearly specified rights of the people and the constraints put on government. (The only good thing that can be said about the idiocy known as the income tax is that the people inflicted it on themselves via the amendment process.)

The latest round of Obamacare premium increases are upon us. Fulfilling a campaign pledge and repealing that odious legislation will have a place on Trump’s to do list. So too will immigration reform, and not the “reform” that is Washington-speak for virtually open borders, amnesty, non-assimilation, and a Democratic registration drive. Trump has mortified the elite, insisting that the US has a right to control its own borders, who gains admittance to it, and on what terms. They were dismissive until Trump defeated their Washington-speak candidates. Supporters grasped easy truths that the elite had sought to make politically unmentionable: the welfare state and open borders are incompatible; hand-out and criminal immigrants adversely affect America’s quality of life. Throw in the Muslim tide washing over Europe and many Americans are quite receptive to either rolling up the Welcome mat or putting it out much more selectively.

Trump can be an offensive, loudmouth blowhard, but he is not stupid. Much of the wailing about the candidates’ deficiencies and the “circus” election casts offensive, loudmouth, and blowhard as equivalent to incompetent and criminal. Whom does such equivalence benefit? Trump’s policies and personality offer Americans an opportunity to challenge the status quo. Many Trump supporters are animated by the middle-finger desire, but Trump would have been long forgotten political roadkill if he didn’t offer a clear-cut departure from the “way things are” and the powers that be.