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Does Someone Need to Shoot Donald Trump?

Sep 17, 2016
With the exception of Donald J. Trump, Hillary Rodham Clinton is the weakest candidate for president we have seen in our lifetime. She is an inept campaigner, cold as the proverbial well-digger’s knee, and widely mistrusted and disliked. She carries baggage that would floor anyone even moderately capable of being ashamed of themselves: her emails, the Libyan debacle, Bill, quarter-million-dollar speeches, habitual warmongering. And finally, it seems apparent she is not well. Should she have to drop out before the election, and should her running mate take her place at the top of the ticket, he has neither name recognition nor much of a track record in politics, and would seem to be unelectable given a choice between a celebrity and someone no one has ever heard of. Biden? Perhaps, but how can they justify a candidate who hasn't even campaigned?

This week in The New Yorker, John Cassidy asks, “The Big Question About Donald Trump’s Rise in the Polls.” In the piece, Cassidy mentions several recent polls which show Trump fast approaching Hillary’s numbers and, in one terrifying case, overtaking them. Cassidy’s Big Question is essentially, “Can he maintain this new momentum and carry himself into the White House?”

But we can’t have Donald Trump in the White House. So my Big Question is, “Does someone need to shoot him?” Or poison him, or strangle him, or toss him off a high bridge?

Now, before the Secret Service gets all bent out of shape, recall Trump has made more than one lightly veiled allusion to the desirability of someone offing his opponent. So tit for tat.

Of course, I don’t believe anyone needs to shoot Donald Trump. Or should. Any halfway competent opponent would have made mincemeat of this lightweight long since. And he’s no Hitler, as I have said elsewhere in this blog. However, in the White House, he is a menace to us all, to our pocketbooks, our health, our domestic tranquility, and to our lives. With his testy and dummkopf finger on the button, he could easily bring on the End Times.

At the very least he will preside over four years of political chaos in which the modest gains of the Obama years will disappear; Supreme Court justices even loonier than Clarence Thomas will be appointed; Black Lives will Matter not at all, never mind brown ones or, for that matter, any white ones not intimately associated with the inner sanctum. The world economy will stagger under his ignorant fumbling; our alliances will unravel; our climate will deteriorate further; and income inequality will soar.

If this sorry excuse for an American faces the Chief Justice on January 20th and mouths the oath of office, the office will never be the same and, in a way, perhaps, America will have fulfilled its destiny, after all.

tags: Governance | Politics | Domestic Unrest

Something to Do

Sep 10, 2016
“I like life. It’s something to do.” —Ronnie Shakes

Finding something to do has become a problem for many of us.

Almost eight million people had nothing to do in August, and that is only counting the unemployed who were looking for work. One point seven million more had given up looking. Another 6.1 million, involuntarily employed part-time, did not have enough to do.

Perhaps the most telling statistic is this one: 37.2 percent of Americans who might be working (the so-called labor force) are not. No doubt some are the stay-at-home helpmates of CEOs or the offspring of seven-term senators. Still, that figure has been steadily increasing since its low of around 33 percent 20 years ago. (Source for all the above: Bureau of Labor Statistics (.pdf).)

The situation is certain to become worse, and rapidly, owing to several factors. The Big Two are globalization and mechanization. Globalization will continue to move low- and medium-skilled jobs overseas and, increasingly, highly skilled jobs as well. Mechanization of manufacturing and service sector jobs is about to skyrocket, owing to the increasing speed and capacity of computers and the maturation of robotics.

Additionally, merger mania, with its emphasis on downsizing and layoffs; an aging population that stays on the job longer while still receiving retirement benefits that must be paid for through current F.I.C.A. contributions; and substandard health and education infrastructures that are driving down our standing in relation to both our allies and our antagonists are three more stressors on the labor force in addition to the Big Two.

It is arguable that a machine ought to do any job of which it is capable, freeing up the human for higher-level pursuits. That may be true, but between globalization and mechanization, it is all happening too fast, as the labor force participation rate so graphically reveals. And as for programs to retrain the out-of-work, they are few, underfunded, and of questionable value. You may attempt to train a 50-year-old laid-off coal miner to program in Python, but your success rate is not going to be anything to write home about.

On the other end of the work force, our children are not being trained today for tomorrow’s jobs. A K-12 school system in New Hampshire with which I am familiar has no computer science courses, or any plan to offer them. If there is one area of employment in which we may reasonably expect humans will be involved in 50 years it is in configuring, programming, managing, and repairing these beasts that will have by then relieved us of all sorts of work we do today. Not to prepare our children for that will, one day, be looked on as an unforgivable sin of omission.

What are people going to do? What should we be doing to ensure they have meaningful and remunerative work and, even more importantly, are ready to perform it? Probably a great deal more than we are doing now, or even talking about doing now.

I wrote a piece here entitled “Make America Work Again” in May. There I noted that over half of working Americans do not make enough to live on. But at least they are working. Increasing numbers of us are not, however, and our polarized and paralyzed political system holds out little hope for effective action at this time.

If any of us are to continue to have something to do, we must do something. And now.

tags: Labor | Employment | Education

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