Hillary Clinton and the pundits are planning for a conventional war while Donald Trump is in the nuclear age. Clinton is delivering her force by tanks. Trump is releasing space-based missiles. The smug pundits keep talking about the "pivot" and "no political campaign experience" as if those age-old concepts matter today. They are whistling past the graveyard filled with 16 Republican contenders.
Let's look at reality. Cable and even broadcast TV are giving Trump billions in free airtime, holding their cameras on an empty podium for 15 minutes awaiting His Royal Racist, who then raises high the roof beams for another 30 minutes. Of course, broadcasters are hoping to catch a car accident live on TV. The head of CBS even said Trump gives a tremendous boost to their bottom line. But Trump is going along merrily, living by the adage "I don't care what they say about me, as long as they spell my name correctly." (Attributed to many, but I like the P.T. Barnum attribution.) And, because he actually does erupt at negative comments, he garners even more attention.
It'll take just one tragic event (be it ISIL or the Taliban or Hamas or Hezbollah, or the NRA, or or or) and an avalanche could bury Clinton while hoisting Trump to Pennsylvania Avenue.
Richard Breitman, Minneapolis
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Much of what I have to say about Trump has been said before, by people with more influence and experience in the world of politics than I. I am just your "average American," as the politicians like to call the rest of us, watching a man running for the highest office in the land with a mix of train-wreck curiosity, horror, outrage and some sadness.
As a public-figure-cum-entertainer, Trump can't not be viewed on a daily basis with morbid fascination to see what, pray tell, will come out of his mouth. The horror, outrage and sadness follow when one considers how insensitive and nonsensical it can be, coupled with the fact that so many still follow him and dare to encourage his lunacy. While he may be scoring emotional points with those who consider themselves downtrodden, disenfranchised and demoralized, it doesn't take too many steps back to see he is merely stirring the pot at the bottom of the barrel.
When it comes to guiding the massive apparatus of American government, healing a fractured nation and leading the world through the challenges of the 21st century, emotional appeals to our inner demons are not going take us where we want to go. Trump has no serious message, no serious plan and no serious direction. He is not a man who can be taken seriously.
This is not a stump for Clinton or any other candidate for the presidency. But know that there are alternatives to voting for a person who thinks nothing of the people he claims to speak for, whose only ambition is for the inflation of his own vanity and who could no better run this country than he has run his own campaign, full of self-aggrandizement, self-delusion and self-pity. We are not merely voting for a candidate for president, we are voting for ourselves, our nation, our rights, our future. Trump could care less about any of those. It is time that we, the electorate, shut down this clown show, look at ourselves as a nation and take it where we want it to go. Hopefully, not down the toilet.
