By Dave Duffy
Donald Trump has been urging African-Americans to vote for him for President by asking them, “What have you got to lose?” Things are so bad for blacks in many of our hollowed-out inner cities like Detroit and Chicago, it is a fair question. In fact, I have been asking myself the same question, “What have I got to lose?” Every time a typical Republican or Democrat gets elected, the economy gets worse, the country goes deeper in debt, and my individual freedoms diminish.
I’m not so sure how successful Trump has been with African-Americans. Many blacks have swallowed the falsehood that there is a free lunch in the modern Democrat welfare state if only they’ll support Hillary Clinton, just as they’ve supported previous Democrats. It’s the modern Democrat plantation for inner city blacks, and I think it’s ironic that the old slave plantations were run exclusively by Southern Democrats. They just replaced force with welfare and empty promises.
But my situation is different. I am a middle class Irish-American who escaped the Irish ghetto of South Boston many years ago. I’m not so different than many African-Americans who have escaped their inner-city ghettos. I have no intention of going back to any semblance of the crime-ridden, impoverished streets from which I came, and the blacks I know of my generation who achieved the same escape from crime and poverty and helplessness feel the same way.
I can’t think of anything we have to lose!
The mass media is full of scary stories about Trump being part of the 1% elite class that gets all the money while the rest of us get nothing, how he is just a former reality show actor and has no experience in government, how he may be rich now but his success is partly due to the misfortunes of many people who lost their jobs due to Trump’s many bankruptcies. They also cite his outlandish statements regarding women and immigrants. They caution we wouldn’t want such a “shoot-from-the-hip” finger on the nation’s nuclear trigger.
It sounds like they’re talking about former President Ronald Reagan again. He was a former actor hated by much of the political Establishment. The hostile media of his day dubbed him Ronald Ray-Gun, partly because of his “lunatic” idea that we could build a missile defense system around America. The media mockingly called his missile shield idea “Star Wars” and told us he was a dangerous warmonger who would bring America into conflict with the Soviet Union, the other great superpower of the day. God forbid, they warned us, that that cowboy might get his finger on the nuclear trigger. Of course, Reagan caused the old Soviet Union to collapse, his “Star Wars” idea now protects countries like Israel and South Korea, and his “less Government” approach to governing allowed the American economy to expand greatly, creating millions of good paying jobs.
The mass media has nothing but praise for Hillary Clinton. She’s the former Secretary of State, for gosh sakes. That’s about as much experience as you can get to prepare yourself to be President. And the honesty question has been overblown, they tell us. After all, nobody in Government has seen fit to indict her! And the Clinton Foundation? Let’s not even talk about it because it’s just a red herring the Republicans threw out there. Plenty of politicians have made millions trading on their position in Government.
So I’m left to wonder what I should do. I’m a Libertarian and have voted Libertarian in most Presidential elections. My one deviation was when I voted for the Establishment Republican, Bush II. That didn’t work out so well. He screwed up the economy, got the country deeper in debt, and stirred the cauldron of the Middle East to the point that its habitual wars of hatred have spilled over into Western Civilization. Many of the other Establishment Republicans, including all the Bushes, hate Trump.
I’m a conservative too, but Trump doesn’t look like much of a conservative to me. Hillary, obviously, is a socialist like Bernie Sanders. Worse, Hillary hates guns. Say goodbye to the Second Amendment if she gets elected. And she’ll also pack the Supreme Court with Leftists. It’ll be like Hugo Chavez risen from the grave and coming to power in America. It’ll take generations for a stacked Supreme Court to die off.
Oh yeah! I’m also voting for Trump because I think it is important to unwind all the Liberal BS of the last 7-plus years, to defuse the class warfare that Obama and the Leftist media have fanned continuously in an effort to divide our communities along race and gender lines. The bogeymen that the Leftist race-baiters have created such as bad cops and racist Republican politicians are simply not true. Americans are getting along fine and race relations have been good for at least 20 years. It’s the Leftist political opportunists who think they can gain votes by dividing us again.
I’m voting for Trump primarily because of what he’s not. He’s not a race-baiter. He’s not a lying, crooked politician who has profited by granting access to Government. He’s not a gun-grabbing socialist who thinks American Capitalism has to be dismantled. He’s not a career politician who owes everything he is to other career politicians and their Wall Street sponsors.
Sure, I’ll vote for Trump! What have I got to lose?
