Historic Perspective to the Campaign

Understand history is a handy tool for understanding today's politics.

Cruz, Trump, and the Gold Standard

What the gold bugs are doing for Uncle Sam.

If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we shall fight them to the uttermost, having behind us the producing masses of the nation and the world. Having behind us the commercial interests and the laboring interests and all the toiling masses, we shall answer their demands for a gold standard by saying to them, you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold. ~ William Jennings Bryan, 1896

Ted Cruz and Donald Trump want to return the United States financial system to the gold standard, a discredited monetary policy that no modern country uses. Pegging the US economy to the price of gold would have no positive effect except for the advertisers on Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity's shows. It would, however, put the country at risk of debilitating deflation and at the mercy of gold producing countries like Russia.

Hillary Clinton and the Suffragette Victory

By 1916, western states had all granted women the right to vote and Lady Liberty was striding boldly east.

The women's suffrage movement is only the small edge of the wedge, if we allow women to vote it will mean the loss of social structure and the rise of every liberal cause under the sun. ~ Winston Churchill, 1911

Assuming things go as seem inevitable, it will have taken 96 years for America to nominate a woman as this nation's leader. That's quite a long time. Many nations got their first female head of state in the 1970's and 80's. Pakistan beat us by over a quarter of a century, electing Benazir Bhutto just 21 years after women gained the vote.

The Republican nominee, be he Trump, Cruz, or Paul Ryan, will not be so plainly spoken as Winnie was 105 years ago but they will hint at the same prejudices. Women are too liberal. Hillary is a harpy and too emotional for the job (Like Trump and Cruz aren't?). American society will collapse if that woman is elected.

Trump's Campaign Is All an Act

Those morons out there? Shucks, I could take chicken fertilizer and sell it to them as caviar. I could make them eat dog food and think it was steak. Sure, I got 'em like this... You know what the public's like? A cage of Guinea Pigs. Good Night you stupid idiots. Good Night, you miserable slobs. They're a lot of trained seals. I toss them a dead fish and they'll flap their flippers. ~ Lonesome Rhodes, A Face In the Crowd 1957

I'm far from the first to notice the striking similarity between Donald Trump and Andy Griffith's first starring role as an obscene huckster who became a media sensation and political power. What's new is that Trump's own spokesperson, Paul Manafort, has told Republican bigwigs that Trump's public performance is just a show to excite the crowds and that he will become "presidential" when the time is right.

That evening, Trump was in eastern Pennsylvania throwing chicken shit at a crowd that ate it all up with gusto.