Trump & Clinton, Presidential Debate No. 3

In the third debate (October 19), there were a few loose ends which I feel compelled to tie up. Beyond those, the dialog reflected essentially the same direction and implications as the first two debates. The moderator was Chris Wallace of the Fox News channel. Of the four total moderators who worked the three debates, Wallace seemed best able to keep both the candidates and the audience from being disruptive.

Part of why I’ve editorialized about each of these three presidential debates between Mr. Trump and Ms. Clinton is to prevent these public dialogs from being commandeered by vacuous idealogies and their candidates. That is, to prevent these debate venues from being intellectually empty rooms, where the various strategic lynchpins which have been deployed by both candidates’ organizations, from freely roaming the marketplace of ideas and devouring responsible political thought and the rigorous analysis of key issues without encountering any sound protest. What do I mean by that? Well, basically I want to ensure that key policy issues such as constitutional law and civil rights aren’t swept under the rug, because those are the main sources of fundamental political authority for the people of the United States. The candidates are politically aware enough to understand the common law precedents and requisites of process service and personal executive accountability. It is during the public vetting processes of these campaigns, that corporate candidates seek to find shelter from the fetters of constitutional restrictions against the bad faith designs of special interests and their candidates, attempting to establish or renew political quarter where themselves and their partisans may be held harmless for their transgressions.

Lynchpins of note? Well, for example, it appears that Mr. Trump has gotten involved with national politics because he sees problems that the establishment government cottage industry cannot fix, but which he is in fact better equipped to address as a well-tenured international businessperson. With that, he has gone “all in” with his campaign, and is doing everything necessary within the confines of the law to win the election. Unfortunately, because of the current state of American politics and his partisan orientation, his incumbency puts him on the leyline of the evangelical right, and he has espoused that faction’s political inclinations to a fault in his “all in” approach. The problem is represented summarily in Mr. Trump’s election of former Indiana governor Michael Richard Pence who has been said to describe himself as a “Christian, conservative, and a Republican in that order.” So, by his own admittance, Pence is someone who ranks his own religion, then his own personal biases or preferences, and then his partisan confederates, ahead of any general ethical obligations related to public service, egalitarian liberty, and peaceable co-existence/collaboration among people who are different from himself.

[From Wikipedia’s entry about Indiana’s “Religious Freedom Restoration Act: “In 2000, Pence stated “Congress should oppose any effort to recognize homosexual’s [sic] as a ‘discreet and insular minority’ entitled to the protection of anti-discrimination laws similar to those extended to women and ethnic minorities.” He called for “an audit to ensure that federal dollars were no longer being given to organizations that celebrate and encourage the types of behaviors that facilitate the spreading of the HIV virus” and instead advocated that resources be directed towards Conversion therapy programs. He commented that homosexuals should not serve in the military, stating “Homosexuality is incompatible with military service because the presence of homosexuals in the ranks weakens unit cohesion” and in 2010 stated that repealing ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ would “have an impact on unit cohesion.” Pence opposed the 2009 Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act stating that Obama would “advance a radical social agenda” and said that pastors “could be charged or be subject to intimidation for simply expressing a Biblical worldview on the issue of homosexual behavior.”]

Mr. Trump has aligned himself with a most unenlightened and distasteful hate-based special interest group. It’s a cohesive group, and it’s entitled to its ignorance regarding what The Christ taught anyone who would listen about love and acceptance, and it’s entitled to whatever other biases or prejudices it may carry, but it’s not entitled to force such views on other Americans through public policy and infrastructure. The faction continues seeking to aggressively occupy high office irrespective of the long arm of the egalitarian liberty and American constitutional law.

Alternatively, Ms. Clinton’s administrative style also relies entirely on corporate/special interest funding and incumbency; that these two candidates are what remains of the mainstream corporate media campaigns for the next White House administration and “control” of the office of the U.S. Executive is no accident; it reflects the corporate purse, to the penny. So it explicitly shows the disconnect, between the best interest and political will of the American people, and the economic symbolism of it via the dollar. Thus is exactly how the gap, which happens to be huge, is defined. Clinton’s campaign also represents an effort at occupation of high office for the purpose of violating the egalitarian liberty of our constitutional law. It is not in the best interest of the people, for the United States to militarily occupy foreign nations for decades or dozens or years, just as much as it’s not in the best interest of the people, for their domestic seat of national government to be occupied by the interests of foreign warmongers amid the decay of both our domestic infrastructure and quality of life. How close is Ms. Clinton’s campaign, at what individual personal degree of separation would the nearest member of cabinet be, from the Israel lobby, or that of OPEC? Et cetera. Not far at all, and her organization is definitely close enough to continue the war/occupation that’s been occurring since 2003 for the effective furtherance of those interests, and also near enough for the very easy continuation of active propaganda campaigns to such an end.

Mr. Wallace’s first question was regarding general interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. Ms. Clinton responded that she is an advocate for people and organizations to include the GLBT community, the everyday common citizen, and reiterated her adversarial disposition regarding the Citizens United v. FEC precedent which is said to liberalize corporate campaign funding. However, her position on the Citizens United caselaw standing is ambiguous in its context, because the case itself stemmed from partisan attacks against her own political campaign in 2008, and because she is the very mouthpiece of a national/international corporate partisan caucus that’s funded entirely by corporate and other private wealth. Generally, the degree to which it’s also publicly funded is that to which foreign governments can tally their laundered contributions; so we’d have to ask them. In response to the same question, Mr. Trump indicated that his U.S. Supreme Court Justice nominee(s) will be conservative, pro-lifers with literal interpretations of the Second Amendment.

[Editor’s note regarding the alleged conservatism of the American Judiciary’s body politic: My contesting of the 2013 federal income tax policy (4:14-cv-02574-TUC-JAS) in pro se, on legitimate grounds of constitutional due process procedural violations regarding collections, which was indeed a windfall circumstance for just such litigation which I brought against the individual tax collector in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona on grounds for relief of R.I.C.O. civil clauses, Title 42 civil rights, and qui tam False Claims Act provisions, received a dead-hand response from a Department of Justice attorney 2,300 miles away, and the case was dismissed with prejudice by the District Court Judge J.A. Soto, who is a a Democrat and Obama nominee from Nogales, Arizona. Unfortunately I missed the appeals deadline, and Mr. Soto denied the motion to reconsider.]

Hence it seems to me, federal courts are quick to follow unconstitutional taxation (and slow to correct the lingering error in jurisprudence pursuant to the taxation without capitation which was put into place by Republican industrialists in the run up to World War I), which funds a central bank that is occupied entirely by private wealth used to fight land wars on the other side of the world, which ends up furthering foreign political interests that are aligned with organized domestic hate groups who continually seek to occupy the high offices of this nation in order to force their minority religious views on the whole of the constituency in direct conflict of the ideals of civil liberty upon which the United States of America was founded. The federal judiciary fails to do one of the only very few actual duties which define it, that is, protecting the constitution and its constituents from transgression. Therefore I’m offended when I hear talk about the existence of a conservative Supreme Court. They’re not that; they allow foreign occupations here and they allow those occupants to occupy foreign nations militarily in perpetuity; all of which is patently unconstitutional. It’s a travesty; a uniform function of enabling and providing political quarter for unconstitutional activities by a select group of wealthy international aristocrats (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Three_of_the_United_States_Constitution).

One of the few prescribed functions of the federal judiciary, as mentioned, is to protect the rights of individuals against individual state governments which violate constitutional liberty. Mr. Trump states that a court packed with any contributions from him would be adversarial to the Roe v. Wade abortion precedent, and determinations regarding the legality of local abortions would be left up to state governments. That’s problematic, because such public legislation based on gender and biological function is tantamount to a chattel law declaring ownership of the bodies of women and their body functions, which is unconstitutional in the absence of extraordinary circumstances, due cause, and due process. The same goes for any other modern iterations of Jim Crow or Black Codes with respect to civil rights. But again, such is the sacrifice in which Mr. Trump’s organization has aligned itself with such an untoward special interest (that’s financed by the bottomless cash coffers of today’s secular churches) in order to win the election.

Ms. Clinton does say the right words regarding the federal judiciary’s inclination to allow state chattel laws, but it would seem to be in exchange for allowing the global war party agenda to proceed unfettered. As a libertarian, that’s naturally the way I’m going to perceive the situation; and in light of the fact that the surveillance state is so badly preeminent after thirteen years of the War on Terror, I already feel like chattel in many ways anyway, and the foreign policy issue seems to be towering in my mind as an American who is to be held legally responsible for my own foreign policy. That’s what democracy means, that is, no one is answerable for such things except me, you, and us. He doesn’t look happy about having to play the pro-life card, but Mr. Trump has quite evidently done so for the sake of preserving the international business landscape. Such an attitude isn’t a silver bullet for perfect foreign policy by any stretch, but again, Ms. Clinton’s is bold-faced status quo colonialism or imperialism, as you like it, in a post-colonial or post-imperial future. It’s a square peg in a round hole.

Responding to a question about U.S. immigration policy, Mr. Trump affirmed that he officially supports the construction of a wall at the border between Mexico and the United States, and noted that Ms. Clinton has also supported such infrastructure in the past. She clarified that her support for a wall had been only in certain situations and locations. Ms. Clinton’s campaign advocates a “pathway to citizenship” which Mr. Trump describes as a disastrous policy of amnesty that’s unfair to those who go through proper channels and waiting periods to formally immigrate to the United States. Mr. Trump’s organized supporters include U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, which have pressed their concerns to the candidate regarding the very serious problems of heavy narcotics trafficking, illegal immigration, and internationally transient felons. He said I.C.E. and C.B.P. are officially in favor of such a wall, which amounts to further paramilitarization of the southern international border. I’m skeptical of such a policy being a sound path forward for international relations, but it isn’t a surprise it’s what the law enforcement community wants, because they’re experts in things like walls, and particularly in light of the fact that the current policy is messy and makes the jobs of border police far more difficult to do without big walls, more jails, and formidable tools of war (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mexican-American_border_at_Nogales.jpg).

Ms. Clinton remarked on an estimated 15 million illegal immigrants currently in the United States, essentially saying that they have to be dealt with at a policy level somehow, and which policy in a Trump administration would predominately entail deportation roundups. Mr. Trump noted that President Obama has deported millions of immigrants. Ms. Clinton said it is a “rank mischaracterization” that she advocates for an “open border.”

Mr. Wallace asked about a Wikileaks report of Ms. Clinton’s vision of a hemispheric open market with open borders. (I say, policy which forwards such a situation is a proper and appropriate goal for neighboring nations, in a world with a bright future for our children to inherit). Ms. Clinton immediately blamed the Wikileaks report on unnamed Russian intelligence hackers, whom she claims do not favor her presidential candidacy. (I say this: The American surveillance state, and the inability for career politicians and war party usurpers who brought about the modern surveillance state as part of the war against everybody but the ruling class, has so saturated daily life that Russia is having to help the American proletariat with investigative reporting. Daylight in the Free West is not just crucial for those who live here, and there’s no Radio Free America. Journalism is not (or is not supposed to be) illegal, and one doesn’t need to be an U.S. citizen to 1) have a preferred candidate for U.S. president or any other public office, nor 2) to conduct flat-footed reportage. Does anyone believe the areas of Texas which are heavily populated with German immigrants, for example, don’t have any right to a political opinion? Do American ex-pats not get to have an opinion or free speech? Can other national governments, with whom we share the same high seas, have an opinion about the leadership of a major world superpower? Yes, of course they have a responsibility to pay attention to international politics. Are our Constitutionally enshrined civil liberties, including freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly, something which all people of the world have a natural right to enjoy regardless of their geography? Yes. We’re supposed to be a beacon not a dark bellwether. Some determination of whether a foreign agent (e.g. a Mexican grocer, a Canadian skiier, a Russian ballerina, an Italian professor) is acting in good faith and within the confines of constitutional law, does use approximately the same legal threshold to measure whether a federal judge understands and is properly enforcing the law, or for that matter, any such fathom regarding any other U.S. citizen, tourist, or emigrant.

Locally, regarding national budget, Mr. Wallace said entitlement spending makes up about 60% of all federal spending, but that funding for Medicare will run out in the 2020s and funding for Social Security will run out in the 2030s. He asked if President Trump would make a deal to save these programs that would include tax increases and budget cuts. Mr. Trump said some cash could be added to such programs and reiterated his inclinations to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. (The editorial which I wrote after the second debate gives deeper treatment to the economic politics of healthcare in the United States). Mr. Trump noted the financial implications of having a “depleted” military after thirteen years of war in the Middle East, and also regarding his platform about related to domestic aspects of peace keeping and civil law enforcement. “Our police men and women are disrespected; we need law and order, but we need justice too,” Mr. Trump said. (The candidates’ conversation about domestic law enforcement policy and race relations was given deeper treatment in my editorial regarding Trump and Clinton’s first presidential debate). “Our inner cities are a disaster, you get shot walking to the store, they have no education, they have no jobs. I will do more for African Americans and Latinos than she (Ms. Clinton) can do in ten lifetimes,” Mr. Trump said. Ms. Clinton’s relationship with African Americans and Latinos, he said, is typical of a career/partisan politician who only revisits relationships with certain demographics every four years in an effort to get votes.

The subject of hemispheric collaboration went from business to war (looking East), Mr. Trump mentioned emerging nuclear powers apart from Russia and the United States. He said the United States has spent 6 trillion dollars on the current war in the Middle East and North Africa, and that the Russian military has “taken over in the Middle East.” Ms. Clinton went on, arguing that 17 different American intelligence agencies have determined the Russian government is trying to tilt the election to Trump’s favor. She brought up the subject of N.A.T.O., and talked about how only four minutes can transpire, between the U.S. president giving the order for a nuclear attack, and the launch of those warheads on target (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove).

The conversation remained on the war in the Middle East for a while, and returned to the subject at various times. Mr. Trump remarked upon the bombing and effective fall of the ancient city of Allepo, Syria, by Iranian and Russian military forces, in the process of the Syrian Civil War in which the belligerent factions listed include Fatah Halab and Army of Conquest supported by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, France; the United States of America; the Syrian Arab Republic; the Ba’ath Brigades; the Syrian Resistance; various Iranian factions; Russia; and the Syrian Democratic Union Party (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Aleppo_(2012%E2%80%93present).

Allepo was the Ottoman Empire’s third largest city, after Constantinople and Cairo. So of course Iran (aka Persia), which encompasses one of the world’s oldest civilizations and is a theocracy whose official guidance comes from “god,” has an interest in raining down hell upon Allepo with the easy assistance of every war machine on the planet.

Why are we (still) there? The answer is, Washington D.C. is occupied by foreign national interests, violent religious crusaders, and global imperialists, who are all operating in your and my name as Americans. A big problem with that is that anyone involved gets exactly what they deserve, and technically we are all, you and I, involved, because the United States is not a theocracy or any other type of held-harmless dictatorship, therefore we as citizens are accountable for our political will and its evident actions at the incorporated actionable policy level. Mr. Trump asserts that Ms. Clinton is a lifetime politician who has had a decades-long career in national government and who has failed to be anything but complicit if not advocating of such disasters in U.S. foreign policy and foreign wars. Regarding the Middle East, “if she’d done nothing, we’d be in better shape,” Mr. Trump said. It’s unclear what Mr. Trump’s plan to get the U.S. out of the near-Asian land war is, or how he would go about making it right and civil insofar as it could be, but he indicates that a huge faction of America’s military high brass supports his campaign, and that they have his ear. Logically, the American military leadership would, after thirteen years of military occupancy (which is, in technological or tactical terms, an operation that’s about twelve years and 51 weeks longer than necessary), is confiding in their candidate that we need to get out. Better late than never.

Mr. Wallace noted that Ms. Clinton had proposed a no-fly zone over Syria (where the Russian Air Force and Iran have been recently bombing), which President Obama refuses to do in order to avoid deepening the conflict with other major military powers in the region. Thereabouts, Ms. Clinton segued the discussion into homegrown terrorism and the recent massacre by a domestic terrorist at a LGBT nightclub in Orlando, Fla. Her topical jump isn’t that far fetched, in the sense that murder and terrorism is just as horrible in Orlando as it is in Allepo, nothwithstanding the obvious geographical and other contextual differences, and, also in the sense that a nation cannot operate unethically and in bad faith overseas, for thirteen years, without experiencing some proportion of significant moral decay at home.

“When the middle class thrives, America thrives,” Ms. Clinton said, saying she will advocate for secure industrial jobs, clean energy, the working poor, equal pay among genders, debt-free public education from pre-school through college, but that Mr. Trump’s plan is to raise taxes. But he said her plan would double taxes. Regarding negotiation of international business deals, an organization such as Ms. Clinton’s sends delegates who are out of their league in such tasks, Mr. Trump said, because they are “people who get the position because they made a campaign contribution.” For such missions, he said, we should instead use our actual business people who are the most competent in the world.

Mr. Trump said the United States’ allies of Japan, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia, etc., need to compensate the United States for the military protection it lends them, because they’re wealthy nations and we could use the in-kind support. “We have to say, you have to help us out,” Mr. Trump said. He said the national debt doubled during President Obama’s administration, and again described N.A.F.T.A. as the worst trade policy ever implemented by the United States, that he says has caused jobs to flee the country. Mr. Trump said he plans to renegotiate N.A.F.T.A. and if it can’t be fixed, he’d do away with it, cut business taxes massively, start bringing trillions of dollars back into the country, “because right now our country’s dying at 1% G.D.P.”

Mr. Wallace said Ms. Clinton’s plan is similar to President Obama’s 2009 economic stimulus package, and asked her to elaborate about her plan. She said Mr. Trump advocates for three times the amount of tax cuts that occurred during President George W. Bush’s administration; she said there would be no new taxes for anyone who earns less than a quarter million dollars per year, and that her administration wouldn’t add a cent to the national debt. She remarked that Mr. Obama inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression, which has led to the slowest growth in G.D.P. since 1949, and that it was a very touch-and-go, messy economic situation during the early days of Mr. Obama’s administration. “I think Obama saved the economy and he doesn’t get the credit he deserves for some very hard positions,” she said.

Mr. Wallace said certain economic analysts opine that Mr. Trump’s economic designs don’t “add up” (e.g. they’re unrealistic in light of the current price of oil). Mr. Trump said that India at 7% growth and China at 8% are considered to be performing poorly, but that actual growth in the United States is technically at about 1%.

Mr. Wallace said the national debt currently is 77% of G.D.P. which is the highest such ratio since World War II, but that predictions of the data under Ms. Clinton’s plan project a debt increase to 88% of G.D.P., while projections under Mr. Trump’s proposed plan are of up to 105%, over the next decade. Mr. Trump reiterated that current U.S. G.D.P. is effectively 1%, and that Ms. Clinton’s plan would put it at less than zero, and that he believes his administration could get it up to 5%, 6%, or 7%. Those numbers weren’t evaluated further during the debate, and I will stop there with the statistics and percentage prognostications because quantitative economic analyses are nuanced voyages into applied social policy for which a more dedicated, exhaustive analytical and philosophical treatment is required for proper, thorough consideration. But in any case, it’s worth nothing that determining the success of an economy based upon percentages of “growth” is an attitude born of the industrial revolution, and which does not fit well into the complex scenario of our 21st century challenges of ecological sustainability.

Once again, as in the previous two debates between these candidates, questions about Mr. Trump’s sexuality, gender role, and his attitude about certain women was explicitly questioned, which invariably leads to conversations about Ms. Clinton’s husband’s sexual escapades during his time as President of the United States. In my editorial which followed the second debate, I accommodated this issue at some significant depth, with respect to its relevance to a candidate’s fitness for high office and the public trust, so I will not go into the matter as deeply in this third editorial.

However, one brief note regarding the matter of fitness and circumstances, is the fact that Ms. Clinton’s husband is a former president of the United States. The odds of that randomly occurring are low enough to be out of reach without the presence of a ruling class, which of course isn’t supposed to exist in the United States. Certainly not over me, but we know the mob rules if we let it. In response to the ongoing questioning about his past sexual excursions, Mr. Trump turned the ethical microscope back onto his opponent, and described the Clinton Foundation as a criminal organization whose funding includes contributions from Middle Eastern donors such as the nations of KSA and Qatar whose governments, he said, push homosexuals from the tops of high buildings. It’s my understanding that such intolerance is the same which Vice Presidential candidate Mike Pence would like to see here in the United States of America:

[Another piece of information from Wikipedia’s entry on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which Pence signed into law as governor of Indiana and is an example of why the federal judiciary is necessary and incumbent to intervene when states transgress civil liberties: “Indiana, unlike neighboring Illinois, does not have a state-wide anti-discrimination ordinance, and the majority of the state does not have local ordinances against discrimination against L.G.B.T. people. When a reporter asked Speaker of the House Brian Bosma whether it would be against the law for a business to put up a “no gays allowed” sign, he stated that “it would depend” on whether the business was in “a community that had a human rights ordinance.”]

Furthermore, in trading barbs with Ms. Clinton about moral turpitude and the Oval Office, Mr. Trump asserted that Ms. Clinton’s apparent deletion of thousands of emails which contained dialog about public affairs apropos her official public office at the time, to be far more turpitudinous and unethical than anyone’s own private, historical romantic activities. “She should never have been allowed to run for the presidency, based on what she did with e-mails,” he said, “and there are so many other things.”

“Horrifying,” Ms. Clinton responded.

Horrifying indeed. Mr. Trump also responded to questions about his theory that Ms. Clinton’s campaign is willing and able to literally “steal” the election, in collusion with the corporate media. And perhaps in collusion with the federal court system, which was deployed by the George W. Bush campaign to seal his election in 2000. Can it be said, that never was there a closer election than that year? With a constitutional court system that fails to protect the constitutional rights of the constituency, and fails to hold accountable the bad faith occupants of high office for their violation of the self-evident rights of all people foreign and domestic, what more could we expect next month? Maybe the question is which of the two corporate candidates, representing which foreign national interests, and which multinational corporate interests, and which domestic minority special interests, does the Supreme Court prefer? If we ask them now, perhaps we could forego the election altogether and just take their nomination. I don’t think anyone’s expecting a landslide, in fact it’s nearly ensured not to be, because of the hedging of corporate interests on both campaigns. (Neither of which come right out and say, get out of the Asian/Middle Eastern land war, or, immediately restore the illegally suspended civil liberties of the American citizenry, which are like the two main points aside from getting the belligerent partisans out of D.C.). So, what would be the difference if we let the august court decide?

In light of the foregoing, bear in mind, regardless of what hard sells you receive from the corporate media or the foreign press corps regarding their preferences for your country, business, and way of life, and regardless of whatever execution of artifice they or anyone else may use to say it, that nobody is in charge of you except you. Such a notion we hold to be self evident, but it’s put to paper in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights nevertheless. Those documents codify the law of the land in fact, and anyone who violates that law isn’t in charge of you or anyone else. If many people have the same misunderstanding about the law of the land and who’s in charge of you, together at the same time, it still doesn’t make it so. Because individuals lacking understandings of the basic law of the land, and of who isn’t in charge of whom, are operating outside of the law and nobody has to listen to a word they say.

Meanwhile, we have the right to choose the representatives and the public executives of our preference. The following two people, among others, will be doing their best to do everything in their power to function as upstanding U.S. citizens for the next eight years, in good faith:

Dr. Jill Stein is the 2016 Green Party nominee for the office of chief executive of the United States of America (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_Stein).

Mr. Gary Johnson is the 2016 Libertarian Party nominee for the office of chief executive of the United States of America (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Johnson).

~C.G. Braswell, host of The Odelay Show