Trump and Obama at the Barbershop

Trump is shaking Obama’s hand on the fuzzy screen of the big television hanging precariously over an empty barbershop chair.

It’s a hot day outside. The limp flag of the barbershop hangs low. Inside a circle of black and Latino men peer up at the television and shake their heads. “Sheeit,” one says, dragging the sound out.

It’s not hostile. It’s as much wonderment as anything else. Like the rest of us, they are seeing the impossible.

“It’s like a miracle,” another says. “I stayed up all night and I couldn’t believe it.”

The noise of three barbers, black men working their trade in the second most hallowed neighborhood institution after the Baptist church, makes it hard to hear what Obama and Trump are saying to each other.

Despite the best efforts of the Democratic Party machine, there’s no hostility toward Trump here. There’s bafflement, amusement and respect. “Sick” is a common term of approbation for him.

The media had sought to depict Trump’s birth certificate comments as racist, but few here buy that.

“He did what he had to do,” one says. “He played the game.”

There’s nothing personal about it. Trump did what he had to do to win. Just like they do what they have to do. The election was a rap battle where you can say anything you want about the other guy, but it doesn’t matter. It’s just machismo and bravado. It’s a game. Trump was a player. And they’re not gonna be playa haters. Even if it’s the biggest game in the world.

Trump and Obama compliment each other in a scene that strikes much of the country as surreal. But not at the barbershop.

“When it’s out there, they fighting. When it’s just the two of them, they good,” one says.

“They gonna smoke a blunt together,” another says and laughs.

There’s a holographic picture of Obama at his first inauguration on the wall. When you tilt your head, he almost seems to be coming out of it. Next to him is an old black and white of Martin Luther King. To reflect the neighborhood’s changing demographics, there’s another one of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, one of Caesar Chavez and an Asian man in a khaki suit that I can’t even begin to identify.

The live Obama on the television looks old and shrunken compared to his holographic doppleganger. Like today’s Bill Clinton, you wonder that he ever seemed so vital a nemesis once upon a time.

Obama is still an icon in the black community. He’s the first black president. But nobody here expected that to last forever. They still like him and his picture will hang on walls for generations.

But they’re also moving on.

Trump is the kind of Republican they can understand and respect. “We need money,” one man chants. “We don’t wanna be on welfare. We want the money.”

A barber takes a call while working on a customer. “Gotta get that money,” he says apologetically.

The Koch Brothers flavor of free market education would fall flat here. But Trump’s kind of capitalism they can get behind.

“He’s got his own plane. He’s got an air force,” a customer observes.

“If I were a billionaire, I’d be an asshole too,” says another.

Trump thanks Obama. The event wraps up. “That’s all,” Obama tells the press.

“You tell ’em to get out,” a barber shouts. “That’s right.”

The media tried to get men like this to hate Trump. But black turnout lagged. At the barbershop they don’t hate Trump. They didn’t vote for him, but they respect him. They want to pull together now.

They want the country fixed and made right again.

The violent freeway protests, the shutdowns and fires, the vandalized police cars, baffle them. “What are they trying to do?” they wonder.

The left has lost nationally. But its grip even in places like this was always shaky. The left excelled at manipulation. It played on grievances and offered freebies. But there’s a hard ambition here and a culture that the left never had a grip on. The barbershop is one of the more conservative outposts of the black community, but it’ll never fly the elephant or vote GOP. But it has much more culturally in common with Trump and his voters than it does with the left that waged war against him.

Black culture has been crippled and twisted, but it’s still about ambition and achievement. The left has seduced the black community, but it doesn’t truly understand it or control it.

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Originally posted on Sultan Knish.

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Israel in the Trump Era

What can we expect from President-elect Donald Trump’s administration?

 

The positions that Trump struck during the presidential campaign were sometimes inconsistent and even contradictory. So it is impossible to forecast precisely what he will do once in office. But not everything is shrouded in mystery. Indeed, some important characteristics of his administration are already apparent.

First of all, President Barack Obama’s legacy will die the moment he leaves the White House on January 20. Republicans may not agree on much. But Trump and his party do agree that Obama’s policies must be abandoned and replaced. And they will work together to rollback all of Obama’s actions as president.

On the domestic policy front this means first and foremost that Obamacare will be repealed and replaced with health industry reforms that open the medical insurance market to competition.

With the support of the Republican-controlled Senate, Trump will end Obama’s push to reshape the US Supreme Court in the image of the activist, indeed, authoritarian Israeli Supreme Court. During his four year term, Trump may appoint as many as four out of nine justices. In so doing he will shape the court for the next generation.

Trump made clear during the race that the justices he selects will oppose the Obama-led leftist plan to transform the Court into an imperial judiciary that determines social and cultural norms and legislates from the bench.

Trump will also clean out the IRS. Under Obama, the IRS became an instrument of political warfare. Conservative and right wing pro-Israel groups were systematically discriminated against and targeted for abuse. It is possible to assume that Trump will fire the IRS officials who have been involved in this discriminatory abuse of power.

To be sure, much is still unclear about Trump’s foreign policy. But here too, certain things are already known. Trump will vacate the US’s signature from the nuclear deal with Iran.

Trump will not be able to repair the damage the deal has already caused – at least not immediately. He will not be able to reimpose the multilateral and UN Security Council sanctions on Iran that the nuclear deal cancelled. Such a move will require prolonged negotiations and their conclusion is far from assured.

Trump will likewise be unable to take back the billions of dollars that Iran has already received due to the abrogation of economic sanctions and through cash payoffs from the Obama administration.

At the same time, from his first day in office, Trump will change the trajectory of US policy towards Iran. He will oppose Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. He will oppose Iran’s rise to regional hegemony.

A second conclusion that it is already possible to draw about the Trump presidency is that Trump will be much more like the hands off Ronald Reagan than the hands on Obama. His past as a businessman along with his lack of governmental or political experience will lead Trump to set general policy guidelines and goals and delegate responsibility for crafting suitable policies and programs to his cabinet secretaries and advisors.

This means that personnel will very much be policy in the Trump administration. Whereas Obama’s cabinet members and advisors have been more or less interchangeable since Obama himself determined everything from the details of his policies to the ways that the policies would be sold to the public (or hidden from the public), and implemented, Trump’s pick of advisors will be strategically significant.

Clearly it is too early to know who Trump’s advisors and cabinet members will be. But there is good reason for Israel to be encouraged by the advisors who have worked with Trump during the campaign.

Vice President-elect Mike Pence is one of the most pro-Israel policymakers in America. Former speaker of the house Newt Gingrich is an outspoken ally of Israel and of the US-Israel alliance. Likewise, former New York mayor Rudy Guiliani, former senator Rick Santorum, retired general Mike Flynn, and former UN ambassador John Bolton are all extraordinary champions of the US alliance with Israel.

Trump’s Israel affairs advisors during the campaign, David Friedman and Jason Greenblatt are also among the strongest advocates of the US-Israel alliance that have arisen in decades.

The striking friendliness of the Trump election team is even more notable when we consider what Israel would have faced from a Hillary Clinton administration. Clinton’s cabinet-in-waiting at the George Soros-funded and John Podesta-run Center for American Progress contained no serious advocates of the US-Israel alliance.

And her stable of advisors were not merely indifferent to Israel.

The Wikileaks revelations from Podesta’s emails, like the correspondences published by Judicial Watch from Clinton’s tenure as secretary made clear that Clinton’s team included several advisors with deep-seated hostility if not animus toward Israelis and toward the Israeli government.

The third thing that is already clear about the nature of the Trump administration is that it will not hesitate to abandon received wisdom on a whole host of issues and initiate policies that the bipartisan policy elites wouldn’t be caught dead even talking about.

Trump’s victory was first and foremost a defeat for the American elite, what Prof. Angelo Codevilla memorably referred to as America’s “ruling class.”

Trump’s campaign did not merely target the Democratic establishment. He attacked the Republican establishment as well. True, in his victory speech Trump said that he intends to heal the rifts in American society – presumably starting with his own party. But at least one thing ought to be clear about that reunification. As the president-elect, Trump will set the terms of the healing process.

There is every reason to expect that at a minimum, Trump will not soon forgive the Republicans who refused to support and even opposed his presidential bid. Members of the NeverTrump camp will be denied positions and influence over the Trump administration and sent into the political desert.

Another establishment that fell on its sword in this election is the American Jewish establishment. Led by the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish establishment, including its largest donors, stood almost as one in its support for Clinton. The American Jewish leadership placed their partisan preferences above their communal interests and responsibilities. In so doing they enfeebled the community in a manner that will be difficult to repair.

Both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party have anti-Semites in their ranks. The Jewish establishment ignored and pretended away the Democratic anti-Semites, even when they were burning Israeli flags at the Democratic convention. They said nothing when anti-Israel ravings that were at best borderline anti-Semitic of senior Clinton advisors like Thomas Pickering and Anne Marie Slaughter were published by Judicial Watch.

On the other hand, the Jewish establishment castigated Trump as anti-Semitic for the presence of anti-Semites like David Duke on the fringes of the Republican Party. Legitimate criticisms of anti-Israel financier George Soros were condemned as anti-Semitic while truly anti-Semitic assaults on Trump donor Sheldon Adelson by Clinton backers went unaddressed.

The consequence of the Jewish establishment’s almost total mobilization for Clinton is clear. The Trump White House won’t have an open door policy for those who falsely accused Trump of anti-Semitism.

Jewish Americans are going to have to either oust the leaders of the groups that put their party before their community or establish new organizations to defend their interests. Whatever path is chosen, the process of rebuilding the communal infrastructure the community’s leaders have wrecked will be long, difficult and expensive.

Unlike the American Jewish community, for Israel, the defeat of the American establishment is a positive development. The American foreign policy elite’s default bipartisan position on Israel was bad for both Israel and the health and reliability of its alliance with the US.

As I explained in my book, The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East, there was a dismaying consistency in US policy towards Israel that ran from Bill Clinton’s administration through the George W. Bush administration and on to the Obama administration.

At least since the Clinton years, the received wisdom of the American foreign policy elite has been that the US must seek to swiftly cause Israel to sign a deal with the PLO. The contours of the deal are similarly clear to all concerned. Israel must surrender control over all or most of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and transfer the areas, more or less Jew free, to the PLO.

This bipartisan view is inherently hostile to Israel. It places all the responsibility for making peace on Israel. And as the sole responsible party, Israel is also the sole party that is guilty for the absence of peace. The flipside is similarly dismal. Palestinians are absolved of responsibility for terrorism, hatred and political warfare against Israel.

The anti-Israel hostility inherent in the two-state paradigm has brought on a situation where even pro-Israel US officials end up joining their anti-Israel colleagues in bearing down on Israel to act in manners that are inimical both to its national security and to the very concept of a US-Israel alliance. The foreign policy ruling class’s commitment to the two-state paradigm has blinded them to Israel’s strategic importance to the US and caused them to see the US’s only stable ally in the region as a drag on US interests.

Many of Trump’s advisors, including Gingrich, whose name has been raised as a leading candidate either to serve as Trump’s White House chief of staff or as Secretary of State, have rejected this received wisdom. In a Republican presidential debate in 2011, Gingrich referred to the Palestinians as an “invented people,” and noted that they indoctrinate their children to perceive Jews as subhuman and seek their annihilation. For his statement of fact, Gingrich was brutally assaulted by Democratic and Republican elites.

But he never rescinded his statement.

Trump’s election provides Israel with the first opportunity in fifty years to reshape its alliance with the US.

This new alliance must be based a common understanding and respect for what Israel has to offer the US as well as the limits of what the US can offer Israel. The limits of US assistance are in large part the consequences of the many genies that Obama unleashed during the past eight years. And the opportunities will come more in areas related to Israel’s relations with the Palestinians and the political war being waged against it by the Europeans and the international left than to the challenges posed by the ascendance of Islamism in the Middle East.

To be sure, Trump is inconsistent. But from what we do know we must recognize that his rise is a deflection point in US history.

It is a rare moment where things that were unimaginable a month ago are possible. And if we play our cards right, like the American people, Israel stands to gain in ways we never dreamed.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

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Obama’s Fall Took Globalism With It

As Daniel Greenfield so eloquently stated: This wasn’t an election. It was a revolution. But what kind of revolution was it?  The Trump revolt like Brexit as well as Bibi’s reelection in 2015 were uprisings focused on tearing down the post Cold War system that has become known as globalism.

Like most leftists, Obama’s policies focused on creating a utopian reality without laying out any exact path to get there.  The Obama approach of demeaning national identity, sovereignty, and authority while boosting up elements associated with bad actors is an approach that strives to create as its end result a citizen of the world.

Here in Israel, Jewish pioneers have been berated by the international media, EU  bureaucrats, and most importantly Obama himself.  For the leftist academics and policy experts, Jewish pioneers are seen as an impediment to “a much needed Palestinian State.”  The globalists view the pioneers of Judea and Samaria much the same way they view blue-collar workers in the flyover country in America or those factory workers in Britain: stubborn racist simpletons willing to hold back progress for some archaic principles.

But this is not the case.  Globalists view the world as one giant utilitarian experiment where the ends justify the means.  Yet, despite their drive for control and manipulation, yesterday their dreams crashed and burned on the altar of reality.

Real America are those places that nurture the belief that America like Israel needs to stand for something far more essential than Hollywood, .Coms, or Jay Z.  America’s exceptionalism is due to the fact that it draws from the strength of Israel’s eternal covenant.  The more it seeks to uphold the divine moral code given to us from the Creator, the more it will flourish.  The Americans who won the election rejected the globalist vision that all countries are equal.  They rejected the idea that the Arab in Saudi Arabia and the Christian or Jew in America have the same worldview despite the fact that we are all children of the Creator. For a person who comes to America must decide to adopt biblical worldview which places the Almighty front and center one’s life decisions.

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When we take away a nation’s specialness we render its citizens powerless. That was Obama’s mission from the beginning.  Obama almost succeeded until a reality TV star and real estate tycoon became the most unlikely leader of a revolt whose message, “This Land is Our Land!”

In many ways the current wave anti-globalism can be said to start not with Brexit, but with the Israeli elections that saw an unlikely leader in Bibi Netanyahu get reelected against all odds.  In fact, it was Obama and the international community that worked in overdrive to unseat him.  It was the Israeli leftist media who picked sides and tried to break the hope of the common man, but just like on Nov. 8th, the Israelis said no.  They said no to globalism and they demanded their country back.

The lessons from Bibi Netanyahu’s and Donald Trump’s victories is never to underestimate a person or nation’s desire to be true to itself and to chart its own course.  Man’s soul desires the freedom to choose, to learn, and to develop.  Government interference and antithetical to the process of Creation.  Without globalism, true freedom based on national sovereignty and individual rights has a chance to guide the world.

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American Uprising

Originally on Frontpage Magazine

This wasn’t an election. It was a revolution.

It’s midnight in America. The day before fifty million Americans got up and stood in front of the great iron wheel that had been grinding them down. They stood there even though the media told them it was useless. They took their stand even while all the chattering classes laughed and taunted them.

They were fathers who couldn’t feed their families anymore. They were mothers who couldn’t afford health care. They were workers whose jobs had been sold off to foreign countries. They were sons who didn’t see a future for themselves. They were daughters afraid of being murdered by the “unaccompanied minors” flooding into their towns. They took a deep breath and they stood.

They held up their hands and the great iron wheel stopped.

The Great Blue Wall crumbled. The impossible states fell one by one. Ohio. Wisconsin. Pennsylvania. Iowa. The white working class that had been overlooked and trampled on for so long got to its feet. It rose up against its oppressors and the rest of the nation, from coast to coast, rose up with it.

They fought back against their jobs being shipped overseas while their towns filled with migrants that got everything while they got nothing. They fought back against a system in which they could go to jail for a trifle while the elites could violate the law and still stroll through a presidential election. They fought back against being told that they had to watch what they say. They fought back against being held in contempt because they wanted to work for a living and take care of their families.

They fought and they won.

This wasn’t a vote. It was an uprising. Like the ordinary men chipping away at the Berlin Wall, they tore down an unnatural thing that had towered over them. And as they watched it fall, they marveled at how weak and fragile it had always been. And how much stronger they were than they had ever known.

Who were these people? They were leftovers and flyover country. They didn’t have bachelor degrees and had never set foot in a Starbucks. They were the white working class. They didn’t talk right or think right. They had the wrong ideas, the wrong clothes and the ridiculous idea that they still mattered.

They were wrong about everything. Illegal immigration? Everyone knew it was here to stay. Black Lives Matter? The new civil rights movement. Manufacturing? As dead as the dodo. Banning Muslims? What kind of bigot even thinks that way? Love wins. Marriage loses. The future belongs to the urban metrosexual and his dot com, not the guy who used to have a good job before it went to China or Mexico.

They couldn’t change anything. A thousand politicians and pundits had talked of getting them to adapt to the inevitable future. Instead they got in their pickup trucks and drove out to vote.

And they changed everything.

Barack Hussein Obama boasted that he had changed America. A billion regulations, a million immigrants, a hundred thousand lies and it was no longer your America. It was his.

He was JFK and FDR rolled into one. He told us that his version of history was right and inevitable.

And they voted and left him in the dust. They walked past him and they didn’t listen. He had come to campaign to where they still cling to their guns and their bibles. He came to plead for his legacy.

And America said, “No.”

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Fifty millions Americans repudiated him. They repudiated the Obamas and the Clintons. They ignored the celebrities. They paid no attention to the media. They voted because they believed in the impossible. And their dedication made the impossible happen.

Americans were told that walls couldn’t be built and factories couldn’t be opened. That treaties couldn’t be unsigned and wars couldn’t be won. It was impossible to ban Muslim terrorists from coming to America or to deport the illegal aliens turning towns and cities into gangland territories.

It was all impossible. And fifty million Americans did the impossible. They turned the world upside down.

It’s midnight in America. CNN is weeping. MSNBC is wailing. ABC calls it a tantrum. NBC damns it. It wasn’t supposed to happen. The same machine that crushed the American people for two straight terms, the mass of government, corporations and non-profits that ran the country, was set to win.

Instead the people stood in front of the machine. They blocked it with their bodies. They went to vote even though the polls told them it was useless. They mailed in their absentee ballots even while Hillary Clinton was planning her fireworks victory celebration. They looked at the empty factories and barren farms. They drove through the early cold. They waited in line. They came home to their children to tell them that they had done their best for their future. They bet on America. And they won.

They won improbably. And they won amazingly.

They were tired of ObamaCare. They were tired of unemployment. They were tired of being lied to. They were tired of watching their sons come back in coffins to protect some Muslim country. They were tired of being called racists and homophobes. They were tired of seeing their America disappear.

And they stood up and fought back. This was their last hope. Their last chance to be heard.

Watch this video. See ten ways John Oliver destroyed Donald Trump. Here’s three ways Samantha Bee broke the internet by taunting Trump supporters. These three minutes of Stephen Colbert talking about how stupid Trump is owns the internet. Watch Madonna curse out Trump supporters. Watch Katy Perry. Watch Miley Cyrus. Watch Robert Downey Jr. Watch Beyonce campaign with Hillary. Watch. Click.

Watch fifty million Americans take back their country.

The media had the election wrong all along. This wasn’t about personalities. It was about the impersonal. It was about fifty million people whose names no one except a server will ever know fighting back. It was about the homeless woman guarding Trump’s star. It was about the lost Democrats searching for someone to represent them in Ohio and Pennsylvania. It was about the union men who nodded along when the organizers told them how to vote, but who refused to sell out their futures.

No one will ever interview all those men and women. We will never see all their faces. But they are us and we are them. They came to the aid of a nation in peril. They did what real Americans have always done. They did the impossible.

America is a nation of impossibilities. We exist because our forefathers did not take no for an answer. Not from kings or tyrants. Not from the elites who told them that it couldn’t be done.

The day when we stop being able to pull of the impossible is the day that America will cease to exist.

Today is not that day. Today fifty million Americans did the impossible.

Midnight has passed. A new day has come. And everything is about to change.

If Hillary Wins There Will Be War With Russia and If Donald Wins There Will Be War With Soros

As the first election results are set to be released, it is clear that the two candidates stand far apart on major issues.

Hillary Clinton has not shied away from sharp rhetoric when it comes to Russia’s Putin.  She has just about blamed him for most of the world’s troubles.  She has made it clear she will push for a no-fly zone in Syria which would bring the USA and Russia into direct conflict.

Putin is watching the election closely and will react very differently if Hillary wins.  One thing is for certain, Hillary has just about guaranteed that Putin will become enemy number one during her Presidency. If you think fighting a direct war with a fellow nuclear power is a good idea make sure to vote for Hillary Clinton.

As far as Donald Trump, his war is against the Wall Street backed elites.  He has tremendous disdain for people like George Soros who Trump believes has his hand in undermining the very fabric of the USA.  Trump has made it clear that his war begins in DC and Wall Street. If you want to drain the swamp and reset America, vote Trump.

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INTO THE FRAY:The Elections are for President—Not Pope

“You knooow…C’mon Who do you think is out of touch?” – Barack Obama, commenting derisively on Hillary Clinton, 2008

“Hillary Clinton, she’ll say anything and change nothing” – I am Barack Obama…and I approve this message – From a 2008 Obama election campaign ad.

“The fate of the republic rests on your shoulders. The fate of the world is teetering and you…are going to have to make sure that we push it in the right direction.”  Barack Obama, urging voters to support Hillary Clinton, November 3, 2016

It would, indeed, be in no way an exaggeration to describe next week’s US elections as perhaps the most significant in recent history, a real “fork in the road” for the future of the over 200-hundred year Union.

Waning adherence to founding principles?

This Union proved to be a remarkable socio-political creation. Largely because of its founding values, as articulated in its founding documents and later amendment’s, it developed into the most influential, prosperous powerful country on the planet.

Indeed, in great measure, by holding fast to those values, it managed to maintain its position of primacy since the early decades of the last century.

But in the last decade this began to change perceptibly. Adherence to the underlying fundamentals–its Anglo-Saxon cultural roots and its Judeo-Christian (indeed Judeo-Protestant) ethical foundations—has begun to wane. Identification with, and belief in, what made America, America began to erode and fray—and with it, the coherence of the identity that made it exceptional.

Clearly, it was not America’s natural resources and mineral wealth that generated its unparalleled success. After all, numerous other countries have been endowed by nature with vast riches but none of them were able to harness the enormous creativity and productive energy of their population on a similar scale/intensity as America did.

What set America apart was the manner in which it managed to mobilize its human resources and facilitate opportunity for talent, ingenuity and industry to flower.

There is no way to decouple this remarkable accomplishment from the original organizing principles set out for the nation at its founding. Similarly, there is no way to decouple these organizing principles from the civilizational foundations from which they were drawn.

Clearly then, as America of today diverges increasingly from identification with those principles and civilizational foundations, and the spirit that they were imbued with, it will increasingly jeopardize the key to its own exceptionalism—and the exceptional achievement that accompanied it.

Diversity is strength, but diffusion is weakness

Of course I can already hear the howls of outraged indignation that this kind of talk borders on bigotry, and reflects gross ignorance as to sources of American strength and success. They will, no doubt, point to the enormous contributions made by immigrants, who hailed from civilizational backgrounds far removed from any traces of Judeo-Protestant influence—from East Asia to Latin America. They will of course recite the worn-out mantra that “diversity is strength” and underscore how Americans of Buddhist, Hindu, Catholic and other origins have all been part of the American success story.

This is all entirely true—and equally irrelevant to the point being made. For it was only in the environment created by the unique societal foundations of America, and the opportunities it afforded, that allowed the immigrants, drawn to its shores from other socio-cultural settings, to blossom. After all, if this was not the case, why would they leave their countries of origin?

So, as long as these foundations remained the dominant determinant of societal realities in America, the country could continue to absorb productive forces from other societal backgrounds, without jeopardizing the sustainability of its past success.

This, however, is not the case when large bodies of immigrants flow into the country and wish to establish communities which retain—indeed, actively sustain—much of what they left behind in their countries of origin, and which, presumably, comprised much of the motivation for them to leave. It is then that dynamic diversity begins its decline into dysfunctional diffusion.

Tolerance vs self-abnegation

To illustrate the point somewhat simplistically: It is one thing if a Mexican immigrant arrives in the US, integrates into American society and becomes a productive American. It is quite another, if waves of Mexican immigrants arrive in America and transform significant parts of it into Mexico.

Thus, when immigrants from diverse socio-ethnic backgrounds blend into the dominant culture, the result might well be a synergetic outcome beneficial to both. But this is unlikely when largely discordant immigrant cultures begin to impose themselves on the dominant host culture, which begins to forego important parts of its identity for fear of “offending” new comers, who were attracted to it precisely because of what that dominant culture offered them.

Accordingly, while tolerance of diverse minorities is clearly enlightened self-interest, self-abnegation to accommodate discordant minority predilections is, no less clearly, a detrimental denial of self-worth. What has all this to do with the upcoming elections on Tuesday?

Well, a great deal! Indeed, in many ways it lies at the heart of the decision for whom to cast one’s ballot. It not only separates out sharply between the two candidates’ declared platforms and campaign pronouncements, but more profoundly–-far more profoundly—it separates out between their prospective constituencies and the long-term vested interests of the respective political Establishments that support them.

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Real “fork in the road”

Accordingly, one does not require advanced degrees in political science to grasp just how the relevant political landscape lies as the crucial ballot approaches.

It is beyond dispute that, because of the demographic composition of its support base, any Democratic Party candidate, Hillary Clinton included, will be exceedingly loath to curtail significant influxes of largely unregulated and un-vetted immigrants from the Mid-East, Latin America and elsewhere. For this reluctance will clearly find favor with many of her current constituents and prospective new ones – particularly in light of the astounding electoral practice in the US which requires no photo ID to allow one to choose who will have access to the nation’s nuclear codes—while such identification is obligatory for a myriad of other far less significant purposes.

By contrast, whether or not one lends credence to Donald Trump’s strident declarations on severe restrictions he plans to impose on immigration across the county’s southern border and from Muslim countries, it is clearly very much in his political interest to act along such lines—since this will deny his adversaries the potential expansion of their political base.

So those, then, are the real stakes in these elections – the real “fork in the road”: A choice between a candidate, whose vested political interests induce her to permit changes that will permanently alter the character and composition of America, or one whose political interests compel him to resist this.

The elections as “damage control”

In many ways—most of them, regrettable—these are elections that are significantly different from virtually all previous ones.

Indeed, there is unprecedented dissatisfaction with—even, disapproval of—both candidates.

Thus, Clinton is hardly an ideal candidate—even for Clinton supporters; and Trump far from an ideal candidate—even for Clinton opponents.

Accordingly, far more than a choice of whom to vote for, these elections will be dominantly a choice of whom not to vote for. They will be far less a process that determines whom the voters want to ensconce in the White House, and far more about whom they want prevented from being ensconced in it.

Thus, rather than what they hope their preferred candidate can do for the country, their ballot will be determined by what they fear the other candidate will do to the country.

In this sense, these elections are largely an exercise in damage control.

Or at least that is what it should be: A choice, foisted on a largely dismayed electorate, to install the candidate least likely to be able to inflict irreparable damage on the Republic, until American democracy can somehow recover and offer the voter a more appealing selection of candidates in the future.

A relatively simple choice

In this respect, the choice ought to be relatively simple. For regardless of what one might believe as to what either candidate has in his/ her heart, it is clearly Trump who has a greater interest in keeping America American; while Clinton has a vested interest in endorsing the burgeoning inflow of immigrants, who, rather than embrace the founding values of America, are liable to exploit them to change the face of US society beyond recognition.

Indeed, one should be bear in mind that there is nothing “universal” about the noble values on which America was founded and evolved. Quite the opposite. After all, the spirit of liberty and tolerance they reflect are not the hallmarks of many—perhaps even most—of the countries around the globe. So, unless these values are diligently preserved, they could well be mortally undermined. It is difficult to think of anything that could undermine the values of a society more fundamentally than the massive influx of largely unregulated un-vetted newcomers, for whom those values are not only foreign, but often antithetical, to those of the countries of origin—something countries like Sweden and Germany have sadly discovered to their great detriment.

But that, of course, is precisely what should be expected if Clinton wins. It would require hefty doses of unbounded, and largely unfounded, optimism to expect any outcome other than increasingly severe erosion of societal values that have defined America in the past.

Specter of irretrievable change

But it is not only the structural bias of Clinton’s political interests that makes her potentially the more permanently damaging incumbent to the character of the American Republic, but also her ability to do so. For, as a seasoned politician, well-versed in the corridors of governmental power and machinations of the political Establishment, she has far greater capacity and reach to ensure that her ill-conceived and detrimental policies are implemented and durably entrenched, than the inexperienced maverick novice Trump. After all, he would undoubtedly require many months “learning the ropes”, before he manages to implement and entrench any allegedly injurious policies that perturb his detractors.

As I wrote in last week’s column, the 2009 Obama administration set a course for America substantially different from those set by his predecessors, and in important ways highly discordant with them. Obama’s 2012 reelection helped solidify the anomalous (the less charitable might say “perverse”) change in direction along which he took the nation.

The election next week of Clinton, who is firmly committed, indeed virtually compelled, to continue with Obama policies is more than likely to make that course irretrievable, and the US—much like several luckless EU countries—will be set on an inevitable downward spiral toward third-world status…from which a growing portion of its population hoped to extricate itself

Obama is right—but Obama is wrong

So President Obama was right when he declared at a North Carolina rally (November 3, 2016): “The fate of the republic rests on your [the voters] shoulders…The fate of the world is teetering…” For these elections will indeed have momentous consequences both for the US and across the world. He is, however entirely mistaken as to the direction in which he urges them “to make sure…we push it” (See introductory excerpt)

Sadly, however, despite the fact that these are likely to be the most consequential elections in modern history, it appears (if the conduct of the campaign is to be any guideline) that they may well be decided because of the most inconsequential reasons. For it seems, it will not be the strategic direction in which the country will be taken that will determine the outcome, but rumors and innuendo as to the character defects of Trump and his alleged crude indiscretions with women. Given the stakes, this seems almost inconceivable. Trump should be elected not because of what may occur if he is, but because of what will almost certainly occur if he is not. He should not be judged on what his incumbency might achieve, but what his incumbency must prevent.

So in weighing the grim alternatives, the US electorate would do well to bear in mind that these elections are for the Presidency not the Papacy. They must choose who is best suited (or the least unsuited) to be President – not the Pope.

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Trump’s True Opponent

As these lines are being written it is Thursday morning in the US. Wikileaks announced hours ago that it is about to drop the mother lode of material it has gathered on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Previous Wikileaks document drops set the stage for FBI director James Comey’s letter to Congress last Friday, when he informed lawmakers that he has ordered his agents to reopen their probe of Clinton’s private email server, which he closed last July.

One week on, the FBI probe still dominates election coverage. If Wikileaks is true to its word, and even if it isn’t, Clinton and her campaign team will be unable to shift public attention away from the ballooning allegations of criminal corruption. This will remain the story of the election when polls open Tuesday morning.

The focus on Clinton’s alleged criminality in the final weeks of the election brings the 2016 presidential race full circle. Since the contest began in the summer of 2015, it was clear that this would be an election like no other.

After eight years of Barack Obama’s White House, America is a different place than it was in 2008, when Obama ran on a platform of hope and change.

Americans today are angry, scared, divided and cynical.

The outcome of this presidential election will determine whether Obama’s fundamental transformation of America will become a done deal. If Clinton prevails, the Obama revolution will be irreversible.

If Republican nominee Donald Trump emerges the winner, America will embark on a different course.

But even support or opposition to Obama’s revolution is not what this election is about. The anger that Americans’ feel is more powerful than mere policy differences – no matter how strongly felt.

More than a referendum on Obama, Tuesday vote will be a vote about Republican nominee Donald Trump and what he has come to represent. Voters on Tuesday will have to decide what they oppose more: Trump or what he stands for.

Trump is without a doubt a morally dubious candidate.

His prolific record of trash talking make the allegations of sexual harassment leveled against him by multiple women in recent weeks ring true. So too, his willingness to truck in racially charged rhetoric, like his accusation that the Mexican government is sending its rapists and violent criminals across the border for Americans to deal with, has made him toxic for millions of American voters.

But for his supporters, who Trump is, is less important than what he represents.

What he represents is the voters’ rebellion against the American establishment – not just the political establishment, but the full spectrum of the American elite. From Washington to Wall Street, from college campuses to the media, tens of millions of Americans believe that their establishment is rotten to the core. And they support Trump because he is running against the establishment.

Popular resentment and animosity towards the powers that be was enough to win Trump the Republican nomination. And as he closes the gap with Clinton in the lead up to Tuesday, chances are rising that it will be enough to get him into the White House as well.

How did we get to this point?

Trump’s rise has been in the making for a decade.

During the Bush administration, many Republicans quietly fretted that George W. Bush and his advisers didn’t know what they were doing in Iraq. They were angered even more by Bush’s bank bailout in 2008 and his massive increase of the national debt.

But as angry as they were at Bush, Republican anger at their leaders has grown exponentially during Obama’s tenure in office.

Since Obama entered office he has used the powers of his office to seize powers no president had ever dared to claim. And Republicans – who bore the brunt of the damage his policies caused – expected their presidential nominees and congressional representatives to protect them. They expected them to curb Obama’s perceived abuses at the IRS, the EPA, at the border with Mexico, the Justice Department, in the healthcare industry, the military, the State Department and beyond.

lev-haolam-international-pressure

In both the 2008 and 2012 elections, millions of Republican voters were appalled by their successive nominees’ refusal to go on the offensive against Obama. In 2008, Sen. John McCain refused to mention Obama’s deep and longstanding ties with radical political and social forces, including his decades’ long relationship with his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, who regularly preached hatred for America from his pulpit.

In 2012, Mitt Romney simply choked. He couldn’t make a competent case against Obama or withstand media criticism, that as the Republican nominee he should have expected.

Republican voters walked away from their party’s defeat with the sense that their candidates cared more about what media said about them than they cared about winning.

Republican voters took an even dimmer view of their congressional leadership. In both the 2010 and 2014 congressional elections, Republicans won big in both houses of Congress. The voters’ clear wish was for their lawmakers to check Obama. But instead, the Republican leadership lashed out at their own voters while failing time after time to check Obama’s perceived abuse of power.

Case in point of course was the Republican Senate leadership’s failure to view Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran as a treaty, despite the fact that it clearly met the standard to be so viewed. By going along with Obama’s lie that the nuclear deal, which destroyed 70 years of US nuclear nonproliferation policy in one fell swoop, was a mere presidential agreement, the Senate leaders enabled Obama to implement his radical deal with little difficulty.

Trump was elected to be the Republican presidential nominee because Trump is the opposite of McCain, Romney and their counterparts in the GOP’s congressional leadership ranks. Trump isn’t merely running against Democrats and the liberal establishment. He is running against the Republican establishment as well. And his supporters love him for it.

Trump began building his anti-establishment credentials as soon as he announced his candidacy. At the first Republican primary debate in August 2015, he effectively declared war against the Republican establishment when he refused to pledge to support whatever candidate the party elected to serve as its nominee.

And the establishment understood that he was the gravest threat to their power and began attacking him.

What they didn’t understand was that he had goaded them into a fight that they could only lose.

The secret of Trump’s success has been a simple logical calculation. As the anti-establishment candidate, he has managed to castigate every criticism launched against him – no matter how valid – as the ravings of the corrupt establishment.

The establishment has not thrown in the towel though. According to one analysis, 91 percent of the media coverage of Trump’s campaign has been negative.

But the negative press has only strengthened his supporters’ conviction that he is the man of the hour.

But the attacks, again, have boomeranged.

A poll taken by USA Today earlier this week demonstrates this point. The poll asked likely voters, “What do you think is the primary threat that might try to change the election results?”

For months, the Clinton campaign has claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin is interfering in the election on Trump’s behalf. Yet a mere 10 percent of voters polled said that “foreign interests such as Russian hackers,” would try to steal the elections.

On the other hand, 46 percent said the news media would. Another 21 percent said “the national political establishment” was intervening in the elections to shift the vote in the direction they wish.

In other words, 67 percent of voters believe that the establishment Trump is running against is trying to steal the elections.

Anti-Trump voters can be grouped into three often overlapping categories. First, of course there are the Democrats. These voters want Clinton to win. They support what Obama has done as president. They support Clinton because they want to see Obama’s policies continued and because they think she is the best candidate for the job.

Second, there is the establishment itself. In August The Washington Examiner polled Washington elites.

Among members of the Beltway establishment, support for Clinton is overwhelming. She beat Trump 62-22 percent. Twenty percent of Washington Republicans said they support Clinton.

These first two groups of anti-Trump voters support Clinton because they are more or less satisfied with the way things are.

The third group of anti-Trump voters oppose him because they believe that he is unfit to serve. They are Republicans and Independents.

It is this third group that brings us to the greatest anomaly of the election. According to Real Clear Politics’ average of polling data, Trump is trailing Clinton in national polls in a four-way race 43-45 percent. But at the same time, a mere 38 percent of Americans have a favorable view of him. In other words, millions of Americans who cannot stand Trump intend to vote for him on Tuesday.

This anomaly is explained by the public’s revulsion with the establishment. And this brings us to the Wikileaks documents and the FBI’s reopening of its criminal probe of Clinton and her team.

Clinton’s support levels have not dropped in the polls in the week that passed since Comey informed Congress that he had reopened the email probe.

On October 28, the Real Clear Politics poll average placed voter support for Clinton at 44.9 percent. On November 2, it had risen to 45.3 percent.

In the same time period, Trump’s support level rose from 41 to 43.6 percent.

Trump is rising because Republicans who have been undecided or have supported Libertarian Gary Johnson have decided to make their peace with him.

The renewed investigations against Clinton are not driving her voters away from her. As Clinton herself argued hours after Comey’s decision became public, her supporters have already factored in her legal difficulties. Trump is rising because with every new report of Clinton’s alleged corruption, Republican and Independent voters are reminded of how corrupt the establishment has become.

Their view of the lesser of two evils is shifting.

By Wednesday we will know whether the Republicans and Independents who are now accepting Trump will be enough to put him over the top. But what is clear enough today is that the voters who reject the establishment and view it as incurably corrupt will give Clinton no quarter if she manages to eke out a victory. At the same time, the establishment’s hatred of Trump will foment Washington battles the likes of which we have never seen, if he wins on Tuesday.

There is a lot hanging in the balance in this election. But only one question will determine the outcome.

If Trump wins on Tuesday, it will be the establishment he defeats.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

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After November 8th the King is Coming

The world is about to be thrown into a level of chaos of unknown proportions. None of this depends on the outcome of the elections in America.  Either way the path ahead post elections is fraught with danger.  The prophecies in the bible are clear.  When the nations of the world gather and come against Israel’s control of Jerusalem, the Almighty himself will intervene and save his children.  This prophecy can, like all prophecies be revealed in a variety of ways.

It is almost guaranteed that Obama will, especially if Trump wins come against Israel in the UN. Eventhough the UN Security Council vote will not come with a force of arms attached to it, the coming vote (which Obama will not veto) will lay down the “final boundaries” of a “Palestinian” State. This will include Israel’s biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria and “East Jerusalem.”  Expect the Old City to fall under international control.

With three months left in Obama’s term there will not be enough time for the world to send forces against Israel. However the vote itself will fulfill the prophecy in both Zecharia and Yechezkiel. What will happen afterwards are events that have already been set into motion. The nations of the world instead of destroying Israel will fight one another as it says, “Jerusalem will be a Cup of Poison.” Russia is already preparing for war against the USA, as is China. Europe is preparing to repel an invasion from Russia.  Iran and Syria are ready to attack Israel and Saudi Arabia is ready to defend against attacks from Iran.

Chaos is coming, but we know that chaos leads to order as it always has. Afterall in creation, night comes first followed by the day.  Night represents chaos and day represents order. Noah and his children experienced intense chaos and yet when the door to the Ark opened, the world was ready to be put back together again by their descendents.

Rebbe Nachman of Breslov tells us the Messiah, descendent of King David will conquer the world without firing a shot. He will fight with prayer as “prayer is his main weapon” (Lekutei Mohran, Lesson 2).  In a moment when the world has exhausted itself and G-dlessness reigns he is revealed to teach us that it is in fact the Creator who directly has done, does, and will do everything in the world for our good. The Messiah will open our hearts so we can worship the true King, G-d Almighty directly.

In Rebbe Nachman’s lesson concerning Tzohar (Lekutei Mohran, Lesson 112) the light in the Ark, he teaches that all holiness comes to the world surrounded by evil. We ourselves find it hard to allow the Creator’s light into our lives. The flood of anti-holiness and G-dlessness has gripped the world. However desperate things appear, Rebbe Nachman teaches that any of us can break through the layers of darkness and despair by making an opening to the Creator’s light within our own lives.  Afterall, there is no despair in the world at all since everything is done for our own good.

What is coming may be scary, but it is the final moment of chaos and darkness before the greatest light is revealed. The Midrash in Yalkut Shemoni relating to the End of Days says: “Do not be afraid my children. Everything I have done I have done for you.”

Buckle your seatbelts, the King is coming.

Break the BDS

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