Ordinarily I find Thomas Friedman tedious and irritating, but on occasion he speaks the truth with some eloquence. Today's NY TIMES column is one such instance. Friedman quite plausibly compares Donald Trump's statement yesterday about Hillary Clinton to the right-wing violent language in Israel that got Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin assassinated.
American is awash in guns and filled with tens of millions of Trump supporters, a good many of whom are clearly unhinged and armed. It will be a miracle if we get through this election without some serious and potentially devastating violence.
Here and then online I still see people who claim to be on the left who support Trump over Clinton because his foreign policy is supposedly less imperialist or because he is anti-free trade, etc., etc.
ReplyDeleteThey could be pro-Trump trolls, but they could be sincere.
I know that you've written a lot against Trump, but have you thought about summing up all your thoughts on Trump and why he is dangerous (I agree with you) in one longer essay or post which could be a reference for others on the left who share your view of Trump but lack your ability to synthesize so much information so well and so cogently?
I don't see any rush but if you were to write it, I'd wait a few weeks before publishing it definitively, since Trump's ability to fuck up never surprises us.
There's a futures market that's opened up in which people are trading (for cash) on what Drumpf / Clinton might do or say next, as well as other elements and components of this election (e.g. how much money they'll raise before X, who'll take which state, etc.). In one sense, Drumpf is so very volatile that he makes for the kind of unpredictability that markets love (RISK!). On the other (tiny) hand, he repeats himself so often that there are no good prices available for things he'll utter. But since Drumpf supporters are often PROUD to bet on their man saying or doing things which everyone else can see beyond – since their sense of faith in his character and proclamations makes them highly irrational participants in these markets – there's still plenty of money to be made ('a fool and his money...'). I wouldn't have been all that surprised if there'd been an offering for whether Drumpf would hint at assassination, and that someone just cleaned up from this, and I'm sure new offerings along those lines are now openly being traded.
ReplyDeleteThere's an amusing podcast called Election Profit Makers here http://www.electionprofitmakers.com/ where two friends dabble in these markets. I guess the idea is that if, at the end of the day, your team loses horribly, you might be able to get some consolation from having made some money along the way? The site they're using is called 'Predict It' -http://PredictIt.org - as I'm typing this it's offering a futures contract on 'Will Drumpf Drop Out by 31st August?'. If you make any money off that, you could push it into Bernie's new campaign. This wheel's on fire, rolling down the road...
This is the weirdest election ever! Thanks for the tip. I will check out those sites, but probably not place any bets. I am very risk averse when it comes to such things. I inherited it. My father's proudest boast was that he never bought anything in the stock market, and so was unaffected by the '29 crash. His big plunge was buying, in 1940, the tiny house we grew up in. He paid $5999. It turned out to be a good bet.
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