The Democratic Debate: Tag Teaming Hillary Clinton

The Democratic debate rolled around again and it was a little more interesting this time because there were only three candidates on stage, the other likely contenders having resigned from the race. While this potentially created the opportunity to just increase the focus on the two ongoing leaders, Clinton and Sanders, it probably provided much more attention for Martin O'Malley, who was practically invisible prior to last night.

Diverse They Ain't

I have mentioned before that the Republican field of candidates is much more diverse than the Democrats' round up of the usual suspects this time around. A picture of the three contenders looks more like a klan rally than anything else.

OK, maybe that's a little unfair. After all, these three are only "white" in the very loose definition of race that exists today. Sanders is, after all, Jewish and O'Malley is Irish. The Irish were not really considered white even a century ago. Remember who was building the railroads alongside blacks and the Chinese in the 19th century?

Nevertheless, the GOP does come off with more points for diversity this time around. They've got multiple hispanics, a very viable black candidate and a woman.

How They Did

Hillary Clinton

• The other Democrats finally took off the gloves and lashed out at Hillary. Many analysts have stated previously that Hillary was going to run away with this nomination unless somebody manned up and started criticizing her. 
• Both Sanders and O'Malley were able to take the high ground diplomatically because neither of them can be tied to voting for the Middle East debacle. Clinton joined with other Democrats to vote for the controversial invasion of Iraq which undeniably led to the present chaos in that region  and in Europe.
• They were also not afraid to bring up her ties to Wall Street. However, most seem to agree that her defense was adequate. Still, it was a defense and it shows that Clinton is no longer untouchable. She is going to have to defend herself if she is going to get this nomination.

Bernie Sanders

• The biggest advance for Sanders came simply with his willingness to attack Clinton's record. Providing this contrast will undoubtedly improve his long-range chances of taking an electoral lead. 
• He failed to utilize the email issue, though, and that is perhaps Clinton's greatest weakness. This sort of cooperation among the candidates stinks and leads me to wonder if the race isn't simply an opportunity for Clinton to air out a lot of issues publicly and make voters bored of them before her cakewalk to the national election.
• Sanders also did not look good when Clinton ridiculed his idea of free college for everybody. She pointed out that this policy would use taxpayer money to pay for Donald Trump's kids to go to school. Hopefully that is the end of that piece of idiocy,

Martin O'Malley

• Martin O'Malley wins big simply for having a lot of face time with the public. This was a great opportunity for voters to hear an option to Sanders and Clinton. He presents a major threat to these other two simply by showing up and potentially leeching off undecided or less fervent voters. 
• He also joined in the attacks on Clinton. He called her a flip-flopper on gun control.
• In particular, he benefits by having had nothing to do with her war record and her participation in regime changes, such as that in Libya which has obviously destabilized the country.

I am not a Democrat but I can say that the democratic race is finally starting to look exciting. It seemed like Clinton was locking up the race when Sanders asked everyone to ignore her email dilemma. She may still run away with this one but there is at least the appearance of a real race at the moment. That will probably improve the ratings and, after all, that is all American culture really has any more: Facebook likes and Twitter hashtags.

The Democratic Debates: Clinton Uber Alles

While the Republicans have been stealing the show for months, thanks to the antics of Donald Trump, the Democrats are finally getting some limelight now that their own debates have begun. Before now, the democratic race certainly stirred interest among democrats themselves but their intrigues did not cross party lines in terms of excitement. Most republicans were entertained enough by their own party's three-ring circus.

The first democratic debate did not get nearly as much press and public attention as the republican debates but that may be due to predictability. In an interesting turn of events, it is the GOP that now holds more diverse views than the Democratic Party. With the exception of the largely-ignored Jim Webb, all democratic contenders hate guns and religion, love illegal immigration, higher taxes and homosexuality and are happy printing money for entitlement programs. Nevertheless, millions of liberal Americans tuned in to watch other people largely agree with them.

And the Winner Is...

I am sure many low-information viewers were confused as to the identities of the people on stage. The competitors really boil down to the First Two and the Other Three. While the latter group showed up, no one was really listening to anything but the presentations of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

In the aftermath, opinions vary as to who won the debate, though the MSM would have you believe that everyone agrees with them in thinking that Hillary Clinton won. Some polls, such as a Facebook vote, gave the victory to Sanders before being erased. The same happened with an early CNN poll. I am not sure why the Founders bothered to put safeguards such as the US Senate in the government to protect against fickle public opinion when they could have just relied on the media to do so.

Essentially, however, I agree with Clinton's victory for one simple reason. No matter how she and Sanders may weigh in the balances, Clinton wins because Sanders is such a hopeless beta-male that he cannot promote himself effectively.

During the debate, he exclaimed how sick he was of hearing about Clinton's emails and basically turned attention away from potential criticisms of her work as Secretary of State. With that possibility eliminated, the other candidates did not have any way to distinguish themselves positively. Remember, none of them have any real distinct ideas about domestic and foreign policy unless they are able to point out Clinton's vote for the war in Iraq and her questionable work as Secretary of State.

This move was classic Sanders. Several weeks ago, he allowed himself to be pushed off the stage by two Black Lives Matters representatives who insulted him and the entire crowd. He was unable to do anything but pump his fist for Black Power like the effete 60's radical that he is. One wonders what Sanders would do on the world stage when Putin or Xi tried to push him around.

The Other Three and the Shadow of Joe

Mention should at least be made of Jim Webb, Lincoln Chafee and Martin O.Malley. They are really running for vice-president by now and their chances even for that scrap are slim. Maybe by now they are starting to get realistic and fix their sights on cabinet posts.

The real question at this point regards the possible entrance of Joe Biden. A lot of commentators think that Clinton's showing was strong enough to convince Biden to stay out. Of course, funding and Biden's proclivity for gaffes of all sorts may push him into the race anyway. Now that would make the debates worth watching!

Two Conflicting Sentiments in American Politics

A few years ago, something occurred during a biology class that I was taking which illuminated the modern political and social landscape of America. With just one comment made by a classmate, it was as if someone just turned on the light in a dark room and, suddenly, everything was clear. I knew right where I and everybody else was in that room with regard to political ideals.

A Biology Lesson

I own much of this illumination to the identities of the people involved. I am a middle-aged man who, at the time, was taking a pre-requisite course to get into nursing school ( I graduated a few months ago). The conversation which I was witnessing took place between my instructor, perhaps 5-10 years younger than me, and a young girl taking the class. She was probably 20 years old.

The professor was explaining the nucleotides that compose the very basic elements of our genetic structure. He remarked that errors in the layouts of these nucleotides were responsible for many diseases. In fact, he said, it was known that UVA radiation could cause thymine nucleotides to bind into units called thymine dimers. These mutations were the primary cause of skin cancer.

Then he said that it always pained him to hear about people using tanning beds. They were just increasing the chances that their thymine would mutate and cause cancer.

The young girl in the class spoke up. "That's awful. If I were president, I would outlaw those places."

The professor, God bless him, replied that there was something called the US Constitution and we were all still free to make decisions for ourselves, even if those decisions were not good for us.

The girl later went on to comment that she just didn't feel safe in a country where it was permitted to endanger yourself. As I recall, the professor turned us back to the lesson and the moment was left behind, only to live in my memory.

Safety versus Freedom

It occurred to me, as I tried to comprehend why I found the girl's comments so repulsive, that she represented one side of a dichotomy in American mindsets. It also revealed to me an explanation for the differences between the general nature of American and European political divides.

This country was founded and colonized by a wide variety of people. The Puritans were not the only ones to come over from the Old World. Yet those early Americans shared one quality or drive in life. They wanted to be free to live as they pleased. Their great common desire was to be left alone to pursue their destinies. They wanted to be free to create their own worlds and manage their own protection from the elements and from their fellow human beings.

Even later immigrants, on whom descendants of the earliest Americans looked down, shared a similar drive. They were escaping poverty or limitations of some sort in Europe in order to come here and find their own way.

In the early 20th century, the much-reviled Southern European immigrants were not coming to America to be on the dole. There was no welfare system. They fully expected to be left to their own devices when they hit the shore. As long as they had a chance to fight for their own prosperity in a land that seemed to have endless real estate and resources, they were content with the opportunity.

There is another social desire active in the world. This is the desire to be safe, to be protected. The semi-mythical contract that occurred between post-Roman Empire Europeans and the feudal knights demonstrates the centrality of this desire in the human psyche.

Allegedly, the feudal transformation of Europe occurred when villages of common people agreed to provide economic support for soldiers, typically led by the horsemen we would call knights now. in exchange for protection from the increasingly chaotic environment left as Rome's influence ebbed in Europe. I doubt any such exchange occurred as cleanly as that but I am also sure that there is a kernel of truth in it all. With banditry on the rise and the roads becoming home to crime rather than commerce, I am sure many people gave up their freedom to be safe.

Sound familiar?

As time passed, the boundlessness of US resources became somewhat less boundless. While this nation still retains an immense amount of open land, times changed during the 20th century. Urbanization increased, especially after the world wars. We became a people primarily living in cities, cities in which we were protected by police forces rather than a village posse or our own arms. Also, the generations that had come here seeking freedom passed away and were replaced by descendants who did not necessarily share their desire for freedom.

Instead, they wanted what those medieval Europeans wanted: protection from crime. These new Americans were increasingly less armed than their forefathers. They wanted to enjoy urban prosperity, learn new trades and even go to school to study the liberal arts rather than forge a new life in the wilderness or build a business from scratch. In order to do these things, they wanted government to take on the job of keeping them safe while they pursued these new goals.

They were willing to give up certain things, such as the right to bear arms, in order to create a protected environment in which they could pursue these goals. In short, they valued safety more than freedom.

That doesn't sound so awful. However, I think that this new desire for safety rather than freedom has again morphed with the latest generation into something that does, in fact, sicken me,

That girl in my biology class did not simply want to make a calculated decision to sacrifice a specific freedom in exchange for another social good. She wanted to live in an environment in which she no longer had the ability to make bad choices at all. Rather, she wanted someone else making those decisions for her. In essence, she wanted to be a perpetual child and she wanted her political leaders to act as pseudo-parents. She wanted Barack Obama to be her father and simply refuse to permit unsafe things in her home environment.

Women's Suffrage and the Infantilization of America

Something else occurred in America during this last century which I believe had a huge impact on its political and social transformation. Women became full-fledged citizens with the right to vote.

Now, the move to give women the vote was ostensibly done by forces which might be characterized as conservative today. There had long been a liberal movement to give women the vote in the Anglo Saxon world. However, the granting of voting rights was really done in Western states in order to hurry the process ending in statehood. These territories suddenly had many more voters and possessed more "statelike" populations in terms of size.

I posit that this had a big effect on the increasing concern with safety in this country. Prior to this, I am sure that most American men wanted, more than anything else, the space and opportunity to live out their lives.

Women, though, come into the world with completely different mindsets. Contrary to pseudo-lesbian feminist beliefs, women are born with family on their minds. I am not one of those who believes that women are naturally more nurturing or more gentle than men. Anyone who has been married knows that this is simply not true,

However, by force of millions of years of biology, women do tend to think in terms of family and children. They are more naturally comfortable with children. To their credit, we probably owe much of our rise from the animal kingdom to women's incessant chattering with children, which helped develop those children's minds with regard to language.

I think that this sudden preponderance of women in the voting bloc (they are over 50% of the population) explains much of the recent past politically.

How much of our political conversation, especially since the onset of the Cold War, has been dedicated to the cause of protection? We wanted to be protected from the Nazis. the Soviets, the terrorists and now,increasingly, people who say "mean" things. Women have been all too happy to throw out freedom of speech in order to prevent feelings from being hurt. This reminds me of a mother forbidding her children to broach certain topics just because she doesn't want to deal with another familial eruption.

Of course, it is not just women who engage in this kind of thinking. Men do it, too. That is, they think this way until they become men. Boy children want to be protected from harm as much as girl children until they begin to develop. Then they begin to fight, explore, seek their own way in the world,

I think an additional phenomenon explaining this conflict in American politics is not just the addition of women to the voting bloc but also the pacification, feminization and infantilization of many men. Or, rather, it is that many men never really develop into men but remain in a stage of early adolescence which leaves them all too ready to seek safety rather than freedom in life.

Other Groups in America and in Europe

This thinking has helped me to understand why conservatives in Europe often have distinctly different views on social and economic issues when compared to American conservatives. Many conservatives in Europe consider a certain amount of socialism to be natural and even desirable.

This makes sense when you remember that they are the descendants of those peasants who chose to stay in the Old World and embraced the idea of being protected by government. The democratic governments have simply replaced the knights and nobility of centuries past.

It also explains to me why other groups in American politics never seem to embrace "American ideals". Africans did not immigrate to this country seeking freedom to live as they please. They were abducted, sold and transported here against their will. It makes sense that they do not have any genetic impulse to seek freedom over safety since their ancestors had no desire to cross the ocean to be here in the first place.

How this applies to Latino immigrants might be a good topic for another essay. This article is already too long.

However, in closing, I think that this concept helps to explain a lot that is going on in American politics now and even applies to the ascendancy of Donald Trump. Again, this is a topic for another article.

Election 2016: What Is Wrong with This Country?

The answer to this question depends on who you ask. More than one social commentator has spoken about the growing divide between Americans with regard to political views. Even someone like me, just in his 40s, can remember a time when liberals and conservatives found common ground on numerous issues. More importantly, we all went to social gatherings and managed to get along in public. As Election 2016 nears, the issues that divide us became ever more clear.

Now, the tone has changed significantly. I was saddened to see a Facebook friend proudly proclaim that she would immediately block anyone who ever posted anything that she felt was sexist. There would be no discussion and no appeal. The person would simply be gone. Leaving aside all the comments I could make about the hubris of actually thinking that banning people from your friend list was some sort of significant threat, I thought how awful this person must be inside to be so eager to cut off relationships based on differing perceptions.

But that is increasingly the way that it is in this country. I find that it is impossible to have a distinct opinion about matters of race, sex, gender etc. without suffering immediate insult.

If I state that I do not think that Bruce Jenner is a woman, and point out simple scientific facts about trillions of cells in his body possessing the Y-chromosome, I should not expect a calm rejoinder about different views of what composes one's gender. Instead, I should be prepared to be outed in violent verbal fashion as a sexist, transphobe or whatever the fuck they call it. I can also expect to lose a friendship, apparently.

If I suggest that we are a country of immigrants and share a great deal in common with Latin Americans when compared to other immigrant waves, I can expect an energetic tirade about Mexican cartels and Latin American welfare queens and remittance schemes.

The distinct answers to this question, then, are really the answer themselves. The problem is this great divide in the perception of present reality. Each side sees completely different things wrong with the country.

What Liberals Think Is Wrong with This Country

When I was young, I definitely thought of myself as a liberal. As a liberal, I had a distinct set of concerns. They were mostly focused on working families and their economic viability. I was afraid that big business would not take care of these people without government interference to ensure their protection and their proper compensation for their work.

One motivation for leaving the Democratic party, to which I briefly belonged in the early 1990s, was the changing focus of the democrats. I do not know any liberals now who really seem to care about poor white men living in trailers and trying to support families. Instead, those men are seen increasingly as the problem by liberals. These uneducated men are likely racist and sexist.

Instead, liberal concerns seem to have turned toward identity politics. It does not seem to matter if you are earning a wage to support a family. Indeed, I believe that many liberals see the family as a unit of oppression. It appears to me that liberals envision a future of individuals who are freed from any kind of bonds on their identities: neither race nor gender nor religion will define a person.

Indeed, religion is an immensely important sub-topic in this discussion. When I was that young man so long ago, both liberals and conservatives went to church on Sunday. If anything, this issue divides liberals and conservatives more distinctly than any other. Liberals, by and large, do not go to church or they go to churches which speak more often about social issues than they do about theological issues.

While some liberals will hold back when discussing religion when they are around people whom they know to be adherents of one faith or another, Internet forums make it quite obvious that they truly despise religion and consider believers to be idiots in whom their can be no sort of trust with regard to the arch-important matters of sexism, racism etc.

What Conservatives Think Is Wrong with This Country

If you are having this conversation with a group of people and suddenly switch from a liberal to a conservative reply, you might think that you are asking questions about two different countries.

To conservatives heading into Election 2016, it appears that liberals are living in some sort of illusory world. This perception is best described by the recent Bruce Jenner event in which he altered his body surgically and declared himself to be a woman. The press immediately began using the feminine pronoun to describe Jenner. It makes conservatives think that liberals use some kind of magical thinking: whatever you think to be true is true, apparently. Conservatives begin to ask, can you make 2+2=5 in that world?

Conservatives see a black man in the presidency and assume that racism is essentially over and everyone can move on. Obviously, race did not keep a black man from reaching the highest office, so how can racism still be impacting black lives?

Conservatives fear the increasing atomization of the family. They see it as responsible for crime and even disease in the long run. Generally, they see the nuclear family as ideal.

You would have to dig deep to find a conservative who did not believe in the essential equality of the races, at least with regard to rights. However, conservatives tend to guard their opinions about the natural abilities and inclinations of each race. Decades ago, it was common for people to speak about the goals and inclinations of each race in distinct ways. Now that this is forbidden, conservatives may pay lip service to the idea of absolute equality but carefully reveal dissidence in guarded conversations.

Conservatives are also still concerned about economic issues form the cold war. They are fearful of a perceived rising socialist threat in the advance of the welfare state.

Immigration has become the biggest conservative concern, possibly because it naturally includes so many of the issues which divide liberals and conservatives. Here you find race and economics together.

Conservatives, in general, treasure the European history which they inherited and the influence of European immigrants on the country in the past. The waves of Latin American immigration which have battered the shores of this country in recent decades concern them greatly for two reasons: they see an eroding of the cultural foundations of the country and they are afraid of the economic impact of so many people living off other people's taxes.

Exceptions to the Rule

There are liberals who are in favor of greater immigration restrictions and conservatives who do not believe in God.

Certainly, the American political landscape is and always has been somewhat kaleidoscopic. My point is that it is much less so now than it was in the previous decades. Reading history, though, I can see that this concentration or crystallization of political viewpoints has happened before. Unfortunately, those periods always did great damage to the country in one way or another.

What Do I Think Is Wrong with This Country?

Most liberals that I know would definitely call me a sexist and a racist, though I am married to a Latin American woman and have experience raising a child in the home while my wife was the breadwinner. That is one of the reasons that I am not a liberal. In my opinion, they do in fact live in an imaginary world in which they can change reality with magical thinking.

Most conservatives would call me a liberal. I speak Spanish and have spent years working as a volunteer to help undocumented workers survive in this country. I like the free market but I have no problem with putting a wrecking ball to the whole health care industry and making government health insurance available to all citizens. I would definitely soak the rich by increasing their taxes.

So what do I think is wrong? The biggest problem is the division of the country into two camps. In the end, it may go back to the whole religion issue. Once liberals stopped going to church, we lost a common ground for meeting. Now liberal ideas were for the most part, cooked up outside the churches and those who remained inside the church walls began to strengthen the defenses.

We are already at war, in a sense. We just haven't started killing anybody. I certainly do not know the best way to resolve this growing divide. I am afraid that the only answer will come from the intensification of the conflict. If you look back at the history of the Civil War, you can see how the country simply came to the point where the only answer was bloodshed. People lost the ability to discuss the issues anymore.

I have good reason for thinking that it will not come to actual physical conflict in the future. I think that our individual lives are so free from the usual concerns of the past that we will not generate the motivation to go to war over these issues. For instance, everyone has more than enough to eat and a secure place to live. It is difficult to work up the ferocity required for war when you are physically comfortable.

But events can always take strange turns. You could have made the case, in the prosperous American colonies of 1770, that revolution against England was an absurd idea. Yet it happened. I hope, for the sake of my children, that we find a way to avoid conflict both before and after Election 2016 while actually working on real resolutions to our differences.

Who Is Marco Rubio?

After the second GOP debate, three top candidates were reconfirmed in their positions: Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson. An additional member of the pack stepped into the foreground: Marco Rubio.

Some Biographical Data

Marco Rubio is one of the younger republicans running for national office this year. As of this writing, he is just 44 years old. If elected, he would be one of the youngest men to ever hold the highest office in the land.

Youth is not the only thing that distinguishes Rubio from past and present GOP candidates. He is a Cuban-American from Florida, one of three serving in the US Senate. His youth and ethnicity single him out at a time when liberals are more likely than ever to depict the Republican Party as a party of old, white men.

Furthermore, Rubio is a Roman Catholic. Only one Roman Catholic, the democrat John Kennedy, has ever served as US President, though the US population is more than 20% Catholic.

Political Background

Marco Rubio won his first election in 1999, when he narrowly defeated an opponent for the Florida State House of Representatives. In just three years, he became the Majority leader in that representative body. By 2009 he was ready for bigger things and ran for the US Senate seat that had been opened by resignation. He defeated the governor of that state, Charlie Crist, in that election.

As junior Senator from Florida, Rubio has represented ideas that have become fairly typical for Republicans today. He won his seat with strong Tea Party support. He has since distinguished himself somewhat from that political group with his stance on immigration reform (rather than enforcement) and his call for strengthening the military.

He takes a strong anti-abortion stance and received a B+ from the NRA on the issue of gun control. He is less republican on climate change, essentially taking an agnostic stance.

It remains to be seen whether Rubio will have the organization behind him to manage this sudden limelight. However, if his past is any indicator, he has been aiming for greater things since the very beginning.

The Immigration Issue and Trump's Solution

For a while, it seemed like Donald Trump was almost a single-issue candidate. Immigration was the only topic he appeared to address. Now he has begun to delve into other issues with a little more depth but this still remains a major dividing line between him and other candidates. That may change over time but there is no question that he has struck a chord that resonates with many Americans.

Some Figures About Immigration

Lest you think that Trump is just eager to bash in the heads of some earnest braceros as they emerge from the Rio Grande onto American soil, you should at least understand the magnitude of the problem which he addresses.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should reveal here that I married an immigrant and that my eldest daughter is an immigrant. Both women are now citizens and were never in the US illegally. Nevertheless, and unlike many liberals who espouse amnesty for the undocumented, I actually know and converse with illegal immigrants on a regular basis. I also worked in shelters on both sides of the border when I was just out of college, helping to feed and house the undocumented from all over Latin America. I have a lot of personal knowledge about this topic and have seen many facets of the issue.

The most reliable research suggests that there are about 11 million illegal immigrants in the US right now. I am not sure exactly how that number could be determined, only that everyone seems to agree on it. I suspect that the real number might be higher.

That number is enough to offend many people thinking about the problem for the first time. However, the real problem that motivates people to vote one way or another is the impact of these immigrants on the economy and even on culture.

A major issue for many on the conservative side is the number of jobs lost to illegal immigrants. When virtually everyone was employed in the late 1990s, there was little concern about immigration. Later, especially after 2008, it became a huge issue as unemployment surged above 9%.

Though the official unemployment rate is much lower today, those who have lived on the underemployed side of that divide do not have much confidence in it. Many people returned to employment but it was at much lower-paying jobs than we had before.

It is estimated that illegal immigrants make up about 5% of the present labor force. It is pretty obvious that, with those individuals removed, the employment situation for citizens would improve dramatically.

A lot of people will also quickly start arguing around the topic of laziness vs hard work with regard to immigrants. While liberal defenders will often point out that illegal immigrants only come to find work and therefore contribute to the economy, conservative opponents will claim that they all come to get on welfare rolls.

The truth is actually that they are both correct. I know a lot of illegal couples and the usual routine is that the woman goes to sign up as a single mother and get public assistance. The man of the house usually works. No one seems to see this as dishonest. Instead, it just seems like the thing to do. And it really helps them preserve a traditional family structure.

I'm not saying that it is correct but it does seem like people genuinely believe that they are just doing what is normal. They have little understanding or sympathy for the complexities involved in paying your own way because they never have to worry about healthcare and, in many cases, the assistance even pays rent. The immigrant family is free to spend all the man's earnings on consumer goods.

The economic impact of this is a two-edged sword. There is no doubt that this is a significant drain on public resources. I know people with large families raking in thousands of dollars per month in public subsidies. At the same time, though, they make a lot of money working in manual labor and spend most of it locally, contributing to businesses in the community.

A less ambiguous burden on state resources involves the children of illegal immigrants. Around 7% of children in K-12 schools have at least one illegal parent. Given that the states spend anywhere from $5-10,000 per student each year, this drain on the tax base cannot be denied.

One aspect of the outcry about this situation that is often overlooked is the cultural aspect. People are upset not only about the financial cost of illegal immigration but also about the cultural changes brought about by their presence. Ann Coulter, a Trump supporter, has pointed out that many of the immigrants come from countries in which respect for women, children and the environment are virtually non-existent. Having lived in Latin America, I can respect this as a genuine concern.

The Trump Solution

Over the years, many different solutions to this issue have been suggested. In the mid-90s, I was present in El Paso, Texas to see operation Toe-the-Line. This approach was one essentially involving a more coordinated defense of the border, with Border Patrol trucks always within sight of each other along the border. Obviously, this increased efficiency in the local area but just moved crossings into the deserts of New Mexico and Arizona.

Other attempts have had internal focuses, busting businesses that hired large numbers of illegals and corraling them at their workplace. The SSN verification method started some years ago is another example.

Trump has called for a much more direct attempt to handle the issue. His idea is not original (Pat Buchanan spoke about this in the 1990s during his presidential run) but he may be the first one to really take it so far. Trump has called the erection of a wall running all the way from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean. This wall would be more than 1,000 miles long and I don't know how high it would have to be.

Some detractors have likened the scope of the project to the pyramids or the journey to the moon. Not only would it be too large a project, it would cost too much and be impossible to maintain. Proponents of the idea generally say that it would be less expensive than the present welfare bill for the illegal immigrants already here.

Trump's solution does not overlook those illegals already in place. The plan, which has no specifics as of yet, is for those illegals already here to be rounded up and deported. Trump has hedged on this promise a little already, saying in some remarks that the ones who behaved well and worked hard might be allowed to stay.

I tend to think that the immigration issue will be an early horse for Trump to ride on but I am not sure it will carry him the whole way. As primaries approach, I think that he will have to address other issues and that immigration will eventually take a backseat to foreign policy and economics. Even if he does win the presidency, I do not think that the wall will ever be built. The immigration problem is here to stay. Prevention may improve but I don't think anybody here illegally is going anywhere anytime soon.

The Sarah Palin Interview with Donald Trump

Here the man speaks for himself with regard to many of the issues of the day.

Donald Trump: Reactionary, Liberal or Loose Cannon?

Whenever Trump flirted with the idea of running for president in the past, I was always appalled by the idea. The last thing we needed, I thought, was a rich, political outsider coming in to mess everything up.

How strange, then, that today I see him as the most promising candidate in the field. Maybe that is because there is nothing that I would like more than to see everything in Washington overturned. But I am starting to let my anarchist leanings show and this post is about Trump, not me.

I think that Trump fascinates the public not only with his candor but also with his unusual set of stances on a variety of issues. He at once appears both reactionary and radical to a public brainwashed over the last few decades to only see political issues in terms of conservative republican vs liberal democrat.

Trump the Liberal 

Trump confuses modern voters because he glibly promotes opinions and viewpoints which, as a set, Americans have been taught to see as irreconcilable. Here are some of the "traditionally" liberal political stances to which Trump allegedly adheres:

• He is, essentially, pro-choice. He is not a big fan of it but he does not breathe fire on the issue. He has come out and called himself pro-life in some remarks but he is not really that strong on the issue. In fact. I think that his is a pretty common view among republicans but, in order to win their socially conservative base, they must take a strong pro-life stance in public. 
• He is, at least, content with the present progressive tax system applied by the IRS. I am sure that, like most people, he would love for the IRS to be unnecessary but, as long as there is income tax he thinks that it makes sense to take more from the rich. This is anathema to fiscal conservatives.
• Apparently Trump does not want to make cuts to Social Security or Medicare.
• He has expressed open support for the idea of a single-payer health care system.
• Trump promotes the Second Amendment but has stated acceptance of things such as background checks and even bans on certain types of weapons. For Second Amendment republicans, this type of thing is a shibboleth to aid in culling the weak from the electoral herd. 
• Trump has a pretty relaxed stance on gays. I would guess that he is essentially a live-and-let live kind of guy. I have not heard , though, how he stands on issues such as the well-known wedding-cake business which got sued out of existence just because it refused to make a gay-themed wedding cake.

More than Trump's political stances, his actions mark him out as a liberal. He doesn't mind hanging out with Bill Clinton, for example. I have to think, though, that most men wouldn't mind hanging out with Bill Clinton. It's pretty obvious that guy would be fun at parties.

I think that Donald's wives are actually getting hotter as he gets older.

Most egregious among his sins, though, are Trump's sexual relationships. Not only has he been married three times but his affairs and his trophy wives could certainly be considered scandalous among conservatives. But, then again, old school feminist liberals would also be appalled by these shenanigans.

Trump Conservative

Simultaneously, Trump loudly proclaims allegiance to many traditionally conservative ideas. In fact, his approach in some cases is so conservative that he makes conservatives blush. Here are a few of his more well-known conservative political themes:

• IMMIGRATION. The all-caps presentation was intentional. On this issue, Trump makes Pat Buchanan look reticent when he talks about immigration. He seems quite serious about building a wall from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean while deporting somewhere on the order of 10 or 20 million people.
• ISIS - Trump apparently wants to reinvade Iraq to handle this problem. That is a much bolder stance than any republican has publicly taken, though it may be that many of them incline toward that solution.
• Climate - Trump has publicly stated that the climate change issue is built on a hoax.
• Drugs - Trump's last known stance on the issue is in favor of legalization and taxation.
• Capital Punishment - Trump sees no problem with sending violent monster's to the chair or to the lethal injection gurney, anyway.

Trump Loose Cannon

A number of people believe that Trump is simply a man with no filter. He says what he is thinking at the moment and is not thinking about which source of financial support an errant remark may cost him.

For his detractors, that is a weakness. The 25% to 30% of republican voters who support him, though, seem enamored of his penchant for calling a spade a spade. Either they are showing a willingness to overlook the other issues on which he is less conservative due to this appealing trait or they themselves have never been that devoted to those issues.

What I like about Trump is the possibility that he presents for breaking down the two-party system. I am less interested in his views than I am in the way that many supporters openly admit that he offends them on one or more points but they forgive him for one reason or another. Some excuse his faults because he so fervently supports their favorite issue, which is often immigration. Others are just angry and simply want somebody to kick some ass in Washington.

Anyone my age or older, though, knows that this opportunity has presented itself before. Ross Perot tried something similar in 1992 and there are other examples in American history before him. Some people do not take him seriously simply because those prior efforts failed.

I think though, that hope springs eternal and that the Internet age may make possible a paradigm shift in American politics. Perot made his venture when his access to the public was almost entirely controlled by three television networks. No one can stop an interested public from hearing what Trump has to say between now and election day 2016.