Letter Of Endorsement For Volunteer Recognition Nominees: Fill & Download for Free

edit: this is not even half-done (I will try to cut out some of the less-import wording when all done) but I needed to present a wide range of material to justify why I will connect certain dots later on the basis of how I think the factions of American elites think and behave.WHY TRUMP FEELS LIKE SOMETHING MORE SINISTER THAN TRUMP -HOW I HAVE CONCLUDED THAT THERE IS A SIGNIFICANT PROBABILITY THAT TRUMP’S CAMPAIGN IS INDICATIVE OF A CONSOLIDATION OF POWER VIA REMOVAL OF REMAINING LEGISLATIVE POWER, AND WITH IT, A DEMOCRACYNot an answer, but an explanation of what I mean.The whole business of Donald Trump winning the GOP nomination and entering the general election is fascinating and troubling and exciting and sad and etc all at the same time, even at times for the same people. I can say that I watched Trump’s candidacy with great interest and even enthusiasm particularly around the time of the SC Primary when he finally gave Jeb Bush and the “Middle East” wing of the party a taste of the shame and dishonor it deserves.My initial feeling was tremendous satisfaction from the evident proof that the establishment was not unbeatable. My personal disdain for the GOP we have today (and I don’t mean that it is too conservative - it’s not even conservative, just stupid and arguably disloyal) allowed me to somehow write off every Trump gaffe as an intentional ploy or a gambit or maybe an error, but no big deal.And as long as I have been around I have wondered whether the US Presidential Election is really a democratic affair. I have always known that the primaries are sort of a big illusion in which you are made to feel you have a choice but only among a presanitized and bubble-gum-cookie-cutter-no-scratches-no-edges group of party folks with perhaps one or two never-getting-in-long-shots thrown in to make it seem plausible that a Ron Paul or a Bernie Sanders etc could win.In fact I simply do not believe that the US is or ever has been “democratic” in even the narrow sense described in the Constitution: first there are the obvious rights’ issues like felony disenfranchisement and id laws and fraud (yes, that happens too, Democrats) and due process concerns and lack of international observers, etc etc etc but all that, let’s be honest, if that’s all it was, we would probably all feel basically that it was a fair and “democratic” or representative election. Meaning, if the only problems were the worst of what we hear and know about, I would not have the feeling we’re in a non-democratic society.But I have a much stronger reason to suspect that US presidential elections have not been democratic in modern times and perhaps ever - namely the fact that there are further requirements for the job than what you may find in our constitution.trust, legitimacy, popularity, recognition, and deferenceThe fact of the matter is that Trump is something new and something truly without precedent in American history in its entirety - a major party nominee, first of all, elected without ever working for the government in any capacity before. That’s a big departure, especially from the last 20-odd Presidents who all came from the political side - not even the military usually, except for Eisenhower and Grant and one other guy.On top of that, anybody who is reasonably savvy and mildly intelligent can pick up that Trump is not one of us - either that or he is a brilliant actor and so good that it is getting quite scary anyway.Plainly, he is not a very intelligent guy, and doesn’t really seem to understand how much that matters in this position, and doesn’t seem to be able to take the advice of intelligent folks or to find them in some cases. It’s not impossible - Reagan was a moron but he did it. And I know I am not supposed to say that as a Republican but come on, this guy invited Gorbachev to discus an alien invasion. Seriously.Now, all of that could be forgiven if he had no chance of winning. But as of today, and even at his worst day, he had a “chance” so to speak. The election is long enough away that we cannot even discount it that significantly.This leads to another question: is there an opposition in the party and who/what does it represent?Ted Cruz supporters - run of the middle conservative Republican voters, high-end donors mainly from the financial, aerodefensee, and “hawks”Mormons - worried about their religious freedom and insuffaraably politeA few evangelicals - because they wanted the Mexicans in their churchesThe Bush family - tarnishes W’s legacy (more on this - but I can draw a direct line from W to Trump that could have been stopped by admitting he got it wrong)The foreign policy establishment and especially elite groups like CFR and Hoover etc.Conservative academia (?) and self-styled intellectuals (mostly hawks)That Senator from Kansas who says he won’t vote for TrumpOkay, so you get the idea. This is not the kind of opposition, frankly, I would have expected from this party - and I don’t really mean that in a good or bad way. The response has been tepid and revealing of a group that is equally confused about what just happened and what is about to happen. I have a hard time calling whatever it is that Paul Ryan and Mitch said about Trump an “endorsement.” I’ll call it a wash.But still there were a few that really surprised me in the sense that I imagined these people would against Trump for no other reason than what he said about the W Bush administration and it miserable failures, deceits, and perhaps borderline-treason. (No I am not a 9/11 truther, no people, if you believe that, I have a hard time taking you seriously). But there is a central dishonesty that started under W Bush and continues today… More on this.And maybe that’s why - it relates to that dishonesty - I have been puzzled by the immediate endorsements placed by the following people, especially with the ?. What I mean is that it surprises me that the following have eagerly or at least without public reservation signed onto his campaign:Dick Cheney (???)Don RumsfeldSheldon Adelson (???)Chris Christie (?)Newt GingrichTom Cotton (???)Adelson is not actually in government but he probably knows as much about it as anyone on taht list and 100 times more than Trump will ever know, to put it as Trump would. But he’s also a fairly dangerous fellow who donates a lot of money to whichever candidate promises the most megatons against Iran. In my opinion he is not a person who can be trusted to do the right thing. But I did think he would at least fear the security implications of Trump. His pet project is, after all, a very small country.Now the rest of the guys, they are cut from the same cloth, but dumber and like Adelson, closer to death than to power. That is, except from Christie (who I guess is a friend) and Cotton.the lettersCotton is my least favorite US Senator, even more than Chuck Shumer who is the biggest killjoy in the Senate, and the guy from Kansas, who clearly thinks he is better than you, and Ted Cruz, for obvious reasons… but Cotton is the worst. To understand why I feel that way you would need to understand just how much I still think about the damage and consequence of the Iraq War.I could go on all day about this but the thesis is: the Iraq War revealed something, like Trump. It revealed in my view a “deep state” that had to push a war but could not tell us why.Recall that the rationale for war was originally around the famed WMD. That alone was full of deception.Dick Cheney claimed at least thrice on national TV that he thought that Saddam had nukes because the intelligence indicated he did…but, you can tell now, watching those clips again, that he worded it very very carefully, the way you would word it if you knew you were lying through your disgusting ugly bald head.The US as a matter of policy encouraged Saddam’s use of chemical warfare in his war with our “bitter enemy” Iran (more on that…) which makes it pretty hard to believe this was about the chemical weaponsI knew then as a teenager that the tip they received (which was a lie anyway) about uranium yellowcake was no worry because the Iraqis needed a lot more than some uranium to get to the home plate there.The fact that a country has no WMD is precisely the reason we would invade itWhy am I bitching about Iraq? Well for starters, somebody should - seriously, we’ve never even talked about the process that led to that “decision” and how it relates to where we are today. That’s not a GOP thing, by the way. That’s very clearly an “American politician with a national profile” kind of thing. Nothing gets you knocked down the ladder faster than questioning the wisdom of the hawkish elite and the deep state that we know exists, the intel community. Even when it claims it was wrong and that was all there was to it.Now I am not social butterfly. I keep to myself and I don’t like parties, etc. But I’ve managed to meet a lot of people and get a sense of what people in the US from New York, from Florida, from Texas, from Colorado, from North Carolina, … etc are like. And still I have to find a person who was particularly concerned about, say, Iran in 2008, or Syria in 2007, or Lebanon in 2005. Almost to a man/woman, I get the sense that nobody even knows there is a war happening in Yemen right now in which we are sponsoring the Saudis on behalf of a government in exile against its own population, or that we have been playing wargames in Russia’s backyard to provoke Russia into doing something hostile (there’s a cable, it’s not a conspiracy), or that President Obama literally spends time trying to prevent certain general from getting him into a war. Foreign policy is never a high priority for Americans but it always seems to be the highest priority for American Presidents.I will stop again here but to kind of finish the thought - between 1789 and 1861, we had some more powerful Presidents, some weaker ones, and in Abe Lincoln, we had for good reason a dictator for a brief time. But other than that, we’ve enjoyed remarkable continuity from then until now. It makes you feel as though the government has just changed hands back and forth for a few centuries.If you think this way then you will miss my point entirely, because I argue that the government we had in 1900 was as different from that we had in 1940 that there might as well had been a revolution in the interim. I don’t have time but look into it. But between 1940 and today? That’s a few revolutions in one.There’s a particular image (1) that’s worth thinking about. This one seems nice and reasonable. From 1940 to 1950 our defense spending explodes because of the Nazis and the Japanese and the Commies. After that, it lulls into 9/11 and picks up.This is the kind of graph that Ted Cruz likes to show people regarding US defense spending. He makes the case, as does Tom Cotton even more strongly, that we are in serious trouble because of our limited capabilities from lack of money. And our soldiers, they argue, are imperiled because of it.And that alone - that they only show this graph and tell that lie - is enough for me to vomit on them and determine they are sick people. And I believe they basically are just that, sick people. The kind you want to prevent from being President, but unfortunately, the kind that is most often found in a primary - on both sides.Now look at this graph. It’s called context. You see, 1940 was another world.The drop in food spending over roughly the same time period is remarkably similar.Does it follow that we are starving?No. To the contrary, we are if anything, the opposite of starving.But what has happened is that we buy a different mix of goods because of changing demand and changing supply and changing tech and yada yada.But there have been other and very important trends between then and now.We - our government, Federal and State - have a lot of debt. We have found that we can sustain a certain level of debt without ruining our currency for now. That’s good.In fact, it has so much debt that it has crowded out the market for credit, as predicted by people who believe in such silly ideas as scarcity.what’s the point?The point is that since the end of WW2, every President has been involved in some war or another that was either not part of the campaign or actually a part of his pitch to America. (Believe it or not, if you recall, W Bush was against “nation building” and Gore debated him on those grounds).Today we find ourselves in the longest war in American history by a wide margin, along with at least two unauthorized “military actions,” an open secret in Yemen, Somalia too, probably in Malaysia and Bangladesh, and making a point in the South China Sea and the Arctic Circle.The thing about wars is that they cost money and require sacrifices from people who volunteer trusting that politicians and elites will not treat them as something less than equals doing a job they will not do.And to be sure, there are many kind words for our military - but they are just that, words - when it comes to the things that matter, their care for injuries and trauma and mental health and the rest of those pesky side effects of war, they are - as Trump says - horribly mistreated.Here is where the military men and women are distributed in the US (their home states):Plainly you can see that there are huge differences between the states in terms of military representation. New Jersey’s hawkish Senator Robert Mendndez represents one of the most under-represented states, and in general I argue that hawkishness relative to other political positions is related to your ranking on this list.It comes as no surprise that super-liberal and super-hawkish DC is dead last at 25 men per thousand enlisted.One of the consequences of getting rid of the draft appears to be a tacit agreement between Democrats and Republicans - one of many - that the Democrats don’t generally compete on matters of peace (only war) and in turn the Republicans will keep their home populations enthused about the next one.You see, there is a big problem that could happen as soon as 2020: maybe somebody could be elected who questioned this whole system of militarism and empire. Trump said things already that were troublesome to the people who follow this.I do not claim to know precisely why the elites are so keen on war, why they choose the wars they choose, or why they won’t share their rationale in an honest way.But I know this: the way they pushed Iraq and the way they tried to get into Syria earlier and the brazenness of these cables - I assure you that they will never accept a candidate who actually tries to act independently of what Obama calls “the Washington playbook.”