Eddie Haskell Is Donald Trump With The Nuclear Codes

Upon learning of the passing of Ken Osmond, forever identified as the actor who portrayed smooth talking and charming trouble maker on the late 50 & early 60s TV show “Leave It To Beaver” I couldn’t immediately help but think of one Donald J. Trump.  It is all to easy to see how Eddie Haskell’s persona was a perfect reflection of Trump as a kid growing up in a world where nothing was ever his fault.  The smooth talking Haskell was always charming and excessively polite in view of the parents of Ward and June Cleaver.  But once out his their sight he had that laugh and sneer that was inescapable. 

It was always interesting how Beaver and his older brother Wally was on to him but at first not their parents who eventually came around.  Haskell’s character was also perfect characterization of Goofus and Gallant, an old comic strip one found in “Highlights for Children” magazine that was found in every dentist and children’s doctor office across America.  I remember grabbing those magazines as a kid and turning immediately to the good kid Gallant vs. the bad kid Goofus parable to see what kind of trouble Goofus was up to.  Haskell was the live version this strip on TV broadcast into the living rooms across the country.  For me, as a kid Beaver’s age, he is the most memorable of the characters in that show.

His passing made me think immediately about #Trump as a parallel of Wally as an adult.  The problem here though transcends an individual who became known for the fake reality TV show he hosted that was also beamed into every living room across America.  The reality is Trump IS Wally but with a slight difference.  He’s got the nuclear codes.  Wonder what June and Ward Cleaver would think about that.  Let that sink in.

 

Donald Trump's Next Book: The Art of the Fine Whine

One of the fascinating aspects of Donald Trump's run for the White House is the aura of business acumen he projects as one of his greatest strengths.  He is never at a loss of words to describe his ability to always maneuver from a  position of strength to strike an agreement when he has the obvious advantage.  By his own admission he has a genius for being able to not only strike a deal where he is in a

win - win situation but to make the end result one where the other side always wants to come back for more.  There is a large segment of the population that still sits in awe of the successful business person with abilities to achieve high levels of success through a public persona that suggests a shield of invincibility all due to their own prowess and powers of persuasion.

According to the Donald his acumen and power to construct deals will be unmatched in contrast to a bunch of unimaginative and dull witted government bureaucrats not able to comprehend the power and strength of his abilities to conduct high level negotiations in a cut throat world of multinational deal makers.  They will fall to their knees in sheer bedazzlement at his ability to coerce reluctant and reticent lawmakers to come around to his agenda and beg for more.  This perceived aura is a common thread running through his supporters when you see them in interviews or panel discussions.  They feel he can achieve things no one else can while ignoring off putting characteristics that would spell certain doom for any other mortal denizen associated with public service through an elected office.  

This is where we come to the Donald's problem.  Over at Digby's blog, Hullabaloo, she has a great piece detailing Trump's sudden realization that maybe he isn't the man he thought he was dealing with people unaware of his powers and abilities.  It's suddenly becoming all to evident the tycoon who claims to be known for his genius at deal making is completely befuddled by a convoluted process with a labyrinth of rules and mechanisms for delegate selection:

[...]Donald Trump made it all the way to April of the primary season as front runner for the presidential nomination without being aware of [the GOP nominating process] says everything you need to know about his organizational acumen. It turns out that national politics isn't as simple as a branding deal with Macy's over ties and underwear. It isn't a Manhattan real estate negotiation either. But like so many wealthy men, he assumed that making all that money must make him a genius, so much so that he's capable of running the world by the seat of his pants.

To go a bit further there's more to it than his sudden discomfort from being in a position where he doesn't have the upper hand:

The Republican front-runner claims to be the world’s smartest businessman, a master at cutting deals and winning with his negotiating savvy. In recent days, though, he has been looking like a chump who bought property in Florida without reading the fine print stipulating the land was underwater and infested with alligators. Trump appears to have jumped into his campaign for president thinking all he needed to do was show up for the debates, call in to TV news shows and tweet out his random thoughts to a waiting world. Actually, thanks to the big boost he got from being a reality show celebrity, that approach did bring remarkable success in the early months of the presidential race.  Now, however, he is getting snookered in many states where the Cruz campaign is far better organized and knows how to exploit the delegate selection rules.

Since the early days of the primary calendar the Cruz campaign has been waiting for its moment to strike.  The Texas Senator patiently waited for caucus and primary states where the Trump campaign would be caught with its proverbial pants down with staff that were not only light in numbers but without knowledge of the ins and outs of that particular state's byzantine mechanism of delegate selection.   When Cruz's various state organizations pounced it was too late for Trump to react:

The Colorado system — precinct caucuses electing delegates to district and state assemblies, where they are selected for the national convention — isn’t undemocratic. But it rewards a different, more demanding and engaged sort of participation than a primary.  An accent on grass-roots organizing is not, by the way, a hallmark of establishment politics. In fact, it is the opposite. The classic conservative insurgent excels at organizing as a means to bypass the party’s gatekeepers and to make up for a lack of resources and media attention. Although the Cruz campaign is well-funded, it has the grass-roots DNA of this kind of insurgency, which it began as, and, in significant respects, still is.

Now Trump finds himself being defined not as the great deal maker with a wizard's touch and knowing smirk, but as the classic whiner who has managed to hone his high pitched complaint into the fine art of, "the whine."  As Rich Lowry over a Politico points out there is one more thing to add to the fact that Trump  has been put into a position where his failings in the primary process highlight how out of depth he is in the rough and tumble political world of grass roots campaigning: 

For all of Trump’s complaints, the nomination system was set up to favor the front-runner and get him over the top as soon as possible. It is a symptom of Trump’s weakness that, even as he romped through the first couple of months of the race and accumulated delegates out of proportion to his popular vote (about 45 percent of the delegates on 37 percent of the vote), he still might fall short of 1,237.

Over at Hullabaloo Digby puts a finer point on the optics for Trump and his veneer of invincibility and what it really means for his public persona:

This is an extremely important point. The rules were rigged. But they were rigged to favor Donald Trump. For a man who is selling himself as the greatest deal maker the world has ever known, he's having an awfully hard time closing one that was set-up for him to win from the very beginning.  So now he's claiming the election is being stolen.

As Trump has been perfecting his technique for the fine art of the whine the coup d'grace in all of this is his ability to readily admit to his penchant for doing just that, whine:

"I think [Rich Lowry] is probably right. I am the most fabulous whiner. I do whine because I want to win. And I'm not happy if I'm not winning. And I am a whiner. And I'm a whiner and I keep whining and whining until I win," he said. "And I'm going to win for the country and I'm going to make our country great again."

Trump "The Great Deal Maker" isn't finished just yet.  He still may win even if he comes up short of the delegates he needs to win the nomination in Cleveland this summer.  Considering all that's  happened to date though one thing is clear no matter if he wins or loses:  his next book will no undoubtedly be a best seller as well -  "Trump The Art of the Fine Whine."

Progress With Anti-Bullying Campaigns Nationwide Being Undermined By 2016 Election Campaign

For the first time in twelve years, since I've been teaching high school, there is a perceptible change taking place in my classroom dynamic.  My Muslim students, some whom I have known for two or three years are now telling me for the first time things are being said to them about their religion and who they are.  One young girl whom I've taught for two years told me that this year she's had something said to her about her belief system from several students, including ones she has known since beginning high school and that for the first time they felt uncomfortable about who they were.

I've also picked up rumblings from my students about LGBT's suddenly getting harassment in ways they've never experience before.  This goes for my black students as well who tell me they are hearing the 'N' word more often how than ever before.  There is no doubt something is happening in my school I've never experience before and apparently I'm not the only one:

"I think there's a real danger of harm taking place in all American schoolchildren," Maureen Costello, an education expert at the Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC), a civil rights group, told Al Jazeera."We've seen 10 or more years of anti-bullying work get rolled back by a hostile atmosphere in many schools. Teachers describe disillusionment, depression and discouragement among kids who feel like they now know what people have thought about them all along," Castello said.

What seems to be causing all of this?  The data from a Southern Poverty Law Center survey of some 2,000 schools across the nation appears to be unambiguous in its findings:

An SPLC survey of some 2,000 US schools found that two-thirds of teachers described their vulnerable students - including blacks, Muslims, Latinos and other minorities - as affected by rhetoric in the 2016 White House race.
It shows a spike in racist bullying. For Muslims - or even some non-Muslim brown-skinned children - the acronym "ISIS" has become a stock taunt, referencing the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, which is also known as ISIS).

There doesn't seem to be any coincidence with the findings of this study and the 2016 campaign for the White House where a leading Presidential contender is talking about building walls and describing Mexican immigrants as anything but in a positive light.  At the beginning of businessman Donald Trumps campaign he started a firestorm with this opening gambit to the 2016 race for the White House:

“[Mexico] are sending people that have lots of problems, and they are bringing those problems to us. They are bringing drugs, and bringing crime, and their rapists,” the business mogul said.

The damage being done to the classrooms across the country seems to be undeniable.  The anti-bullying campaign being so assiduously used over the last 10 years now almost seems to be for naught with the prevailing atmosphere rolling in from the hateful rhetoric by the Republican side of the 2016 campaign.  The damage being done by the rhetoric of fear, anger and racism spilling out of the Donald Trump campaign is going to make it so much more difficult to roll back after such positive progress that seemed to be so evident with that nation-wide anti-bullying campaign.  I never imagined the source of ugly xenophobic rhetoric you would hear at this level would be rooted in the campaign for the White House.

A Bull In A China Shop

I had a great meeting this morning with a group in my church aptly named: "Playing With Ideas."  On the first of the month the topic is always 'Current Events.'  As one might imagine the focus of conversation centered on the GOP nomination contest and Donald Trump.  What I found interesting was the variation of ideas offered to define his appeal to certain groups based on personal vignettes and local readings of Florida primary results in and around regional counties.  What fascinated me was the different number of reasons people attributed to his appeal to a specific demographic whether it was a localized upper income group or a generalization based on what would constitute a 'low information' voter.

Driving home I realized that the main reason Donald Trump has a large enough appeal to be in contention as a nominee was the fact he was something of a blank slate if you will.  A blank slate one could use to make any justification they wanted for him to be worthy of their support due to fact they hate the status quo and what they current make up of the GOP represents:  an inability to act on the agenda they've had since the Gingrich years in the 1990's.

I keep hearing in various social media and mainstream media outlets a meme that really came home to me on my pensive drive home.  The GOP rank and file voter detests the current make up of the GOP and what it has become and Donald Trump represents that feeling no matter what he says he represents issue wise.  He is the strongman to effect change on a party that has become moribund in intransigence at the expense of compromise to be purist in their beliefs that range from privatization of most government functions to the eradication of what they define as 'entitlements.'  Donald Trump represents someone that will remake that intransigence through tactics that represent authoritarianism and an ability to 'get things done' on sheer will.

Unfortunately for his supporters our system of government not only doesn't work that way, it was designed specifically not to.  Unless his supporters find a way to fundamentally change the way our government works as a representative republic it is not possible for a Donald Trump like political entity   My fear is there are people out there that tire of our system of incremental change through a deliberative process.  Their goal is to change our system of government that favors authoritarianism and the ability to exact change on a dime without thought out deliberation from a representative body.  History is filled with examples of what they want and as usual it never ends well for either the strongman they envision for the people that put them their in the first place.