Trumbo and Associates

I don’t know how others feel, but I am well past being weary of the all the sanctimonious handwringing over the sad fate of Dalton Trumbo and other communists who were blacklisted in Hollywood in the years after World War II.  Trumbo was an apologist and advocate for a horrific tyranny which in number of murdered victims and duration exceeded that of  Nazis and a member of a subversive organization under control of the intelligence secret service of a hostile foreign power.

Because of this, a group of potential private employers who were not obligated to do business with him decided  they would not do so,  while another group required him to use an assumed name when working for them. That was it - the extent of his martyrdom during the so-called dark days of the blacklist.  He was not executed. He was not tortured into making a false confession at a show trial. He was not sent to Siberia or a concentration camp. He remained free to speak out.  His property was not seized. His  family was not harmed.  (He did do a short stretch in jail for an offense - contempt of congress -  of which he was clearly guilty, but that is separate from the story of the blacklisting.)

My sympathies are with the people who refused to hire him. I would not want someone like that working for me in a position where he could influence public opinion any more than I would want an advocate of any other murderous doctrine or ideology in such a position.  That others would want that, and even more, think such a person was entitled to it, is interesting. 

Clinton and Her Akin

A few years ago Democrats in Missouri were facing a dilemma. An election for a seat in the U.S. senate was coming up, and their candidate was an unusually unpleasant and unpopular woman who seemed likely to lose.  According to reports at the time, the Democrats hit on the strategy of promoting a particularly unacceptable Republican candidate in the Republican primary – a yahoo named Todd Akin who did become the nominee and  then  lost in the general election in a landslide.  Some analysts think Akin may have been a measurable drag on Mitt  Romney’s campaign  for president.  Of course whether or not the Democrats conspired to help Akin get nominated, the main fault was with Republican voters. They had the  opportunity to select someone better than Akin and failed to do so.

Now in 2016 one can wonder if  the strategy has been applied again, this time in the race for the White House.  The Democrats in 2016 were stuck with Hillary Clinton once Biden declined to run.  She was and is an extremely unpopular, mistrusted, and generally disliked politician with numerous vulnerabilities and several scandals or worse hanging over her head who would  likely  lose to a strong Republican candidate.  Instead she has been handed her own Todd Akin.

 There were fifteen other candidates besides Donald Trump running for president in the  Republican party.  Every one of them was more qualified to be president than Trump. The man’s candidacy was absurd on the face of it.  Yet the almost always pro-Democrat people in the traditional media went easy on Trump and  gave  him far more publicity than any two or three of the others combined before he won the nomination.  After he did so, the same media people quickly changed tones and began emphasizing his  many mistakes and disqualifying faults.  So some might suggest  that there may have been a plan at work here.

Regardless, it appears that what once looked like a big opportunity for the Republicans has been reduced to a scramble to hold the senate and save vulnerable members in the house  and in  state governments while Hillary Clinton becomes the next president.  This could change. There is so much wrong with her, after all, but that is how it looks now.  If things do end that way, it mainly will be  the Republicans’ own  fault – with blame going to  the fratricidal Bush bunch, the weak and ineffective leaders of both houses of congress, the officials of the party,  and especially the voters who  thoughtlessly supported a blustering, ignorant demagogue who seemed  to share their anger but had little or nothing else to recommend him.   

I now plan to vote for Gary Johnson.  I do not agree with all of his policies, but his are  far superior to those of  Trump and Clinton. He favors individual rights, tolerance, freer trade and markets,  acceptance of immigrants, and lower government spending and opposes recent needless wars, higher taxation, trying to reshape the Middle East,  increasing stifling regulation, mass deportations,  and government spying on citizens.  Both he and his running mate are former governors with successful experience in the administration of government.  Also, unlike either Clinton or Trump, he seems to be a decent human being.   I know he cannot win, and so in some ways a vote for him would be wasted, but I cannot see voting for either of the other two.

It's not easy to decide which of  them is worse.  I think it’s Hillary Clinton, but  I see merit in the  counterarguments.  The question to ponder now is what sort of contingency planning  people need to make  to weather four years of either of them.  That will take some thought.