1964 was a watershed year for me as it may have been for some of you, and perhaps, our first experience with politically sociopathic behavior. As a new high school graduate readying to be among the first in my family to attend college, I began to wonder about my future. That August, the infamous Gulf of Tonkin incident occurred, and in its aftermath, the lives of over 50,000 of our fellow citizens ended brutally, and the lives of hundreds of thousands more were forever affected.
As Lyndon Johnson campaigned for the presidency that season, he told us repeatedly he would not send American boys to fight somebody else’s war in Southeast Asia. His opponent was Barry Goldwater, a thoughtful, respected conservative from Arizona, but his honest, decent campaign was shattered by one iconic political ad of a child counting daisy petals as a nuclear bomb went off in the background. It was the temperament thing on television coupled with promises used by Democrats since Woodrow Wilson’s 1916 reelection campaign: “He Kept Us Out Of War!”
We know what happened after Wilson’s reelection, and after Johnson’s. FDR made promises, too, and we became unalterably embroiled in the new age. That’s not to say Wilson, FDR, and even Truman weren’t correct in their estimation of their world’s peril. It is to say, however, that when Democrats have based their campaigns on one particular theme, it’s always the same sleight of hand: they hide the ugly truth about themselves by throwing their mud on the opposition.
The most recent example lying on the surface of history’s political slime pit is what Ted Kennedy attempted to do to Ronald Reagan, when he offered to assist the Soviets because of Reagan’s “crazy” threat with “Star Wars” technology. Dr. Paul Kengor and other scholars have amply documented what Kennedy and his friends, abetted fully by USA State Media organs (otherwise incorrectly called “Mainstream Media”), tried to do to Reagan’s credibility, and nearly succeeded.
All of this came to mind when FBI Director James Comey publicly indicted Hillary Clinton as “extremely careless,” thus highlighting questions about her trust and judgment. Almost immediately, adopting Saul Alinsky tactics, the DNC and the Clinton machine began its campaign of distraction by making claims about the temperament of Donald Trump. Political, unfiltered neophyte that he is, Trump helped the Clinton crowd—which includes nearly all State Media organs—by vomiting catlike wordballs of stupidity about a certain judge and the family of a KIA veteran.
Even without Trump’s assistance, however, Clinton and Co. daily beat the drum about his temperament, taking the spotlight from her purported criminal “misjudgments” handling classified information, the alleged money laundering facility that is the Clinton Foundation, but most of all, her widely reported bouts of rage, screaming fits, and over the edge behavioral traits. No serious witnesses have discredited the narrative of Hillary’s less-than-centered personality by sources like Secret Service Agent Gary Byrne, former presidential advisor Dick Morris, and NYT writer, Ed Klein, to name a few.
Harkening back to those unsettled college years of the 1960’s, I remember taking Psychology 101 from Dr. Earl Kronenberger at Xavier University, and acquainting myself with the definitions of significant emotional disorders, sociopathic behavior amongst them. President Johnson’s promise of one thing and doing another vis a vis Viet Nam and the political destruction of Goldwater were fresh in my mind back then.
In that connection, I’ve always thought expectations for presidential aspirants are much like those for contestants in a dating game. They have to observe all the same rules, and if they break them—and we figure it out in time—they get dumped. One of the first lines at www.datingasociopath.com tells the story: “The sociopath will always accuse you of doing the very thing that they are guilty of themselves. They do this to deflect the attention from them.”
In fact, when you think about it, nearly every one of the historical examples cited here—examples with deadly consequences—Democrats decided what we needed to hear “our own good” and deftly accused their opponents of the very thing they were trying to hide. Aided by the media, academia, and Hollywood, only a rare opponent has had a chance. Reagan was one. Will Trump be another?
In 2016, Democrats have thus far attempted to shine the brightest spotlight on Trump’s sometimes-mercurial behavior. Yet, the silly, stupid stumbles of which Trump has been guilty are nothing compared to a candidate widely reported to throw raging temper tantrums, to hurl vicious, verbal invective at underlings and protection staff, and to physically threaten—as alleged by Agent Byrne—a sitting president.
All the pundits, chatterheads, paid sycophants, media mavens, and a demonstrably ill-suited current president caricaturing Trump as unfit do not convince this writer—this veteran—he would be capable of a nuclear Armageddon of the type Joe Biden described in Scranton, PA, yesterday. It is far easier to imagine an already ill-tempered president, buttressed in her serial lies by adoring constituencies of Kool-Aid imbibers, the media, university puffs, and Hollywood coke-heads, to make historic decisions apocalyptical to U.S. interests—and never admit the truth about them.
If it is true that Americans have had enough, that there are silent millions waiting for their day at the polls, then this is the year the political sociopath-in-chief will be sent away with her kitbag of full of cash and deceit. Hillary’s opponents must be resolute, unyielding. If not, we deserve to hear every lie she will tell us for at least four more years.