There's a reason the road is not taken

Full disclosure. I don't hate Donald Trump with anything near the vehemence of many others in my social network. But that doesn't mean I don't think he might be a bad precedent (spelling pun intended, damned if I didn't work for this one!) for our country. And I don't care about his taxes.


The title to this post is a rift on the famous Robert Frost poem, "The Road Not Taken", reprinted here:

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;	5
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,	10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.	15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I half-think this has relevance in this year's election season, as two very distinct choices exist for the voting population. The other half, that thinks this poem isn't relevant, believes a conversation of the demerits of dying in a plane crash or a car crash seem much ado about nothing. But in the political case, it continues to make for great theater.

Back to the poem analogy. Trump is clearly the path "less traveled by", but for many, many Americans, this is a more desirable path than the road we're currently on. The un- and under-employed, the enthusiastic voters of 2008 for whom the ensuing eight years did not bring the "hope" and "change" they wished for. For these disappointed masses, voting for a "continuation of the Obama legacy" is asking to rub salt into a now-chronic open wound. So what can be wrong with voting for the alternative, the "road not taken (yet)"? Well, perhaps plenty. This is no new insight, but the success of Trump the candidate has been in large part due to blaming "others" for the problems Americans face today. Unemployed? It's Mexicans taking your job, not your decision to forgo college in favor of the line job at Carrier. Can't pronounce your primary care doctor's last name? Let's ban Muslims who might take those near-impossible-to-fill physician jobs. The Donald has not brought the "art of the deal" to this election, he's demonstrated his mastery of the politics of blame. Is he guilty for elevating this tenor of discourse in the political arena? If you're a regular guy/girl, the answer is obvious, duh! But here's the perverse irony. If you're Hillary Clinton, the answer is "I never knowingly considered that my hateful rhetoric would incite people to espouse an ideology or take actions that would be construed as unproductive in the National dialogue".

So here's the rock and a hard place, a bully or a parsing liar. I've said repeatedly that in this year of the celebrity election, Secy. Clinton is as wooden on the stump (hah, pun again) as Pinocchio, with all the truthfulness of this guy, minus the charm: 

Four to eight more years of special deals for Goldman Sachs and the other friends of the Clinton Foundation seem like a tough platform upon which to win a general election, but in case voters don't think Hillary cares about the peasants, here's a clip, which I include because it's her speaking and not a media interpretation. Draw your own conclusions (I'm including the WHOLE exchange to bring in the context):



On the eve of losing the West Virginia primary to Bernie, Hillary tried to Clinton-splain those comments, but I think the voters heard her clearly the first time. Don't be surprised if those same voters are Trump voters now.

Tax returns and e-mail servers aside, I continue to believe that the yugge singular determinant of this fall's election will be the belief by individual voters that a given candidate will be more beneficial to one's own economic situation. In Trump's case, will the bogeyman of trade globalization and immigration sway enough disaffected working-class voters to bring him to power versus the establishment elite? It's gone that way so far on the GOP side. In the other corner, will fear of being profiled and discriminated against on the basis of race or religion be enough to overcome an inherent lack of new ideas or inertia? If you think they're both sucky choices, you've come to the right blog!

Roll the dice or stand and hold (sorry, mixing gaming metaphors). On the craps table I give Trump odds akin to the "no pass" line. You win when betting against the table, and if successful, it typically means that others have lost. I think the analogy is particularly apt here, but in the political case the "losers" may be an America as a "beacon of light" to the world. That's a pretty damn big downside. For Clinton, stand and hold is the same as in blackjack. It all depends on a myriad of outcome statistics, but ultimately it's comes down to how the cards are dealt. The only caveat here is that Clinton is not only the dealer, she's the house, so either way as President she's going to win, while the American people will hold any and all losing hands. That sucks as well.

This has been a pretty pessimistic post, sorry about that. I'll try and find some ray of light next time, may be a challenge. Thanks for reading!