4 observations on Trump's general election strategy

I've noticed a few themes in the last few weeks of the election that I thought might make for some interesting notes. I hope to review "Civil War" whenever I finally see it, even though it's doubtful that film matches the "grim violence" of the other entertainment series I've been talking about recently.

There were some "shocking" polls that came out recently which had Trump and Clinton virtually tied in Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania. This led to a good deal of widespread panic and attempts by the explainers at 538 to calm down the establishment and convince them that this doesn't necessarily mean that Trump will actually be successful in November.

Of course I went on the record here a couple of weeks ago and wrote that I think Trump will win the general election. Here's some thoughts on why I think we're seeing that play out:

1. Trump understands the game

One of his main strengths that he uses to his advantage over the other politicians is that he embraces the fact that this is all theatre and gamesmanship. Politicians are always trying to stick each other with labels that will sting, Trump has taken that to a new level with his hilarious nicknames like "Crooked Hillary," "Goofy Elizabeth Warren," and "Lyin Ted."

Cruz's biggest problem is that he is a lawyer who thinks like a lawyer and is always trying to use different tricks and strategies to win votes that he knows he can't win through pure charisma. He set himself up to ride the "Tea Party" movement and be the "Trust-Ted" candidate for conservatives by taking a dozen principled stands in the Senate to gain attention and trust from conservatives. However, because he's not charismatic and transparently lawyerly, "Lyin Ted" stuck to him really well because he always gives off the impression that he's trying to pull tricks on people.

"Goofy Elizabeth Warren" is a nasty way to undercut how seriously that woman obviously takes herself as some kind of champion of every fringe group in the country. "Crooked Hillary" triggers everyone to always remember how shady Clinton and all of her dealings always are.

You also see Trumps' gamesmanship in the way he'll pivot on issues and avoid giving clear policy details. Every American who's followed more than one election knows that the candidates ALWAYS give precise policy details that NEVER actually match what they'll do in office. What's more, most voters don't give a rip about precise details unless a candidate is caught lying about them. Like when George Bush promised not to raise taxes, or Obama promised we'd get to keep our doctors.

There's little upside or point in giving out precise details, so Trump focuses on big principles he intends to follow when enacting policy and he'll pivot or move around as needed. All politicians do this, but Trump does it transparently. His persona is built on being able to be transparent about flip-flopping or playing the game so he gets away with it.

You can expect Clinton to waste a good deal of time and money trying to hammer Trump on various flip flops only to see it totally fail to have any impact.

2. Trump is forming an "alt-center"

This came from Steve Sailer (or one of his commenters) to describe the position Trump is staking out. Essentially the "alt" part is to push a nationalist agenda as opposed to a globalist one. As a whole, Trump embraces some socialist-style policies and has approved of a single-payer healthcare system in the past and is now pivoting to welcome a potential rise in the minimum wage and higher taxes on the richest Americans.

For those reasons, he's not exactly a right-winger even though some of his positions have recently only been found on the far right wing (like on immigration).

What Trump is actually pushing for is modern national-socialism. This political philosophy is most famous for guiding Hitler's 3rd reich, but you could also use it to describe Finland or some of the other Scandinavian nations that American liberals are so enamored with.

The idea is to have some socialist policies but only with the intention of benefitting the nation that makes up the state. Trump's message seems totally twisted and incoherent to people who are used to "conservative Republican" and "liberal democrat' existing as the only two options but his "Americans first" message is actually totally consistent in wanting to push policies that are intended to help Americans rather than any other nation. Some of those policies will end up being fairly liberal.

3. Trump plans to win by stealing Bernie's supporters from the Democratic party

A few weeks ago Trump was making it a point to note that he thought Bernie Sanders was the better candidate than "Crooked Hillary" and setting up Hillary's seemingly inevitable victory to be tainted with the charge that she stole the election from Sanders.

After some of Sanders' recent victories Trump has turned on him some and given him the moniker "Crazy Bernie" because as shocking as this may sound to many of you, Trump would vastly prefer to run against Clinton than Sanders.

Sanders has some supporters that Trump intends to rally to his cause as he builds a majority coalition that can win the presidency and re-define the Republican party. There are fewer voters there that will suit his vision for an "alternative" party (which is why he's starting in the GOP) but he wants them all the same.

So Trump unveils the "Crazy Bernie" with the intention of helping rebuild the narrative that he can't really win or be president and helping Hillary close the deal. After Clinton wins Trump will cozy back up to Sanders' supporters and say "Hey, I also intend to stop America from engaging in more wars, I'll get after these rich people that are supporting Crooked Hillary, and I'll raise the minimum wage. Here's the difference though, I can actually do it."

It's a powerful ploy, should be interesting to see how it plays out. It only needs to work for a share of the Bernie vote, not all of it.

4. The Doomsday scenario and a new electoral map

Check out these 2012 election demographics numbers:

Democrats saw those numbers and declared permanent victory, Republicans saw those numbers and said "we've got to get Hispanics in the party!" What shared assumptions do they have? That assumption is that A) Neither party should be the "white party" and B) America will continue to trek along with globalist policies, open borders, and be an increasingly multi-cultural empire rather than a majority white nation.

However, there's a much easier path to victory for the GOP from looking at those numbers. If a candidate could increase the GOP share of the white vote and increase the share of the male vote while encouraging more American males to vote...well that could set the party up for a lot of victories as well. Especially if the party desisted in turning the US into a multi-cultural state rather than a majority white/Western one. And wouldn't that be a much easier path to take? Of course neither side of the establishment wants to take that path, which is why they never mention it as even existing as a possibility.

Part of Trump's appeal can be understood from the that he's willing to win or lose with America's favorite villain, the white male. Republicans have been running and hiding from being associated with white males for the last few decades, terrified of being called "sexist" or "racist" and losing their chances of running the multi-cultural empire they were helping to build.

Trump is running as the champion of white males, that should have been obvious from Bobby Knight's endorsement and Trump's subsequent landslide victory in the Indiana primary. That's why his support has been so determined and dogged.

With the support of fresh white males plucked from the Bernie Sanders' votes, the old electoral map has to be redrawn because we are now talking about totally new voter coalitions. The Reagan coalition is dead.

As an Alt-Center candidate Trump has a good chance of doing what establishment Republicans have wanted to do for a long time and dominate the "rust belt" and some of the more lily-white states across the midwest and northeast while still maintaining the south and midwest which are full of ABC (anyone but Hillary) voters.

This is the liberal "doomsday" scenario, in which white Americans led by white males coalesce to form a party that is looking to promote their own interests and subsequently destroy a liberal establishment candidate. The fact that this party will probably push some fairly liberal agendas probably won't be as much of a talking point.

You can expect the media and many people to become increasingly panicked and shocked as the Trump campaign continues to over perform against expectations. Hopefully I've helped bring some clarity on what is actually happening.

How Daredevil serves as safe escapism for white Americans

Marvel has cleverly found a way to do some content aimed at a strictly adult audience with the kind of grim violence that my generation loves. Their venue for doing so combines two things that have proven to be a hit: Frank Miller takes on superheroes and binge-inducing Netflix original series.

Their most successful bit so far has been the "Daredevil" series, which borrows heavily from Frank Miller's take on the character. Like with his influence on "the Dark Knight," Miller brings a darker tone to Daredevil and Netflix continued that theme in a major way.

The essence of Daredevil's character is the way he represents Irish-Catholic immigrants who came to the US and fought to carve out a place in the rough and tumble streets of New York. Sure he's blind and has some super hearing powers and ninja fighting skills, but his character is defined by the way he doggedly clings to his Catholic ethics and his ability to take both a mental and emotional pounding and still overcome.

His opponents in the Netflix series are very, very interesting particularly in light of current concerns about violence in the inner city, immigration, and fears about the existence of terrorist cells across the country. Daredevil is a rather obvious stand-in for traditional Americans' struggle to deal with these concerns without losing their soul in the process.

What's more, the Daredevil villains are politically correct stand-ins for the kinds of people and crime that actually scare Americans.

Politically correct inner-city violence and immigration

I had to notice with no small amusement a paradox that has come up in my generation in our social media conversations. I noticed in Daredevil season one that there would be Facebook posts all over my timeline about the righteous cause of the #BlackLivesMatter movement juxtaposed with the same people extolling the awesomeness of Daredevil season one.

The irony is to see people lambast police officers for using levels of violence to try and control thugs that makes our stomachs churn and then see the same people binge-watching a show where a white American beats criminals within an inch of their lives in an effort to do the same.

With season 2 of Daredevil I'd see tons of posts or tweets from people furious with Donald Trump's charges that "Mexico is sending criminals and rapists" or his proposed moratorium on Muslim immigration. Those same people would then excitedly binge-watch Daredevil's efforts to stop the rampant crime caused by particular ethnicities of immigrants within Hell's Kitchen.

Part of the way in which Daredevil gets away with this is that they avoid, other than a few brief scenes with a particular arms dealer, any depictions of black criminality or white-on-black violence. The thugs Daredevil fights are always white and the non-immigrant thugs are bikers.

And the immigrants that Daredevil is dealing with? Irish mafia, Russian mafia, and Japanese mafia/ninja supervillains.

The result of all this is that Daredevil is able to play to modern anxieties about inner-city violence and immigrant-initiated crime without actually referencing the ethnic groups people are actually worried about and diving into the controversy.

If I mention a concern for rising black violence in urban or suburban settings I can be called a racist, but if I move to a richer, all-white community and escape to Hell's kitchen in my Netflix binges I'm safe. If I voice concerns about how the risks of introducing large numbers of Muslims or poor Mexican migrants into the country I'm a racist but when I'm watching Daredevil beat up other Irish-Americans in my flat in gentrified downtown I'm safe.

If they can get Matt Murdock to wrestle with cognitive dissonance in season 3 that would just take the cake.

Season 2: A half-good follow up

In my estimation they made three mistakes in season two of the show...

*Don't read any further unless you are prepared to hear spoilers*

Mistake 1: They went overboard on the grim violence

The best parts of season two were the parts that featured Frank Castle, "the punisher." His character was PERFECT for testing Daredevil's commitment to "thou shalt not kill" and the way that he conflicts love interest Karen Page makes for some good drama that wasn't really properly exploited by the writers.

The episodes that featured Punisher were gripping and intense, but there were times when it was just overboard. One major example is when they showed the head of the Irish mafia murdering another man by slowly stabbing a fork through his eye and into his brain at a wake.

It was also interesting when he's later torturing Punisher with power tools, you get close to the point where you aren't sure if you want to watch anymore, and then they threaten to start torturing his dog...

At that point I was basically going

but mercifully Punisher relents and we don't see them exhibit animal cruelty. It's funny that as humans we are capable of watching cruelty towards other humans (to a point) but when it's turned on animals that's just too much. Especially animals like dogs, our best friends.

After my brother finished this season he texted me saying, "I think I'm going to take a break from watching people die for a few weeks."

The Punisher takes as much punishment as he doles out and the show seems to dance on the lines of what they can get away with in terms of violence without turning off their audience.

More modern shows ought to take a page out of John Wayne's "the Searchers," a story that includes tremendously grim violence and cruelty but doesn't have to depict any of it graphically in order to convey the emotions and drama of the moment.

You can accomplish so much more with what might be described as the cinematic version of "show don't tell" in which you use the actors' responses to convey the weightiness of a moment rather than just depicting it. They at least got this partially right when Karen Page steps out into the diner and sees the aftermath of Frank's brutal murder of a few dudes.

I love much of the violence in the show, especially the single-shot scenes in each season's episode three, but they need to use some other tactics.

Mistake 2: Nobu and the hand

The most gripping action sequence of season one would either be when Daredevil fights his way through a pack of Russian mafia thugs to rescue a boy from child trafficking or his epic encounter with Nobu where he's sliced up to the point where he nearly dies.

It was revealed in this moment that Nobu isn't just a Yakuza boss but is actually a legit ninja and his Shoge hook became a really sinister image.

Well they doubled down big time on Nobu and his hook in season two, basically bringing him back from the dead and repeatedly showing scenes where he'd pull out the weapon and you're supposed to feel the dread of having to watch Daredevil get carved up again.

However, it felt like a massive stretch to me to believe that Nobu has super powers or that he'd really been the mastermind of a massive, underground ninja organization this whole time. None of the episodes centering around the Hand or Elektra did much for me, although I always enjoy Stick.

When Scott Glenn tells me that there's this major war going on for the world between a group of ninjas who's leader has been moonlighting as a Yakuza boss and who's evil plot centers around that organization successfully digging a major hole in New York for some reason and weaponizing a 5'7" girl...I can almost take it all seriously.

I understand that the Hand plays a big role in the comics I just don't think this was executed all that well. Nobu is kinda wooden and he doesn't seem that threatening to Daredevil now that he has body armor and a baton.

Mistake 3: Elektra isn't convincing

When it's revealed that converting Elektra is the ultimate aim of Nobu and the Hand I'm not sure what to make of that. It seems clear enough that Daredevil could track her and dispatch her even if she went rogue and it's not clear why the Hand sees her as this unstoppable weapon. Is she really that much more useful than immortal Nobu?

I guess perhaps she'd be their best bet for a world-leader killing assasin or something, I don't know, it's not explained.

When she slits the throat of a boy in front of Daredevil and asks him "This is who I am? Can you accept me?" I had to roll my eyes. Just a bit too much, imo. The scene where Matt and Elektra plan to run away to London if they survive their upcoming battle with scores of Hand ninjas produced in me a similar reaction.

You're asked to accept that she wins over Daredevils heart in part because he's fighting so hard for her soul and in part because he feels free to be who he really is (a costumed vigilante) when he's with her whereas everyone else in his life is either at arm's length or threatening to force him to give up his identity.

I thought the show's conclusion worked for a few reasons. One reason was that I was happy to see Elektra die, even though I know they'll just bring her back later. Maybe next time it'll be better written.

Another reason was that I loved how the show wrapped up by exploring Murdock's emotional toughness in the face of losing Elektra and losing Foggy yet still being willing to risk emotional attachment again by revealing his true identity to Karen Page. They'd already explored his physical toughness so diving into his emotional strength was a good move.

Everyone knew that Daredevil would overcome the ninja hordes because Punisher would show up and gun a bunch of them down but it was still slightly satisfying to watch it unfold.

The pandering soliloquy to New Yorkers offered by Karen Page when it's finally time to write her feature article on vigilante justice was the worst part of either season. It's just not really set up by the show's themes this season. After watching Daredevil prove victorious over the Hand and seeing him basically just accept the Punisher's presence despite their philosophical differences I'm not thinking "man the people of New York are so tough and awesome for surviving all of this." Maybe they could have got there, but didn't feel like it really landed.

Feels like the show is pandering to the audience as survivors but I think an ode to the kind of hero Murdock is phrased in universals would have been better. Of course Deborah Ann Woll tends to overact quite a bit in this show so it may have been doomed regardless.

Presumably season three will return to the Kingpin as the major villain and he'll no doubt build some kind of powerful coalition of politically correct opponents to threaten Daredevil's urban setting. Although much of season two misfired for me it still produced some amazing moments and I'll be ready to escape back to Hell's Kitchen for some safe depictions of Daredevil's battle for justice whenever season three is released.

How Batman v Superman could have been a good movie

Batman v Superman was so poor, so badly executed, that Ben Affleck was apparently humiliated by the reviews and is likely to be put in charge of saving the entire franchise. A few weeks ago I drafted a long, wordy review of this film in which I wrestled through all of the film's missteps before finally stumbling upon some deeper truths the movie had possessed but failed to clearly convey.

In short, I could sum up why this movie didn't work with a few pithy sentences such as: "It tries to do a million things and doesn't do any of them well," or "it would have been better if it'd actually been about Batman v Superman."

Director Zach Snyder tried to tell a grim, violent story and engage with deeper truths along the way because that's a popular way to do things these days. The problem is that I'm not sure he himself fully understood the deep themes of the movie and he was also done in by his attempt to have a climactic ending that also set up DC's "Justice League" series.

On a minor note, I also wonder if Snyder has become overly concerned that his reputation is for making cool, slow-motion action sequences rather than deeper, grittier films like he'd prefer. He tried to make Batman v Superman a deeper, grittier film and it lacked the well-choreographed, slow-motion action sequences that would have given the 151 minute trek a better payoff.

*I'm going to give some spoilers on what happens in this movie so don't read on if you aren't okay with that*

What Snyder seemed to at least dimly understand about Superman is that he works best as a metaphor for God. What's more, both Batman and Lex Luthor are equipped with "how does man relate to God" motivations that drive the movie and could have done so effectively.

So here's a brief sketch of how this looks in the movie:

Superman is like Jesus. His character has always been like Jesus. He comes to earth and accepts the role of a humble and unimpressive servant while putting his powers to use at all times to try and protect the planet's inhabitants. He has to wrestle with how to best protect the people around him and in this movie has to struggle with a tendency to show favoritism for Israel Lois Lane. Admittedly the metaphor breaks down here a bit as there's no greater purpose to be accomplished for the world by specifically protecting Lois Lane, as good a reporter as she may be. He just likes her.

Batman is represents man and his frustrated relationship with God. He has real authority issues, seems to be increasingly embracing his role as a criminal/rebel, and he has real frustration with the way Superman does things. Bruce Wayne sees the collateral damage from Superman's battles and says, "why should I trust this all-powerful creature? Aren't I better off in my own hands?"

Modern man asks that question all the time. The problem here is that this frustration isn't really fleshed out that well and there's a big emphasis on Batman's concern with Superman's collateral damage, which is juxtaposed with sequences where Batman seems to show a similar lack of regard for whether criminals or innocents are hurt in his own vigilante escapades.

Lex Luthor is the devil, and he's very explicit about it. He looks to pit man against God and then what that doesn't work out issues the following line:

"If man won't kill God, the devil will do it!"

Another take is that Luthor is another person who's been hurt on earth, this time by an abusive father rather than a criminal who robbed him of his parents, and because his relationship with his father included so much abuse he's incapable of seeing God the father as being a force for good. As a result, he's looking to overthrow God (Superman) and sees Batman as the perfect tool for that purpose.

Now here the movie gets one thing right and two things very, very wrong.

What the movie does well is setting up the "Martha connection" in which both Superman and Batman have mothers named Martha. Luthor captures Superman's mom and tells him she'll die unless he brings Luthor Batman's head.

Superman then reasons that he must go to Batman and either convince him to help or else kill him. I'm not sure why he didn't instead determine to find his mom and rescue her, perhaps he felt Batman would be more effective in that role. This was all fairly lazy and somewhat disappointing, especially in light of how ineffectually the movie sets up Batman's motivations for taking down Superman.

What the movie gets exceptionally right, even though it fell flat for most of the audience (including myself until I finally stumbled upon the underlying theme), is when Batman has Superman beat and is ready to kill him when Superman says "don't let them hurt Martha!"

Batman is stopped, and then emotionally undone by the realization that Superman IS in fact vulnerable. Because he has people on earth that he loves so deeply, he's made vulnerable by their weakness. It's a chosen weakness, the same that God shows by allowing himself to be hurt by humanity's sinful choices as he bears with us in our weaknesses and errors.

Luthor never has this moment, his image of God is too broken (and the movie needs a supervillain), but Batman is reconciled to God by the vulnerability of Superman.

Here's the next error the movie makes, which is that it robs this moment of serving as the climax of the movie in order to pit the burgeoning "Justice League" against this CGI space-monster thing that Lex Luthor has cooked up.

There are so many mistakes here it's hard to count them all. First, Batman is pretty useless in this fight because the space-monster is so overpowered. They bring in Wonder Woman to fight it but she has so little to do in this movie that it's all rather lame. It would have been better to introduce her character with an entire film like Marvel did with most of the Avengers characters. DC was too hasty here, imo.

The plot holes that lead to Luthor creating the space-monster are pretty ridiculous. How did he know that having access to the Kryptonian spaceship would enable him to build it? Once he got aboard the ship how did he so quickly realize that it included procedures for building biological weapons?

The movie would have been much, much better if Luthor had put all his chips in the Batman basket and never said the line "if man won't kill God, the devil will do it!" After all, Batman v Superman is supposed to be the point of the movie. Justice can dawn from their alliance, you don't have to show them fighting space-monsters with Wonder Woman just yet.

Another problem is how silly and over-powered this monster is, which just didn't fit with the intended grim realism of the rest of the film. They literally nuke this monster (and Superman) and it does nothing. The Batman v Superman showdown was way cooler than this stupid fight.

Snyder also tries to give Superman the opportunity to show weakness again and sacrifice himself in order to destroy Luthor's space-monster, which brings about his own death (or not). This is needless, he already showed the vulnerability the movie needed in the "Martha" scene with Batman.

Ultimately, in the devil's battle with God his ultimate play is trying to turn man against him. That's what this movie was trying to do and could have done well. Instead, Snyder tried to add the additional fight scenes with stupid biological weapon creature and Wonder Woman.

Maybe Affleck will get all this right now that he's in charge but if the problem is DC trying to rush things and do too much while playing catch-up with Marvel then I don't know if even Affleck and Ironside's very effective Batman-Alfred combo will do the trick.

Is the balance of power in America moving back to the people?

Many of the Republican pundits in the #NeverTrump movement have been very keen to point out that the US is a Republic, not a pure democracy, and that the GOP itself should have ultimate deciding power to choose their own party's nominee. Not the voting public.

Of course all of these pundits were happy to parade and extoll the virtues of democracy as long as the voters were doing what they wanted them to do, but when the party's base revolted and decided to nominate a vulgarian billionaire with a penchant for humiliating the party's actual leaders many of these pundits felt the need to put the voters back in their place.

This was a massive mistake, of course, and simply resulted in Trump wrapping up the race with yet another landslide victory in Indiana. You don't convince voters to do what you want by demeaning their choices and suggesting that perhaps power should be more concentrated in the hands of the elite, particularly when anti-elite sentiment is already driving the choices you don't like.

But few have accused Republican pundits of being the best strategic thinkers in the biz.

Anyways they happen to be right about at least one thing, the Republican system established by the founding fathers was designed in emulation of the Roman Republic before it fell, and like most all forms of government, the Roman Republic was ultimately an oligarchy.

Sure the people would vote and Roman citizens were afforded particular powers and privileges (including the right to go die with the legions while expanding the Republic into an empire) but the major decisions and power was wielded by the ruling class.

The same was true for the US Republic established by the founding fathers, which was ruled by elites. The history of our nation's politics can largely be understood as representing struggles between a few elites for control of the helm and that history is important for contextualizing what is happening in the current US election.

The original American elites

One thing that used to puzzle me about American history was how so many brilliant men ended up in the original colonies. Growing up you always get the impression that the original colonists were simple-minded peasants who were fleeing England in order to have a chance at a better life in a new world. From there the cream rose to the crop and "survival of the fittest" enabled some great men to emerge later on such as Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and George Washington.

Then I learned about the massive role that genetics play in human abilities and began to wonder how it was that America ended up with so many highly intelligent and gifted people.

The answer can apparently be found in a book called "Albion's seed" by David Fischer, which I've personally only read spark notes about. The four main Anglo-Saxon groups that defined original American settlement and still influence culture today include:

The Puritans
The Quakers
The Cavaliers
The Borderers

The Puritans were evidently not the simple-minded fundamentalists you tend to imagine from your public education but came from the educated, upper-middle class ranks of England. They were obsessed with education and their legacy lives on in the Ivy Leagues of America's northeast. The Quakers were more or less America's source of liberal conscience and they pushed an agenda for society that would still be described as fairly egalitarian today. They settled in Pennsylvania and Delaware.

The Cavaliers settled in Virginia and were made up of British Aristocrats fleeing a Puritan takeover in England that was hostile to nobility. They brought with them a great many indentured servants and became the landed class of the south.

The Borderers are often described as "the Scots-Irish" and were the rough and tumble folk who were hardened and fashioned on the violent border of England and Scotland. These are basically your classic rednecks, the folks that would push out the frontier, and the better part of the country's overall WASP population.

I'm betting that a great deal of my own lineage is "borderer" although there are some other groups mixed in.

American politics up till the Civil War can largely be defined as northeastern elites of Puritan heritage battling southern elites of Cavalier heritage for control of the state with the Cavaliers usually winning, in part thanks to the 3/5 compromise that counted black slaves as extra votes for southerners.

Jefferson's vision for the American Republic

Jefferson's primary concern for the US was that it not be transformed into a centralized empire, which he saw resulting from the creation of "mobs" within big cities that would be easily controlled by increasingly powerful elites. While he was on board with oligarchy he wanted a certain balance of power to prevent either the masses or the elites from wielding too much power. As a general rule, the Democratic-Republican party led by Jefferson and Madison and focused in the South was ironically more libertarian (usually) than the northeastern party despite including so many landed aristocrats.

The Louisiana purchase was Jefferson's big play to ensure that America be a balanced Republic in the future. His hope was that if provided with tons of room to expand, America could be maintained as nation of self-sufficient peasant farmers for decades to come. Of course this didn't work out.

Victory for the Northern elites

For years and years the Southern aristocracy had the upper hand over America's northeast. Despite the north's economic progression towards manufacturing and establishing a middle class built on urban workers rather than farmers, the south maintained political control due to factors like the 3/5 compromise.

Andrew Jackson built the modern Democratic party around borderer sentiment as he and his people feared that elites would tend to use the government to promote their own interests over the interests of everyday Americans (true) and his response was that government should be limited and curtailed. Ironic given the modern Democratic platform, no?

However, the party was frequently hijacked by southern elites who used the party's popularity and credibility with borderer masses to push their own agenda, such as the protection of the institution of slavery. They kept the commoners on their side by fighting against northern measures like the tariffs, which were designed to benefit northern manufacturing at the expense of southern agrarians.

From the inception of the Democratic party and it's election of Andrew Jackson in 1828 until the year 1861 when the Republican party's first president (Abraham Lincoln) assumed office the Democrats held the presidency every term save for the 1841-45 and 1849-53 terms. The Democrats lost those elections to "Whig" presidents. The Whigs accomplished those victories by nominating war heroes William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor that allowed them to expand into the south on the electoral map and beyond their northeastern cluster.

The establishment of the Republican party and a split ticket in 1860 finally allowed the northeastern elites to break the power of the southern elites. Seeing the writing on the wall and fearing that they would henceforth be ruled by northern interests thanks to that region's superior population, the south then seceded. The north won the war and established control back over those states.

Ebbs and flows in American political power dynamics

From the Civil War on the country has been ruled by a wide variety of different interests but northern elites have usually run the show. Some of the power of American elites was broken and their exploitation stopped by the "progressive" Republicans of the early 20th century, such as Teddy Roosevelt. At this time in American history the papers started to wield a good deal of power helped provide the people some counter-balancing power. Prior to that William Jennings Bryan tried to take up the populist cause but was soundly defeated.

Over the last few decades the country has come to governed by a "ruling class" consisting largely of well educated people in the D.C.-N.Y. axis and the nation's small supply of billionaires. While the Republicans and Democrats have each fought for different values in the culture wars you'll notice that none of the last several presidents did anything too different from one another in terms of expanding American reach abroad and pushing a globalist economic vision.

The major media networks all largely sang that tune and candidates like Ron Paul that cautioned against aggressive foreign interventionism were universally labelled as "nut-jobs." Essentially, America's oligarchy had become a bit too powerful and unchecked.

The 2016 election is probably the first in which the super-democratizing internet has made it possible for the descendants of the borderers who swept Andrew Jackson into power back in 1828 to make another dent in American politics with Donald Trump.

When you see Bobby Knight campaigning with Donald Trump and helping him over the top in Indiana you're seeing classic America fight to reclaim a seat at the table.

The 2016 election is partially about globalism vs nationalism in the same way the Civil War was about slavery vs free labor, but it also represents average Americans using the power of the internet to check the power of the nation's elites.

Take a gander at how much money the various candidates have raised and spent:

A few notes here, I combined the money raised and spent by the campaign and their Super-PACs and the numbers are in millions. Neither Bernie Sanders nor Donald Trump have really used Super-PACs in their campaigns. I didn't include super-delegates in the count for Hillary vs Bernie and their rules for delegate dispersions are different than in the Republican primary so direct comparisons are inexact.

Super-PACs are the means by which billionaires can have unlimited influence on a campaign because there are donation limits to presidential campaigns but none for Super-PACs. Despite raising $76 million for Hillary and about $188 million for Jeb and Marco with Super-PACs, billionaires have had very little impact in the 2016 election, save perhaps for influencing super-delegates to roll with Hillary rather than Sanders (she currently has virtually all of the super delegates on her side).

Trump is a divisive candidate who basically represents all the rough edges of America's non-elites, but perhaps someone like Thomas Jefferson would be pleased to see the pendulum of power swinging back again and limiting the control elites have in the American system.

The Revenant: An exploration of human savagery

It'd be a mistake to talk about the grim violence inherent in modern movies and television without discussing "The Revenant" which was nominated for best picture at the Academy Awards and won for "best actor" (Leo DiCaprio), "best director" (Alejandro G. Inarritu), and "best cinematography" (Emmanuel Lubezki).

This was one of the most effective films I've ever seen at totally immersing you in a foreign setting (the savage wilderness of the Dakotas in the 1820s) and forcing you to deeply consider what it must have been like to experience the extreme settings the people of that place and time would have endured.

Naturally, this wasn't a movie about the lighter or easier aspects of exploring the frontier and trapping fur but the most brutal extremes even of that occupation. I'd go so far as to say that this was the 2nd most intense film I've ever sat through and a very close 2nd at that behind Mel Gibson's "The passion of the Christ."

If you haven't seen the movie I'm going to be dropping spoilers here and there so be warned*

The movie opens with a serene scene in which Leo and his son are hunting moose in a creek bed while the fur trappers he's working for are cleaning pelts back at their camp. The scenery and shooting for this film is beautiful and combined with the sound editing it helps with the immersion this film is aiming for.

You are taken inside the trappers' camp where Tom Hardy's character is voicing normal business concerns and directing traffic when suddenly you see a naked, scalped man stumbling into the fur trappers camp before he's suddenly cut down by arrow fire...and the brutality unfolds.

As it turns out, the trappers have found themselves caught between a band of Arikara natives and their target, which is whomever has taken the Chief's daughter (it turns out to be French explorers who are the true culprits of this crime).

What unfolds is a series of unfortunate events in which you find the various characters of the film getting caught between parents and their children. Virtually everyone is caught between the Arikara Chief and his daughter, Leo is caught between a mother grizzly and her cubs, and Tom Hardy is caught between Leo and his son. In every instance the result is the parent enacting graphically-depicted brutality on whomever finds themselves in their crosshairs.

The result is that you are repeatedly exposed to grim situations and truly brutal violence as different species and people groups are thrown together in a primitive environment in which familial bonds take over and guide everyone's decisions and motives.

Captain Andrew Henry, played by Domhnall Gleeson, is basically the stand-in for the modern viewer. He's doing all he can to impose civilized ethics in a primitive environment but is ultimately unable to prevent all of the savagery from taking over and is eventually killed himself when caught in the middle of Leo's quest for vengeance against Hardy for killing his son.

While a shockingly brutal depiction of human interaction like "Game of thrones" is aiming to underscore the meaninglessness of life and lack of an ultimate higher purpose (or at least a good one), the Revenant's violence has a different feel and purpose to it.

One of Inarritu's main aims seems to be exploring the extremes of human experience and forcing us to weigh and feel the difficulty of looking to impose modern human standards on a primitive, untamed world. He's not looking to shock us and there isn't entertainment here in the sense where viewers are eager to see what kind of horrifying event will unfold next. Each violent scene is painful to watch and set up as something to be endured and felt rather than something to anticipate and be shocked by in an entertaining sense.

There is a sort of deconstructive unveiling here though in the revelation that if there isn't a guiding force to impose civilization then people will resort to animalistic instincts, looking to survive and ensure the survival of their offspring. Because even watching the film is such an intense experience you are pushed to be more realistic when considering how you might handle the different ethical dilemmas and situations of the story.

There's some value to that aspect of the grimly violent storytelling here in that the viewer has to interact with violence as a reality in the world to be navigated rather than simply an abstract deconstruction. Whereas "Game of thrones" can push you to throw away ethics as a convention of simpler minds or the burden of those who don't hold power, "the Revenant" will push you to examine how to preserve ethics for the sake of preserving ourselves from savagery.

You also can't help but consider the fact that Inarritu is a Mexican (or at least I can't) and there is a clash today between Mexican and American cultures along the border with familial instincts often taking precedent over the rule of law or modern civilizational standards. However if you consider that struggle in light of the movie you won't find any answers, just concerns.

There's also an attempt by Inarritu's to reference higher purpose and meaning with Leo's decision to forego vengeance and find another purpose to drive him to survive. Perhaps he sees this as the ultimate solution to the problem of how to sort out the inevitable conflicts between different people who are trying to survive and raise children.

Whether this is successfully conveyed in the movie I'm not as sure. One problem here is that Leo doesn't really forego his vengeance. He stabs Hardy and has already nearly killed him when he decides to "pass up" the ultimate act of snuffing out his life in order to hand him over to the Arikara chief who happens to be passing by for this scene. After doing so, the chief immediately completes the deed himself and scalps Hardy, who is a man already embittered from having been scalped in the past.

There's a sense here in which it's depicted as though God were ultimately responsible for judgment and he reliably hands it down to Hardy's character but what other outcome would Leo even have expected? He does pass up the chance to savagely kill Hardy himself (fortunately for the viewer, at this point it'd make for a horrifying conclusion to sit through a drawn out murder) but what he does is almost equally cruel and highly likely to bring the same result.

A modern way of telling this story would be to have Leo bring Hardy in and hand him over to the law, in a Christian telling (or in the real life event the movie is based on) perhaps Leo would forgive Hardy and send him on his way to Texas. Inarritu's post-modern conclusion is to give in to extremes and hand over Hardy to the savage Arikara and then rationalize this decision as giving up vengeance to a higher power before pressing on for new purpose and meaning in life in order to stay motivated to keep drawing breath.

What's ironically lost in this existentialism is any kind of uniting social ethic that could save us from savagery but instead simply a "whatever it takes to make things work for you" conclusion. There's no real sacrifice, no real ethic, just coping mechanisms for the individual. The only guy who tried to live for something greater than himself was killed.

You are left to wonder what it is that actually saved us from the brutality of the frontier and what could save us if we ever slipped back.

What is with our modern fascination with grim, violent stories?

I often bristle when I hear George R.R. Martin compared favorably up against my own favorite author, J.R.R. Tolkien.

The latter created Middle-Earth and wrote "The Hobbit," "The Lord of the Rings," and "The Silmarillion" which have been the underpinning of modern fantasy and myth. The former created Westeros and wrote "A Song of Ice and Fire," the series that includes volume one "A game of thrones," and spawned the ultra-popular HBO series based on the series.

George R.R. Martin cites Tolkien as an influence and is typically credited with moving forward the genre. If you're at all familiar with the series you can basically track Western society's development from being Christian to post-Christian by noting the differences in the series.

In Tolkien's stories you know the good guys are going to win, although it's not clear how and there is always suffering and sacrifice involved in seeing a good purpose overcome an evil one. In Martin's stories (as best I can tell) he repeatedly sets up the possibility of likable characters seeing positive ends only to bring it all crashing down in ruin in the most brutal and horrifying fashion imaginable.

The HBO series, of which I've only seen chunks, really takes this to another level with exceptionally graphic depictions of sex and violence that regularly leave viewers shocked. It's customary for people to even make "reaction videos" that track how they respond to whatever appalling ending has come upon the characters of the show in series finales.

This grimness all lauded as being "more realistic and true to human experience" than Tolkien's "escapist fantasy" in which the good guys win. The characters are largely flawed and mixed with varying degrees of nobility to their motivations. The most noble characters usually meet horrifying ends.

I find this assumption supremely arrogant and frustrating. Allow me to explain...

George R.R. Martin was born in 1948, just after WWII had been completed, and the major war that his generation experienced was the conflict in Vietnam. You can probably guess where this is going, no? He went off to Vietnam, saw horrible, horrible things, and has used his writing to express a worldview that looks to capture and depict the cruel nature of modern struggle for power. Right?

Wrong. He avoided the war by applying for conscientious-objector status.

Meanwhile J.R.R. Tolkien was born in 1892 and his generation experienced THE major war, World War I.

World War I essentially destroyed the modern era of the west and launched the post-modern movement that is an often cynical, hurt, and confused deconstruction of the modern era. Everyone's faith in modern institutions and thought was completely shaken by the fact that none of them prevented a war that took 17 million lives without any real positive objective

Tolkien endured public scorn as he finished his degree before enlisting as it was popular in England at this time to use public shaming to drive the young men to enlist. He stuck it out and finished his degree though before heading off to France to experience the unimaginable hells of trench warfare. There he participated in the nightmare of the Battle of the Somme and lost most of his friends.

Somme or Mordor?

So what happened next? He captured the hellish conditions of the Somme in an imaginary place called Mordor and he wrote a work in which human struggle against the all-too real nature of hell results in ultimate victory and good.

So while George R.R. Martin avoided the cruelest realities of human experience and then wrote about them in cynical and unfettered fashion. J.R.R. Tolkien experienced them and looked to help others make sense of them and see the potential for goodness coming as a result.

In our modern experience the vast majority of us Americans are not confronted with a terribly difficult life. We don't have to shiver in the mud while explosions go off around us, we don't have to make sense of a world in which our friends are blown to pieces and both suffering and difficult moral choices are a daily reality.

Thus, it's really easy for us to venture off into a world like "Game of thrones" or any other grim, violent entertainment series. When it's over and we're done thinking through difficult challenges in an abstract fashion we can adjust the temperature in our homes and rest comfortably in our beds.

If you ask me, the idea that this approach to story-telling, this depiction of mankind's struggles, is more advanced and superior to what Tolkien wrought after he wrestled with true grimness and violence is puffed up nonsense.

We'd love to believe that today we are more enlightened than in the past. We like to pretend that we know better, that we know that the world is a grim place and that true happiness or goodness is a mirage.

In reality, we're just comfortable to the point that we can play make-believe like the world is a difficult place without actually having to taste the reality of it like Tolkien did in the trenches at Somme.

Tolkien may have been guilty of helping people to escape brutal nightmares and find peace and meaning with his fantasies, but today we are guilty of trying to escape the fact that we don't live amidst brutal nightmares and yet haven't found that peace and meaning that comforted Tolkien.

Why Donald Trump hasn't been and won't be stopped

On this blog I've spent a lot of time detailing and explaining the plans of the Republican establishment and Ted Cruz to stop Donald Trump from winning the GOP nomination. Their plans were easy enough to understand and essentially boiled down to trying to unite the majority chunk of middle-class Republican voters who felt that voting Trump was unseemly and unsafe.

It didn't work, it won't work, and it failed for the same reasons that the conservative movement as a whole has largely failed over the last several decades. Because it was fighting against a message and against a vision rather than supplying their own.

At its core conservatism is reactionary and about preserving the old ways. In a democracy with a powerful economy and a central state with tons of money and resources you're generally not going to win elections by arguing for prudence, you're going to win by selling the best vision for how to leverage all of those resources.

Democrats and progressivism have argued for using those resources to improve the lot of average citizens. On the home front and socially, Republicans and conservatism has been about preserving the traditions and institutions that made those resources possible. The latter is a prudent vision, but it's just not going to sell.

Where Republicans have developed and sold an aggressive vision for how to make the most of America's resources is with foreign interventionism. Neo-conservatives within the party sold the electorate on policing the world and establishing peace and prosperity across the globe. But today with America's economy slipping combined with repeated military defeats and foreign adventures that seemed to make foreigners and Americans both worse off? That's not so attractive a vision. That's how Trump is able to sound almost like a 9/11 truther before the South Carolina primary (home of neo-Con senator Lindsey Graham) and then still absolutely thrash George W. Bush's brother.

When many conservatives look at Donald Trump they see a disreputable scum bag who's out for himself, they don't see someone who should be winning the GOP primary nor someone who can win in November. The whole thing is totally baffling.

However, when you see past all of that to a guy who's completely alone in selling a new vision for how the government's massive pool of resources can be put to work to improve the lot of the average American over and against the lot of the foreigner, you begin to understand why he's having success.

Combine that message with the fact that Trump is by and far the strongest personality and leader (in the purest sense of getting people to follow him) it's easy to see why Cruz and the establishment have been totally unable to stop him.

Beating Trump will require another strong leader who can sell the people on a positive vision. Instead, Trump is likely to run against Hillary Clinton, who will almost certainly fall into the trap of running as the non-Trump, safe answer for who should run the country. That's not going to work for several reasons.

One is that people don't like the status quo and they make like it even less if there are more terrorist attacks, market failures, or rumors of even higher insurance premiums between now and November.

Another is that Hillary is profoundly unlikable. Trump's weakness as an unfavorable windbag is completely minimized if America's other option is a shrill phony that can easily be painted as being on the side of the established powers that Americans don't really trust anymore to hold their best interests at heart. Neither the status quo nor Hillary herself have done anything to paint themselves as a likable, safe alternative to Trump.

Here's the current delegate count in the GOP primary:

Now that Cruz and Kasich are both mathematically eliminated from winning the needed 1,237 delegates their ability to sell themselves as a strong, alternative leader is further blunted. Instead they are pitching themselves to Americans as a means to stop Trump and allow the party to choose the next president on our behalf. It would seem that the GOP's plan is for that to be Paul Ryan.

Voters are not going to go for that. What reason do they have at this point to trust the establishment to make decisions on their behalf without accountability?

You can expect to see Trump snatch up enough of the 733 remaining delegates to reach Cleveland, OH as the nominee thanks in part to massive victories in Pennsylvania and California. If he's even close he'll leverage the threat of the utter destruction that would occur if the party looked to overturn the will of their voters to secure enough delegates to wrap it up.

From there all the talk will be about how Clinton is a shoo-in to beat Trump and the "educated people don't vote for demagogues like Trump!" rhetoric will really be ratcheted up. But it won't work.

In this space I think I'll do some writing on some movies and TV shows I've seen recently that I think are an interesting reflection on current American culture. We'll still check in on the election but that's about the size of it for the foreseeable future.