This year’s Nobel Prize winner for literature Bob Dylan, back in 2001 wrote some lyrics to one of his many enjoyable songs, a song entitled Mississippi.
In one stanza Dylan’s words note “things aughta get interesting right about now” and while penned a decade and a half ago, given current global political events and especially with “The Donald” as president-elect, these words are poignantly relevant today. Putting aside the George Soros funded agent provocateurs and anarchists and the hysterical complaints of those in the camp of neo-liberalism, Trump’s victory cannot be attributed to a bunch of what Hillary Clinton and corporate media echoed as “deplorables,” but rather an electorate that was fed up with Wall Street and crony capitalism, political entitlement and corruption, endless regime-change wars and the idiotic economic policies free trade and the fraud of human caused climate change.
To claim Putin and Russian involvement in determining this outcome is ridiculous and stupid. The fact that the voters in the state of Michigan, a state that has voted Democrat for the last 29 years and other “rust belt” states voted Trump, would seem to prove the point. These working-class Americans, many of them unemployed, didn’t vote for the GOP but for Trump’s promises.
Now let’s see what the soon-to-be President can do in the position occupied by the likes of Lincoln and FDR and JFK. It is hard to imagine that he would be worse than the last 15 years of ruin and war under Bush and Obama. Unfortunately, President-elect Trump has already reneged on some of these promises, namely prosecuting the patently criminal Hillary Clinton and on revoking the “kill the useless eaters” Obamacare.
With his appointment of some Wall Street types,Trump appears to be softening his call for Glass Steagall banking regulations, a huge mistake! His promise of rapproachment with Russia in fighting terrorists in Syria is hopeful but his appointment of “Mad Dog” Mattis as Defence Secretary is foreboding of more unwarranted provocations against Iran and China. Will he have the integrity and the backing to follow through on his promise of a very necessary re-newed and independent 9-11 investigation?
Here in the Great White North, our quite juvenile poster boy prime minister continues to follow the orders of his fellow privy councillors, the likes of John Manley, Bob Graham, Bob Rae and Gerald Butts. For what it’s worth, my favourite version of Mississippi is on the Tell Tale Signs bootleg album.
Brian Gray
Penticton