Last Sunday’s reality TV show was revealingly vegetarian. Sacred cows remained whole. No steaks were barbecued.
To heal, you must first realize you have a problem. America’s is dietary.
Both Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton avoided the red meat issues, our bloated military budget and the futile war on drugs.
However, while tromping through the garden of defensive democracy, Donald Trump accidentally stumbled upon legitimacy.
“All Ronald Reagan had to do to win the presidency in 1980 was convince the great unwashed that he would not blow up the world, a very low threshold against unpopular incumbent Jimmy Carter,” I wrote last month before the first Trump-Clinton love fest.
The Donald’s Reaganautical mission was finally accomplished Sunday. He surprisingly seemed rational at times.
Whatever the outcome – and the psycho could still win – Donald Trump has done America a great service. He has taken America’s racism, sexism and bigotry out of the closet for all the world to see and for us to ponder.
“We have met the enemy and he is us,” Porkypine once opined in Walt Kelly’s legendary Pogo comic strip.
During our summer of police shootings, I offered my top 10 cures for what ails us. (Barbwire July 12)
1. END NIXON’S BOGUS WAR ON DRUGS. In 1994, former Nixon White House aide John Erlichmann told journalist/author Dan Baum that Richard the Rotten hated two enemies, “the antiwar left and black people. We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities…Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” (Harper’s Magazine, April 2016)
Nixon originally started down the enlightened path of treating drug addiction as a disease, but chose the dark with damnable results.
2. START A WAR ON WAR. In his farewell address, our greatest president warned against foreign entanglements. We have ignored George Washington’s advice at our peril. The richest country in human history has all the money needed to cure what ails us. We just spend it wrong.
NAGPAC RULES. Nevada’s unique “none of these candidates” ballot option in statewide races will set records this November, especially given that the major presidential candidates are ignoring solutions for the problems they promise to fix.
I’m getting bad vibes statewide that minorities and millennials may stay home in droves, 2014 all over again.
I created the None of the Above for Governor Political Action Committee (NAGPAC) as a insider joke in 1982.
The joke is on us.
Porkypine’s wisdom abides.
GIVE ‘EM HECHT. Joe Heck’s character assassination of Catherine Cortez-Masto reminds me of Republican U.S. Sen. Chic Hecht’s last-minute 1988 ploy. Trying to save his seat against Democratic Gov. Richard Bryan, Hecht ran saturation TV accusing Bryan of buying himself “a private jet” with state funds.
Actually, the photo shown was the Nevada Dept. of Transportation’s in-house aircraft.
But it almost saved Hecht’s re-election.
Heck remains the favorite according to pollster Nate Silver.
Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Barbano is a 48-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com/ E-mail <barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us> Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988.
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