Janvier T. Chando
&
Janvier Chouteu-Chando
TISI BOOKS
NEW YORK, RALEIGH, LONDON, AMSTERDAM
H.L. Mencken
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.
Mark Twain
Mark Twain
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
In America, the criminally insane rule and the rest of us, or the clear majority of the rest of us, either do not care, do not know, or are distracted and properly brainwashed into acquiescence
Kurt Nimmo
Kurt Nimmo
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Voltaire
Voltaire
We are in the process of creating what deserves to be called the idiot culture. Not an idiot sub-culture, which every society has bubbling beneath the surface and which can provide harmless fun; but the culture itself. For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal.
Carl Bernstein, U.S. journalist.
Carl Bernstein, U.S. journalist.
A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
What luck for rulers that men do not think.
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Map of the USA
2008presidential election Map
2012 presidential election Map
The clear majority of Americans and most citizens of other countries of the world are in unison that no presidential race in the history of the United States of America has been as unpredictable, abnormal and unconventional as the 2016 race for the White House pitting the frontrunners Donald John Trump of the Republican Party and Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton of the Democratic Party. Even though four candidates are vying for the highest office in the land, the towering personalities of the Democratic and Republican candidates make the other two seem like footnotes in the race as Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton overwhelmingly command the attention of the world’s media, the focus of the financial institutions, the perturbation of foreign governments, and the haziness of the common folks of America and the rest of the world. This is so notwithstanding the fact that the Libertarian candidate Gary Earl Johnson is likely to win 5 percent of the vote, which would allow Libertarian Party candidates equal ballot access and federal funding during the next election cycle; this is also so despite the strong showing of the Green Party's presidential Jill Ellen Stein whose electoral platform seems like a dream come true for those with apocalyptic views of our world, which they consider to be at the mercy of humankind’s destructive impulses.
But then, in an electoral race where the media is solidly behind the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton; in a world where the top brass of the Democratic Party and most of the top brass of the Republican Party are against the Republican candidate Donald Trump, thereby making him an anti-establishment candidate that stirs trepidation in the bosoms of the political elites of the country; in a race where Donald Trump is viewed by his party elite as an outsider, and is known as a maverick by the rest of the populace because of his non-affiliation with traditional politics as a political novice with a knack for being politically incorrect by “saying things as they really are” or for being “brutally honest”; in a race where the machine of the Obama administration, the repertoire of Hillary Clinton’s husband and former president William Jefferson Clinton (Bill Clinton) and his retinue are fully at the service of the Democratic candidate, this election was supposed to be a walkover for Hillary Clinton, a stroll into the White House that would make her the first female president in the history of the United States of America. But that has not been the case. Donald Trump is defying the odds and is a step away from becoming the next president of the United States of America, much to the consternation of the political elites and financial heavyweights in the USA and the rest of the world. Forecasts or predictions have been failing one after the other, even after the Republican candidate's self-inflicting setbacks, even after polls show him lagging his rival with wide margins. Analysts have come back shortly after their pronouncements with reports that Donald Trump caught up with his rival and was even leading in some cases. Why has the media been found wanting so many times in their predictions? Why have pundits been failing consistently to analysis the Trump enigma in a race that may lead to an earthquake in the political setup of America?
The answers to the above questions lie in the ignored, downplayed and underrated aspects of the makeup of America that Donald Trump has managed to tap into, so that they have become major factors in the 2016 presidential election, factors the elite media and political establishment had wanted to keep under wraps, but which henceforth would become fundamental issues in future presidential races. These factors or game changers are:
States with high church attendance will see the denominations that dominate voting the candidates identifying with the dominant denomination in those states as indicated below:
Weekly church attendance by state in 2014
|
||
Rank
|
State
|
Percent
|
1
|
51%
|
|
2
|
47%
|
|
3
|
46%
|
|
4
|
46%
|
|
5
|
45%
|
|
6
|
42%
|
|
7
|
42%
|
|
8
|
41%
|
|
9
|
40%
|
|
10
|
39%
|
|
11
|
39%
|
|
12
|
39%
|
|
13
|
36%
|
|
14
|
35%
|
|
15
|
35%
|
|
16
|
35%
|
|
17
|
35%
|
|
18
|
35%
|
|
19
|
34%
|
|
20
|
34%
|
|
21
|
33%
|
|
22
|
33%
|
|
23
|
32%
|
|
24
|
32%
|
|
25
|
32%
|
|
26
|
32%
|
|
27
|
32%
|
|
28
|
32%
|
|
29
|
32%
|
|
30
|
31%
|
|
31
|
31%
|
|
32
|
31%
|
|
33
|
30%
|
|
34
|
29%
|
|
35
|
28%
|
|
36
|
28%
|
|
37
|
28%
|
|
38
|
27%
|
|
39
|
27%
|
|
40
|
27%
|
|
41
|
26%
|
|
42
|
25%
|
|
43
|
25%
|
|
44
|
25%
|
|
45
|
24%
|
|
46
|
24%
|
|
47
|
23%
|
|
48
|
22%
|
|
49
|
20%
|
|
50
|
20%
|
|
51
|
17%
|
|
One factor that has been overlooked in the election is the force of sectarianism. The media dwells on the long held mantra of evangelicals and most protestants voting Republicans, and Catholics voting Democrats. But this would not be the case in this election. When during the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation dinner—an annual charity event that has long been a bastion of civility in an otherwise partisan political world—Donald Trump said that “Here she is tonight, in public, pretending not to hate Catholics,” it might have been construed by some of the participants there that night as a passing comment aimed at Hillary Clinton, but Donald Trump’s verbal remark drew jeers from some of those attending this traditionally lighthearted affair. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, was uneasy about the comment and must have wondered at the time whether his assertion four years ago that “The purpose of the Al Smith Dinner is to show both our country and our Church at their best”, was right after all. Even so, the night ended well, and the world expects to see the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation continue keeping its longstanding election-year tradition of inviting both major parties’ presidential candidates to the white-tie gala, where they would have the opportunity to give a lighthearted speech, and tease one another and themselves in a good-natured way in the spirit of Alfred E. Smith, the former governor of New York and the first Catholic presidential nominee.
Through his comment, the Catholic Donald Trump was reminding Catholics that he was a Catholic running against a non-Catholic Hillary Clinton. And since the Democratic Party won the majority of the Catholic votes in the past and only split it in the 2012 presidential election, he believed he would have the elections if many Catholics who voted for the Democratic presidential candidate and incumbent Barack Obama in the last elections, turn around this time and vote him the Republican candidate in the 2016 election just as they would have voted Alfred E. Smith. This gimmick would sway many Catholic voters who inclined towards the Democratic party in the past, to vote for the Catholic Donald Trump, a factor that would have a major impact in Catholic majority states like Florida and the states around the Great Lakes (Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania). Such a development would create, and in some cases, strengthen the bond between Catholics and the Baptists and Methodists in the Southeast (the first and second most popular Christian Religious denominations there)—since cognizance should be given to the fact that the three denominations agree on many issues, and evangelicalism is strong in the south. In a nutshell, not only would Donald Trump’s Catholicism help him in the south, especially in the slightly wavering pro-Republican state of North Carolina, it is going to come in handy in the North where Catholicism is the leading denomination of the population. Florida, a state where Catholics dominate, easily identifies with Donald Trump on religious or denominational grounds.
The media and political pundits have analyzed and made predictions on the results of past elections based on the simplified categorization of race as most of us know it today. They classified Americans as either White, Hispanic, African, Asian, American, Native-American or American/Pacific/Eskimos. The biggest oversimplification has been the white vote, where ethnicity is often overlooked or ignored Statements like “I am Irish”, “I am Scottish”, “I am German”, “I am English”, “I am Russian”, “I am Polish”, “I am Italian” are common among whites, often indicating a combination or combinations of these European origin nationalities. As Steven Seidman said: “Whites are most commonly unaware of their privilege and the way their culture has always been dominant in the US, as they do not identify as members of a specific racial group but rather incorrectly perceive their views and culture as "raceless", when in fact it is ethno-national (ethnic/cultural) specific, with a racial base component.”...
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