PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEES WILL DEBATE

NO ONE NOMINEE TALKED DIRECTLY ABOUT THEIR OWN COMMUNITY

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

The Presidential nominees indirectly defined community while extending offers of association to the uncommitted, waffling electoral fragments, in the United States Presidential Debate at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday, September 10, 2024.

Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, and Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, continued to define community, with each nominee simultaneously claiming to be fighting for one America.

In reality, America has begun to struggle with fragmentation, having polarized into two identities, but with each official identity struggling to maintain consensus.

The candidates made ideological assertions about community throughout the debate to unite the electorate behind their candidacy for the 47^th President of the United States.

The candidates also made assumptions about each other’s vision of community to alienate their adversary from that extra one or two percent of eligible voters that might be all that is needed to secure electoral victory in November.

Trump’s image is that of a power broker, and as one of the few dominant players inside a limited elite class of Americans who benefit from the national fabric by simultaneously moulding certain elements of society while constricting other elements of society.

Trump brought that image from private life into the original 2016 presidential campaign. And that image has merged with his successes and failures of his first term as president, after everyone has had four years to reflect.

Harris did not mind pushing him in that direction.

The underlying modus operandi of a power broker is imbued in self interest while claiming credit for creating benefits for other Americans, such as families and workers, and smaller investors – and perhaps a wide range of big and small entrepreneurs.

Harris portrayed herself as more rational than Trump. The Vice President highlighted a more inclusive egalitarian agenda in contrast to Trump’s more exclusionary populist right wing assertions about what is going on in America and what is best for America.

The system, all around the world, is in a state of flux, and America is not so different, needing to survive the changes with the best possible outcome by ending the bickering about what is and has occurred while moving forward toward the most beneficial outcome, according to Harris.

Trump unabashedly, although indirectly, espouses an organic theory of society involving a hierarchy of competing groups and classes working in loose cooperation to achieve relative benefits for themselves while simultaneously working toward the greater long term good for America.

This society with a competing class structure consists of the higher one percent ultra rich class holding as much wealth as 90 percent of the rest of the population.

This organic society succeeds because each group will benefit appropriately according to their class by competing, Trump implies in almost everything he says and even the way he looks at the camera – especially after having trimmed his business elite bouffant.

Trump believes more in competing communities, which in the result enables social economic and political forces to determine the most benefits for the people. Cities also should compete with other cities for residents, manufacturing jobs and the location of corporate headquarters.

Harris espouses more of a harmonious interdependence of parts to meet the diverse needs of a varied population. The Democratic Presidential nominee underscored that Americans have more in common that can be used to unite America than the differences that divide the nation.

While shadow arguments of exclusion and inclusion occurred in the deep cover background, no one spoke of the obligations, rights and duties of citizenship within the entire nation, regardless of the shape of community, nor of their individual ability to lead the people within that tentatively defined community of interdependent parts, regardless of the level of competition.

A President and the Governing Party Administration must provide a centrifugal force that holds the national fabric together.

Nationalism is often manipulated by large corporations benefiting from regions being driven to compete against one another. Even in the new online world, eTech companies are dominating by forcing distinct regions of the world into competition within a framework of minimal government regulation.

This freeform economy gives rise to an era of oligarchs and autocrats, who operate more to their mutual benefit and less to improve the lives of the general population.

Policies form, and infrastructure becomes built, by the bourgeois, in a manner that drives corporate interests and only coincidentally creates jobs and towns along the way that increase the common good – towns get built simultaneously with the creation of jobs as one of many magic tricks.

The corporate entities, though, are imperfect guardians of the public trust because the capitalist often acts within the myopic profit motive without consideration for the benefit to one region of a nation to the detriment of another region.

In the online world, this selfishness pits one part of the world against another through the veil of healthy unregulated transnational competition.

Often only the rhetoric, of individuals maximizing freedom within the constitutional democracy, brings all Americans into an embrace, while in reality, great disparity exists, not just economically but in the real time experiences of freedom and equality.

Trump iterates about international trade and raising tariffs with this economic lever in mind, in essence intending to treat the corporate elite and those individuals expecting to benefit indirectly from the resulting economic activity and profits.

The untold trick, though, is that selfish multi-national corporate entities have become greedy transnational corporations operating with more impunity.

Americans require a strong government to reap the greatest amount of common good from this new transnational economy. Trump’s tariff policy implies that he will maximize the benefits of this consumer economy for Americans.

Harris espouses more of an egalitarian classless society, although really her attention is directed toward the one big middle class, while implying the lower class will simultaneously benefit from the increased potential for upward mobility in an inclusive society.

The Democrats attack the upper class, who are not necessarily going to vote for their Presidential Candidate anyway, because of the tax incentives always part of the kitchen table discussion held in Republican households.

Harris will side with the need for central planning from the Oval Office to create order out of the market chaos. The transnational corporations and the individuals coincidentally attached to those corporations not only survive the chaos, but inevitably find easy profits through this systemic volatility.

Democrats believe in a greater degree of state intervention while Republicans believe in less regulation and more government stimulation. One way that Republican governments stimulate the economy is by manipulating the monetary supply and adjusting tax rates.

America has a market oriented economy with many power centers. Presidential candidates recognize this pull of capitalism and, as a result, seek to blur ideological differences among Americans by talking about incomes and about standards of living in relative terms, to which everyone can relate. ‘Life will be better with me as President.’

While Presidential Candidates recognize that communities compete, the end goal of a United States President is the expansion of markets to the widest extent possible that results in the greatest benefit possible for Americans. Voters will enjoy increased benefits, although the candidates typically run silent about which voters will benefit more than other voters.

This commonality in the direction of national interest leads to discussions about apolitical solutions, and subtler difference between policy. Harris tempers positions on policy with reason, purposely in juxtaposition to Trump’s sensational, attention grabbing statements meant to maintain the popular right wing rural electorate.

Harris rather enthusiastically calls her economic platform the “opportunity economy” while Trump referred to the plan as a “watch spot run” idea.

Trump calls for lower taxes at home and higher import tariffs, and he talks about tariffs as if they were a form of international tax, which they are.

The Presidential Candidates also differed on policy that affects the day to day lives of individuals. Trump continues his anti-illegal migrant stance, which involves securing the United States border with Mexico. Harris tried to paint that standing Trump policy as a general discriminatory approach toward migrants. Trump didn’t help his own positions with some of the assertions he made himself during the debate, such as migrants causing an increase in the crime rate.

Harris also tried to label Trump as a racist with a direct reference to the advertisement Trump purchased about the Central Park Five. Trump did not help his brand, in this regard, with a sensational reference to Haitian migrants in Ohio.

Harris has iterated her stance on reproductive rights since the Supreme Court of the United States overturned Roe v. Wade. The Democrats want to legislate the restoration of reproductive rights, which would be the only way forward for them as a one up of the conservative Supreme Court Justice majority.

Trump proudly takes credit for causing Roe v. Wade to be overturned. The Trump position has become a complicated two fold vitriol: one that he appointed the conservative justices that changed the ideological composition of the court, and two, that he ensured that the people have a more direct say in reproductive rights with the matter being now left to the state legislatures to shape state specific modifications to reproductive rights. 

The reproductive rights health issues are nuanced, but the main components vary from no right to abortion, to no right to abortion even in cases when the pregnancy was a result of rape or incest, to a right to abortion but no later than during a specific term of the pregnancy.

Late term abortions are widely shunned on both ideological sides of the argument, unless the mother’s life is at risk. Harris stated that 26 out of 50 states have passed a Trump Era, no exceptions, abortion ban.

The Gaza War and the War in the Ukrainian became divisive issues. Trump was accused of catering to dictators because ‘he wants to be a dictator’. And Harris was maligned as being seen by foreign adversaries as weak and therefore inciting the wars. Trump made this highly speculative causal connection between the wars and the manner in which the Biden Administration withdrew American troops from Afghanistan.

Trump continues to boast a rather magical, one stroke ability to end foreign conflicts within 24 hours of him being elected to office in November.

The Afghanistan war allegedly was costing $300 million per day, according to Harris. The War in Ukraine is allegedly costing $250 billion, according to Trump.

Harris touted the Biden Administration’s ability to build global consensus for political, financial and military support for Ukraine. “If Trump had been President, Putin would be sitting in Kiev with his eyes on Poland,” stated Harris.

Trump stated that Putin attacked Ukraine because the Russians saw how incompetent the Biden Administration was.

Trump also blamed the Biden Administration for lifting sanctions against Iran, which indirectly allowed Iranian funds to be used to fund anti-Isreal militias throughout the Middle East.

Differences do exist between the candidates. Differences in policy are evident even between the personal attacks, vitriol and sensational headline grabbing banter of the debate.

What America needs, and why the world remains interested, is leadership. The global geopolitical flux requires America to be an active partner on the World stage.

When European leadership faulters, the whole world suffers. When the leadership of the United Kingdom changes, the power balance begins to tip one way or the other. When America fails, the thugs and dictators and power brokers and oligarchs emerge.

America and transnational corporations benefit from democratic capitalism. Eventually, a point in time does arrive in which there is a need for a redistribution, or at least a more equitable distribution, of the benefits of economic union.

America knows. And sometimes America decides to elect an inclusive egalitarian. Other times, America knows, and decides to elect an exclusive capitalist democrat.

America is polarized in part because these two leadership camps govern for their own community and seldom govern for the entire nation.

America also thrives on competition, resulting in the next government tearing apart what the previous government had accomplished in a kind of nihilistic approach to political futurism. The electorate tends to support a new future that involves a bit of political historical revisionism in which the accomplishments of the past four years of government, under an opposing administration, are marginalized as much as possible.

This approach to political leadership results in the turmoil in which the corporations thrive. In this new online world, the corporate leadership manipulates transnational operations in multiple jurisdictions without the necessary accountability that would ensure the populations share in the benefits and avoid any risk of harm.

The arrest of Telegram Messenger Inc CEO Pavel Durov by the Paris France Prosecutors office is an attempt to harness the oligarchs and the large transnational corporations causing global chaos.

Paris France Prosecutor Laure Beccuau opened an investigation into illegal activity on Telegram that includes online criminal transactions, possession and distribution of online child pornography, drug trafficking, organized fraud, criminal association, and money laundering.

Telegram provides encryption that hides communication, including communication related to criminal activity from police authorities.

This state of lawlessness enables a few ruthless entities to profit at the expense of innocence.

Executives of on-line social media companies have been protected from liability since 1996. In the United States, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act provides immunity to providers of online digital services.

The law regarding corporate immunity for online activity is gradually changing though.

The European Commission limited corporate executive immunity in the online world with the passage of the Digital Services Act in 2023. The legislation, which is enforceable throughout Europe, requires companies to cooperate with authorities.

Social media companies must also remove information and/or take steps to stop illegal activity when that illegal activity is brought to the company’s attention.

The democratic leadership of the Free World must hold the corporate executives accountable, not only for the safety of the online world, but also for climate warming and the exploitation of vulnerable populations.

This message becomes lost in the Presidential Debate because, in the short term, the necessary readjustments will be a taxing burden on corporate activities, which, America knows, will ultimately shrink all those coincidental collateral benefits that filter down from corporate headquarters into the electorate.