The American debates as we heard them.

The crowds of republicans are gone including those who I thought would make more formidable foes to a democratic party in search of another term. Cannot help but wonder if a Biden Bid would have made more sense. I suggested before that a look into a previous battle between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Rick Lazio would have been helpful in creating a strategy for the Republican Candidate. I hope you listened. In the meantime there were plenty of metaphors and useful insights from election watchers of days past that will help inform or at least add to this web log. 

A boxing match. 

If this was a match then it was a nasty fight. All civility was lost after about twenty minutes in the ring. Ears were bitten and blood was spilled. We did not hear as much as we needed to hear about the very important issues. What we heard was an exchange in which both candidates sought to soil each other. One candidate seemed or have been more resigned to their position and was therefore more keen to prove that their adversary was just as soiled if not more. As the days have passed the media seems to have moved in with more stories helping buttress the real estate guru in his position-where he firmly claims to be on the receiving end of mainstream media and its biases. This while managing to attract free advertising and attention from a media that others have had to send gazillions for coverage and ads. 

Body switches. 

It was not clear who was who. At some point it felt like the two candidates had switched bodies. But this is politics. You have to have the ability to blow smoke out of both sides of your neck. You have to depend on short term memory of those who matter while pushing away the long term memory of those who have the power of influence. We have has shift in directions that have made us look like colonies of the USSR as we have championed causes closer to socialism and communism that were previously unimaginable. Try this in the early and late fifties and you would have faced the same challenges as MacArthur? 

But these are challenges that are unique to our generation with its massive young and tech savvy populations with movements such as black lives matter, the 99 percent as well as the tea party making a comeback or at least their presence known. 

Sounds and sights? 

Other insisted that it was better to hear the debates than watch them. This was decided for me when my provider decided to pull the plug at 3:30 AM right after I had made myself comfortable in preparation for debate night. So I listened courtesy of the BBC. The same media group took quite al to of criticism for not availing it's massive crowds the full 90 minute debate instead giving 30 minute chunks. So I listed to sniffles which were later explained away as microphone sabotage. As can be expected the female card was used extensively to Mrs. Clinton's advantage. We heard some evidence of the Trump charm, "...i want you to be comfortable". 

Junior High or Kinder? 

We expected a little more about what we in these parts think are very important issues. The army and veterans issues, health care, retirement, job creation, race issues and challenges, immigration reform, foreign policy, economics with an emphasis on international trade, Canada, Mexico and South America, The Drug Trade. Instead we got something similar to what would take place in a class room between two young children where they for a moment forgot the issues and hand and instead went after each other on things as simple as hairstyle and who was dating who and cheating on who. 

Plowshares into Swords?

Plowshares into Swords?

Every time trouble breaks out in these parts, and a struggle begins, you immediately have the emergence of two groups. A group that chooses to stay and fight and one that chooses to leave.
http://www.monitor.co.ug/Magazines/PeoplePower/Lupembe--How-presidents-Lule--Binaisa-were-juggled/-/689844/2318542/-/4lmu90/-/index.html the article by Henry Lubega has some interesting similarities to this very idea. The difference though, is that these are being played out in a different context. 

Even if some could argue that there is no overt push towards and struggle similar to that of the eighties, certain challenges in the economy have forced many to leave and the harder core to stay. 

These differences have resulted in an interesting relationship between those who by circumstance have decided to work in foreign countries while supporting relatives and friends back home. The tensions that have arisen on the return of the former are still as palpable as those that were mentioned in the article by Lubega. 

There are some ways in which Post World War I and II, nations have been forced more that ever to devise other means by which to annihilate each other and even if the effects are often less gruesome they are still as effective and damaging if not more. In a sense, most of our modern day battles have become economic. The fallout from these battles has been an increase in poetry and a rise in real estate for ghettos and shanty towns. 

So the need to better circumstances has driven us abroad in search of better pastures. While many are unwilling to turn their plowshares into swords, they have none the less held on to these tools in preparation for a change of circumstance.