PeterZ wrote:So I still stand looking at a corrupt politician with decades of experience in using machine politics and a private citizen with impulse control issues who spent decades navigating corrupt waters. Both are comfortable dealing with corruption, but only Hillary has demonstrated skill and experiencing at creating a sustainable ecosystem for systemic corruption.
The recent news just piles the evidence higher and deeper. That the evidence continues to have no impact on her beyond possibly on polls further supports the entire premise.
I think you're too taken in by Trump's marketing. We're talking about someone who is not only a habitual (maybe even compulsive) liar, but who seems to be unclear on the distinction between his personal, political and business affairs.
As this article points out, it is impossible for him to separate his business from himself; the entire Trump empire is based around him having direct and personal ownership of most of it. Assuming he is elected, the conflict of interest between his charge to act as a representative of the will of the people and his business interests will be unavoidable.
Ultimately though, it comes down to this for me: Hillary Clinton may not be squeaky clean, but decades of investigation of her activities by her political adversaries has never amounted to anything substantial. No indictments, no convictions, nothing except for a growing mountain of paper printed with angry words written by angry people about how they know they're right and how the fact that they can't be proven right is definitely a sign of widespread corruption and conspiracy.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, is a living caricature. He's the Bad Boss, the corrupt real estate guy, the idiot american who is ignorant about everything and everyone and proud of it. He's a demagogue, high on the adoration of the crowd and willing to do everything to get his next fix, regardless of what direction he has to go to get it. He's the avatar of everything going wrong with the way society evolves in the age of the interne, unable or unwilling to recognize that he is living in a bubble of his own making. He is adrift on a sea of memes that he has no defence against (much like our Pokermind or DDHv have no defence against such things). Trump has taken to heart Karl Rove's words about creating his own reality. His is a world in which facts do not exist, where truth has been replaced by
truthiness. Unfortunately for the rest of us, he has convinced people to join him in this world of his. It's one thing to make fun of countries like the old Soviet Union or North Korea and their continual revision of what reality is to suit the needs of their leaders, but to see the same sort of thing happening in real time, in a country as powerful as yours, is more than a bit frightening.
Given a choice between the two, Hillary, despite your attempts to paint her as the worst thing to happen in american politics since Boss Tweed, is far too invested in the american political machine to stray far from the dictates of realpolitik. She is, above all,
consistent, in any given situation, we can be reasonably certain what her reactions and policies will be. Trump on the other hand allows no such predictions. Your insistence that he would be reigned in by the political machine once in office rings hollow when the fact that he's not part of said machine is the reason you're considering to vote for him. It's like handing a gun to an angry drunk guy in the hope that he'll calm down a bit. I hope I'm wrong about that, should TRump actually get to office, but I deeply fear I'm not.
After all, focusing on the trivialities is proof that there is nothing of substance to moan about...