The United States of Retribution: Is That What We Have Become?

You don’t have to be around for a long time in this country to understand that we have slipped into a state of where retribution reigns supreme.

If you are from Massachusetts as I am you have seen that four of our local boys, JFK born in Brookline, Mike Dukakis born in Brookline, George H.W. Bush born in Milton, and J. Forbes Kerry, a military brat who settled here, relatively recently vied for the office of president of the United States.

Two won; two lost. JFK defeated Richard Nixon; H.W. defeated Mike Dukakis, and John Kerry lost to George W.

Nixon as we know would go on to become president; Dukakis to a career as a teacher at a university; and Kerry to become secretary of state.

Looking back to near the end of WWII in 1944 FDR defeated Thomas Dewey; 1948 Truman defeated Thomas Dewey; in 1952 and 1956 Ike defeated Adlai Stevenson; 1960 JFK over Nixon; 1964 LBJ over Barry Goldwater, 1968 Nixon over Humphrey, 1972 Nixon over George McGovern; 1976 Jimmy Carter over Gerald Ford; 1980 Reagan over Carter; 1984 Reagan over Mondale; 1988 H.W. Bush over Dukakis; 1992 Clinton over H.W; 1996 Clinton over Bob Dole; 2000 George W over Al Gore; 2004 George W. over John Kerry; 2008 Obama over McCain; 2012 Obama over Romney.

All the defeated candidates once they lost were allowed to go on with their lives. There were no strong feet that followed relentlessly behind them reminding them of their defeat. No efforts were made to humiliate them.

Defeated candidate Romney is now running for the U.S. Senate. John McCain returned to his seat in the Senate and stayed there with honor until his illness. Kerry and Dukakis I mentioned, Gore, Dole, H.W., Mondale, Carter, Ford, McGovern, Humphrey, Goldwater and Stevenson pursued different undertakings in a free and open manner. They didn’t suffer any recriminations. That was the American way at one time. The candidate that lost was left alone.

With the latest occupant of the Oval Office we have seen that things have changed. They have not changed for the better for the defeated candidate. Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College and became president even though he received three million less popular votes than she. He, as you know, has continued since his win to attack Hillary Clinton relentlessly and he has been joined in this attack by Fox News and by many in the Republican Party as I noted in a recent posting..

I wonder whether this bother any of his supporters that Trump is acting so contrary to years of precedence of what happened in America? I am curious if this is what you want to see happen after future American elections for president.

Do you want America to be a country where the winner of the presidential race will demand that the person who lost be investigated and jailed? That sounds to me less like a democracy than a coup.

Hillary was not my cup of tea. Nor was Trump. I figured I was left little choice in 2016. I could not vote for Trump under any circumstance especially because of his puerile conduct in calling for his crowd to shout about Hillary “lock her up!” What kind of person is he or what kind of people were they who would call for a former first lady, a former U.S. senator, and former secretary of state to be imprisoned. Where were her crimes?

It has been a year and four months and Trump is still attacking her. Why? Look at all the previous presidents. None of them did it. Are you happy he is doing it?

Of course there is one big difference between Trump’s opponent and those the other presidents faced. It is that his opponent was a female. Would he be doing it if it were a man? That is also something to think about.

15 Comments

  1. Just ‘art,’ right?

    A school in San Diego allowed the display of a mural on a wall that showed a spear right through the head of President Donald Trump.

    This isn’t just an affront to the world of art and to commonly held notions of decency.

    It’s an eye-raising show of how the left gets by practically with murder — at least, with making a mural of it — if the target is the right, whereas the right, if the roles were reversed, would not.

    Could you imagine a mural at a school that showed a spear shoved through the side of Barack Obama’s head?

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2018/05/05/a-schools-mural-depicts-trumps-severed-head-on-a-spear/

  2. John King McDonald

    Zzzzzzzzzz all relative, Man !!! ( PROBLEMO !!! )

  3. John King McDonald

    ” We invented the American fantasy-industrial complex.”…. HOW AMERICA LOST ITS MIND … Kurt Anderson , Atlantic, August 2017

    Good reading, Matt .

  4. Matt, this article shows why so many people are sceptical of the alleged ‘charges’ against Trump. FBI members of “The Resistance.”

    https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/russia-report-redactions-cover-fbi-missteps/

  5. From earlier comments, you have noticed that many agree that it is not just the treatment of the loser that has changed but the treatment of the winner. Recent history gave us the beneficial development of the Presidents’ Club with congenial relations among the incumbent and former Presidents of all political stripes. The others reaction to Trump, however well deserved, seems to have eroded all that.

    4 Presidents, the Adamses, JFK and Bush were born not only in Massachusetts but in Norfolk County. 1988 was the only time both major nominees were born in the same County.

    • We all know how well Obama was treated by the opposition. He could have come up with a cure for cancer and McConell et al would have blocked it.

      For a more interesting post-election treatment see winners versus winners and the treatment of Slick Willie by the Limousine Liberals and West Coast Willy Brown. Bizarre stuff.

  6. It is strange for a pussymarcher to whine about Trump’s continuing references to Hilliary Clinton. That crowd refuses to accept the election. Stop blaming the victim. The primal screams, the incessant whining, the malicious prosecutions, all require an answer. Trump replies to this puerile hatred.

    If the United States had an election system by popular vote Trump’s campaign would have been pursued differently. He likely would have won by not conceding California, New York and other states with large populations. The targeting would have been different. That Clinton’s strategists did not understand the American election system cannot be blamed on Trump whose wisdom reminds me of papa Joe Kennedy’s remark in 1960 that he would pay for a win in West Virginia but not for a landslide.

    Aside. John Forbes Kerry was born in a military hospital which by most definitions does not qualify one as a “military brat.” By the time his family settled in Washington when he was six his father had been discharged from the Army Air Corps, had convalesced from TB in Colorado and lived in Massachusetts. The exact dates are uncertain. His formative years were not spent hopscotching from military base to military base. Wikipedia can be misleading. The definition of army brat used therein is too far reaching. Under it most comment writers here would be army brats and we are not. Just read the first sentence from the footnote. It says it all. https://web.archive.org/web/20150402124238/http://www.ausa.org/publications/armymagazine/archive/2014/Documents/11November14/SteeleBrats_November2014.pdf

  7. Where were her crimes? Fox frequently lists about a dozen. She lied under oath to Congress claiming she had no classified material on her server. She erased thousands of subpoenaed e-mails and obstructed justice. She was grossly negligent in handling classified intel. She ran a pay for play scheme at the Clinton Foundation. She took payoffs from the Russians in the Uranium One deal. She and her husband sold pardons in another payoff scheme. Using campaign funds to hire a British spy to work with the Russians to undermine Trump. 2. If one wants to think of a coup look at Mueller and the Deep States efforts against Trump. A two year investigation into a non crime. Using the full apparatus of the National Security State ( FISA Warrants) to spy on the opposing political party is clearly the biggest political crime in American history.

    • Two year investigation? It’s been less than a year. Trump hasn’t been president for two years!

  8. John King McDonald

    WHAT HE SAID !!!

  9. Trump won 80% of the counties in America . . .subtract uber-liberal wacked-out California, and Trump wins popular vote too.

    Hillary continues to get mauled because she continually puts herself before the public falsely and loudly trumpeting her downfall, blaming everyone under the sun for it, and maliciously attacking the current president and others in public service.

    She is the one who’s not following precedent.

    She wails like a banshee and cries in her beer and can’t accept defeat. It is she who will not go silently into that good night of political oblivion where the American people rightfully put her.

    • Except you can’t because as much as you hate to admit it…the 80 percent of mostly white counties aren’t the only Americans. This election was white backlash against the liberal high water mark of the Obama presidency, one that received so much hatred and vitriol. The trump voter is a white male with perceived grievances that the other guy is doing better on his dime.

  10. John King McDonald

    ” Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College and became President even though he received three million less popular votes than she did .”

    YOU ACTUALLY WROTE THAT !!!

    DO YOU SEE THE PROBLEM ???

    IF NOT , THERE IS NO HOPE . THERE IS JUST FOOT STOMPING AND DENIAL .

    • Seconded.

      As I remember it, no other winning candidate excepting perhaps Lincoln faced as much sore-loser hatred as has Trump. None of the other presidential losers in the 20th century faced a multi-million dollar financed RESISTANCE and a “Never Trump” movement partly financed by a Hungarian billionaire, Soros. Foreigners meddling in US elections are apparently sanctioned if you’re on the ‘correct’ side.

      I wonder how many of that alleged 3,000,000 figure were votes by people who were not really eligible to vote.

      Trump received 304 electoral votes and Clinton received 227; Colin Powell won three, and John Kasich, Ron Paul, Bernie Sanders, and Faith Spotted Eagle each received one.

      Trump is the fifth person in U.S. history to become president while losing the nationwide popular vote.

      • John King McDonald

        Damn !!! … If I had known Faith Spotted Eagle was running we might be having a different conversation ….

        THE GREAT WHITE FEATHER !!!

        (Yep, know Faith is a chick. Still works)