A Tale of Two Visions: Clinton and Trump After Orlando

I broke my long-standing rule about not watching or listening to speeches by progressive politicians. If a ProgPol, e.g. Obama, gives a major speech, my practice is to find the text and read it. That way I don't have to put up with ProgPol mannerisms. Well, I broke my rule, and listened to Hillary Clinton's June 13 speech on terror. You can go HERE and read it, so I am not going to spend a great amount of time dissecting it in gruesome detail. I also watched Donald Trump's June 13 speech on terror; you can go HERE  and read that one. Again, I won't go over that speech in great detail, but just want to give my thoughts on how they went over. In both cases we note digressions in delivery from the written text, but minor ones. 

OK, let's start with the showman aspects of the speeches before we get to the more important stuff. The Clinton campaign has slick production values, e.g., flags placed perfectly. Clinton has worked on her delivery and it shows. She seems learning to keep her irritating screeches under control, and has developed a smooth, well-paced even mellifluous delivery. She reads a teleprompter well. She still has irritating mannerisms, such as nodding slowly, smug expression frozen on her face, after saying something she considers incredibly clever. As somebody who during his career wrote or gave hundreds of speeches, I can appreciate her mastery of the standard boiler-plate American political speech. She delivers empty platitudes well.

Trump is completely different. The production values are poor, even sloppy. He slouches at the podium, the background is nondescript, flags poorly placed, and still--in my view--he talks a little too much about himself. He might, I say, might, want to work a bit on all that if he becomes president--seems to work for him as a candidate, so I won't give any advice there.

OK, OK, enough of that stuff, what about the substance? Who won?

Folks, if I might use that irritating word, I am probably biased, but I thought Trump killed it. He owned the subject. While Hillary went for the smooth-running snobby Beverly Hills Cadillac limo approach, The Donald went all blue-collar Detroit 1966 Oldsmobile 442 on her. Sure, at times, he was a bit sloppy on the cornering, and his gear shifting was a tad rough, but on the straightaways his roaring 400 cubic inch engine left Hillary way behind, sucking in the acrid blue smoke of burning rubber.

Hillary prattled on about the wages of hate, to wit, "A madman filled with hate, with guns in his hands and just a horrible sense of vengeance and vindictiveness in his heart, apparently consumed by rage against LGBT Americans." When she tried to sound tough, she fell flat, her speech crippled by the tenets of political correctness,

In the Middle East, ISIS is attempting a genocide of religious and ethnic minorities, they are slaughtering Muslims who refuse to accept their medieval ways, they are beheading civilians, including executing LGBT people, they are murdering Americans and Europeans, enslaving, torturing, and raping women and girls.

Notice, she couldn't bring herself to mention the word "Christians"? And on she went,

Inflammatory, anti-Muslim rhetoric – and threatening to ban the families and friends of Muslim Americans, as well as millions of Muslim business people and tourists from entering our country – hurts the vast majority of Muslims who love freedom and hate terror. So does saying that we have to start special surveillance on our fellow Americans because of their religion. 

It’s no coincidence that hate crimes against American Muslims and mosques have tripled after Paris and San Bernardino.

Oh, please. Hate crimes against American Muslims . . . right.

The Donald, on the other hand, went for the bear's throat. I said I wouldn't go over it in much detail, but he has an eloquent passage which I must quote at length,

This is a very dark moment in America’s history. 

A radical Islamic terrorist targeted the nightclub not only because he wanted to kill Americans, but in order to execute gay and lesbian citizens because of their sexual orientation. 

It is a strike at the heart and soul of who we are as a nation. 

It is an assault on the ability of free people to live their lives, love who they want and express their identity. 

It is an attack on the right of every single American to live in peace and safety in their own country. 

We need to respond to this attack on America as one united people – with force, purpose and determination. 

But the current politically correct response cripples our ability to talk and think and act clearly. 

If we don’t get tough, and we don’t get smart – and fast – we’re not going to have a country anymore -- there will be nothing left. 

The killer, whose name I will not use, or ever say, was born to Afghan parents who immigrated to the United States. His father published support for the Afghan Taliban, a regime which murders those who don’t share its radical views. The father even said he was running for President of that country. 

The bottom line is that the only reason the killer was in America in the first place was because we allowed his family to come here. That is a fact, and it’s a fact we need to talk about. 

We have a dysfunctional immigration system which does not permit us to know who we let into our country, and it does not permit us to protect our citizens. 

We have an incompetent administration, and if I am not elected President, that will not change over the next four years -- but it must change, and it must change now. 

With fifty people dead, and dozens more wounded, we cannot afford to talk around the issue anymore -- we have to address it head on. 

I called for a ban after San Bernardino, and was met with great scorn and anger but now, many are saying I was right to do so -- and although the pause is temporary, we must find out what is going on. The ban will be lifted when we as a nation are in a position to properly and perfectly screen those people coming into our country. 

The immigration laws of the United States give the President the power to suspend entry into the country of any class of persons that the President deems detrimental to the interests or security of the United States, as he deems appropriate.

And there you have it, folks. Trump nailed it.

I heard some commentators, including conservatives, criticize Trump for using the actions of an American-born slug to advocate for tough immigration laws. Those critics don't understand what the average American does. Islam is an alien concept and incompatible with Western democracy. We cannot vet people coming from Muslim countries with any reasonable sense of accuracy. It, furthermore, is clear, as we have seen here as well as in Australia, Canada, France, Belgium, and the UK, that native-born Muslims have no problem going full jihadi on the rest of us.

As I have written before, Islam is a creed for the aggrieved. It teaches resentment and vengeance for slights real and often imagined. The non-Islamic world is to blame for everything that is evil and keeping back the Muslims of the world.

Rough and raw Trump is right; smooth and slick Clinton is woefully wrong.

More important, however, as I noted before,  there is no need to listen to Clinton's words. Whenever she says something, the simple response, is "Yeah, yeah, but what did YOU do when YOU had the power?"