The Stateside election: River's discounts The Donald, remembers The Ronald and seems to want to put his money on The Cuban.

Rivers 100x100By Ray Rivers

February 4th, 2016

BURLINGTON, ON

I’m in Nicaragua this week, taking in a little sun and a lot of car exhaust fumes. Even in the picturesque tourist city of Granada, a walk down its narrow streets yields an unhealthy lung full of petroleum byproducts. The privately owned cars, trucks and motor bikes scoot around or get tied up in vehicular traffic on these mostly pot-holed streets, pumping out nasty black fumes and all those other pollutants we don’t see.

It’s a poor country, as I discovered trying to drive on what passes for roads here, before giving up and championing public transportation and my shanks’ mare. And it is a treat to watch the many horse-drawn vehicles and the oxen carts hauling the nation’s produce and its people.

It makes one wonder how these people manage their extensive cane and corn plantations, when not a tractor is to be seen. Oxen technology? One wonders if the exhaust fumes from grass-fed ‘quadro gastric’ ruminants are worse those than from the petroleum-fed internal combustion engines when it comes to global warming?

donald-trump

Donald Trump

It may be a poor country but they do have universal internet, even if it runs a tad slow, in true Latin tradition. So I could hardly avoid exposure to that other hot air activity, the 2016 US primary in Iowa, which was plastered all over the cyber sphere. Our own Canadian-born Ted Cruz managed to trump ‘The Donald’, thanks in part to the flamboyant Trump’s set-to with Fox News and his insatiable appetite to insult and alienate.

One would have thought the endorsement of the unintelligibly rambling Sarah Palin would have pushed him over the top, but not so. Cruz invoked the higher order of ‘The Ronald’ (Reagan) and that must have sealed the deal. Even if Cruz’s own party finds him an unlikeable sort – and if unlikeable, unlikely to win the big one in November – he’s still a more authentic neo-con than Trump, cut in the cloth of his hero Ronnie.

If I were a betting man, I’d put my money on that other Cuban, the handsome Marco Rubio to get the GOP nod, though. Oh and I’d be surprised it Trump doesn’t fall on his promise to the party, and run as an independent along with former New York mayor Bloomberg.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. gestures during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Jan. 16, 2015, to discuss Republican efforts to cut Social Security and Medicare and other programs that have an impact on working families. Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, became the ranking minority member on the Senate Budget Committee when the new GOP-controlled Congress began. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. gestures during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington.

The democrats had a see-saw contest in Iowa with Hillary and Bernie almost equally balanced off. Except it wasn’t supposed to go that way. Iowa should have been a shoo-in for the capable and likeable Clinton, and would have been except for all the baggage she is carrying. No one can blame her for her flirtatious husband’s sexual addiction, and she might get a pass on voting for the Iraq invasion, but it’s her unimpressive record as Madam Secretary which is weighing her down.

And Bernie – God bless his 74 years as a socialist – he is creating quite a stir, especially among those spoiled millennials who need a good reason to vote. In fact Sanders’ impact on the younger crowd hasn’t been seen… since America elected its first black president. Well maybe that didn’t work as well as some of us had hoped, but Sanders like our own Trudeau, is a breath of fresh air in a country on a precipice.

Marco Rubio

Marco Rubio

The precipice – progress or regress. This is not the first time that Americans have faced that kind of choice in their outdated bi-cameral electoral system, with its archaic electoral college and independent state-managed voting systems, And as often as not they have made the poorer choice, as when they and the Supreme Court elected GW Bush and when Cruz’s hero Ronald Reagan won two back-to-back elections – which takes us back to Nicaragua.

The US has had a long history of helping Nicaragua discover democracy even as the Monroe Doctrine, defining the US role in Latin America, was evolving. In the mid 1800’s an American slavery promoter by the name of Walker, from the great state of Tennessee brought in an army on the pretence of supporting one side in a civil conflict. He was there anyway so decided to make himself president and revoke Nicaragua’s anti-slavery law, just to please his southern state-side supporters.

But all good things must come to an end and eventually the bordering states of Costa Rica, El Salvador and Honduras ganged up to defeat Walker, and with a little help from the Brits, he ended up before a Honduran firing squad. Then a half-century later the marines landed, and using the Roosevelt corollary hunkered down to ensure the US’s Panama would be the only canal in the continent. (Nicaragua had been an alternative route).

Ronald-Reagan

Former American president Ronald Regan

In the late 1970’s the Sandinista socialist hoard overran the corrupt dictator Samosa and Reagan’s CIA and Oliver North broke American and international laws, selling arms to Iran via Israel – as incredible as that sounds today. The money was used to train the ‘Contra’ militants to commit acts of terror and human rights violations against the Sandinistas. That included killing over 3000 people and mining the nation’s harbours.

The Nicaraguan government first took and won its case against the US in the International Court of Justice, where the court ordered the US to desist and pay reparations. Then armed with that judgement they went to the UN Security Council, only to be vetoed five times by the US. Eventually, brought before the UN General Assembly, a resolution was passed condemning this act of state sponsored terrorism.

Of course the US approach to Latin America has changed recently with the Obama administration turning the page on the Monroe Doctrine – or as some have observed, returning to it’s original intent. As for Ronald Reagan, the world would be a better place had he stuck to his career as a mediocre actor.

Rivers-direct-into-camera1-173x300Ray Rivers writes weekly on both federal and provincial politics, applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat to his thinking. Rivers was a candidate for provincial office in Burlington where he ran as a Liberal against Cam Jackson in 1995, the year Mike Harris and the Common Sense Revolution swept the province. Rivers has taken a break to complete his second book – he does dabble in local politics.

Background links:

William Walker   ICC Ruling     Contra Affair

Sandinistas       Monroe Doctrine       Terrorism

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3 comments to The Stateside election: River’s discounts The Donald, remembers The Ronald and seems to want to put his money on The Cuban.

  • Celine Ogrando

    I think you give the voting public too much respect. The parallels between the nincompoop, Regan, and the ultra-malleable, Trump, are just too close. Trump has already said that he could shoot somebody and still be elected: where is the universal condemnation? His every move is covered 24/7 on CNN. Celebrity sells!!! As the headline from an article by the former Globe and Mail columnist Dennis Braithwaite once stated: “The world will not end with a bang, but rather a burp.”

  • Gary

    A bit of a rambler with this one Mr. Rivers. I would have preferred either a more in-depth look at Nicaragua or a better synopsis of why you think Rubio should/would be the winner in the Republican race. I got neither. Nor do I understand why you think Clinton is (a) likeable and (b) capable. Neither of those things are obvious to third party observers. As to her husband’s “flirtations”, as you dismiss them, they were certainly a bit more than that and well know to the Mrs., who, if she had any real integrity, would have divorced the cad after he left the White House. Perhaps you should add the word “enabler” to Hillary’s resume.

  • Paul Goodacre

    Great article! l like the historical connections you made. Further, it is great to have met you in Granada. Viva Nicaragua! Paul & Terri