DECLARATION
ON DONALD
WHY I VOTED FOR TRUMP
I.
PREAMBLE
My name is
William Brian Franken. I hold a Master’s degree in Restoration and 18th Century
British Literature with summa cum laude honours from Southwest Missouri State
University. I've had academic papers on Jonathan Swift, James Joyce, William
Blake, as well as editorial commentaries on the farces of 18th
Century playwrights David Garrick and Colley Cibber published in such literary
journals as the Huntington Library
Quarterly. Additionally, I’ve written political and cultural essays for Spiked, the Independent, the Federalist and
sundry others publications. After leaving academia in my mid-twenties, I became
a satirical, character-based comedian whose unique style, heavily
British-influenced, has been celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic from the New York Times to the Guardian. Despite this colourful intellectual
and artistic pedigree, however, I am also one of Hillary Clinton’s
“deplorables”.
II.
ECONOMIC POLICY: WALKING AWAY FROM NAFTA
I was born
into a working-class background in a small town in the Midwest of America. As a
young man, I saw first-hand the negative effects of the NAFTA-style economic
policies Hillary Clinton currently espouses – just as her husband did before
her – in which vital industries were gutted and farming and manufacturing jobs
outsourced. Consequently, I approve of any plan to penalise companies who wish
to relocate outside the United States for the purposes of cheaper labour and
tax-dodges, such as the tariff-based system proposed by Donald Trump.
III.
ENDING VA CORRUPTION AND CARING FOR
THE NATION’S VETERANS
My father,
William Dale Franken, was not only an independent builder and mechanic, he was
also a Vietnam veteran. Early on in life, I was disgusted to hear how he and
his fellow servicemen had been labelled "baby-killers" upon their
return from combat. My grandfather before him, William George Franken, had also
seen combat as part of General Patton’s tank corps in World War II, a time when
gratitude for the nation’s military was more widely expressed. I have always
felt a deep admiration for military veterans and the sacrifices they were
called upon to make. And I have been disgusted with the treatment of veterans
in the United States for many years now, particularly in regards to the ongoing
Veterans Administration scandals. Therefore, I am very much in favour of Donald
Trump’s promise to clean out the corruption there and offer veterans the care
and support that are owed them. Without their protection, the West is nothing –
ungrateful though the West may be for the very freedoms these men and women
were called upon to protect.
IV.
REBUILDING THE US MILITARY: ENDING SEQUESTRATION
My support
for veterans also extends to an overall support for the US military. I believe
America needs a strong national defence and, to that effect, the defence sequestration
that began under Obama must be overturned by Trump. The nation’s armed forces
need to be better equipped and modernised under the aegis of Ronald Reagan’s
model of “Peace Through Strength”; a motto which Trump has echoed often on the
campaign trail. America does not need a military more concerned with diversity
training than combat training – an Orwellian prospect guaranteed to continue
under a new Clinton administration.
V.
RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM: NO MORE
DIVERSITY BOX-TICKERS
Later in
life, when I attended university – on my own dime, I should mention – I
witnessed the encroaching split between traditional academia and the snobbery
of reverse-racism multiculturalism which relegated feelings over facts. Not
only did I feel it demeaned the very education I was paying for, I also justly resented
the broad-brush painting of my demographic as inherently racist and oppressive,
especially given my modest upbringing. I regarded such rhetoric as blatant
lies and self-serving ivory tower propaganda and fought against it every chance
I had. I am not interested in a presidential candidate who will serve as diversity
box-ticker and regard their voters as nothing more than their skin colours,
their sexual preferences, or their genders. I want a candidate to whom race,
gender, and sexual preference is incidental and not integral to the character
of their voters. I believe this candidate is Donald Trump.
VI.
EDUCATION: ENDING COMMON CORE
In my
early twenties, I moved to New York City and became an inner-city school
teacher. Any remaining vestiges of sympathy I may have had for liberal
progressivism died during my employment there. As a middle-school teacher in
Harlem at what was described by the NY
Post as the 2nd worst school in New York City, I witnessed an
utter degradation of the educational system made possible through liberal
policies that had stripped standards from the curriculum and essentially turned
teachers into babysitters instead of educators. There, I was also privy to the
crookedness of a teacher's union that consistently took extortionate dues and
never made any attempt to instigate meaningful change that would serve the
teachers, their students, and the principles of education more generally. At
the close of the school year, when two-thirds of the students failed the
government-issued standardised test by receiving a "1" or a "2"
instead of a "3" or a "4", all faculty members received a
letter from the superintendent stating that – for the purposes of the school’s
"social promotion" policy – a "2" was now to be considered a
"3". (2 + 2 = 5, anyone?)
Therefore, I am strongly in favour of Donald Trump's plan to reinstitute
freedom of choice in education by eliminating Common Core.
VII.
THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN CANDIDATE:
REBUILDING THE INNER CITIES
When I
moved to New York City for the first time, I had little disposable income and
thus rented a cheap place in Harlem, near to the school at which I taught. I
was the only white guy in my building as well as my neighbourhood. There, I was
welcomed by the residents, ribbed gently about my skin colour, and invited to
many a homecooked meal. Meanwhile, I
found a great disconnect growing between myself and liberal friends, who would
pay up to 2,000 dollars extra a month to live away
from blacks and would never
cross north of 110th Street to visit me. On both coasts, from Harlem
to West Oakland, I have worked in deprived ghettos and I have lived in deprived
ghettos. I have seen first-hand how – just as globalist policies like NAFTA
have gutted the working-class communities of small-town America – the lowered
expectations for inner-city minorities promulgated by modern liberalism – in
terms of education, prosperity, and government welfare-dependency – are not
only economically damaging but culturally racist. It is audacious for liberals
to demand any longer, based upon decades of empirical evidence, that minorities
should act as one single-minded voting bloc. When Donald Trump says to the
African-American communities to vote for him because, “what do you have to
lose?”, I believe he makes a more than compelling argument.
VIII.
LAW ENFORCEMENT: ENDING THE NEW
BLACK PANTHERS
Throughout
my years in Harlem, I was also privy to the race-baiting agitation of Al
Sharpton who, along with Tawana Brawley, concocted a fictitious rape and
battery to besmirch the entire New York City Police Department as “systemically
racist”. Over the past eight years of the Obama administration, Al Sharpton has
visited the White House countless times in an advisory capacity on “race relations”.
I am for any candidate who will deprive such violence-promoting hucksters of
access to the upper echelons of the US government. America does not need a
Black Panthers-cum-Black Lives Matter divisive mentality anymore. And the
country can certainly do without a political rhetoric implying all the nation’s
police officers are racists and potential murderers. There was a fork in the
road for the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Martin Luther King had it
right and Malcolm X had it wrong. We need a leader who will not live in the
shadow of the separatist Malcolm X, but the integrationist Martin Luther King.
I believe Donald Trump will steer America away from the deceptive dogma of doctrinal
diversity.
IX.
GROWING SMALLER BUSINESS AND ENDING
LARGER CORRUPTION
In the
last year of my first stint in New York City, I earned money doing occasional voiceovers
and televised commercial spots. During that time, I ran afoul of the Screen
Actors Guild, who were upset that a non-union actor was being cast in these
roles. I was summoned to what amounted to a McCarthy-esque hearing in front of an
austere panel of Guild representatives. On the table in front of me was a large
manila envelope with the word “Franken” written across it. As things turned
out, the casting directors had sold their lists of auditioning actors to the
union, following the resolution of a strike that none of the non-union actors
had been aware of – since we were, after all, not in the union. The panel
demanded I give them information on other non-union actors who had auditioned with
me and I refused. Consequently, a ban was placed on my ability to ever join the
union. Given my experiences there, the inefficacy of the teachers’ union before
that, and my father’s ongoing struggles as an independent contractor against
the monolith of the larger labour unions, I have always held a healthy scepticism
in regards to collectivisation. I believe that although there was a time when
unions were not only effective but necessary, greed and corruption have led
many of them to neglect their initial principles. I support the growth of
smaller independent businesses and the dissolution of larger monopolies, no
matter how appealing their platitudes of “togetherness” may seem. More
importantly, I believe in justice. To that effect, I would gladly welcome a
candidate intent on exposing, prosecuting, and eradicating corruption in such
entities, be they governmental or non-governmental organisations. I feel Donald
Trump is such a candidate.
X.
UNITING THE NATION: RACE DIVIDES,
ECONOMICS UNITE
Depressed
and discouraged after my blacklisting, I relocated for a year to the southern
hospitality of North Carolina where I found, incidentally, race relations to be
much better down in the conservative south than they had ever been up in the
liberal north. There is a great misconception that there is no class struggle
in the United States. This is because it is easier for American politicians to
make everything about race, which cannot be changed. Whereas class – in the
American sense of succeeding from humble beginnings – ostensibly can. When
economic conditions are the same for everyone, such as amongst the poor in
Missouri or North Carolina, there is considerably less racial tension – unless
it’s being fanned by propagandists and politicians, as it currently is under
Obama. Donald Trump is a billionaire who has gathered a strong tide of support
from the struggling working classes of America and, in that sense alone, has
already bridged a great divide. Midwesterners and Southerners who would
normally be suspicious, if not outright contemptuous, of a rich New Yorker,
have warmed to him because they believe he has their best interests at heart. And
I am one of them.
XI.
WHO BETTER THAN A BUSINESSMAN?
I am not a
communist and therefore I do not judge all wealthy people as inherently evil.
It matters not to me that Donald Trump was given a financial start from his father.
If my father had been in the same position to do so, I certainly would not have
refused the help – and neither would anyone who says otherwise. Just as no one
in his position would have neglected to take advantage of the tax code that
Hillary Clinton herself approved as US senator. Moreover, I believe a
billionaire businessman who has rebounded back from bankruptcy more than once
is better equipped to deal with a broken economy and create beneficial trade
agreements than a career politician who trades in empty promises and campaign
slogans. He has made products. She has made problems.
XII.
HERE COMES ISLAM: PROTECTING THE 1st
AMENDMENT
Following
the worst terror attack in US history on 11th September, 2001, I,
along with many others, found myself having to suddenly pay attention to a
religion I had always regarded as uninteresting and inconsequential. In the
fifteen years that have elapsed since that attack, I have been told by academics,
entertainers, and politicians – i.e., the establishment – that Islam is a
“religion of peace” and that the 28,135 terrorist attacks which have been
carried out by jihadists across the globe in that span of time have “nothing to
do with Islam”. Sensing an obvious disconnect, I have devoted a considerable
amount of time throughout these ensuing years reading sources from the right,
left, and centre of the political spectrum on this topic – as well as primary works
on Islamic jurisprudential thought, the hadiths, and the Koran itself. Consequently,
I have reached the conclusion that the Islamic religion needs a reformation, renaissance,
and enlightenment in order to successfully coexist with the Western world, else
the Western world will be forced to abandon many of its own core principles. I
am grateful to have been born, raised, and educated in Western values and I
believe in the promotion of those values and not their denigration. Hillary
Clinton has accepted untold sums of money from Middle Eastern countries with
horrible track records on human rights through the nefarious workings of her
Clinton Foundation. Even more troubling, however, her associations with groups
like the Muslim Brotherhood and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation – the
latter to whom she promised, as Secretary of State, to employ “peer pressure
and shaming” in preventing criticism of Islam from Americans – indicate clearly to me that she is not only disinterested
in human rights, but specifically holds the 1st Amendment in
contempt. As a Western satirist appreciative of the freedom to criticise who
and what I choose, I need a leader who supports the 1st Amendment.
Donald Trump is that leader. He is a constitutionalist and therefore holds The Bill of Rights as supreme. She is a
globalist and views the same document as culturally relative.
XIII.
THE UNIQUELY AMERICAN RIGHT TO BEAR
ARMS
Along with
Donald Trump, I also support the 2nd Amendment and agree with the
drafters of the Constitution that its inclusion in The Bill of Rights would provide American citizens the means by
which to defend themselves not only against an invading foreign enemy but an
encroaching tyrannical government as well. On a purely philosophical level, it
should also be self-evident that a gun cannot load and shoot itself in
perpetration of a crime. Such an act requires a human agent imbued with motive,
as was the case, for example, with the jihadist that massacred forty-nine
people in Orlando – a body count that would have been significantly lower had
the patrons of the club themselves been armed. By definition, criminals do not
obey laws. Therefore, any restrictions on guns will be ignored by criminals to
the detriment of law-abiding citizens.
XIV.
DISPENSING WITH POLITICAL
CORRECTNESS: NAMING THE PROBLEM
To that
effect, I also believe it necessary to refer to Islamic terrorism as “Islamic
terrorism” and not as any of the vague and inane substitutes put forward by the
Obama administration, such as “violent extremism”, “man-made disasters”, -- or,
in the case of Nidal Hasan’s 2009 Ft. Hood Massacre – “workplace violence”. Even
if such obfuscation conveys tolerance, it conveys an even greater stupidity.
This practice insults not only the intelligence of the voting public, but also
the reformers within Islam who realise a problem cannot be solved unless people
are willing to discuss it openly and honestly. Currently, Islam stands no
chance of being reformed from the inside because of the interference of
political pundits from the outside. Meanwhile, as Christianity secularises
itself out of existence, Islam has politicised itself into a very real arm of Western
governmental policy-making. This imbalance needs to be redressed, which will
likely happen under Donald Trump and will certainly never happen under Hillary
Clinton.
XV.
DESTROYING ISIS
Although I
recognise that Islamic State is only the latest manifestation of an ideology
that propels jihadist movements such as al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, Hezbollah, Hamas,
and the Taliban, I strongly support Donald Trump’s promise to “bomb the shit”
out of ISIS as well as seize their oil, thus depriving them of the wealth
needed to fund their theocratic fascism. Such a strike would be a great rhetorical
boost for Western morale, for nothing has been more culturally embarrassing
than witnessing the world’s largest superpower sit idly by as a movement more
grotesque and barbarous than Nazism has been allowed to metastasise. Donald Trump, of course, is correct in saying
that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, through their failed “Arab Spring”
policy, are responsible for the proliferation of ISIS. Therefore, I say, let
Donald Trump be responsible for their destruction.
XVI.
SPECIAL PROSECUTOR: CARNALITY DOES
NOT TRUMP CRIMINALITY
Hillary Clinton
has done much to destroy the Middle East and discredit American foreign policy
in that region, most apparently in her dereliction of duty and subsequent
cover-up of the 11th September, 2011 Benghazi massacre. In fact, I
had initially assumed that the majority of her 33,000 deleted and bleached
emails were related to this particular issue, although I now believe the subterfuge
of the numerous Clinton Foundation deals may have figured more prominently. Unless
Donald Trump is able to get into office and appoint a special prosecutor, the
public may never know what it has a constitutional right to know. I consider a
career marked by decades of political corruption and criminality of eminently
greater concern than one’s sexual attitudes towards women.
XVII. PEACE
WITH RUSSIA
The Obama
administration and Clinton’s ongoing neglect to deal with the ISIS situation
they themselves have created – in addition to the resultant European migration
crisis – have left a power vacuum which is now being filled by Russia.
Consequently, Obama’s loose and unverified accusations that Russia is rigging
the political system, besides being a hypocritical negation of his own
criticism of Donald Trump’s easily verifiable accusations of electoral fraud – coupled
with Clinton’s slanderous equation of Putin with Hitler – have amounted to the rattling of war sabres.
It is a regrettable truth that sometimes in world affairs, military conflict is
necessary when dealing with certain enemies. Russia is not – and should not –
be considered such an enemy. We no longer live in the 1960s of the Black
Panthers and the Cold War. We live in an age of global jihadism. Donald Trump
realises this, whereas Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama evidently do not. Moreover,
Donald Trump has promised, if elected, to reach out before his inauguration to strike
a deal for peace with Putin and join forces to destroy ISIS. A position I
strongly encourage.
XVIII. SCRAPPING
THE SHAMEFUL IRAN DEAL
Most
importantly, however, Donald Trump will either renegotiate or consign to the
rubbish bin. the greatest national embarrassment – out of many – committed by
the Obama administration: the Iranian nuclear deal. This was nothing more than
a cynical attempt at solidifying Obama’s legacy; one which provided the
terrorist-sponsoring state of Iran billions of dollars in unfrozen assets and
an even clearer pathway towards obtaining nuclear weapons. A partnership with
Russia and the shredding of this agreement will be an instant two-pronged
attack against the sort of instability Obama has created and Clinton intends to
exacerbate.
XIX.
THE ECONOMIC TRUTH ABOUT ILLEGAL
IMMIGRATION
After
leaving North Carolina, I relocated to San Francisco and managed to carve
a name for myself as a satirical comedian, often attacking the leftist
hypocrisies I was constantly being deluged with in that municipal bastion of
Maoist progressivism. When my son, William Dustin Franken, came out to live
with me during his teens, he attempted to find menial work as a busboy for some
extra cash. I had to explain, and he soon found out for himself, that the
liberal business owners in “sanctuary cities” like San Francisco would never hire
him as a busboy because he was a legal citizen, had a social security number,
and therefore would have to be paid a decent living wage. Such jobs instead went
to undocumented Mexican migrants in order that the exploitative owners could
cut financial corners. I was subjected to many political untruths during my
time in San Francisco – cop killers like Mumia Abu Jamal were saintly peace
activists, the state of Israel was the new Third Reich – but perhaps the most
deceptive of these was the reductive sophistry that any argument against
illegal immigration reflected contempt for brown-skinned people. Greedy
businesses are perfectly content to let this narrative thrive. But illegal
immigration has always been at its core an economic and security issue and not
a racial one. When both the establishment Republican and Democratic parties are
“confused” about what border security means – as they have been for decades – such
confusion invariably has something to do with money or votes or both. Donald
Trump bears the hatred of the Democrats and the mistrust of many Republicans on
this issue, which puts him in good stead with myself and a number of other
independent-minded nationalists. Therefore, I agree with Donald Trump’s plan to
close off the border, cut off the supply of cheap labour, and in so doing, create
a legal path towards citizenship. All this, of course, is anathema to the globalist
Clinton’s plans for creating a “hemispheric common market” – or NAFTA 2.0.
XX.
REINVESTING IN AMERICAN ENERGY:
DEFUNDING THE UN
In 2006,
the Al Gore-backed film Inconvenient Truth
gave left-leaning politicians a new cause to add to their collection: Global
Warming (which, given the various fluctuations in temperatures since its
release, has since been rebranded Climate Change). At the time, the cynic in me
regarded this as a shady attempt for Mr. Gore to stay politically relevant,
still smarting as he was from the highly contested election of 2000. (In fact, Donald
Trump’s recently criticised reluctance to honour the results of this current
election has an earlier precedent in Gore’s 2000 defeat by Bush.) I believe
there is much compelling evidence that shows the science on climate change (nee global warming) is far from settled
and any claim to the contrary, from UN bodies or otherwise, completely flies in
the face of the scientific method itself. Currently, as things stand, this a
problem that may not even be a problem and one that may not even have a
solution. Despite the uncertainty, this cause has been forcibly used to raise
taxes, put coal miners out of business, and provide a stream of endless funding
for one-sided, politically-biased research. Donald Trump’s recent promise to
divert billions of dollars from UN climate change programmes to put back into
domestic American energy is one that is not only economically sound but – given
years of Republican kowtowing to this initially Democratic issue – nothing
short of revolutionary as well. And I believe it is in this regard that Donald
Trump’s independence from mainstream politics is perhaps most clearly evident.
XXI.
INDEPENDENCE FROM THE ELITES:
AMERICA’S BREXIT
Following nearly
fifteen years of performing comedy in the United States, I relocated to Great
Britain, a country whose history, culture, and traditions I value just as
highly as those of my native land. I did not move to Great Britain because I
sought some nebulous “better” economic life or because I was simply “looking
for a change” and felt this country was as good as any other. And I most
certainly did not move here because I am enamoured of globalist super-states
such as the EU. I have loved Britain from afar for as long as I can remember
and, now that I live here, consider myself as much a nationalist for Great
Britain as I am for the United States. Nationalism is not synonymous with
racism, no matter what the elites would have the voters believe. It is gratitude
for the principles and traditions that make Western nations such as Great
Britain and the United States entities to be admired and emulated throughout
the world. This is why I was very much in favour of Britain’s decision to exit
the European Union and begin the process of restoring sovereignty and democracy
back to itself. Brexit was a referendum on many things, but it was also a
revolution inasmuch as the working classes of this nation – sneered at for many years by so-called experts
as uneducated and racist – elected to transfer power away from the corporate
elites in Brussels and bring it back home to Britain – such as any proper,
functioning Western democracy can and should. Symbolically, it represented the
people’s chance to pause and collect their breath before trudging headlong into
a progressive globalist dystopia from which the odds of returning were slim if
not absolutely nil. Donald Trump represents the same patriotic desire to
stop and reflect with gratitude on the inherent goodness of the United States, instead
of handing it over to disinterested, third party elites such as would comprise
the oligarchic rule of the hemispheric common market Hillary Clinton advocates.
America, too, deserves a Brexit and it will assuredly find one in Donald Trump. With the success of Brexit, there was a chance that Western culture and civilisation would survive. With the election of Donald Trump, it will be almost a guarantee.
XXII. DOING
IT HIS WAY: THE REALITY CANDIDATE
Throughout
my entire adult life, I have been the proverbial odd man out in my chosen
fields of academia and entertainment, institutions in which diversity of political
opinion is discouraged whilst a herd mentality sycophantically applauds itself.
What little success I have earned in my present occupation I owe not to the
comedy industry, but in spite of it. Where diversity quotas and liberal
groupthink are rewarded and uniqueness and merit are denigrated, I have been
forced to carve out my own singular path, for better or for worse. Likewise, I
see in Donald Trump a man who has gotten as far as he has in this election
almost exclusively by doing everything “wrong”. He has not qualified his
statements on terrorism with mealy-mouthed platitudes such as “Islam is a
religion of peace”. He has not given lip-service to the ongoing and expensive
fraud of climate change. He has been brusque and discourteous to criminal politicians
who audaciously demand that political discourse be kept “civil”. He has angered
social conservatives by not caring which bathroom a transgender uses and he has
angered social progressives for almost everything else. He has given the
American public and the world at large the ugly independent truth instead of
the sugar-coated sanctimony of the status quo. He has pushed back fiercely and
relentlessly against a biased and brainwashing mainstream media. And to those who disagree with his assessment
of modern journalism, simply consider the headline Reuters used to describe a
thwarted jihadi suicide bombing earlier this year: Syrian Man, Denied Asylum, Killed in German Blast.
XXIII. FREEDOM
FROM POLITICS AS USUAL
I am tired,
as are millions of others, of establishment politicians. I want Donald Trump in
office for many reasons, but mostly because I want to return to thinking and
writing about other things and working on other creative projects, of which
there are many in the pipeline. And I believe if Donald Trump becomes
president, I can open the paper every morning, scan the headlines and, more
often than not, pump my fist in the air and say “Right on!” instead of “You
sneaky cunt. . .”
XXIV. OPTIMISM
IN DEFIANCE OF FAITHLESSNESS
Donald
Trump has continuously deflected the ad hominem attacks against his sexual
character and, as of this writing, the latest narrative from the opposition
seems to be that he never took this election seriously; that he was merely “pretending”
to love the people who love him. But this assessment overlooks the fact that,
in elections past, he has perennially been put forward as a potential candidate
and, barring this current one, has always declined. Perhaps this is just another
weak attempt from the opposition to neuter what is actually a genuine
revolution: to claim that it’s all been for show. The same cynicism that would
hand the nation to Hillary Clinton is the very one that now assumes Trump is
simply playing P. T. Barnum.
XXV. CONCLUSION
I was born
the son of a hardworking labourer. From kindergarten to eighth grade, I attended
a small country school. I was raised in a community against whose traditions I
often rebelled as a child, but have long ago come to appreciate as a man. I
have been fortunate enough to see many places and do many things in my life and
those small-town values have been largely responsible for making me the unique
individual I am today – not the groupthink progressive consensus of my
pedigreed peers; which would have me unquestioning, watered-down, and
ineffective. I live in Britain, but I am
from Missouri, affectionately nicknamed the “Show-Me State”. Throughout the
course of this election, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have both shown me much.
And I choose Donald Trump.
