Response to Missing Quite a Lot

(See: Just Above Sunset: Missing Quite a Lot)

If you, as I do, are tempted to ask how it is that all these newbie candidates keep bringing up that bit about our military forces having shrunk since 1916 -- the same thing that Romney kept bringing up back in 2012, and which Obama finally got a chance to answer, face-to-face ...

“You mention the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets,” Obama said during the final presidential debate. “We have these things called aircraft carriers and planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.”

... it's probably because all these current Republicans have, so far, been discussing all this stuff among themselves, where there's been nobody in the discussion with the incentive to set the record straight. That should change, of course, once some Democrat gets on the stage.

It's worth remembering, by the way, that falsely claiming the current administration is not keeping us safe is an old trick in presidential elections, and not always used just by Republicans:

The missile gap was the Cold War term used in the US for the perceived superiority of the number and power of the USSR's missiles in comparison with its own. This gap in the ballistic missile arsenals only existed in exaggerated estimates made by the Gaither Committee in 1957 and in United States Air Force (USAF) figures. ... Like the bomber gap of only a few years earlier, it was soon demonstrated that the gap was entirely fictional. 

John F. Kennedy is credited with inventing the term in 1958 as part of the ongoing election campaign, in which a primary plank of his rhetoric was that the Eisenhower administration was weak on defense. It was later learned that Kennedy was apprised of the actual situation during the campaign, which has led scholars to question what the (future) president knew and when he knew it. There has been some speculation that he was aware of the illusory nature of the missile gap from the start, and was using it solely as a political tool, an example of policy by press release.

But, of course, all this ill-informed Republican tough-talk on who we would be "bombing the shit out of", and how, if they were president -- a question that is being totally ignored on the Democratic side -- helps highlight the main difference in what the candidates on each side are looking to convey to voters. In general terms, the Republicans are trying to impress "toughness", while the Democrats are focussing on "smartness". It's "I-may-not-be-smart-but-I'm-tough" versus "I-may-not-be-tough-but-I'm-smart".

But it's actually more than that. While one's intelligence (assuming one has it) can be directly demonstrated in a campaign setting, toughness can only be hinted at.

Therefore, Republicans must constantly demonstrate their dominance over somebody -- especially their opponents, but not necessarily just opponents -- with symbolic gestures, such as humiliating their fellow candidates on Twitter, while Democrats ask voters to support them because, if elected, they will govern with the same intelligence they've been demonstrating throughout the campaign. It's all form versus function, in the sense that you can only promise you'll do something mean to our "enemies" if you win, or else you can come up with some good ideas on solving problems peacefully, and you can do that now.

But if they can't literally do more than promise someday to kick some foreign ass, they can still pretend to be beating up on Hillary back home, in the here and now.

As for her famous emails, I erupt every time I hear some candidate offhandedly mention that Hillary will probably be "indicted" any day now for something or other, without saying what or how or why.

First of all, to repeat what Fred Kaplan told us in Slate, since it's worth repeating:

Mishandling of classified information is a misdemeanor, which could turn out to be a problem for her; but even the sources of leaks about these incidents have acknowledged that she’s not the target of a criminal probe and that the lapse had no national-security impact.

A misdemeanor? All this scary FBI talk is about a possible misdemeanor?

It's also become known -- no small feat in itself, since nobody in the know is supposed to talk about this stuff, I guess even in private -- that what's being called "classified" was classified after the fact, and apparently might concern something so trivial as a casual mention of some newspaper article that mentions the drone program -- which nobody is supposed to know about, in spite of the fact that everybody, including you, does know about it.

And it should also be clear by now, including to all those disingenuous Republican candidates who pretend they don't know this, that all this talk about a criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton is simply hogwash.

Just for fun, someone needs to ask Chris Christie, or any of the other surviving Republican candidates who have been pushing this email fantasy, if they are aware of the United States having a drone program.

And if they say yes, they should be immediately arrested for disclosing classified information, just like Hillary Clinton did.