Response to Odd Man Out

(See: Just Above Sunset: Odd Man Out)

I'm pretty sure we're only now starting to see the reason that Donald Trump calls Hillary Clinton "Crooked Hillary", which from the start always seemed like a bit of a stretch. Psychologists call it "psychological projecting":

Psychological projection is a theory in psychology in which humans defend themselves against their own unconscious impulses or qualities (both positive and negative) by denying their existence in themselves while attributing them to others. For example, a person who is habitually rude may constantly accuse other people of being rude.

For another example, a person who is crooked may constantly accuse someone else of being crooked!

The trick, of course, is to "get there first" -- that is, you need to call Hillary a crook (when she clearly isn't) before she gets a chance to call you one (which you clearly are), because once she does, you can just accuse her of being "unoriginal".

And the psychologists take this into even deeper and potentially more dangerous territory:

Bullying: A bully may project his/her own feelings of vulnerability onto the target(s) of the bullying activity. Despite the fact that a bully's typically denigrating activities are aimed at the bully's targets, the true source of such negativity is ultimately almost always found in the bully's own sense of personal insecurity and/or vulnerability. 

Such aggressive projections of displaced negative emotions can occur anywhere from the micro-level of interpersonal relationships, all the way up through to the macro-level of international politics, or even international armed conflict.

In other words, God forbid some hypothetical psychological-projecting bully becomes the supreme leader of some big world power!

Much of the thinking behind "projection" was originally conceptualised by Sigmund Freud, but there were later dissents in the psychology community which, frankly, I tend to agree with more:

Some studies were critical of Freud's theory. Research supports the existence of a false-consensus effect whereby humans have a broad tendency to believe that others are similar to themselves, and thus "project" their personal traits onto others. This applies to good traits as well as bad traits and is not a defense mechanism for denying the existence of the trait within the self.

But all the psychobabble aside, we've all seen people who use projection as a rhetorical trick. You've seen it every time you heard some conservative Republican claim that it's really the liberals who are the true racists!

So whatever, if anything, comes out of the FBI investigation of Hillary's email business, it probably won't show her to be crooked, especially if by crooked you mean:

crook*ed |ˈkrʊkəd| adjective ( crookeder |ˈkrʊkədər|, crookedest |ˈkrʊkədəst| ) ... 

• informal dishonest; illegal

Hillary admits to doing what everyone knows she did, which was put her email on a server in her home, so she can't be found to be dishonest, and I doubt the probe will find that she did anything illegal.

But can the same be said for Trump? It's becoming more and more obvious that he got to where he is not only by being dishonest, but also by stealing other people's money.

And in the Thesaurus, in the list of synonyms to "crook", you'll find the word "racketeer":

rack*e*teer |ˌrækəˈtɪ(ə)r| noun 

a person who engages in dishonest and fraudulent business dealings.

Bingo!

Think not only Trump University, but you'll also need to read Steve Reilly's investigation into the history of Trump's business dealings in USA Today:

On just one project, Trump’s Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, records released by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission in 1990 show that at least 253 subcontractors weren’t paid in full or on time, including workers who installed walls, chandeliers and plumbing. 

The actions in total paint a portrait of Trump’s sprawling organization frequently failing to pay small businesses and individuals, then sometimes tying them up in court and other negotiations for years. 

In some cases, the Trump teams financially overpower and outlast much smaller opponents, draining their resources. Some just give up the fight, or settle for less; some have ended up in bankruptcy or out of business altogether.

One of those that was run out of business was Philadelphia cabinet-builder Edward Friel Jr.:

During the Atlantic City casino boom in the 1980s, Philadelphia cabinet-builder Edward Friel Jr. landed a $400,000 contract to build the bases for slot machines, registration desks, bars and other cabinets at Harrah's at Trump Plaza. 

The family cabinetry business, founded in the 1940s by Edward’s father, finished its work in 1984 and submitted its final bill to the general contractor for the Trump Organization, the resort’s builder.

The final bill they submitted 30 years ago, as recalled by son Paul Friel, the company accountant, was for $83,600.

So then what?

Paul Friel said he got a call asking that his father, Edward, come to the Trump family’s offices at the casino for a meeting. There Edward, and some other contractors, were called in one by one to meet with Donald Trump and his brother, Robert Trump. 

“He sat in a room with nine guys,” Paul Friel said. “We found out some of them were carpet guys. Some of them were glass guys. Plumbers. You name it.” 

In the meeting, Donald Trump told his father that the company’s work was inferior, Friel said, even though the general contractor on the casino had approved it. The bottom line, Trump told Edward Friel, was the company wouldn't get the final payment. Then, Friel said Trump added something that struck the family as bizarre. Trump told his dad that he could work on other Trump projects in the future. 

“Wait a minute,” Paul Friel said, recalling his family's reaction to his dad’s account of the meeting. “Why would the Trump family want a company who they say their work is inferior to work for them in the future?”

I'm thinking that if I were the Friels, I would do what "repo men" do when their company fails to get paid for the car somebody bought. I'd sneak into the casino and rip out all the cabinets and take them home, and leave a letter to Trump, reminding him that he made a deal to pay for my work product, and that he doesn't own my work product until I'm paid all of my money.

But, the Friels’ story is similar to experiences of hundreds of other contractors over the casino-boom decade in Atlantic City. Legal records, New Jersey Casino Control Commission records and contemporaneous local newspaper stories recounted time and again tales about the Trumps paying late or renegotiating deals for dimes on the dollar.

Donald's daughter, Ivanka Trump, who will be running the company if Trump is elected, denies it all:

“We have hundreds of millions of dollars of construction projects underway. And we have, for the most part, exceptional contractors on them who get paid, and get paid quickly,” she said, adding that she doubted any contractor complaining in court or in the press would admit they delivered substandard work. “But it would be irresponsible if my father paid contractors who did lousy work. And he doesn’t do that.”

(Really? Well, I guess the nut doesn't fall far from the tree! Obviously learned all she knows about business at Trump University! I wonder if they'll let father and daughter share a cell at Riker's.)

But Jesse Singal notes this in New York Magazine:

While Trump would often claim shoddy work as his reason for not ponying up, Reilly presents pretty overwhelming evidence that in many, if not most, of the cases, this was not a credible claim.

That 253 subcontractors, all on just one project, are swindled by Trump doesn't make it sound like he was refusing to pay someone for substandard work performance, it instead suggests a business model based on fraud, which one would think would be illegal behavior.

To put this another way, if you agree to pay a certain amount of money for a certain amount of work, and when the bill comes, you refuse to pay it (or you pay only part of it, or you don't pay on time), you're guilty of theft! You're stealing money from someone you've made a deal with.

Is Donald Trump a crook, or not? Try as I could, I could not find out why he's not being criminally charged for any of this. It seems to me he's probably not guilty of mere civil fraud, his company's whole MO seems to be that of a criminal enterprise -- which is what he wants to turn the United States into!

It's absolutely true what they say, that Trump's campaign is in a totally different category of candidacy than past Republican candidates. He's certainly not anything like Abraham Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt, nor Ronald Reagan, nor John McCain or Mitt Romney. If I had to name anyone he's like, I'd have to say Al Capone.

It's as if the GOP got conned into putting some smarmy "Little Caesar" on the top of their presidential ticket this year.

And as a final thought, Donald Trump keeps saying how he's surprised that nobody gives him credit for "self-funding" his campaign. But in fact, had Trump been forced to raise funds like everyone else, he probably wouldn't have had any more luck than Mitt Romney did when he considered a run, then dropped out when donors rejected him.

Maybe the GOP should write a new rule at its convention this year, one that could save them a lot of hassle next time around:

No candidate who self-funds his own campaign will be allowed to become the nominee on the Republican Party presidential ticket.