Try to stop your leg from moving when the doctor strikes your knee with the rubber mallet. It is reflexive and virtually automatic. Your leg is going to move. 140Characters is running a “knee jerk” campaign. By constant repetition, he is working to get a knee jerk reaction associated with Hillary Clinton.
In a complex world, Americans have a right to expect its presidential candidates to engage thoughtfully and respectfully with the electorate. Unfortunately, one candidate doesn’t agree and, in the process, is making Americans, including his supporters, the butt of his personal mockery of the American electorate.
He has consistently campaigned on negativity. “Crooked Hillary and Crooked Hillary.” As much money has been spent investigating her, where are the arrests, trials and convictions? Being president didn’t shield Nixon from disgrace. Vice-President Spiro Agnew paid the price for his corrupt acts as have numerous other political figures. Yet, nothing has been pinned on her despite 24 years of constant hounding by NY Times’s political columnists and admittedly politically motivated congressional investigations.
“Lying Hillary.” Joyce Behar said it best earlier this week on The View when she said Clinton may lie but 140Characters is a LIAR. A politician who hasn’t lied is an unelected politician. The difference with him is that he revels in lying. He keeps repeating “facts” that have repeatedly been demonstrated to be false.
“Bigoted(???) Hillary.” Guess who employed rental agents who placed a “C” on the rental applications of minorities? in fact, each epithet he uses can more appropriately used against him. Is it coincidence he trotted “Bigoted Hillary” out during his asinine wooing of the black folks of the USA.
This name-calling process is aided and abetted by two prominent actors. The mainstream press is the most culpable abettor. During the primaries, the press served as his advertising arm. Now, it serves as his bodyguard. What is your knee-jerk reaction when asked if 140Characters’s failures are being investigated similarly to Clinton? If you responded “yes” then your focus was based on media coverage of numerous rhetorical (verbal and written) screw-ups uttered by the candidate. What was the shelf life of each individual screw-up as reported by the mainstream press? Has any one of those screw-ups been scrutinized like the e-mails or Benghazi?
The knee-jerk campaign has driven and continues to drive coverage by the mainstream press. The bottom line is that reporters, scurrying about to find the smoking gun on Hillary, can’t be used to investigate his past. How many stories might be developed detailing 140Characters’s treatment of small business owners who were stiffed by him? This is only one example but my knee-jerk response would be “plenty.”
Mainstream press coverage abets his campaign by creating a Twilight Zone environment. He gets to campaign in the present while his attacks are directed to Clinton’s past. And, this is thoroughly to his advantage. And, the Matt Lauers of the media refuse to call him out when he repeats a known lie. There are already enough despicable acts that are already known. What is your knee-jerk reaction as to whether there is more pig sty material waiting to be converted into fertilizer? You know what mine is.
The second abettor is social media. I’m glad social media did not play a prominent role in the only presidential election that I’ve worked. Mike Dukakis was a decent man. 
The senior aide, who signed off on the tank photo and allowed it to be actually presented to Dukakis, should be sentenced to a boxing match with Mike Tyson. That beat down would match the one his boss suffered.
Today, on social media, political activism is of the knee-jerk variety. And, both divides of the political spectrum are abettors. It is sickening to see important issues be immediately sidetracked from the underlying message. A February video of garbage men removing fruit from a sidewalk is posted as a referendum on NYC’s mayor. An Albuquerque mayor’s party affiliation is deemed relevant to the issue of positively and humanely using panhandlers, at $9.00 an hour, to pick up litter around the city. And, these are benign examples.
The not so benign instance is much of the response to Colin Kaepernick’s stance on standing for the Star Spangled Banner. The “love America or leave it” response is a knee-jerk reaction. In 1943, the Supreme Court elegantly covered this issue by asserting:
If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.
You think our most petty, major party presidential candidate ever would embrace Kaepernick. Someone please show me the difference between “Make America Great Again” Kaepernick’s assertion this country is not living up to its lofty ideals. 140Characters’s nuanced response shows he is capable, at times, of taking political direction. Who thought his knee jerk reaction would be “love it or leave it?” His supporters believe he feels this way and he can argue he didn’t say it. Win-win for 140Characters.
Dealing with race in the United States is a complex issue. When I was a Cost and Management Officer in Japan, I was asked on several occasions to examine complex problems. My guiding principle was to tear down the complexity and build toward a solution to the problem. That is the public service Kaepernick is performing.
Now, only 60 odd days before we can shut down this knee-jerk campaign and, hopefully, rid ourselves of this monumental jerk.