Donald Trump knows he can’t be the next American president. America is not that intellectually advanced, but still, it has come a long way from the old days of hate, bigotry and fascism.
When Trump says he wants to ban all Muslims from coming to U.S., he kills his chances even more.
Really, Trump knows he doesn’t have any serious chances. People who are supporting him now are supporting his hate speech and message of bigotry, paranoia and exclusion. But nobody knows it better than Trump himself that he has zero knowledge about how the world turns, how tax is collected, how roads are paved, and how barbers run their unisex shops across America. For that matter, he never visited a barber shop in years.
Trump never read history or geography or science or arts books…none of his colleagues did. He never paid taxes…none of the American one percent did in recent years, especially since Reagan. He never drove on the road…in fact, his class only rode the helicopter from Wall Street straight up to their New Jersey, Connecticut or Rhode Island mansions.
That is how their world turns…as we’ve seen on soap operas and Hollywood. Their lives are fantastical and frivolous. I would give it an F. If you look carefully at his face, you know that he knows he is an F.
And again, we all know Trump never went to a barber shop. In fact, he has the most unkempt hair that we have seen in recent years. It’s shameful.
But here on this blog, we don’t talk about shamefully unkempt hair. Or, Hillary Clinton’s $600 hair. Here, we talk about more serious and important things.
Six months ago, I said this to my labor union students [paraphrasing]:
“Trump will not be the Republican Party’s presidential nominee, and he knows it. But he is doing what he has been asked to do: move an already right-wing media discussion to an even further right, and the 2016 campaign will be fought within that narrow, right-wing, hate and war spectrum. All else will be excluded. That is the plan.”
Let’s go global for a second, given this is a globalized economy today, and elections are not local either. They are global. Monsanto farmer suicides in India can make it an election debate issue between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton.
In USA and India, the two largest “democracies” in the world, the one percent is doing precisely this, what we call distraction from the 99 percent’s bread and butter issues, and putting spotlight on sensational issues. That is the plan.

In India, suddenly, beef eating or not has become a nationwide media market sell. As if India and its one billion poor people have solved all their problems with poverty, hunger, malnourishment, diseases, environment pollution, illiteracy, or unemployment. Women in India found equality and respect. Film stars — especially the billionaires — suddenly find out that India is so intolerant that they may have to leave the country. 
In USA, Trump and Kruz and Carson and Huckabee and Bush the juniormost president-to-be all want to tell us how tough we must be, and how evil Muslims and Latinos are. Trump called Mexican immigrants rapists and murderers. When that didn’t go very well, ISIS came along to help. Now, it’s all about terror and ISIS and Mali and the imminent threat to American security and American way of life.
(Without telling us who and what created ISIS and Mali in the first place, that is. Hillary won’t talk about Libya and Mali. Bush  and New York Times and Judith Miller won’t talk about Iraq, Syria and ISIS.)
Trump and all other Republicans candidates are now saying that Muslims are all evil, as “thousands and thousands of Muslims cheered” when the World Trade Center towers came down on 9/11. Now, we must mark and tag and label each and every Muslim in America, Trump said.
(This tagging sounds familiar too…just go back on history a few decades.)

And American big media — New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, NPR, PBS, NBC, ABC and CBS, plus the right wing nuts on their TV and radio shows — have all decided that the 2016 elections should not and must not have any discussion on subjects such as the unprecedented income inequality in America, the hidden, massive unemployment, the anti-labor treaties such as Obama’s TPP (or Clinton’s NAFTA), or global movements such as the ones on climate change or women’s equality. No more debate on police brutality and Black Lives Matter. No discussion no more on immigration reform.
They have succeeded. It is very likely that Bush or Cruz from the Republican side and Hillary Clinton and Blue Dog Democrats from their side will be made the candidates for another four years of dumb charade, aka presidential elections.
Serious people who talk about serious issues — like Bernie Sanders — will be officially ostracized and excluded. Unless Bernie’s people can bring in so much pressure that DNC has no choice but to nominate him.
Noam Chomsky once said,“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.”
That is the plan. Trump and Cruz, with help from Hillary and Obama, are moving the spectrum of the election debate to far right.
New York Times and Washington Post and CNN and NBC are making sure that is where the “lively debate” stays.
Just think about it.
Sincerely,
Partha Banerjee
Brooklyn, New York