“You’re Controlled Opposition!”

Yesterday’s reckoning flustered the fish… fluttered the dovecotes… and enflamed the hornets.

We insinuated that Donald Trump — if elected — may not prove the dictatorial he is purported to be.

That is because the governmental construction is against it. This belief runs contrary to opinion abundant in mainstream circulation.

Certain readers even believe we blew a bugle for Mr. Trump.

Here is reader S.S.:

Since you’re attempting to convince people that Trump is better than Biden, that proves that you’re controlled opposition, and should not be trusted for anything you purport.

With the highest respect to S.S.:

We never claimed Mr.Trump “is better than” Mr. Biden. We believe both are scoundrels to one degree or other.

Yet scoundrels are often amusing. And we find Mr. Trump vastly more amusing than Mr. Biden.

Yet comedic value— we concede — is no qualification for office.

What did we claim?

That we did not vote for Mr. Trump in the two prior elections — and will not vote for him in the presumptive third.

Thus we blew a very muted bugle for the fellow.

S.S. claims we are “controlled opposition”? Opposition to what? And controlled by whom?

We may be for hire, it is true. Yet we are not for sale.

Who is for sale? Please see the below article.

What is more, S.S. cedes us an influence we altogether lack.

This publication exerts no magnetism over men and events.

Nor does it aspire to.

Next we come to reader C.C.:

Trump increased the deficit by over $7 trillion in four years. Biden’s budget would decrease the national debt by the largest amount EVER. The choice is clear.

Mr. Trump was a fiscal atrocity, we concede. We said it again yesterday.

Yet C.C.’s theory, by our lights, stretches and strains all credulity.

The sitting president’s budget — under any plausible accounting — would not nick a nickel from the nation’s debt.

The national debt has, in fact, expanded some $6.5 trillion under the same sitting president.

And it expands yet — we might add — at rates truly prodigious.

Meantime, reader M.H. tells us that:

The WORD “Democracy” NEVER but NEVER appears in either the 1776 document NOR The CONSTITUTION for the U.S.A…! Pleas CAREFULLY read both Documents especially the Preamble at the beginning of the Constitution. Your ERRORS, Brian, are very commonly made by those who did NOT study in schools.

We inform M.H. that we maintain high acquaintance with the nation’s foundational documents. This high acquaintance extends to the two documents cited.

We have never claimed — not yesterday or the day before yesterday or the yesterday before that one — that the United States is a democracy by construct.

Thus we deny that we have ERRED.

Yet we are battened habitually by references to “our democracy.”

And so we met the phrase head-on and on its own terms.

Yet we are pleased our readers talk back to us.

“Love me or hate me,” someone once said, allegedly — “but spare me your indifference.”

To our everlasting satisfaction… you, our reader, spare us your indifference.

Be assured, we extend you the identical courtesy.

The Daily Reckoning