This column comes out on the first Tuesday of every month. Four years ago, broadcast early Tuesday morning, I called the presidential race for Donald Trump. I was virtually alone. It was not a popular call, but I use different metrics and I was sure enough to step forward for the test. I have predicted quite a few things correctly over the years, from the EU to China to the presidency, and so far have not been wrong. Early this year, I predicted cities burning. It’s not that I think I’m a prophet or have a crystal ball. I just use different metrics. 

Today, I have a prediction, but it’s not about who will win today. It’s more serious than that. Today, I predict that, no matter who wins the presidency, there are very dark days ahead. Darker than you can imagine. Days when the distance between you and slavery may be a matter of months, not centuries. 

There is something people don’t seem to understand about corruption. There are serious allegations of corruption surrounding Joe Biden’s family. I don’t know whether they are true or false. I do know the media is covering it up. 

Corruption is a Siamese twin with compromise. The corruptor wants to compromise the corrupted official. The corrupted official thinks it won’t “hurt,” and that money is good, so he takes it. However, the corruptor can then raise the stakes with the threat of exposing the corruption. There is ALWAYS one person in the transaction that knows of the corruption and can prove it. The corruptor. It is a simple form of blackmail. That is what it’s for. 

Moving on, take a look at the landscape. Portland is still burning while its leaders continue to twiddle their thumbs. Baltimore, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Detroit, Philadelphia, Minneapolis and even Wauwatosa – a name likely never heard prior to last month. People are burning police precincts, killing babies and destroying monuments – all, apparently, because they can get free Gucci bags and Nikes.  

I know we are not supposed to make stereotypic statements, but these people are all Democrats. Over the past month, it has come to appear that the goal is not, actually to take what they have not earned – the quintessential mark of Democrats – it is to steal today’s election. Do you think it is some kind of coincidence that every region or locale that is demanding extended voting is Democrat? 

I was raised a Democrat. I was a Democrat. My parents were Democrats. But today’s Democrats have morphed. They are NOT what they were. They are killers. 

I suppose you heard Joe Biden tell the world that if Trump gets elected, the rioting will increase. Have you ever heard that before? It is the standard threat issued before attacks throughout history. Submit or die. 

However, it is worth wondering how we got here. 

I can say without fear of contradiction that the media has been a main driver. Sure, they are sometimes rabidly anti-Trump, but they are much more than that. So much more. If you do the research, it is the media that’s behind “political correctness.” These juvenile, pink-collar, sub-management wage earners of the wealthy class find a new, glittery word or idea, and POW! it becomes “cool.” And if you’re not media-cool (the PC word now being Sick) then you are canceled. 

This is all being done under the guise of “free speech.” If you have watched this space for long, you have seen much about free speech, but let me try to put it in a nutshell. 

Freedom of speech is analogous to freedom of thought and freedom of action. Free people speak freely. The foundations of free speech are long and weighty, but let’s start with the proposition that the IDEA of free speech attaches to one person – one man or one woman with a vision and a drive that creates a book, a poem, a magazine, a photo or a movie. Like him or lump him, Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, Paine and Descartes did not work for a corporation or submit to a committee. In fact, NOT doing so was the whole idea. Do a search for Star Chamber. 

In the ‘80s, the Supreme Court stupidly “found” a “limited right to commercial speech.” That is, the Court decided that free speech could be paid speech. This has proven demonically absurd and imbecilic. Then, still in the ‘80s, commercial interests began buying up all the independent, respected, one-owner media on earth and drawing new boundaries. 

Did you see last month that Twitter twitted that President Trump was “not above censorship?” Can you get your head around that? A collective of tweeting twits have “found” that the leader of the free world can’t say what he chooses, and must, rather, submit to a tribunal of badly educated, oatmeal-brained sycophants for permission. 

Has it occurred to you that we are idolizing a bunch of addle-pated, self-aggrandized minstrels, jesters and recreational gladiators as political pundits? Does it occur to you that if you have reverence for LeBron James as a political theorist that you are an idiot? Would not such a person also be a Democrat? I am not name-calling. The political pundits of the Left are right there for all to see. 

OK, you might say, on a thumbnail, you make some interesting points, but why? Why would somebody disrupt society, shoot eight-year-olds, burn precinct buildings and bugger the vote? What is the objective? 

As a journalist of long standing, I still recall JN101: follow the money. Since I have set myself up as a predictor of outcomes, let me tell you the metric. SOME people want two things: the keys to the armory and the keys to the treasury, and they are willing to do whatever it takes to get them. 

Their minions have been promised a share in the money and power. When has that ever happened? Granted, mercenaries in the Dark Ages were allowed to loot and kill, and we are seeing some of that, but as far as what happens once resistance has been stifled… nonproducers remain nonproducers and are treated that way by the authorities once their usefulness is exhausted. 

Anybody that reads the news, conservative or liberal, surely knows by now that SOME people tried to overthrow Trump’s presidency. They tried with phony FISA warrants, and they tried with impeachment over a phone call. Now they have even looked at invoking the 25^th Amendment to the Constitution to throw Trump out of office for incompetence, when he appears to be many things, but incompetent is not one of them. 

SOME people are letting these things slide because they seem so horrific that there must be some basis to them or they could not be advanced. Yet, there is no basis. The fact is, we have grown complacent and stupid. 

Take a look backward for a minute. We know that Hillary Clinton destroyed thousands of e-mails, that James Comey “found” as much but decided not to prosecute. We know that Hillary Clinton hired a Russian operative to try and unseat a duly elected president.  

Now, here’s a test of your seriousness and your knowledge of history. What did Ethel Rosenburg do that Hillary Clinton did not do? 

I am not advocating the electric chair for Clinton. I am, however, pointing out that back in the ‘50s, people had a very sound sense of what happens when you let bad people do bad things for too long, and they did not want to repeat their own recent history. 

One of the biggest manufactured controversies, today, is the “mail-in ballot.” Many people believe this is an effort to introduce yet more election fraud. I do. Metrics. Advocates are whining about my duty to help somebody else vote when they otherwise would not. Here’s a question, what would young Goodman Schmidt from Shickshinny, Penn., on Nov. 3, 1820, have done if he wanted to vote, it was cold and raining and he was 10 miles from town? 

He would get on his horse and ride. 

Back then, you had to be a property owner to vote. That was to prevent the indigent from voting themselves a windfall at the expense of society’s producers. How primitive. 

Let me be clear. Voter fraud is, pure and simple, an effort to overthrow the government. As such, in more serious times, it would have been punishable by hanging. This is not a Republican/Democrat issue. It is not a Chiefs/Raiders issue. It is not a Coke/Pepsi issue. We are not a gang of fanboys rooting for our side. If somebody is successful in stealing an election, they will have overthrown the government without firing a shot…. Well, not many. They have managed to shoot a few kids in strollers and a member of the House of Representatives. 

Think about this: anybody in a Republic that tries to cheat the vote has already admitted he or she is a loser and that his or her ideas have no value to the majority. What you have, then, is a maggot-spined, morally bereft, intellectually vacant thug. 

We are in charge of the future of the free world, and we should be serious. For once. 

So… I see dark days. Depending on how you vote today, those days will have a chance of passing, or they will surely deepen. There IS an elite aristocracy in politics, in bureaucracies, in media, in entertainment, in every social medium and elsewhere, and their belief is that you are cattle that must be fed, comforted, herded and milked to death. 

Vote. If you know anybody that is not voting, talk to them. If you do, it might get you canceled. If you don’t, it surely will. The fate of the free world is on your shoulders, Spiderman. Do your duty. 

This won’t win me any friends, I guess, but to me, salesmen that sell on price are weak. I don’t like Apple, but Apple agrees with me, and well they should. Tell me about the last time you got a discount for buying an Iphone. (You spell Iphone with a capital I, by the way. It’s called a proper noun in English, and Apple does not own English.) People that obey tin-horn dictators from Silicon Valley and points west are also weak. Strong people follow ideas and principles; ducks follow other ducks. 

That’s not to say I have an unbendable character. There was this one time when I deliberately took financial advantage of a soon-to-be widow for my own financial gain, and it had everything to do with selling value. I was selling cars. 

The scene was a major, Midwestern dealership. I had accepted a job starting up a magazine in another state, but that job didn’t start for two months, and the contract I was finishing did not require much attention. I had an option to take the time off, but I made the mistake of asking myself what my greatest weakness was. 

You should never ask yourself what your greatest weakness is. If you do, and if the answer comes back, you are obliged to work on it, or you are weak. 

My answer came back that I was short on high-pressure sales experience. No problem, there, I arranged through a friend to have an interview with the car dealer. The interview was to be Monday morning at 10:00, and the friend assured me the way would be paved and there would be no problem. 

I was there at 10:00, but the sales manager was late – like two hours late. Unbeknownst to me, he had a) not had a chance to talk to my friend, and b) his wife had run off with another man over the weekend, and he had been following the pair around Texas. He was not looking good, but some people just have tough lives, so it didn’t concern me. 

He ushered me into his office, where his coffee was already cold and his desk littered with orders, notes, pencils and spent calendar pages. He looked at me. 

“OK, Kerry,” he said, “I hear you want to sell cars.” 

I confirmed that, thinking from his tone that he was joking with me, having been put up to it by my friend. 

So he said, “When I have people work for me, I like them to have what I call ‘the eye of the tiger.’ I want them to be aggressive. Do you consider yourself to be aggressive?” 

Still thinking he was having me off, I answered, “Sir, if this job requires it, I’ll find out your wife’s bra size.” 

He went sort of pale and dropped his jaw, then recovered, acted like it was all in the script and said, “Then I guess you have a job.” 

It wasn’t until later that I learned the back story. I feel sorry for the guy, but I really a) thought he was joking, and b) was in the very convenient position of applying for a job I didn’t need. 

I picked up the jargon quickly. Few of my coworkers were “lifers” in car sales. One was on day release from jail, a few were between marriages. To them, the game was selling on price. 

One day, a woman came in and I got to her first. She said she was interested in a convertible, and I said I had just the thing. I showed her a few budget models, and one high-end sports car. She was interested, and left to get her boyfriend. 

One of the ladies from Parts came over. The ladies in Parts liked me. They had heard of the bra incident and thought the sales manager had it coming. She asked me if I knew who that woman was, and I admitted I did not. 

She told me the woman was the wife of a supply salesman, that he was in the hospital, dying of cancer, and that she and the boyfriend were cashing out his estate, such as it was, and leaving on a road trip for California. It was clear the Parts ladies did not approve. 

Neither did I. Life happens, but nobody, I felt, should have to deal with an unfaithful spouse and terminal cancer at the same time. So I did what I don’t do. I rationalized. I said, “That guy would like it if I took what I can of his money to keep it out of the paws of these two. 

By and by, the woman came in with her beau, and I started the conversation. I said, “I hear you are going to California.” She said they were. So I said California is a long way, mostly desert before you get there and convertibles are really not that fun in 120F heat. I said they would be way ahead to get a deal on a conversion van, drive to California in comfort, and then trade in the van on a convertible in California. 

She was curious, so I showed her what I had picked out. It was a conversion van with barroom string lights, a VCR (look it up; old technology) and a built-in stereo. It had air conditioning, shag carpet and a dark motif. 

It had something else. At that time and place, conversion vans did not have a sticker. No MSRP. So, when she asked what it would cost, I told her I would go see. 

I told the general manager (not the sales manager; he was off having problems again) that I had interest in a conversion van, and I wanted a price. And I said, “Make it big.”  

He looked at me quizzically, so I said, to make it really big and then double it. 

When it was all over, I had made the biggest sale of a conversion van in that company’s history, and had made the highest-net sale of anything, ever, in that company. I also had two customers that were very happy, and I had done a favor for a dying man and paid a bit toward my kids’ educations. 

Before long, it was time for me to be on my way. None of my coworkers bothered to wish me well, which is fine. There were other stories to explain that. However, when I picked up my things and went to the door, the general manager stood up at his desk on a podium on the floor and saluted. 

That still feels good. More importantly, it crystalizes my belief, then and now, that if you have nothing of value to sell, then you have nothing to sell, no matter how low you go. Conversely, if you are selling value and can attach that value to the goals of your customer, the price is no object. 

Like you, I am waiting for the final release of the Iphone XII. I have sent Apple a friendly note about their English, and I can’t wait to see if it takes.