Guest Editorial by Conor McCue (@CK_Kirbi)
Hello Ralph Retort readers. I come to you, a humble yet ever so aggravated plebe, to discuss one of the many fascinating developments that have occurred in the run up to the 2016 U.S.A elections. While there are certainly many worth going over such as the rise of Bernie Sanders, an independent faux-socialist, as the most electable and popular of the democratic candidates, to the inane ramblings of Ben Carson, who somehow became the Republican front runner for a short while before alluding to his fantasies of stone age food storage, I am here to talk about that strangest of election anomalies: The viability and general support of the Donald Trump candidacy.
Now, I feel I should pretext this whole effort post with a disclaimer: I am not advocating for a Trump presidency. I have no love for the current American political system, and I have long held disdain towards both parties for the sheer ineptitude, incompetence, corruption, and hypocrisy that pervades each of the major established political wings in this country. This is not about supporting the man, but rather taking a look at the events and political climate of the U.S.A which has enabled his campaign to go as far as it has in the time that it has. From where I stand, Trump’s position is completely unprecedented, and for better or worse, he’s a strong candidate for the GOP’s pick for the 2016 election. Ergo, seeking an understanding on how he reached the place he’s in today serves us all, whether we like him or hate him. As we are taught in the Art of War: “If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles… if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.” So I seek here and now to understand this man and the political environment he has climbed to the top of, to better know the hows and whys of his current stature in the election.
From where I stand, the Trump candidacy is the result of multiple different cultural elements and political winds all coming together in a maelstrom of radical public discontent. Each cloud of anger is enmeshed with another, creating a perfect storm which the golden haired bringer of mischief (No, not the good Milo Yianoppolis) has managed to work his way into the center of. The list of discontent includes the growing bipartisan contempt for Washington DC/the upper echelon leadership of each party, the rampant corporate cronyism that pervades each party, the unwillingness of each party to address the issues of Mexican illegal immigration and islamism, the abandoning of the American lower and middle classes, and the nature/stances of Donald Trump himself. I shall go over each in full.
Item number 1: The bipartisan public contempt for the Democratic and Republican leadership.
One does not have to be a social scientist to perceive the current relationship between the American citizenry and its leadership is in wretched condition. We have in the U.S.A a deep seated distrust towards our elected representatives. This distrust stems from the feckless and self serving nature of our politicians, a distrust that exists simultaneously with hopes and desires that they’ll do the jobs we elected them for. The gauntlet of criticisms against the current establishment runs from suspicions of financial corruption to anger over a lack of attack on ISIS and everything in between. We hate them for babying us, and for not babying us enough. We hate them for not cracking down on the illegal immigrants crossing the boarder, but also for not enacting immigration reform. We hate them for not slapping the shit out big business, while also hating them for letting those businesses pack up and leave. In truth, if every complaint of ours was taken to represent the whole of the country, our relationship with DC could probably be described as borderline schizophrenic.
Now, the core problem isn’t that any of these individual issues exist. Instead, it’s that nothing is being done about them, which leads to both parties being reviled. Instead of pissing off one half of the country and acting on the will of the other half, our current political establishment has let almost every major hot button issue languish and go unattended. This has consequently created the sort of environment where the two most viable people for the Seal of the President are a pair of genuine anti-establishment outsiders with no love or acclaim within the parties that they have chosen to affiliate themselves with: Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. The number of liberals and conservatives who want to vote for a veteran Democrat or Republican have dwindled drastically, because neither group of citizens believes that the parties they have stood by for all of these years gives a shit about them. This holds especially true on economic issues, to the point where we see a lot of liberal and conservative voters switching sides to vote for Trump and Sanders respectively.
Item Number 2: Failure to address Mexican illegal immigration.
Illegal Immigration is a problem that has been front and center of a lot of political debate since before I was a teenager. It is perhaps the most prevalent cause for concern in the American populace today, and as the years have gone by, the populace has swung in and out of favor with the various ideas of reform and law enforcement that have been tossed out like a meatless bone to the American people.
The failure to address illegal immigration comes in two forms. First is the liberal form, the progressive form, the leftist form, or whatever you want to call it. They’re all the same to me: Post Modernist drivel that depends on the identity politics that pervades the current Democratic establishment and the rhetoric of its base. This failure manifests through political correctness and all of the mindless vitriol it can muster: If you aren’t 100% in lockstep with the permissive agenda of San Francisco and Seattle based coastal liberal progressives, you’re a bigot and as such your opinion on the matter needs to not even exist.
To say that this sort of mentality is damaging to the dialogue is an understatement. It’s childish, blind, arrogant, and ignorant. It ignores every nuance and bitter reality that accompanies the issue and those who stand against illegal immigration. It pathologizes a consequence of individual examination and experience, throwing all people who oppose illegal immigration into a damning bandwagon, without any thought to the consequence of such ostracization.
On the Republican side.. the GOP side.. of the issue, we witness a constant disconnect between what the voting conservative base wants and what the GOP elite wants. Contrary to popular belief, the majority of conservative politicians and pundits actually desire immigration reform. From Sean Hannity and Rupurt Murdock to George W Bush and Marco Rubio, the “Gang of Eight” to Charles Krauthammer (What a name!), the GOP voices that have spoken in favor of immigration reform are mighty indeed. And why wouldn’t they? Immigration reform most benefits people who have capital assets, people who employ low skill/low cost labor, and professionals who are already highly compensated and secure in their jobs. Furthermore, there is much about Mexican culture that meshes well with stereotypical conservative social values: Many Mexicans, especially poor ones, are deeply Christian (Catholic, to be precise), have a strong masculine culture, and abide by their own, compatible, form of “family values.” If the GOP was the group to end up giving illegal immigrants amnesty, as George W Bush and his intrepid brother, Jeb, both desire, then the newly formed body of U.S.-Mexican nationals could serve both the GOP’s economic and political bottom line.
The problem with this approach by the GOP elites is that it is completely out of touch with the desires of the Republican base, who by and large are against most suggested forms of immigration reform that have been proposed. For this reason, the GOP rarely wants to get into the debate about immigration, which in turn is capitalized on by the liberal elements of the media, who prefer to claim that the reason the GOP doesn’t want to address the issue is because they’re all secret racists who don’t want their true tentacally agenda exposed for all of its odious, Lovecraftian terror.
So, along comes one Mister Donald Trump, who basically opens his campaign rhetoric with the most inflammatory statements on the issue of immigration that have been heard in a very long time. In one fell swoop, Trump was able to crack open the simmering well of discontent that exists over the issue by drawing attention to one of its most damning and damaging aspects: The crime that comes with it.
Take a look at the various crime statistics that come out of the border cities. Drug running, kidnapping, weapons trafficking, and the nature of the violence that occurs on the other side of the boarder in relationship to the Central American drug empire that runs up and down the cities in Columbia, Mexico, Cuba, and elsewhere. This violence is the stuff of legend and epic crime family movies, and given that it’s happening in real life, today, within stone throw of several boarder cities, people of all political stripes genuinely have the right and the reason to be concerned. Couple this with the prevalence of federal crime prosecutions that occur on the boarder states due to drug related violence, and the fact that many Mexican gangs in Arizona and Southern California have ties to the cartels of their motherland, and suddenly you end up with a very stark picture of what sort of trouble follows in the wake of illegal immigrants.
It is here that the political culture of America becomes so troublesome. Most immigrants are not criminals. They’re poor and desperate people who flee their home nation, which is as corrupt as DC is and is ridden with violence and poverty. These people want to indulge in the American Dream, and grow up in a land where they don’t have to pray to the saints for protection against the forces that prey upon them in their homeland. However, in order to make the venture up here, they often have to fall into debt with the very same people who are the cause for their exodus in the first place. It’d be like if genuinely scared Syrians, Iraqis, Palestinians and Afghanis had to flee their homelands on a boat sponsored by ISIS, Hezbollah, or the Taliban just to make the effort for freedom. They often end up hurt, they’re often turned into drug mules, and they get caught up in monstrous circumstances so that they can make their way here.
Our country’s established political leadership wants to ignore this reality, to talk their way around it and silence anyone who would shed light on the drastic ugliness that infects the issue of Mexican Illegal Immigration. Frankly, they want all of us to shut the fuck up so that they can virtue signal or exploit unskilled labor. Don’t talk about the violence. Don’t talk about the broken system. Don’t be a law abiding citizen who holds the same expectation of Mexicans as you do towards Canadians, Samoans, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Brits and Italians. Shut your fucking mouth and stop making a fuss for your rightful rulers, plebes.
In an environment like this, there’s only one outcome for a position like Trump’s, audacious and ridiculous as it is: Support. He has done what no other politician of this era dares to do: He has tapped into the seething discontent and silent fury that many Americans, be they left wing or right wing, feel on this issue. This silence has been forced upon the masses by the wannabe Stasi behavior of the establishment left and the avarice of the establishment right. You don’t have to be liberal or conservative to want to have a real conversation about illegal immigration. Whether or not you even like Trump or support his particular position is irrelevant. What is relevant is that his stance on the subject makes it a subject that actually gets to be addressed for a change, and for this he earns the support of people on a purely emotional and a purely visceral level. I don’t agree with his stance on a wall, but he has my undying gratitude for actually talking about some of the horrific shit that floats about in the passage of the gentler Mexican folk.
Item Number 3: Failure to address Islamism
The next item on our list is, to me, the most interesting one in our current Geo-political climate on account of the consequences we’re seeing not in the U.S.A., but instead in England, Sweden, Germany, and abroad in the Middle East itself.
Across the world, we have seen the dire ramifications of the growth of the jihad-centric and politically ambitious forms of Sunni Islam known as Salyfism and Wahhabism. These are the two dominant orthodox forms of Muslim faith, one having its roots and power center in Egypt and the other having its roots and power center in Saudi Arabia. Each of them has liturgical literalism, subjugation of women, hatred for foreigners, hatred for non Muslims, marriage of church and state, rejection of errant interpretations (heresy), and rejection of western liberal values at the core of their practiced ideological dogma.
Where Arabic Muslim populations have spread in mass, so too has the orthodoxy of these particular branches of Islam. It is these specific Muslim philosophies, preached from the general seclusion of the Mosque and practiced in the privacy of home, that has turned two generations of Muslim men into the sorts of predators and conquerors that have enacted their wills upon the world around them in violent and archaic fashion.
The reaction of the west to genuinely radical, IE literalist, too-the-root, Islam, in their own nations has been lack luster, to say the least. Again we see the foul tendrils of political correctness and the multiculturalism fetish of the Post Modernist left at work. From police forces and cuckservartive politicians who hide under their desks, acting in timid complacency with the ambitions of progressives and subsequently Islamists out fear of being branded a racist, to.. well.. “intellectuals” such as Dr. Wikan, the worst elements of fundamental Islamist Arabic nations have been allowed to flourish in western nations that have long since evolved past the archaic and abusive social moors that perpetuate far too many Arabic countries. Homosexual asylum seekers are tormented and attacked by fellow refugees, women are assaulted on the road to what they had hoped was freedom and continue to be assaulted once they are settled into whatever nation they’ve fled to, and the populations of the asylum giving western European countries divide more sharply along ethnic and religious lines due to the insular nature of these orthodox Muslim philosophies.
In America, these issues are not front and center the way that the threat of acts of terrorism are, but they form a deeper and more important issue which is sure to turn up on our shores eventually. Between the less founded but understandable fear of terrorist attacks and the more founded but not yet actualized cultural clash between western liberal values and Muslim religious literalism, there are many people with a rising fear and anxiety over the refugee issue in the United States. Once again, Trump shines where all others fail, precisely because of his audacious position. Yet it was not a position he held until very recently.
In September of 2015, Trump was featured as a guest speaker in a number of schools. During this time, the question of Muslims in America came up, and he was quick to proclaim his love for them and his willingness to have a Muslim in his White House staff. This question was likewise posed on CNN and his reaction remained the same. With calm and casual ease, he affirmed his commitment to religious tolerance. Come the end of November, his stance suddenly did a 180.
The brutal, tactical execution of terrorism on Paris saw Trump immediately raise the call to a ban or halt on Muslim immigration to the United States. In response, the political establishment on both the left and right side of the isle blew up in a fury of righteous indignation at this proposal, just as they had when Ben Carson had all but suggested outlawing Muslim citizens entirely. But if Trump had just put forth his love to Islamic faithful only to turn around and piss on them, the questions must be raised: Why did he do this, and which of the statements is the “real” Trump.
Well, the reason he did it is because, like with the Mexican illegal immigration issue, Trump has an understanding of the political pulse and the nature of our discourse. Where leftists shrieked about xenophobia towards anyone who so much as showed a glint of doubt about allowing Syrian refugees over to the U.S.A, and the GOP elites remained silent on the subject, Trump again positioned himself as the lone voice willing to fight for the fearful who have no champion and no principled teacher to help them address their concerns. Again, he choose to word his position in the most outrageous manner possible, because the shocking brutality of the words, coupled with the unaddressed anxiety of people who are all shit upon by the rest of the American political and intellectual establishments, allow him to tap into a roiling well of anger so fierce that he doesn’t have to be reasonable. He needs only address the issue in defiance of political correctness and cuckservative weakness, and in doing so he gains the adulation of people who have given up on the hope that reasonable discourse will even be allowed.
If current statements are to be believed, Trump does not hold Arabic Muslims in whole-hearted contempt, nor does he think such a ban should be permanent or effect the people who are already here. This suggests his move is calculated entirely on the basis of galvanizing non-Muslim Americans via an appeal to emotion. Maybe he’s a racist xenophobe, maybe he’s a cunning demagogue. Whichever it is, the latter is far more deadly than the former.
Item Number 4: Corporate Cronyism
Corporate cronyism in American politics comes in a myriad of forms that infects both parties to their core. This cronyism informs the expenditure of government funds on special interest projects and gives preferential legal treatment to America’s plutocrat elite. In return, our elected officials back in massive campaign contributions and the promise the of wealth and power their positions grant them. Like Whores of Babylon, the politicians of the U.S.A. have turned DC into a cesspit of self centered hedonism and corruption from which no aspiring civil manages to resist. This problem has existed for generations, and its visibility has embittered the American masses.
The most obvious form of corporate cronyism, and probably the most hated, is lobbying. Wealthy enterprises and corporations are able to deeply influence the leadership of America by giving them gifts, all expense paid vacations, insider trading information, positions of power within the lobbying company’s corporate structure, massive campaign donations in the form of free advertising, media manipulation, and Super PAC funding.
The second form, possibly the more deviant one, is preferential corporate treatment. This includes subsidies (corporate welfare), no-bid contracts, and the pet projects of politicians with business ambitions. DC politicians with ideological pet projects are often married to corporate entities who wish to benefit from Uncle Sam’s deep pockets. Be this in the form of the Military-Industrial Complex, which sees the likes of John Boehnor and Bernie Sanders pushing for the construction of war machines that the Pentagon has been trying to reject for years to the combined tune of over a trillion dollars, to the massive failures in green energy company start ups funded by the Obama Administration, to the corporate bail outs that started late in 2007 and proceeded for the next few years. All of these actions saw massive gains for the pals of politicians and the financial elite of the nation to the tune of the suffering of the American middle and working class, which has yet to much tangible benefit from any of these programs.
At each step of the way, both parties have participated in the corporate corruption of government to the consternation of their constituents. Specifically, working and middle class conservatives have long been furious at the GOP for its marriage to big business. While the political elite and common men of the Republican Party have both shared ire towards unions, regulatory boards, and other items of importance to the idea of the free market, run of the mill conservatives believe that there is a line between Capitalism and Corporatism. When it comes to the economic ideology of leftists, the reasoning behind this dislike is much more diverse. With the advent of Bush 2’s Administration and its DEEP connections to both Big Oil and PMCs, conservative laymen were faced with the fact that the Party of Lincoln had become nothing but fat cats who paraded around offering false promises and shallow platitudes to their widely agrarian voter base. Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush may believe in trickle down economics, but Doctor Otho Marsh and VSDA Executive Eric Paulson do not. The feeling of the conservative voting base is that the GOP has betrayed the fiscal conservative philosophy that is, at its core, a philosophy designed to help family businesses and land owning farmers survive bureaucratic overreach. This manifests in their complete rejection of Jeb Bush, whom most conservatives suspect will be too much like George W Bush, whose ass was filled to the bursting point by the manipulating hands of Halliburon executives and Saudi princes.
On the left side of this issue, the problem that now tears the Democratic base apart is the gross and completely unashamed hypocrisy of the Democratic leadership in regards to how it handles financial corruption in politics. One of the big issues that comes up is the fury that progressives, socialists, and other hard leftists have towards the Koch Brothers, who essentially serve the role of some great moneyed boogieman for leftists to point and hiss at. This fury is utilized poorly by establishment Democrats, who forget or ignore the condemnations of their voting base, a base that rightly points out the many various media mega conglomerates, enterprises, and ultra rich billionaires who contribute to the Democratic war chest. The DNC has spent years demonizing Republicans for playing the same exact game that Democrats play. This reeks of a falseness and betrayal of contemporary leftist economic values which few liberals are patient enough to endure again. This has led to names like “Shillary” Clinton, who many Sanders supporters and political independents see as nothing more than a two faced corporate puppet who has been bought by the Super PACs of George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, and Sheldon Adelson. To add insult to injury, these Democratic Super PACs currently outperform Republican Super PACs by roughly 60 million dollars. When your party base thinks that individual wealth is evil, you are ill served to have more money than the guys who are backed by the Koch Brothers.
In comparison to these political elites and the money that backs them, Donald Trump is a genuine breath of fresh air. He cannot be bought the same way they can because he is already independently wealthy in a way most politicians are not. Furthermore, as someone who has financed the political campaigns of several prominent politicians, including both Obama and Clinton, he cannot be attacked on the subject of money without his attackers being told in return exactly how owned they are by corporate masters: Masters whose ranks he was once amongst. One of the single biggest elements of the Trump Candidacy that is drawing liberals to him is that he is one of the only voices that is genuinely speaking out against the current campaign financial system that dominates the election cycle, and he has done so in his typical Trumpy fashion. Trump comes off as economically pure in a way that even Bernie Sanders doesn’t, especially to informed voters and genuine communists, who are weary of the myth that has built up around the man.
Item Number 5: Democrats have betrayed lower class whites.
In the current era of American politics, it is nearly impossible to miss the constant barrage of condescending remarks and outright dismissals of America’s working class whites. From the shit that comes out of Chris Matthew’s mouth during his Hardball panels, to various anti-white scandals that have been covered here on the Ralph Retort, there is a great deal of hatred coming out of the most visible and powerful centers of left wing thought and culture. A class of people who feel hated and used by another class of people naturally drift away from those who hate them and start to actively work against them. I will quote an article from the very conservative and very biased PatriotUpdate.com, because I’m too lazy to do all of this writing myself:
Those working class whites Matthews speaks of, commonly known as “bitter clingers,” are making a slow but justifiable exit from the Democratic Party. When Democrats take a stand against coal, when they bring in boatloads of legal and illegal immigrants, when they make it difficult to exercise second amendment rights, when they support racial discrimination against whites (“affirmative action”), the message that the white working class hears is “not welcome.” And for good reason.”
“Liberals, who dominate the party and the media—two institutions that are often difficult to distinguish—have employed an effective pincer maneuver against the American majority. They launch their attack from above and below, appealing to the rich, but also to perpetual wards of the state, or what I call “the non-working class.” Liberals will never admit that such a class exists. Perpetual wards of the state are, in their estimation, still part of the working class…even though they don’t work.”
“It should be noted here that the white working class is not exclusively rural, Appalachian, or even southern. There are white working class people in all fifty states as well as in urban areas. The dwindling Irish Catholic population of South Boston is a good example of working class whites who are neither rural nor southern, though they have traditionally voted Democratic just the same.”
Issues between working class whites and the Democratic establishment have been brewing for quite some time now. In the 80s, the leading liberal thinkers began to abandon the traditional concepts of liberal justice and class parity to instead cash in on the nascent grievance culture that was arising out of the angst of bored, entitled white teenagers; the children of middle class baby boomers now referred to as Generation X. Gender equality, multiculturalism, and identity politics became the calling cards of the Democratic Party as it began to appeal to a group of youths who had less to complain about, but were more prone to complaint. While the Democrat establishment was occupying itself with this new identity and preparing for cultural battles that they were soon to initiate, the working class of America was swallowed up, never to recover, by the passing of NAFTA under Bill Clinton and the subsequent outsourcing of jobs. NAFTA and the Dot Com bubble burst lead to our current economic stagnation and in essence the reduction of the minimum wage, which would never again be sufficient for the role it was created for in the first place. Both of these economic tragedies would go on to form the broken foundation of the Bush economy. Eventually this became a full collapse of the American Dream under George W Bush, who clearly needed to play a game or ten of Age of Wonders 2 in order to understand that you don’t stop filling national coffers at the exact same time you start funding two invasions half way across the globe.
In truth, the Democratic Party was once the faithful watch hound of the interests of American blue collar labor and even the poor, unskilled masses that make up the majority of poverty level Americans. That changed under Bill Clinton. Nowadays, successful liberal politicians of every stripe continue to speak in the old tongue of traditional liberalism, one that expresses sympathies with the pains of lower class Americans, but in reality the Democratic establishment has completely betrayed the very people that they purport to represent and defend. This is most evident in the current relationship between Unions and the DNC.
In the past, the union movement, which was once one of the most critical assets of the Democratic Party, never dared to threaten the Democrats in any way. The unions became the whipped house dog of the DNC, beaten and submissive to a master that long since discarded the notion of loyalty to its once vibrant and faithful hound. During the 2008 election, the Obama Campaign promised the Unions of America something called the EFCA, or the Employee Free Choice Act. The purpose of the EFCA was to make it easier to organize unorganized workers by granted them new and improved protections in the 21st century American working environment, as well as the resources to make such protections a rality. In the first two years of the Obama Administration, the Democrats controlled both levels of Congress. During this time, the EFCA never even came forward to be proposed on either floor of Congress. The EFCA was a ruse to suck up the votes of and donations of the unions, which are dominated by skilled white workers. Naturally this lead to the bill never being seen by anyone, and it was subsequently forgotten by everyone who had promised or been promised the providence of this Act. Obama and the Democrats betrayed the American Unions, who became nothing more than an afterthought to the DNC after Barrack was elected.
Beyond the issue of unions, the identity politics and political correctness of Democrats also isolates white working class voters who could otherwise be easily reached. The Republican idea of voter registration is often touted as racist because of how it would disproportionately effect lower class black minorities working in both rural and urban job environments. This criticism stands side by side with criticisms of voting booth time tables. The problem with the criticisms isn’t that they are wrong, but rather that they completely neglect the white working class that suffers the exact same penalties when these systems are enacted. There is no difference between how this hurts a black man who lives in an apartment complex and has to bus 7 miles to his job site, and a white man who lives under the exact same circumstances. Both are equally inconvenienced by the policies that serve to hinder the ease of access to orderly voting booths. Every time that a democrat opens his mouth about how this hurts black people beneath a certain economic standard, he is willfully ignoring that man’s white neighbor, who shares in his economic plight. This is one of the greatest and most damning consequences of the cultural Marxist garbage known as “White Privilege.” The only privilege that exists is class privilege, and by completely abandoning this once core democratic principle, liberals have failed in their once sacred and righteous duty to uplift all people into a status of prosperity.
These treacheries have not gone unnoticed by working class whites. In 2014, once faithful liberal voters punished the Democratic party with unprecedented record low turn outs for the DNC while adding to a new wave of lower class whites voting for the RNC. Those same missing voters simultaneously voted to legalize weed in more states, raise the minimum wage in several regions of the US, push for the final chapter in the Gay Marriage debate, and brought Gamergate.. a left wing majority counter movement against heinous invasion of progressive identity politics into the video game entertainment.. to the height of its activity.
Now that same treachery, which has gone unabated over the last year despite numerous alarming articles written by conservative and liberal alike, has culminated in one of the most outrageous and telling elements of the nation’s rejection of the current status of the Democratic Party. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters withheld a political endorsement of Hillary Clinton, reportedly so that their members could have a much needed conversation about who they actually want to endorse. None other than Donald Trump is on their lips as the guy they want to talk about. Likewise, the Communication Workers of America have delayed making any sort of early endorsement for Hillary Clinton, which goes against the predictions and desires of the DNC. The Democratic abandonment of labor and their endorsement of damning trade deals and agendas that have weakened the working and middle classes of this nation. The plutocratic ambitions of Hillary Clinton and the left wing establishment’s naked contempt for the white demographic, the demographic that put them into power in the first place, has all come together to put the DNC into an extraordinarily untenable position. The original liberal voter base is abandoning the Democratic Party in favor of a faux socialist and an Outis level troll worth ten billion dollars. This is the ramification of the Democratic Party’s fall into identity politics and left wing collectivism.
Item Number 6: Republicans have betrayed the middle class.
On the right side of the isle, there is a growing sense that the GOP has long abandoned the moral and economic roots that have driven the core conservative voting base for decades now. Among the various groups that the right wing establishment has managed to alienate from their cause, the American middle class has taken a front row seat to numerous disastrous political decisions. Such decisions have long benefited officials who have become comfortable and too conceited in their positions of power and wealth to have a functional grasp on the reality of their actions to America’s domestic interests.
Front and center to this betrayal of the middle class constituent has been the “trickle down” philosophy that has defined GOP economic philosophy for the better part of over thirty years now. Defined often by terms such as Reagonomics and Supply-side economics, the concept of the systems in question, if not the execution, has been a cornerstone of upper class Republican economic philosophy. The policies enacted by GOP politicians, acting in faith to this philosophy, have ever been to the detriment of their middle class voting base.
To quote from a few sources on the subject, starting with a report from CBS News…
There’s a major problem with trickle-down economics: it not only doesn’t work, but it ends up backfiring by actually shrinking a country’s GDP, according to a report from the International Monetary Fund.
“With the gap between the rich and poor growing wider each year, the situation has become dire in many countries, according to the IMF, which found if the top 20 percent of earners increase their income share by 1 percentage point, GDP actually shrinks in the following five years. When income rises for the poorest 20 percent, however, the GDP rises by about one-third of a percentage point.”
“Inequality leads to a number of problems, including policies that hurt growth and a higher chance of conflicts, thanks to the resulting damage to social cohesion and trust. Prolonged periods of inequality may also worsen financial crises — similar to the Great Recession — because such imbalances are connected with higher amounts of leverage and a push from lobbyists to deregulate the financial system.”
In the aftermath of the Great Recession and the failings of the GOP elite, a group of conservatives called the Lunch Pail Republicans began to rise in opposition to conventional conservative leadership. These Republicans were conservative pro-labor middle class workers who came to the conclusion that the GOP had abandoned the values that made America an economic powerhouse during the 19th and 20th centuries. The GOP advocated positions which damaged the wages, benefits, and quality of life of skilled laborers. The Lunch Pail Republicans saw that the right wing establishment was riding on anti-worker programs which ultimately harm the Republican cause by actively working against a number of conservatives and thus encouraging the conservatives to jump ship or simply not vote during elections. Their list of grievances is long and heavy, but the core of it is a cognizant point that the GOP has long failed to understand: You cannot be pro-business and anti-worker because each group depends upon the other for maximum prosperity and survivability. Likewise, they see the way that the GOP treats firemen, policemen, soldiers and unions in the houses of state government as a total disgrace to both the moral and economic obligations that a great nation has to its most valued members.
These failings are compacted by the recent GOP embrace of amnesty for illegal immigrants, which includes the passing of the 1 trillion dollar Omnibus bill. This particular issue has already been covered in an early part of this article, but it bares repeating: The majority of the Republican voting base, for whatever reasons befit their view of the world, oppose amnesty and illegal immigration. The GOP leadership on the other hand is being paid off by rich businessmen and social elites to enact immigration reform, because such reform benefits the powerful in ways that most people don’t care to take the time to understand. This gaping disconnect between Republican politicians and the people who voted them into a position of majority congressional power in 2014 has driven a terrible divide between the GOP and its constituents. This divide is one which Mr Trump, utilizing both his pro-labor and anti-immigration stance, is perfectly positioned to capitalize on.
Item Number 7: Trump himself.
All of the aforementioned social and economic issues are on the plate for any given politician to seize and act upon. So what is it that makes Trump uniquely suited to handle each and every one of them? This is the crux of the complicated mess I’ve been trying to understand since late last year. In observing the rhetoric, both past and present, of Donald Trump, as well as the issues that sit heavy in the current political environment like a heady miasma, these are the traits I’ve come to believe define and differential Trump from his fellow contenders for the Republican front runner nomination.
Firstly, Trump is the candid candidate. His fiery rhetoric, his unabashed ignorance on certain subjects, his unfiltered persona, and his go get em attitude all speak to a people who are tired of losing and being ground into the dust. Trump, as I’ve mentioned before, is a demagogue. He intentionally utilizes extreme language, making sweeping generalizations of ethnic groups and complicated political problems. Where many have counted this a weakness and a wickedness on his end, it has ended up being a strength. When civil discourse, full of nuance and good faith, is completely crushed beneath the weight of language police and media narratives, people who have been forced to bite their tongues will gravitate towards anyone who is willing to speak to a truth, even if that speech is overly harsh. This allows Trump to not only tap into a simmering rage that festers beneath the surface of many an American mind, but it also allows him to direct and mold how it manifests.
Secondly, Trump is a primarily liberal individual. He supports the creation of a genuinely universal healthcare system in America. He is the anti-war candidate: Trump is on record showing a great fear and respect of nuclear weaponry. He wants to enter a meaningful partnership with Russia in order to foment peace in Europe and the Baltic. He wants America to stop being the world’s police. He wants to spend more of our GDP on nation building, especially to modernize our aged and ailing national infrastructure. He wants to enact protective economic policies that hearken back to the days of the original Progressive president: Theodore Roosevelt. Likewise, his tax proposals mimic some of the more popular elements coming out of current Democratic and Republican think tanks.
Thirdly, Trump is generally unflappable. The man certainly likes to complain a lot about a number of petty issues, and this can have the effect of making him come off as fragile of ego. However, this same trait is also a strength of his. When Hillary Clinton challenged him on his comments about Magyn Kelly and women in general, Trump immediately returned fire, stating that if Hillary wanted to talk about bias against women, she could answer for her role in covering up her husband’s sexual assault on several women. The Hillary campaign never brought the subject up again. What would have easily been a hook for serious attack against any other president became a point of non-aggression for the same campaign currently accusing all of Sander’s male constituents of being misogynists. Trump does have an ego on him, but he pushes when pushed, bites back when bitten, and it ultimately makes him look like a scrappy fighter. Though he honestly creates more of his own problems than not, he generates the appearance of being a man not willing to allow people to speak or do ill to him without being given a piece of their own medicine.
These traits, when put together and viewed from a favorable light, put Trump in the strange position of being a liberal Republican candidate who is capable of reaching out to people of multiple different political backgrounds. What must be stressed is that this man is not obtaining the votes of stereotypical Republicans. His appeal is to centrist Democrats, who long ago moved to the Republican party because they were exiled by the increasingly ideologically constrained leftists who reign in the Democratic party. His appeal is to independents, to disenfranchised liberals, and to moderate libertarians who want nothing to do with Tea Party. His appeal is to people from blue collar backgrounds who genuinely worry for what the state of the American economy is going to be in 20 years, but who also don’t but into the anti-capitalist, anti personal prosperity overtures currently popular in left wing rhetoric. His appeal is to people who want to commit to domestic nation building and who don’t want another cold war with Russia and China. His appeal is to people who look at the southern boarder of the US and wonder when someone will talk about the cartel violence and law breaking that stands as a dark shadow following illegal Mexican immigration. His appeal is to people who look at the growing incidents of violence, sexual assault, cultural alienation, media cover ups, and government abdication of responsibility in the face of the EU’s ideological investment in mass Arabic migration.
I would say that his appeal is ultimately that he is an acidic pit bull who is willing to bring many otherwise taboo issues to the table. He is willing to fight, to start fights, and exchange tit for tat with the establishment leadership of both parties. For those people who want to fight for themselves, but have been told they are not allowed to, Trump is the only individual on the field who instills a belief that there is someone in our obscenely corrupt and broken system who actually gives a fuck about the problems of the every man. This belief is what makes him viable.
Only time will tell if he is worthy of it.
