The Grand Illusion
…before Republicans and others who supported Trump will acknowledge their mistake? Will they ever?
Trump hasn’t been true to much of anything in his entire life. Not to his three wives. Not to keeping his word. Not to actually doing the entire job.
Evangelicals supported him over Clinton, largely because of Hillary’s spouse, and because she’s a woman, and women in power have never been all that acceptable to traditionalist patriarchal believers, let alone appealing. Can anyone accurately claim that Trump is either more religious or moral than Clinton? Anyone who does has a different view of morality than is set forth the Bible that evangelicals hold so dearly.
More than a few business interests supported Trump largely, it appears, on his promise to cut taxes, totally ignoring the massive deficits those cuts will create, and,the fact that, after the first year, the tax structure won’t increase demand, not to mention, interestingly enough, turning their backs on the Republican Party’s former longstanding rhetoric about the need for fiscal responsibility.
Trump promised to drain the swamp of Washington, D.C. Instead, he’s brought a degree of insider dealings and cronyism not seen since the wide-scale corruption of the Harding Administration almost a century ago.
For all the rhetoric, I don’t see any increase in jobs in the coal industry. Nor any massive on-shoring or return of U.S. manufacturing jobs.
And the firing of Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe two days before he could take full retirement was incredibly petty, especially since McCabe is actually a Republican. Neither decency nor loyalty in that action.
Trump’s been quoted, as least once, and possibly more often, as saying that people will believe whatever you tell them, if you just keep telling them that. And, unhappily, he’s proved that, at least for more than thirty percent of Americans, he’s absolutely right.
And that’s why, despite his dishonesty, immorality, lack of understanding of either government or economics, his increasing alienation of foreign heads of state of present allies, and his treachery in dealing with both subordinates and Republican politicians, he’s likely to remain President for some considerable time… and that makes the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and Senate complicit in all that the President has done and will continue to do.
Well, given his replacement of McMaster with Bolton, he’s at least become the president most likely to bring about some of the stuff described in Revelations . . . .
There’s a major distinction here, and that is that Trump is not the republican candidate. He is the people’s candidate, for better or for worse. Because America has undermined its own democracy by sliding into a completely bipartisan form, Trump had to hijack a party in order to gain his position, but make no mistake- he does not garner support from republicans for being a republican president, nor does he support the republican party.
The perpetuation that Hillary is less corrupt than her spouse is a major contention both in America and globally on the internet. Hillary has held positions of political and lawmaking power in the last couple of decades and in many people’s eyes the country of America has been let down by its government consistently for a long time. This doesn’t even touch on her involvement with several controversial cases that have had no conclusive actions taken.
I doubt you share that opinion, and you do have first-hand experience of the workings of the government. Please note that however that unlike governments and large financial entities, the common man does not have the power to propagate such ideas on any regulated and platformed media. It has effectively taken the internet to allow people to discuss and look outside in an attempt to look at their own country more objectively. There are severe shortcomings with America’s system of government, and they started long before Trump.
I have to take issue with your contention that people have used the internet to view anything more objectively. First, the internet is not objective; it’s a system platform that allows anyone to post just about anything, some small faction of which is objective. Second, very few people who use it are interested in objectivity; they’re largely looking for facts that will confirm what they already believe.
The statement that America undermined its own democracy “by sliding into a completely bipartisan form” is enormously misleading, because the bipartisan structure was set up by the Founding Fathers, and while one can certainly argue that such a structure is less than ideal for a democracy, one can argue, I believe more accurately, that the growing unwillingness of voters to compromise has done more to undermine democracy than the structure, which operated moderately well until the advent of modern media and the internet. In that sense, I’m not so sure that the internet isn’t what made possible extreme partisanship and Trump.
On the internet, I concede that it is not objective by any means- but it does allow people to communicate with people who are not only outside of their town, community, city, state or even country. The second point is interesting, because much of the information that is accessible by the uninitiated is regulated by bodies like Google in order to seek a specific narrative. I think the main reason people used the internet at least at one point was entertainment, though even I think that has diminished the last decade.
As for the Founding Fathers, forgive me if I’m mistaken but I believe the intention was to have a structure in which individuals were voted on and elected i.e. multi-partisan, not (two major) groups of individuals i.e. bi-partisan. By that stroke, bipartisanship is an abuse of an oversight, and an ugly one at that- arguably better during wartime, but not as was intended.
I personally believe the opposition to compromise has stemmed from the use of controlled opposition and strawman tactics to misrepresent people and steal their voices. This occurs both in mainstream media and on the internet, at least in what I have observed. I could of course be wrong or misguided, I just want to the chance to discuss such as I value your opinion.
What the internet allows and what most people use it for are two different matters.
You’re correct in that the Founding Fathers were opposed to a party system, but they wanted people to be elected as individuals, not even as members of a multi-party system, but after Washington’s second term, the two-party system began to develop in response to the debate over whether the U.S. would be an agrarian republic or an industrial democracy [although it wasn’t portrayed that way, that was the essence of the conflict] and the two-party system was largely in place by Jefferson’s time as President, and which necessitated the Twelfth Amendment, effectively requiring that the President and Vice-President be from the same party.
M. Kilian: “There’s a major distinction here, and that is that Trump is not the republican candidate. He is the people’s candidate, for better or for worse.”
No. Trump is the Republican candidate. Among Republicans, Trump enjoys a 90% approval rating. Among the American populace in general (“the people”), he has a 40% approval rating; thus, the vast majority of “the people” disapprove of Trump, while virtually every Republican approves of him.
Tony: I believe there’s a misunderstanding here. When someone says a republican or a liberal, they often refer to the voter base. The term may also apply to a politician of the same party, but because it can be one and not the other, they are not mutually exclusive. While Trump may have the support of the republicans (voters), I highly doubt he has anything but grudging/reluctant support from the republican party (politicians).
Either way, the approval ratings and so forth, while definitely useful at times, were also horrendously off the mark during the 2016 elections.
Sorry, I meant to say mutually inclusive instead of exclusive there.
Having read a recent article on the founding of the ancient Roman imperial system, your president is acting more like an emperor than a president.
That actually seems to be a troubling trend among leaders worldwide.
I suppose he wants to be Hadrian, but he’s working more the Caligula/Nero angle, unfortunately.
I wonder if “going against the grain” is the same as “making a mistake”? The first suggests recognition of the result of the action: the second action does not do so overtly.
Trump has been consistently overtly indicating who and what he is. Trump supporters want him as their leader and will never be ashamed of what ever he does: somewhat like the Hitler followers and Putin and the Stalin adherents.
Russians I speak to who are working here in the UK like Putin because he is giving Russia back the respect they feel was lost with Gorbachev and Yeltsin.
I disagree with the premise that evangelicals voted for Trump over Clinton because of Bill Clinton’s actions, and the premise that a candidate’s demonstrated religiosity/morality (or lack thereof) has ever been anything but a fig leaf, hiding (barely) the fact that the alliance between evangelicals and the Republican party is and always has been about political power in the this life, not spirituality in the next.
Donald Trump is very plainly a misogynist and a white supremacist. His hostility towards non-compliant women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ people are features for evangelicals, not bugs. Evangelical Christianity has been and continues to be inexorably tied to the regressive strain in American politics which has utterly been failed to be addressed by the last fifty-odd years of polite liberalism.
Far fewer people will argue for their right to use the n-word in public today, but how many still see no systemic problem in a nation where unarmed black men are regularly murdered by police?
Anyone who really supported Trump because of the Clintons’ immorality, real or imagined, must have long been exposed to the truth about Trump’s. Anyone who really supported Trump because of “economic anxiety” must have noticed that, his weird love of economic protectionism and trade wars aside, he has no real interest in economic policy that doesn’t specifically benefit him.
And yet, he still receives the support of the vast majority of Republicans. The rest of the Republican party refuses to seriously check the President’s power because those people are the base of the party, and they know they will face primary challenges and more if they are seen to be in opposition to him.
I’d agree with most of what you’ve described. There is, however, a significant minority of “ethical” evangelicals, as noted in Michael Gerson’s recent Atlantic article, who deplore the fact that the majority of evangelicals have voted for Trump and continue to support him. The use of Bill Clinton’s ethical lapses and the misrepresentation of Hillary’s acts as Secretary of State by Trump and the majority of evangelicals are, as you point out, a rationalization to justify support for Trump, when the real reason for evangelical support is a desire to retain “old ways” of traditional white male patriarchal supremacy, combined with anger at the change being forced upon them by a changing society and by modern technology.
I am a never Trumper.
I did not vote for Trump in either the primary or the general election. I wanted Kasich to win.
Most republicans seem to have stuck with Trump not because of any policy reason but because they so enjoy his trolling of Dems.
I understand the Evagelicals allying with Trump in a time where people are being run out of buisness because of their beliefs.
The real question is if the Democrat Party will elect a palatable alternative. We have seen in the case of Alabama that given an alternative the people can make the right choice.
I am a Republican and I think Trumps presidency has been and will be a disaster.