My guess is that the American Left has been waiting a very long time to have somebody like Trump validate about one actual half of the anti-democratic & repugnant things they truly believe about all Republicans. What they can't really abide is the fact that the party elders truly don't like him. It makes them laugh and cry at the same time. Maybe Trump is just Trump. I mean if you've paid attention, how could anyone really believe that he's anything other than what he's always been? There is nothing that he has done that deserves to either put his head on a platter or in a Presidential jar. But what's in his head, really? Can there be anybody who believes that he's not saying everything that comes to mind? I find it hard to believe that he can be surprising when it comes to ideas.
I'm sympathetic to anyone who grits his teeth at Trump. When I think of the type of tasteless zillionaires who run the media, I think they'd be perfectly at home with Trump. The kind of socially cynical person who runs gilded casinos or produces insipid reality TV, or degenerate gangta music, are all the same color to me. Why shouldn't the person who collects dirty nickels and dimes aggregate billions in nihilist America?
For several years I've been looking for an elevated Left. I don't think I'll ever be satisfied but I have faith, if not confidence, that Enlightenment Liberals still believe in class, noblesse and society. So whoever, wherever such people are, I'm happy to join with them in opposition to the kind of shrill blowhard that is Trump. I don't blame America for having credulous people and I don't blame the people for being angry or feeling that Trump expresses that anger well. It's simply that we should all know that great leaders don't scream. Helpless people scream. And I sincerely believe that Donald Trump is the kind of helpless person who simply cannot understand the limits of his power. He thinks that he can do in government what he cannot do in real estate or entertainment, and for those questions that make him itch, he wants the power to make the itch go away. Now.
He strikes me as the kind of man who is longing to enter a new world of troubles and demand the begging question "Don't you know who I am?" He presumes that solutions to nagging issues are matters of will and power. In many cases he may very well be right, but I'm convinced that in most case, those his incuriosity and following will not allow him to explore, matters are more nuanced and complicated than he would like to admit. So he simplifies. He would not govern with carrots and sticks but with luxury prizes and total annihilation. I don't imagine that there is anyone with whom Trump can be reasoned. I perceive him to be a master of the sucker punch and so you underestimate his intelligence at your own peril. But there's a problem with Trump's kind of victories; they are ill-suited for a republic of the sort we are, but eerily proper for the sort of fascist state we could become. It is never enough to have the power of the people made manifest through the office and person of the President of the United States. And this is something neither Trump nor Obama grasp.
Obama's own trump card was his willingness to end the war in Iraq with speed and finality. Like Trump he took a moral absolutist position and called everyone else out as unclear and bedraggled. Obama's election, in my estimation, was the primarily the embodiment of a war-weary nation. All that had to be done was a mustering of the will to undo all that George W. Bush had done. And in the simplistic eyes of his opposition it was Iraq, Gitmo and Afghanistan, in that order. "Yes we can" was the answer to the following three questions. "Can we stop the useless war in Iraq?, Can we shutdown Gitmo? Can we get out of a land war in Asia?" Obama thus elected promised to run full speed ahead and damn the complications. The rest of his geopolitical positioning was merely flavor. He was not, in any way I could perceive, a canny statesman with the skills necessary to retain American geopolitical leadership. He simply put on the brotherhood suit and profiled and speechified. He refused all risks of positioning his foreign policy in any other direction but polite withdrawal. Obama believed America's boots on the ground made too much noise and stepped on too many toes. So he assumed the Christlike position of global footwasher. Just right for his ego. Of course in the long run, predictable consequences frustrated Obama's ambitions. The war in Iraq was not useless. The closure of Gitmo fell short of judicial scrutiny, and the substitution of drones for troops in Asia has backfired.
Trump too wants to focus on what he thinks he can do for America right here at home. He projects nothing beyond our shores but the pride of a jingo, and wants to lock down fortress America behind impenetrable walls. Accomplishing that shouldn't be such a leap considering how far Obama has weakened our extended arms. So we have another inward looking presidential candidate who sees that America has run off the rails. But here is one who is ready not to blame it on evil Americans in the other party, but on evil countries beyond our borders.
So, now I'm going to turn slightly. And if I have to take lumps for it, sobeit. To the extent that I care about politics, there are only quibbles that I have with Trump's stated positions. If a one term president could accomplish what he has prioritized it wouldn't be a bad deal for the country. In other words, if a nicer guy, somebody more 'presidential' enacted the Trump agenda, I wouldn't have much beef with it. So how fair is it to suggest that what is clearly ass backwards about Trump's history as a self-aggrandizing blowhard is exactly wrong for the nation? Sadly, the only thing I have to indicate it is how correct I was about Obama and his fascist temptations and the extent to which he was ready to go rhetorically to solidify position, inside of office as well as on the trail.
These days I'm reading about how the Cold War went close to disaster several times and the circumstances under which the distrust of countries and politics was far more consequential than it is today. I'm also going to give the holdouts some credit on matters of national security given the type and amount of threats we have evidently survived. That's not a firm footing by a longshot, but I am tending to trust the country's distaste for Trump, as partisan as that is. The problem is, none of his platform positions are fundamentally bad. Say what you like about the man, and believe me character counts, but he is not promoting dangerous ideas. Still, I'm afraid that you cannot have the agenda without the man. So as for Trump, I accept that agenda, I reject that man.
It should be said that I am, in my own way, trying to be Trumplike, in that I seek the kind of self-determination and wealth that will make me and my family largely immune to the deprivations of those pendulum swings of policy that attack middle class and poor Americans in the pocketbook. I am truly sad to see that we do not do for the common man in natural and apolitical way such that America simply means that this is the land of economic opportunity. We have the blueprint and we keep shitting on it through overreach and irresponsible sloppiness. I'm talking about the Debt and the Deficit and squirrelly trade deals with global cabals. I'm talking about regulatory capture and environmental madness that made American cars suck so badly during the 80s. I don't want to be dependent on tit-for-tat politics between the two parties holding up government benefits for me to jump and snap at like a hungry dog. I want to be a fat, strong, lazy dog chasing my own rabbits when I feel like it. I want to have enough freedom and money to choose better, and more often than between the false dichotomies provided like clockwork by the American two party system. And I want to be able to fail on my own and learn from my own failure without bringing acrimony against political partisans. In other words, I want the kind of aloof self-determination that Trump has. The thing is, that I know that I don't have patience with people and I'm not at that point in my life where I have enough dosh saved up and enough bucket list items checked off so that I am ready to serve the common man.
Something about Trump convinces me that although he does have the dosh, that he's not truly motivated to serve. I think he just wants to win.
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