Trumped!
As predicted on the widely viewed and well respected social commentary known as The Simpsons Donald Trump is now the President of the United States of America. Given that the outcome was so unexpected by so many it’s difficult to sensibly respond to the situation.
It’s not surprising then that social media is completely awash with responses which are anything but sensible. It’s difficult to trawl through all of the silliness. One offering from satirical news reporter Jonathan Pie was quite amusing (1).
In a seven-minute rant, Pie takes a cudgel made of words to some elements of the left. He is particularly savage when noting how some left leaning commentators have a propensity to talk down to those who don’t agree with them and resort to name calling rather than a more civil debate of ideas.
It’s a point that’s fairly well made. It seems to particularly irritate those in the left. The truth often manages to do that. Of course it’s tremendously unfair, not to mention misguided, to simply ‘blame’ the left for the election of Trump. If you were to suggest that the failure to debate is the prime reason, or even just a reason, for Trumps election then the moderate right should be copping a verbal belting along with the left.
It’s also worth noting that those on the conservative side of politics also have history with regards to name calling. During the late 1940’s and most of the 1950’s America endured the scourge of McCarthyism. The fear of communism in the United States was so great that any talk of socialism resulted in the speaker branded as a communist.
Regardless of who called whom what and when they said it one thing seems very clear in the aftermath of the United Sates election. The Trump campaign was far more effectively engaged the remnants of the American middle class. Those disaffected with the establishment as a whole also seem to have flocked to Trump.
The incredulity which has been displayed by the left after Trumps win is of particular concern. I can’t help but get the sense that so many with left leaning views simply cannot understand how this has happened. They seem to be incapable of empathising with the people who voted for Trump.
Just consider for a minute the type of person who voted for Trump. They maybe live in Ohio, Michigan or even Pennsylvania. They are a young family. They have both been laid off from their blue collar jobs which have been moved offshore. They are both really struggling. Their family is struggling.
These young people see the amount of money the United States government spends on the military. This spending helps secure Western Europe. Western Europe doesn’t pay taxes to the United States. In fact, what does Western Europe do for the United States? Why should we spend all that money? How does that help me? I’ve paid taxes for years they say.
Then they hear Trump. Trump says he’ll rethink the NATO alliance. He’ll help bring business back to the United States. He’ll start up massive infrastructure projects. This young family can get work again. They can pay the bills again. What do you think matters more to the young jobless people in Ohio? A job, or the politics of Western Europe?
What does the left offer this voter? Well – hope. Also they stand for marriage equality and for less racism and more gender equality. I’ve little doubt that most people want all those things. But do they want them more than a job? Do they want them more than being able to pay for their child’s education, or to fix their teeth?
I’d suggest that for most middle class voters the job is more important. How does the left respond to this view? What is the lefts response to the person who would vote for Trump? Well, it’s just name calling. You’re a racist. You’re a sexist. You’re a bigot. Is it really such a massive surprise that voters throughout the ‘rust belt’ voted with Trump?
Further compounding the problem was that throughout the campaign the left side of politics, and in particular the media, lampooned and ridiculed Trump instead of attacking his ideas. The dirtier the mud got, the better it was for Trump. Consider the ‘pussy grabbing’ incident.
I don’t actually know what Trump did or did not do. Sure plenty of people have come forward. I’d suggest that based upon what we know right now Trump probably did use his power and influence to sexually harass or at least intimidate some women. That’s horrible. Let’s hope Trump doesn’t behave that way in the White House.
I wonder though is Trump more horrible than say someone who cheated on their wife with a junior employee. Someone who actually smoked a cigar, coated in vaginal juices in the White House. Because that’s who is married to the lefts candidate. That didn’t possibly happen. That’s not what might happen. It’s what actually happened. If Clinton feels so strongly about treating women reasonably how could she not of divorced her husband?
Any attack on Trump’s treatment of women leaves the left massively exposed to claims of hypocrisy and that’s what happened. The middle class, who have a truly fantastic ‘bullshit radar’ for that kind of thing didn’t buy it and the rest as they say is history. Step inside the White House President Trump. I can’t believe I just typed that. President. Trump.
Another idea that seems to be regularly trotted out by those in the left is that the world is somehow lurching to the right and or descending into fascism. I don’t like Tony Abbott. He’s not a fascist. Either is Trump. The people suggesting that they are fascist need some perspective. I can help with that. Consider the quote below.
"For three long years I have been going up and down this country preaching that government -- federal, state, and local -- costs too much. I shall not stop that preaching. As an immediate program of action, we must abolish useless offices. We must eliminate unnecessary functions of government. We must consolidate subdivisions of government and, like the private citizen, give up luxuries which we can no longer afford."
And then he said, "I propose to you, my friends, and through you that government of all kinds, big and little be made solvent and that the example be set by the President of the United States and his Cabinet."
That was a quote from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s acceptance speech after he won the 1932 election. Roosevelt was the only American to be elected as President four times. When he died there was a massive outpouring of grief. He is considered by many to be one of the three greatest American Presidents. He was a Democrat.
Can you imagine what would happen if today an American Democrat, or a member of the Labor party in Australia or Britain, talked about abolishing ‘unnecessary’ functions of government? Can you imagine what would happen if they asked private citizens to give up their luxuries? They would be frigging lynched.
What quotes like the one above show is just how much people take for granted what the left side of politics has managed to achieve over the past century. Achievements such as welfare, public health care and equal pay for both genders actually had to be discussed in the twentieth century. Now, at least in the west, they are simply accepted as a better way to live our lives.
Most of the actual racists and sexists in the west have been defeated by the superior ideas of the left. An unfortunate by-product of this seems to have been that in the absence of actual racists and sexists, moderate conservatives seem to get labelled as racists and sexists. This is simply because they do not agree with some ideas of the left.
It’s very frustrating for a moderate conservative who is almost a centrist such as myself. If every reasonable conservative gets shut down for being a racist/bigot/islamaphobe/whateverist # everyday sexism - the only remaining opposition to the lefts views are the extremists and the populists because unlike people like me the right wing extremists don’t care what you think.
Thus it comes to pass that the man who was never expected to win the Republican nomination much less the Presidency is the President of the most powerful nation on the earth.
Now that he’s in power he’s surprised many already. The rhetoric has been well and truly toned down. Refusing the Presidential salary is a masterstroke. The more I see the more I am wondering if this man has not been woefully underestimated. It remains to be seen of course just how history will remember Trump but I can’t quite shake the feeling that we’ve just seen a piece of history unfold.