Much More Than Trump
Mar 12, 2016 15:22:19 GMT -5
Post by Michael Downing on Mar 12, 2016 15:22:19 GMT -5
straightlinelogic.com/2016/03/12/much-more-than-trump-by-robert-gore/
Much More Than Trump
Peggy Noonan is one of the few mainstream writers who has tried to understand, rather than insult or condemn, the Trump phenomenon. In a widely cited article, she ascribed it to the split between the “protected,” those who run the government and its allied institutions, and the “unprotected,” the government’s and its allies’ victims (“Trump and the Rise of the Unprotected, The Wall Street Journal, 2/25/16). It was a nice try, but Ms. Noonan is trying to straddle a chasm that cannot be straddled. She writes for the Journal, an establishment organ, some of whose writers have been either so clueless or disingenuous that they have denied the existence of an establishment. And ultimately, the protected-unprotected differentiation doesn’t fly.
Most Trump supporters don’t want the government to do something for them; they want the government to quit doing things to them. They viscerally revile the elite—it’s personal—and they want no part of that class or its government. They know how to take care of themselves, and many know the government hurts the most those whom it ostensibly protects.
Elite sons and daughters have not been in the ranks of front line military that have fought the elite’s disastrous wars. The top and bottom of the service economy swell—lobbyists, political operatives, debt merchants, Internet wizards, lawyers, bureaucrats, waiters, bartenders, nurses, orderlies, sales clerks—while what used to be the heart of the economy—manufacturing—shrinks. The bailouts from the last financial crisis went to Wall Street, not the homeowners with underwater mortgages facing foreclosure. Whose pockets were picked to fund those bailouts? And whose pockets were picked to pay the higher insurance premiums necessary to fund the Obamacare disaster?
It doesn’t take an Ivy League degree to know that the national debt, $19 billion and counting, is a big, scary number, and that the unfunded Social Security and medical care liabilities coming due are even bigger, scarier numbers. It does, apparently, take an Ivy League degree to believe that more debt is the answer to our economic problems, or that microscopic or negative interest rates will do anything but fund carry-trade speculators and screw those trying to fund their own postponed retirements, or that the limping economy since the financial crisis has “recovered.” Idiotic blather fills the elite, mainstream media, while much truth is suppressed and debate stifled in the name of political correctness.
Not much has changed since Vietnam. The decent besieged are taking fire from all sides, valiantly fighting their way through it, while preening, posturing, spoiled idiots congratulate themselves for running a once great country into the ground. It is a mark of the decent besieged’s decency that they are turning to the ballot box, the politically correct way to change a democratic government. The idiot class should be grateful for their forbearance. Instead, it resorts to means fair and foul to subvert them and maintain its power. Whether Trump does or does not make it all the way to the White House, the wave he’s riding will only grow stronger, tsunami-strength when the economy collapses and the world descends into war. If the idiot class and its rabble subvert him, a quote from John F. Kennedy, recently featured on SLL, will surely come back to haunt them.
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
Much More Than Trump
Peggy Noonan is one of the few mainstream writers who has tried to understand, rather than insult or condemn, the Trump phenomenon. In a widely cited article, she ascribed it to the split between the “protected,” those who run the government and its allied institutions, and the “unprotected,” the government’s and its allies’ victims (“Trump and the Rise of the Unprotected, The Wall Street Journal, 2/25/16). It was a nice try, but Ms. Noonan is trying to straddle a chasm that cannot be straddled. She writes for the Journal, an establishment organ, some of whose writers have been either so clueless or disingenuous that they have denied the existence of an establishment. And ultimately, the protected-unprotected differentiation doesn’t fly.
Most Trump supporters don’t want the government to do something for them; they want the government to quit doing things to them. They viscerally revile the elite—it’s personal—and they want no part of that class or its government. They know how to take care of themselves, and many know the government hurts the most those whom it ostensibly protects.
Elite sons and daughters have not been in the ranks of front line military that have fought the elite’s disastrous wars. The top and bottom of the service economy swell—lobbyists, political operatives, debt merchants, Internet wizards, lawyers, bureaucrats, waiters, bartenders, nurses, orderlies, sales clerks—while what used to be the heart of the economy—manufacturing—shrinks. The bailouts from the last financial crisis went to Wall Street, not the homeowners with underwater mortgages facing foreclosure. Whose pockets were picked to fund those bailouts? And whose pockets were picked to pay the higher insurance premiums necessary to fund the Obamacare disaster?
It doesn’t take an Ivy League degree to know that the national debt, $19 billion and counting, is a big, scary number, and that the unfunded Social Security and medical care liabilities coming due are even bigger, scarier numbers. It does, apparently, take an Ivy League degree to believe that more debt is the answer to our economic problems, or that microscopic or negative interest rates will do anything but fund carry-trade speculators and screw those trying to fund their own postponed retirements, or that the limping economy since the financial crisis has “recovered.” Idiotic blather fills the elite, mainstream media, while much truth is suppressed and debate stifled in the name of political correctness.
Not much has changed since Vietnam. The decent besieged are taking fire from all sides, valiantly fighting their way through it, while preening, posturing, spoiled idiots congratulate themselves for running a once great country into the ground. It is a mark of the decent besieged’s decency that they are turning to the ballot box, the politically correct way to change a democratic government. The idiot class should be grateful for their forbearance. Instead, it resorts to means fair and foul to subvert them and maintain its power. Whether Trump does or does not make it all the way to the White House, the wave he’s riding will only grow stronger, tsunami-strength when the economy collapses and the world descends into war. If the idiot class and its rabble subvert him, a quote from John F. Kennedy, recently featured on SLL, will surely come back to haunt them.
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.