It’s not just optimism, I’ve seen studies – Millennials have a higher percentage of atheists and agnostics than any elder generation, are more accepting of gay rights and SSM, are less racially/ethnically/gender prejudiced, etc. And these are not the kinds of attitudes on which they can be expected to grow any more conservative over time, nor on which still younger/later generations can be expected to be any more conservative.
Granted, I have not seen any studies showing them any more favorable to left-progressive economic positions. But, without religious conservatism and social conservatism and racism and nativism and sexism and angry-white-maleness in general, the hard-RW/TP loses well more than half its motivating force.
Except even that isn’t right: The people that Trump is opposed to are more “native” than Trump himself is. Their ancestors mostly came from the southern and western portions of North America, while Trump’s ancestors mostly came from Europe.
They are not imaginary things, they exist as forces in human minds and people act on them and the results are in the world are real. God might be imaginary, but religion is not. And the difference between patriotism and nativism is not spurious, they are completely different forces in human minds – not necessarily contradictory or incompatible, but very different.
In the Western world tribes no longer exist, not in any way that matters outside small and marginal populations. Countries do exist as political communities, and borders are very real in economic and social terms, and are very difficult to move or change. But ethnic identities are far more fluid and mainly a matter of cultural attitude, which is also very fluid.
Ok, so I’m not a Trump “supporter.” His demagoguery on immigrants is appalling. His China-bashing is stupid. His personality is tacky, buffoonish, and comically unsuited to the presidency.
BUT… Hate to say it, but on at least a few major issues Trump has had the sanest things to say about foreign policy of anyone on the Republican side, except for Rand Paul whose campaign is in its death throes.
Iran: Other than the obligatory nonsense about it being a bad deal, Trump hasn’t entertained for a second the notion of “tearing it up” on Day 1.
Ukraine: Trump has talked about how Putin’s aggression in Ukraine is due to loss of American standing and credibility, etc., but unlike many of the other candidates he has not AFAIK advocated arming the Ukrainians.
Syria: Unlike most of his rivals, Trump is looking at Russia’s intervention in Syria through a sane lens; while other candidates (including Clinton) are calling for an ill-conceived “no fly zone” that will presumably put us at risk of full-blown armed confrontation with Russia.
In short, Trump may not be nearly as stupid as he looks and acts.
He’s not an idiot. The reason his immigration policy is so abhorrent is that it reflects a high enough percentage of the base’s views for him to win, mixed with his support of entitlements like social security, Medicare, and healthcare for all. He’s not a dummy, he knows a decent chunk of the GOP actually likes their stuff from the government and some of those same people also happen to not like brown people very much.
And he is one of the few candidates who aren’t at the beck and call of the Koch Brothers/other mega-billionaire donors because he himself is a mega-billionaire. So he can weave together a coalition of hatred + some liberal economic theory/government regulation to thatch together a victory that no one else could. It’s why he’s so scary to the establishment.
I absolutely cannot hate the man more. I think Charles Manson is a nicer and more sane person, though I’ve never met him.
If someone decided to blow Trump’s head clean off his shoulders, and I was on the jury, I’d vote not guilty of any crime. Then start a gofundme to fund a coast to coast parade in honor of the person who pulled the trigger.
Trump is by far the best Republican candidate remaining. On some issues he may be to the left of Hillary. Hard to tell though, since he talks out of both sides of his mouth in an attempt to appeal to everyone. Is he anti-war and pro-universal healthcare? Good luck figuring that out. During one of the debates he had a funny moment where he contradicted himself like three times in a row - he wants to cover everyone, people shouldn’t be dying in the streets, but he wants to preserve free market competition unlike that awful Obamacare! Years ago he flat out supported universal, citing its success in other countries. He’s against neo-con wars but wants to bomb ISIS to dust, kill civilians on purpose, and wants to torture even if it doesn’t work. I think most of the ridiculous stuff he says is red meat for the Republican base.
If nothing else can be known, at least he’s not a theocrat like the others. So that’s nice.
I know I’m responding to an old post but I strongly disagree with this attitude. Trump is doing serious harm even if he fails to get nominated. He’s acting so stupidly, he’s making the other candidates look smarter. If we’re living through a Cruz administration a couple of years from now, it’ll be due to Trump.
And don’t rule out the possibility of Trump getting elected. He is leading so far. He has followers. If he gets the nomination, he becomes a serious contender. One stumble by Clinton or Sanders and Donald Trump becomes President of the United States.
Ah yes because the pathological liar, hard-right Cuban Canadian or the warmongering pretty boy duckspeaker is so much better.
In the four months or so since I made that post, my opinion has only solidified that TRUMP is probably the best thing to happen in American politics since the creation of the New Deal coalition. Who would have though even a year ago that the leading Republican candidate for President would be denouncing the Bush administration in a way that even no mainstream Democrat has dared that, for letting 9/11 happen on their watch and possibly even lying about WMDs to wage a disastrous and ruinous war in Iraq? Who would have thought that it possible that its quite probable that the Republican nominee for President this year will have been a far more consistent and vocal opponent of the Iraq War then the Democratic one?
Even this past summer I was far more pessimistic about American politics-that the status quo we have now would continue on for a decade or even longer with Democrats barely winning Presidential elections via the Obama coalition but locked out of achieving even the modest reforms due to solid GOP control of the House and the state thanks to collapse in Democratic support among blue-collar, rural, and/or Red State whites and with said fragile balance constantly under threat should the Republicans be clever enough to nominate an unreconstructed Bushite who just was mum enough about hot-button cultural issues to win over the upper middle-class normies and Hispanics in order to achieve a brutal neoliberal reactionary counterrevolution comparable to 1815 France or 1991 Russia with utterly disastrous consequences for the American middle- and working-classes.
Yet in the space of a few months, the dynamics of American politics have completely changed and Donald TRUMP has completely broken the hold of Wall Street-neocon axis on the Republican Party who perverted the conception of conservatism to be an anti-national ideology solely concerned with worship of Mammon with a few foreign wars thrown here and there. Single-handedly almost, TRUMP has exposed this ideology for the scam it was, benefiting only a tiny minority of disconnected coastal elites and utterly harmful to Middle America who under the guise of “free market globalization” has “enjoyed” such “fruits” as destruction of organic communities, rising death-rates, atomization, deindustrialization, un/underemployment, and tremendous income inequality. These spiritual and moral traitors have been finally given the contempt they richly deserve and by doing so has broken the stasis American politics has been locked into in the past generation. Regardless of whether TRUMP wins the nomination or not, it’s clear their game is up and the Paul Wolfowitzes and Koch Brothers of the world are about to be cast into the dustbin of history. He has shown a large portion of America’s white working-class an alternative-a genuine (if right-wing) populism that protects one’s Social Security and Medicare as well as guns, that denounces open borders to trade as well as human migration.
Meanwhile, equally important on the left, Sanders has avoided the elite trap that previous “progressive” Democratic primary challengers were crippled by drawing supporting only from educates, well-off whites rather than the working-class. By winning by enormous margins among low-income, non-college, rural, and gun-owning whites in Iowa and New Hampshire, Sanders-if he can attract enough Hispanic and black support-can create a new, genuine progressive populist coalition within the Democratic Party that can pull it to the left on bread and butter issues and certainly will be a strong challenger to Clinton this primary season regardless of whether he wins or not.
As it stands, TRUMP appears to be the living embodiment of just, divine retribution to the Republican Party and beckoning finally a return of History. By allowing the wheels of progress to move once more and speaking in such blunt terms about the nature of American politics, TRUMP is if not a friend at least a strategic ally to all those who genuinely desire progress.
As for the specific criticisms raised, I don’t think his actions are making other Republican candidates look more “respectable”. Indeed most of the criticisms of the Cuban candidates for TRUMP has been from the right-insinuating he isn’t a real conservative because of his past stance on abortion or his attacks on Bush. That may benefit them in the primaries (although it’s doubtful) but certainly won’t in the general election when the Democratic party machine can turn its big guns on such genuine extreme right-wingers. If anything the threat would have been bigger without TRUMP-any GOP candidate that emerged from a "normal’ primary would have been far more of a shill for the Wall Street (think of the prospect of electing an anti-union archreactionary like Scott Walker to national office!). And if Donald is actually elected President-so what? He’s undoubtedly vastly preferable to virtually any other serious Republican candidate (and no Kasich is not a serious contender for the GOP nomination, adaher notwithstanding). Nothing would have been more destructive of my faith in democracy then the American people voting for third Bush term in the form of either Jeb! or Rubio. At least with TRUMP, they are voting for something at least somewhat different.
But nothing, not a fucking thing will convince me this tabloid idiot WANTS to be president. He’s. Not. A. Politician. He has no idea how to “fix” things, other than yelling. I’ll give him the credit on how to play the media. Other than that, might as well vote for a bigoted boss who runs a portapotty business. No difference, other than tons of inherited and misused money.
Just yesterday, I was lecturing my Political Geography students on an observation Colin Flint makes in his textbook Geopolitics: The US has an inherent and unresolvable tension because on the one hand its idea of itself is as a nation-state uniquely and proudly founded by and made strong by immigrants ---- yet immigrants, by nature, take time (generations, sometimes) to assimilate, and assimilation, in various guises, is the main project of any nation-state.
Like say Australia or New Zealand or all of South America.
The issue isn’t immigration it’s an utterly fucked up, hopelessly unrealistic and provincial national self image.
Dump the fucking wagon trains and the WW2 heroism already - pretty much everything the US experiences has happened a hundred times eleswhere. Often hundreds of years before.
Surprisingly, I agree with very much of this. There are a large number of people, both Democrats and Republicans, that have an ideology that has been left behind by mainstream politicians with their inane talking points and stump speeches. They generally:
Realize that we cannot continue to allow unfettered illegal immigration. That attitude comes from a wide variety of reasons from outright racism to economic concerns. But when we get past the accusations of bigotry, it is realized that the cultural and socio-economic norms will not be maintained unless something tangible is done to stop it. Trump isn’t really going to deport 11 million people, but the fact that he is putting it on the table shows that he is serious about it. These people fully support that instead of the bumblings of other politicians.
Do not like the way the U.S. image has faltered on the world stage. This is Obama’s fault with his apology tour, but also Bush’s fault for starting a war in which even in the most charitable light was caused by an utter lack of intelligence failure in believing that Iraq had WMDs. Our inability to stop terrorist attacks (even 9/11) is a part of that failure. These people want an America that can kick ass and take names when appropriate, negotiate strongly when appropriate, and leave it the hell alone when not.
Do not really give a damn about abortion or gay marriage. Sure, everyone has an opinion on both of those issues, and many voters have strong opinions. But the majority of people who do have an opinion can very capably live in a country where their preferred position loses. These people will not die on that hill.
Realize that the welfare state as we know it cannot continue, however, they accept that Social Security and Medicare are here to stay and want government to strengthen these programs and not let them “wither on the vine” or move to private savings accounts solely. These people have no problem with charity to help those truly in need, but are tired of going to work and paying an income tax burden that would have shocked people 100 years ago in order to support women who have 5 children by 5 different fathers at age 25. Nor will they support men who have the physical ability to work, but choose not to. These people no longer wish to support those capable of work, but stay at home and receive free healthcare, food stamps, WIC, free cell phones, Section 8 housing, etc. when they have to bust their asses for those things. If that means saying that they are insensitive pricks, they are happy to wear that label.
Believe that gun control is absurd, wrong headed, and an indicia that a politician who proposes it fails to see the basic truth that keeping them from purchasing a 12 round magazine does not stop a truly evil person from shooting up a school.
Regarding health care, they believe that the insurance market is here to stay, and support reforms like the elimination of pre-existing conditions as a bar to coverage. However, they are widely skeptical of a government program that will control all aspects of it like single payer. They believe that Obamacare represents the worst of both worlds with retaining a largely unfettered private market, with a toothless mandate, and a bunch of coverage that they must pay for even if they will never use it such as maternity care for men.
This is a small list, but Trump taps into people who are tired of the same crap from politicians who use their talking points, but the same problems persist. I am not a Trump supporter, and I am not saying that he will do any or all of the above. But what I like about him is his ability to parry the one line attacks against these very popular positions.
When he is called a racist, he blows past it and holds his ground. He doesn’t “clarify” or modify his positions when they come under attack. He takes positions that the pundits believe are unpopular and does not care. I think all and all, he has broadened the discourse and talked about “third rail” issues that people care about that other candidates are too afraid to mention.
Those founding immigrants all came from the same place and had roughly the same values. Assimilation was not really an issue. Even throughout the 1900’s immigrants mostly came from Northern and Western Europe. Cultural differences were not so vast that assimilation to American society would be so difficult.
