Donald Trump Isn't the Presidential Candidate We Should Be Worried About

[cali]

Boy, does this article make a good point.


The real danger is the smarter, more capable neo-fascist politician who will inevitably rise in his wake.

The voters vowed to take their revenge at the polls. They’d missed out on the country’s vaunted prosperity. They were disgusted with the liberal direction of the previous administration. They were anti-abortion and pro-religion. They were suspicious of immigrants, haughty intellectuals, and intrusive international institutions. And they very much wanted to make their nation great again.

They’d lost a lot of elections. But this time, they won.

In Poland, that is.


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read:https://www.thenation.com/article/donald-trump-isnt-the-presidential-candidate-we-should-be-worried-about/

[AntiBank]

1. brilliant article, sums up so much of the underpinning structural contours

of the current tensions in the West.

[Hortensis]

2. Depression to 1980, the lower 90% took home

some 70% of the growth in national income. An era of unprecedented growth in productivity was already beginning, but from then on dramatically less and less accrued to 90% of Americans. From 1997 to present, American workers took home 0% of the growth in national income.

This is only one, but huge, marker of the change. We no longer get a cut of the pie we bake, only pay set by employers that usually has nothing to do with, and is well below, the cost to draw new workers into the field (the traditional economic test for appropriate wage levels).

It didn't have to be this way, we didn't have to vote to "get off the backs of big business." We didn't have to vote to "cut the waste" in government that included agencies and programs that could have worked with colleges and working people to help millions retrain for new, good-paying jobs.

We didn't know our pay was considered the largest part of the waste we were cutting by eliminating our own power to have a say. Those nasty "intrusive" regulations on business. But it still doesn't have to be that way.

Btw, scholars care about the differences between libertarianism, neoliberalism, neofascist conservatism, and many other names, but ultraconservatives like Charles Koch and thousands like him use whatever works for them at the moment to keep the transfer of the nation's wealth and power to them going.

Excellent article, Cali. Thanks. This is hugely important.

[Hortensis]

3. "Riding the tiger of populism."

Trump's a salesman and recognized an unserved market and how to use populist discontent to sell himself to it, but does this booberkin have any clue to what he's tapping into and the enormous forces of destruction he could unleash? I'm guessing it's all way, way beyond his comprehension.

[cali]

4. An insult to salesmen everywhere.

Even used car salesmen.

Seriously, I agree he saw that market, but he isn't smart enough or disciplined enough to expand on it.

I don't think he gives a damn how much damage he does. Looking at his history, it's clear he never has.

Narcissistic and senile.

[Hortensis]

6. Agree. He does see potential for profit in destruction,

witness his ridiculous revelations regarding Brexit. But it's a comprehension of the potential scope of destruction I'm wondering about. The Trumps of this world need a stable framework to pursue their profits within. He could operate within a new Fascist States of America (I'm sure we'd have a more hypocritical name), for instance, but he might lose everything in a chaotic transition.

[pampango]

5. "The real danger is the smarter, more capable neo-fascist politician who will inevitably rise in his

wake.

Great point. Trump has laid the foundation for future right wing populists to further the scapegoating of immigrants and foreigners.

He has provided a degree of legitimacy to bigots and nativists who have always bee around but have previously been relegated to the shadows. Not any more.