.
"What Trump offers is permission to conceive of an American
interest as a national interest separate from the “international
community”."
9/7/15,
"Traitor to His Class," Julius Krein, Weekly Standard
"Nothing is more terrifying to the elite than Trump’s embrace of a tangible American nationalism."
.................
"It would seem to be the duty of every American pundit today
to explain the inexplicable and problematic rise of Donald Trump. The
critical question, however, is not the source of Trump’s popularity but
rather the reason his popularity is so shocking to our political
culture. Perhaps Trump’s candidacy threatens a larger consensus that
governs our political and social life, and perhaps his popularity
signifies a profound challenge to elite opinion.
Why is Donald Trump so popular? Explanations range from
mere celebrity, to his adoption of extreme positions to capture the most
ideologically intense voters, to his explosive rhetoric. These
explanations are not entirely wrong, but neither are they entirely
right.
To begin with, his positions, as Josh Barro has written in the New York Times,
are rather moderate. As Barro points out, Trump is willing to
contemplate tax increases to achieve spending cuts. He supports some
exceptions to abortion bans and has gone so far as to defend funding
Planned Parenthood. He has called for protective tariffs, a position
heretical for Republicans, who are typically free traders. Although
opposed to Obamacare, he has asserted that single-payer health care
works in other countries. Even on the issue of immigration, despite his
frequently strident rhetoric, his positions are neither unique—securing
the border with some kind of wall is a fairly standard Republican plank
by now—nor especially rigid.
With respect to his rhetoric, whether one characterizes
his delivery as candid or rude, it is hard to ascribe his popularity to
colorful invective alone. Chris Christie, who never misses an
opportunity to harangue an opponent, languishes near the bottom of the
polls. Or ask Rick Santorum, as well as Mitt “47 percent” Romney,
whether outrageous comments offer an infallible way to win friends and
influence voters. Trump’s outré style, like his celebrity, helps him
gain attention but just as certainly fails to explain his frontrunner
status.
What Trump offers is permission to conceive of an American
interest as a national interest separate from the “international
community” and permission to wish to see that interest triumph. What
makes him popular on immigration is not how extreme his policies are,
but the emphasis he puts on the interests of Americans rather than
everyone else. His slogan is “Make America Great Again,” and he is not
ashamed of the fact that this means making it better than other places,
perhaps even at their expense.
(p. 2) Conservative pundits have complained for years about the
base and its desire for “ideological purity.” Trump shows that what is
most in demand, however, is not ideological purity but patriotic zeal.
Only a fool would believe that the fate of the Export-Import Bank could
motivate millions of voters. It is not a minor and complicated organ of
trade promotion that motivates but whether the ruling elite is seen to
care more about actual national interests or campaign dollars and
textbook abstractions like free trade.
Trump’s critics misunderstand his political appeal just as
they fail to comprehend his business appeal. Indeed, Trump is almost
certainly not as rich as he claims he is, nor is his record as
glittering as others’, nor is his a rags-to-riches story....For Trump,
business is about winning and losing, and for real human beings, that’s
what gives it life....
Trump, however, is eros and thumos incarnate, and his very
candidacy represents the suggestion that these human qualities should
have a role in our political life beyond quivering sentimentalism. Trump
alone appears to understand that politics is more than policy and
ideology. Beneath the bluster, he offers an image of Machiavellian virtù long absent from American politics.
Nothing in our politics seems worthy of being taken seriously anymore. The White House takes to Twitter with Straight Outta Compton
memes about the Iran deal....This is precisely the precondition for Trump’s popularity, and his
unapologetic mockery of more conventional forms of political theater
makes him in some ways the most serious candidate in the race."
...............
...........
"Julius Krein is a writer in Boston."
===============
Added: Related themes by Dr. Angelo Codevilla:
2/20/13, "As Country Club Republicans Link Up With The Democratic Ruling Class, Millions Of Voters Are Orphaned," Angelo Codevilla, Forbes
.
...................
"Increasingly the top
people in government, corporations, and the media collude and demand
submission as did the royal courts of old."...
.....................
........................
"The debate is over."...
10/20/2011, "The Lost Decade," Angelo M. Codevilla, Claremont Institute (2001-2011)
"Rule by Experts" (subhead, scroll down)
"Decision-making by
"experts" rather than by people and procedures responsible to the
American people has always been American progressives' prescription for
American life. During the past decade, the pretense that America was at
war has given this practice a major boost. For example, official and
semi-official panels of experts from government, business, and the
academy generated "studies" on the energy and health-care sectors of the
economy. Based on these, the government promulgated regulations and
presented Congress with demands that it approve massive legislation to
"stop global warming" and to "establish universal medical care." These
government-business-academic experts, i.e. this ruling class, presented
their plans as demands because, they shouted,
"the debate is over,"
and opponents are not qualified to oppose. Regardless of these
demands' merits, such claims to authority are based strictly on the
proponents' credentials. My point, however, is that these credentials
are based largely on the government endowing these proponents with
positions and money. As President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned in his
farewell address, such expertise is a circular function of government
power.
.
The event for which the decade is most likely to be
remembered, namely the "great recession," was a similar phenomenon. When
the financial bubble in mortgage-backed securities burst in 2008, the
leaders of both parties, and pundits from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal,
assured Congress authoritatively that appropriating some $800 billion
for the Treasury to buy up "toxic assets" would fix the problem. Three
out of four Americans dissented, in part because of widespread
recognition that the U.S. government's increase in expenditures from
$1.86 trillion in 2001 to $2.9 trillion in 2008, due in part to the war,
was unsustainable. Yet Congress bowed to "expert" opinion. But the
markets tanked, the fix did not work, and the economic collapse gathered
momentum. The subsequent Democratic administration increased spending
even more radically, to $3.7 trillion, roughly doubling federal expenses
in a decade, and pushed the national debt over $14 trillion—almost
equal to America's GDP. By 2011, 40 cents out of every federal dollar
spent had to be borrowed. .
As a prescription for salvation, the very same spectrum of experts that
had certified the efficacy of bailing out big banks emphasized to
Congress that the country needed to borrow more money and pay more
taxes. Three fourths of Americans wanted neither to borrow more nor to
pay more. The experts labeled them "irresponsible" and even
"terrorists."
The markets tanked again, and the great recession got a
second wind. The 2010 census reported that in 2009 the
inflation-adjusted median family income was $49,445, down from $51,161
in 2001. Although the official unemployment rate at this writing is only
9.1%, a truer measure of America's condition is that only 45.4% of
Americans of working age are employed full time—a true definition of
depression."....
.....................
=============================
...................."No prominent
Republican challenged the ruling class’s continued claim of
superior insight, nor its denigration of the American people as
irritable children who must learn their place."...(parag. 3)
July-August 2010, "America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution," by Angelo M. Codevilla
"Although after the election of 2008 most Republican office
holders argued against the Troubled Asset Relief Program, against
the subsequent bailouts of the auto industry, against the several
“stimulus” bills and further summary expansions of government power
to benefit clients of government at the expense of ordinary
citizens, the American people had every reason to believe that many
Republican politicians were doing so simply by the logic of
partisan opposition. After all, Republicans had been happy enough
to approve of similar things under Republican administrations.
Differences between Bushes, Clintons, and Obamas are of degree, not
kind.
Moreover, 2009-10 establishment Republicans sought only to
modify the government’s agenda while showing eagerness to join the
Democrats in new grand schemes, if only they were allowed to. Sen.
Orrin Hatch continued dreaming of being Ted Kennedy, while Lindsey
Graham set aside what is true or false about “global warming” for
the sake of getting on the right side of history. No prominent
Republican challenged the ruling class’s continued claim of
superior insight, nor its denigration of the American people as
irritable children who must learn their place. The Republican Party
did not disparage the ruling class, because most of its officials
are or would like to be part of it."...
America's
ruling class lost the "War on Terror." During the decade that began on
September 11, 2001, the U.S. government's combat operations have
resulted in some 6,000 Americans killed and 30,000 crippled, caused
hundreds of thousands of foreign casualties, and spent—depending on
various estimates of direct and indirect costs—somewhere between 2 and 3
trillion dollars. But nothing our rulers did post-9/11 eliminated the
threat from terrorists or made the world significantly less dangerous.
Rather, ever-bigger government imposed unprecedented restrictions on the
American people and became the arbiter of prosperity for its cronies,
as well as the manager of permanent austerity for the rest. Although in
2001 many referred to the United States as "the world's only
superpower," ten years later the near-universal perception of America is
that of a nation declining, perhaps irreversibly. This decade convinced
a majority of Americans that the future would be worse than the past
and that there is nothing to be done about it. This is the "new normal."
How did this happen? - See more at:
http://www.claremont.org/index.php?act=crbArticle&id=319#.VeIfe5dLy
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