A friend of mine and I were in a funky Irish-themed restaurant yesterday having a conversation that ranged from Rothbardian economics* to international travel and life in Santiago, Chile. A television was playing in the background, with the U.S. pundit class on full display, knashing their teeth over what to “do” about the continued dominance of Donald Trump as the GOP frontrunner. This, of course, has never happened before: an outsider, an unapproved person, uncredentialed, unlicensed, unschooled by elite mentors of the Brzezinski type, etc., getting this close to a presidential nomination simply through his affect on voters who are fed up with business as usual in the Asylum on the Potomac. The pundits as mouthpieces for the elites with actual privileges identify with those who have the power of approval over who soars to the top. At one point we commented on this. Afterwards at least 20 minutes passed. Our talk again moved to other things. Then abruptly my companion looked up at the television and gasped. “My God, they’re still going on about Trump!”
“Ratings,” I observed. “They know it, and he knows it. He’s dollar signs. Capitalism in action, in the U.S. mainstream media.” Chew on it, corporate elites! If The Donald knows anything, it’s how to work an audience. How to capture and hold media attention, even from those who hate his guts. He’s supremely skilled at it, with vastly more talent than any of the empty suits going up against him, not to mention the pundits who would be lost if they didn’t have scripts to read from. It would be even more comical were there not so much at stake!
GOP elites: you’re not fighting Donald Trump, you’re fighting the people who are voting for Donald Trump. What you are fighting is called democracy. But you never believed in that anyway, did you? Never mind the arguments over whether our Founding Fathers created a democracy or a republic. Let’s be honest here. We all know the republic has been dying at least since 1865, and probably has been dead since 1913. Building something called democracy around the world has been one of the priorities of the elites. Just so long as they can approve the results, and U.S. taxpayers keep willingly footing the bill!
“It's not that this monster has raised himself up to threaten the ivory castles of the blue bloods, it's that millions of people have stood up and said, “Enough is enough.”
“It is they against whom the GOP establishment is fighting.
“And that fight never turns out well.
“Donald Trump isn't Barry Goldwater in 1964, he is Andrew Jackson in 1828. He is going to storm the White House, and he is going to bring his unwashed hordes with him. The Trump campaign is built on the uniquely American premise that the people are sovereign, and that does not jibe with cozy arrangements of the country-club Republicans. For too long, the Republican Party has exploited its constituencies, instead of served them, and the beaten dog is about to bite.”
http://www.boblonsberry.com/writings.cfm?go=4 (thanks to Wes D. for the pointer.)
Dunno. We may be seeing what happens when a truly skilled manipulator turns the tables on the elites by appealing directly to the products of the school systems they have approved all these years. Democracy in action, in the Land of the Free! Ready or not!
Newt Gingrich, who may or may not be one of your favorite people, makes some intriguing remarks here. One of the issues Ted Cruz raised (he’s hardly the only one to have raised it) is: is Donald Trump really a conservative? His mass of followers don’t appear to care very much. If he’s not really a conservative, is this an indictment of a “movement” that has completely lost its sense of direction? I’ve long been of the view that actual, self-aware conservatism that understood its own first principles basically died with Russell Kirk. I know of no one alive today who defends the position as well or as clearly as he did. That the GOP Establishment is not really conservative is a point I’ve made over and over again. The claim has fallen on deaf ears, or disappear into the air (or, in this case, into bandwidth space). But one would expect there to be some actual conservatism in his following. Maybe they are no longer thinking in these terms, though. Modern schooling, again, which doesn't exactly define terms or encourage critical thinking skills. What we can say for certain is that there are a lot of people who are simply so fed up with being taken to the cleaners by a GOP Establishment that they have figured out does not represent their interests, they just want an outsider who looks like them and speaks their language, even if he isn’t perfect.
I’m not saying that’s a good thing. The American electorate is, in most respects, adrift and unfocused. My point is that there are very few people out there who identify with something called conservatism, as a political philosophy, and can outline with any thoughtful detail what it is — as I sometimes put it, explain what they are trying to conserve, and why. This is a problem! This is what Donald Trump is exploiting, just in case he's not a conservative!
Gingrich’s remarks:
http://redstatewatcher.com/article.asp?id=8825
The way Gingrich frames this misses one important point, however.
There are significant elements in the Establishment (I am personally convinced) that want Hillary Clinton in the White House! Even though, as Gingrich puts it, she will be the most corrupt president in U.S. history. This does not matter to the globalist superelite. She will continue serving their interests, so that business as usual will continue. They will get their Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), for example, which will continue the migration of power into leviathan corporations able to sue once-sovereign governments of developing countries (Chile comes to mind), and their Trans-Atlantic Trade & Investment Partnership (TTIP), the TPP’s Atlantic equivalent.
Where Gingrich is right on target: if Donald Trump is the GOP nominee and the rest of the GOP refuses to support him, whether by running an independent candidate or by staying home on Election Day, they are helping to elect Hillary Clinton. They are furthering the unstated goals of the superelite.
Incidentally, if their servants in the GOP elites fail to circumvent a Trump nomination through attack ads, will they try to steal a nomination won from voters by changing the rules of the convention at the very last minute? Here are some thoughts on that subject:
Last minute items:
Is Trump University a fraud. Bill Still (www.billstill.com) says no, and presents some credible testimony to that effect. When he doesn’t know what else to do, does Marco Rubio just make stuff up?
*The economics put forth by Austrian school economist and libertarian author Murray N. Rothbard in Man, State and Economy, Power and Market, and other books.
No comments:
Post a Comment