Policy Made Simple
Source: Eugene Robinson: Trump dispels GOP fantasy – San Jose Mercury News
It’s all fun until someone loses an eye is the old saying. For the past 6 months or so, The Donald has been celebrated as, well, the celebrity candidate for the GOP. Riding on a wave of populism and anger of unforeseen breadth, he has consistently appeared at the top of the candidates scrum vying for the nomination. He’s kind of like the eccentric, brash relative who comes to visit and is a barrel of laughs…until he starts walking around in his underwear, drinks milk directly from the carton, inappropriately fondles the dog and calls your sister mean names.
Oddly his behavior hasn’t noticeably dented his support among his hard core fans; if anything, the support base becomes larger if you believe the polls. He’s very popular, just ask him. The mainstream media have come to label his rhetoric as right wing and nationalistic but this is mostly inaccurate. All candidates, left and right have nationalistic views. His ‘right wing’ views just happen to cater to an audience that have long been marginalized by seven years or more of suppression in favor of left wing views. Despite Trump’s vague policy details, adolescent tantrums and often contradictory and inflammatory rhetoric, his base still thinks he’s the best man to represent them. He’s like Kanye West for white people.
This feels eerily familiar to the circumstances that brought the last President to office who likewise was ushered in by the support of a constituency that overlooked obvious shortcomings and bought into his rhetoric. In effect, this is the pendulum swinging the other way. Trump’s entire message is simply, “It’ll be better when I’m in charge”. In fact, we found a website that has his fingerprints all over it, huhcorp. Those that think Trump’s coronation will be a balm to what ails them might want to take a closer look at what he stands for, though that may be difficult given his admitted ‘evolution’ on many issues. A pertinent quote from George Orwell’s classic Animal farm:
“No question now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
As the aphorism goes, be careful what you wish for.