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eridani

(51,907 posts)
Tue Mar 22, 2016, 04:32 AM Mar 2016

Fact-Check This: Arrogance Of Elites Helps Drive The Trump Phenomenon

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/03/21/fact-check-arrogance-elites-helps-drive-trump-phenomenon

For some time now most of the people in this country have been under economic pressure. Pay is not going up very much or at all, while living costs keep rising. One recent statistic stands out – 63 percent of Americans would have difficulty raising $500 to cover an emergency, like a sudden need for car repair so they can get to work. Around them the community’s roads and schools and services are in decline.

Most of the public can see this clearly, yet so many elites can’t see at all, and see it or not, they do little or nothing to make things better. This arrogance of our blind, well-fixed elites is helping drive the Donald Trump phenomenon.

Among the “establishment” – the people “in charge” of our “system,” including the news and opinion elites who serve as gatekeepers of information – there is willful blindness to how things have been getting worse for millions of Americans and their communities. They tell the voters they are wrong, that our trade policies are actually good for them.

The voters turn to Trump, who promises he will make it all better, that it will be beautiful.

No one else is offering hope.
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Skittles

(152,963 posts)
1. I cannot understand why people BELIEVE Donald Trump
Tue Mar 22, 2016, 05:00 AM
Mar 2016

the man SO OBVIOUSLY cares more about himself than ANYONE or ANYTHING

Skittles

(152,963 posts)
6. WHY would someone as awful as Trump be expected to ERADICATE awful?
Tue Mar 22, 2016, 07:39 PM
Mar 2016

Trump represents SO many American stereotypes

 

highprincipleswork

(3,111 posts)
3. You know what's sick? That w the elites we've got, the Repugs become the Populists around here.
Tue Mar 22, 2016, 05:10 AM
Mar 2016

Very, very dangerous territory.

Even when they are as sick as Donald Trump, he picks up the allure and the powerful appeal of the Populist banner, while folks like Hillary and Debbie Wasserman Schultz just have the whatever it takes to hold that banner high.

Only Bernie, on our side, can do that for the moment. And that is why he should be the one leading the charge.

pampango

(24,692 posts)
4. The secret of Trump's RW populist success is that too many people blame our problems on OTHERS
Tue Mar 22, 2016, 06:00 AM
Mar 2016

rather than our own 1% - who look amazingly like Trump himself. Like RW populists George Wallace (though a Democrat he certainly qualifies) and Pat Buchanan before him, he appeals to the racist/nativist streak in too many people.

We trade less than any country in the world (other than 2 small African ones) but what is the cause of our economic problems - trade according to Donald. We have a lower percentage of immigrants than Canada, Germany and Sweden, but what causes our economic problems - too many immigrants according to Donald.

The 'beauty' of Trump's RW populism is that while he distracts us with scapegoating of foreigners - both the ones who immigrate here and the ones who stay home and work - he preserves what really enriches our 1%: regressive taxes (his plan would be more 'trickle-down' tax cuts for the rich), weak labor unions (Donald loves him some 'right-to-work') or a flawed safety net (OK, while his plans are 'oddly' vague they might not be as bad as your typical republican's).

Canada, Germany and Sweden would tell Donald (if he cared what they thought which he doesn't) that trade and immigration do not hurt the middle class as long as you have high/progressive taxes, strong unions and an effective safety net. Of course, if a country does not have those things the domestic economy (75% of the US economy has nothing to do with trade) does not benefit the 99% as well. Without them the 99% benefit little from trade or from the domestic economy. (FDR would say that was the flaw in Coolidge's and Hoover's high-tariff, no-trade policy in the 1920's.) And that is the RW populist secret that Donald protects with his "Look over there! Is that a foreigner taking your job?"

Like FDR Bernie would, I think, go after our 1% with higher taxes, a better safety net, legal support for labor unions and better regulation of corporations and the finance industry. Like FDR Bernie would see that with the benefits of domestic and international-linked parts of our economy being redistributed to all and not just the 1%, he would push for us to be more like Scandinavia in terms of how we negotiate and trade with the rest of the world.

MisterP

(23,730 posts)
5. Clinton's managed to ride the neolib train without it sinking: she can do whatever she wants
Tue Mar 22, 2016, 02:19 PM
Mar 2016

to the party, twist it into noodles, and the Human Rights Campaign will give her its endorsement even as it rates her far lower than Sanders; but playing Schroedinger's pol means that now Trump--TRUMP--can run on her left

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=1543972

One_Life_To_Give

(6,036 posts)
8. People like Trump only rise when there is a fundamental problem.
Tue Mar 22, 2016, 08:03 PM
Mar 2016

His rise is not so much about what he may or may not do. It is about people feeling a fundamental pain and a certainty that the establishment will not do anything about it. That is when we run the risk of wingnuts and fascists being elected POTUS.

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