Jonathan Capehart at the Washington Post writes that the rise of populist oligarch Donald Trump spells the death of the GOP — and laments that as something regrettable, because at least two viable national political parties has long been considered a criteria for the health of a liberal democracy — at least internationally.
From the column:
The hate-fueled self-immolation of the GOP would be a laugh riot were the consequences not so dire. Our democracy depends on a thriving two-party system where competing parties and the voices within each vigorously debate ideas and then reach the reasonable compromises needed to govern an enterprise as important as the United States. Since 2010, the Republican Party has succumbed to its basest voices for short-term political gain. Compromise became a dirty word. Lies were peddled as truth and never corrected by those who knew better. Invective was liberally employed against opponents no matter the party and without consequences.
Trump has pledged to stuff his cabinet with fellow oligarchs and experienced operators in the business world, while pledging a grab bag of vaguely phrased anti-immigration initiatives combined with inflationary monetary policy, protectionist trade policy, and presumably more social liberalism. He’s recently praised Japan’s Shinzo Abe as an example of a leader whom he’d like to emulate.
Despite all this, people out to shave off legitimacy from liberal democracy in the US and elsewhere tend to be pleased with this development.
Ironically, the people least pleased with Trump’s popularity in the polls are the ones who have the strongest belief in the righteousness of liberal democracy with universal suffrage. Trump embarrasses this crowd because he knows how to give the masses what they want in a bombastic and entertaining manner. Most of the time, people in the political sphere compete at a lower level than someone like Trump needs to. They’re in a different competitive league — it’s like sending a professional football team to compete with the peewee league.
The critics of universal suffrage claim that it rewards shallow politicians who are willing to tell people what they want to hear in order to get elected. Popular policies are rarely also wise policies. Plenty of unpopular policies are also stupid, counter-productive, or corrupt policies.
Fundamentally, the existing GOP and its auxiliary media organizations act as a legitimizing outer party. Trump, like every other GOP candidate, supports radical progressive initiatives like graduated income taxes, universal education, and the other raft of alphabet agencies instituted during the second Roosevelt regime.
The substance of the candidate’s platform matters less than the demoralization that the campaign inflicts on the Outer Party and the actual administrators of the regime. This is one of the reasons why he’s so entertaining. If Trump wins the presidency and succeeds in creating a lot of internal confusion and conflict within the administration, then that’s mostly a good thing rather than a bad thing.
The permanent marginalization of an alternative party to the Democrats is also a good thing, because the loss of popular legitimacy would make it much harder for progressives to actually administer the country. If the right-leaning hoi polloi realizes that they have no hope whatsoever of influence in Washington, they will be less willing to comply with the raft of other policies — which means greater difficulty enforcing compliance with the regulatory state, more children pulled out of public schools, more people tuning out from the media, and a lot of other positive consequences.
“Our democracy depends on a thriving two-party system where competing parties and the voices within each vigorously debate ideas and then reach the reasonable compromises needed to govern an enterprise as important as the United States.”
It’s really a one-party system controlled by Jews and homos.
“The hate-fueled self-immolation of the GOP would be a laugh riot were the consequences not so dire. Our democracy depends on a thriving two-party system where competing parties and the voices within each vigorously debate ideas and then reach the reasonable compromises needed to govern an enterprise as important as the United States. Since 2010, the Republican Party has succumbed to its basest voices for short-term political gain. Compromise became a dirty word. Lies were peddled as truth and never corrected by those who knew better. Invective was liberally employed against opponents no matter the party and without consequences.”
This is literally the exact opposite of the truth, as the popularity of the “cuckservative” meme illustrates. And like all negations of the truth, it points to the actual truth in the same way that a photographic negative (remember those?) shows a recognizable image of what was photographed. What Capehart and those like him really want is two political parties that believe exactly the same things. There is, of course, only one reason why anybody would want that: to create the illusion that a one-party system is something other than what it actually is (and thus avoid the fate of 20th century-style communism, which sucked at PR). Stop and think about that a moment: Capehart is, if you know how to read what he’s saying, publicly admitting that he wants a political system based on outright fraud. In the Washington Post. This is essentially the equivalent of Bank of America sending all of its depositors a letter announcing that its new CEO is a Nigerian prince, and that he needs their help in moving some money around. The very fact that they feel emboldened enough to publicly complain that they’re worried about how to keep their scam going shows just how bad, and how effective, the scam has been.
There’s only one way to not get taken in by a scam: don’t participate in it. Only a fool does anything with a letter from a Nigerian prince other than throwing it in the trash. And certainly, respectable people do nothing to help a scammer seem legitimate. Complicity in fraud is a grave sin – one that must be avoided.
“If the right-leaning hoi polloi realizes that they have no hope whatsoever of influence in Washington, they will be less willing to comply with the raft of other policies — which means greater difficulty enforcing compliance with the regulatory state, more children pulled out of public schools, more people tuning out from the media, and a lot of other positive consequences.”
As usual, bang on.
Conservatism is a repeater trap which ensnares those who might otherwise be Reactionaries.
The NR was created by Buckley to promote Kosher Conservativism, everyone should read Prof. Revilo P. Oliver books and writtings.
Voting for Trump Iz The Great Fuckyou.
Because there is no voting our way out of this, Trump couldn’t come along at a more opportune moment in time.
Consent is a wonderful thing. There is withdrawal of consent, an awesome weapon against tyrants and their corruption. Maybe the most powerful weapon ever created. Though most people don’t grok the power they hold in their hands against the illegitimate nature of the sonofabitches running things.
There is also consent in the sublime form of providing the rope with which the bastards can hang themselves.
Voting for Trump is that rope. Even if Trump is genuinely a kind of more honest oligarch, he is a colorful psychopath, a loose wing nut, because you have to be a psychopath to begin with to play in the fuckers sandbox. A loose cannon. What makes the Donald an honest tyrant is he is a honest crook. There are no ulterior agendas or hidden ideologies with this maniac. He is what he is. He ain’t out to destroy liberty, he is kind of a clueless fool, a kind of kind hearted prince among thieves. But he is his own fool. He has worked hard and earned his reputation, it is his brand. Crazy as it seems, in a crazy world gone mad, it is kind of refreshing. The reality is principles and virtue, leadership of the kind born of that are basically impossible as a platform to be elected upon. Somebody who ran for president like that would be killed before they where permitted to be in a position to become a peoples leader of America if they by some miracle made it that far what with all the checks and obstructions within this system of administrative tyranny which was euphemistically called a constitutional republic.
Which makes the whole spectacle and circus of elections even more hilarious and preposterous. The US Constitution is the worlds largest parking ticket. Created to extract tribute and strip mine the wealth of a free people in order to deny them liberty. For what is liberty without unfettered economy and the primal right of property and the fruits of ones labor?
Trump may be a total outlier. After all, he may be a rich wealthy fool, but he is a self made man in his own right. His political views not withstanding, it makes him an outsider and an outlier among the fuckers running things.
It don’t make him nessacarily any better an alternative to the self appointed tyrants and crooks running things.
But he is a contrasting figure to the tyranny breathing down our necks. A contrast easily sensed by a plurality. Because if there is anything that is dynamic enough to begin a popular uprising and revolt against the motherfuckers in power and for what they are doing to the rest of us, it is a cascade of preference against that and a withdrawal of consent.
That is what the bastards are terrified of. That preference cascade. A plurality who understands it is one. That figures out it is they are a plurality, and no power on God’s green Earth has the legitimacy of a plurality in liberty.
You can’t deny or stop such a movement once it reaches critical mass. You can try and gulag and kill them by droves, but people who know what liberty is understand it really is liberty or death.
The oligarchs blew it. They had us in a great position, right where they needed us to be to sustain the thriving and strip mining of our productivity and intrinsic wealth, for decades, maybe a century or better.
But they got too greedy, to inbred, too insular. They stratified our society, their survival depended on not disturbing the layers if class and wealth.
But the Donald, he has the rarefied position of being able to high dive from the higher levels of the ruling class, and his clownish swan dive has plunged through the stratification of class, it is roiled the layers.
Something everyone is missing here is the Donald’s relationship with the political fuckers. He was good enough to be permitted within the upper levels of the oligharchy when his money was needed. But he has never had the pedigree of the chosen royalty.
They saw the popularity and notoriety of the early campaigning he acquired and stuck their prissy little noses in the air and snooted their disdain for such a cretin as The Donald. He was like a pet or token upper class working blue collar symbol of their omnipotent tolerence for a self made man. Tolerated as long as the cash kept coming. But they snubbed Trump, he was shown just how despicable and ugly they are. All the glitz and opulence was window dressing for really bad people. Nasty, hateful, arrogant.
And being the scrapper and hustler he is, I think he is pretty pissed off and not a little hurt by the rejection.
Piss off a guy like Trump, who you underestimate in your hubris, you create a monster who knows exactly what makes you tick, and where your vulnerabilities lie. Trump is Trump because he understands human nature, greed and avarice.
They created a monster.
They created The Great Fuckyou.
That is why Donald Trump is popular.
It has nothing to do with him being president.
He gave the sonofabitches the finger and did not back down.
Say what you want about him.
The guy has a spine and gives better than he gets.
How can you not root an underdog like that?