©James FergusonWhat is one to make of the rise of Donald Trump? It is natural to think of comparisons with populist demagogues past and present. It is natural, too, to ask why the Republican party might choose a narcissistic bully as its candidate for president. But this is not just about a party, but about a great country. The US is the greatest republic since Rome, the bastion of democracy, the guarantor of the liberal global order. It would be a global disaster if Mr Trump were to become president. Even if he fails, he has rendered the unthinkable sayable.
Mr Trump is a promoter of paranoid fantasies, a xenophobe and an ignoramus. His business consists of the erection of ugly monuments to his own vanity. He has no experience of political office. Some compare him to Latin American populists. He might also be considered an American Silvio Berlusconi, albeit without the charm or business acumen. But Mr Berlusconi, unlike Mr Trump, never threatened to round up and expel millions of people. Mr Trump is grossly unqualified for the world’s most important political office.
Yet, as Robert Kagan, a neoconservative intellectual, argues in a powerful column in The Washington Post, Mr Trump is also “the GOP’s Frankenstein monster”. He is, says Mr Kagan, the monstrous result of the party’s “wild obstructionism”, its demonisation of political institutions, its flirtation with bigotry and its “racially tinged derangement syndrome” over President Barack Obama. He continues: “We are supposed to believe that Trump’s legion of ‘angry’ people are angry about wage stagnation. No, they are angry about all the things Republicans have told them to be angry about these past seven-and-a-half years”.
Mr Kagan is right, but does not go far enough. This is not about the last seven-and-a-half years. These attitudes were to be seen in the 1990s, with the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. Indeed, they go back all the way to the party’s opportunistic response to the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Alas, they have become worse, not better, with time.
Why has this happened? The answer is that this is how a wealthy donor class, dedicated to the aims of slashing taxes and shrinking the state, obtained the footsoldiers and voters it required. This, then, is “pluto-populism”: the marriage of plutocracy with rightwing populism. Mr Trump embodies this union. But he has done so by partially dumping the free-market, low tax, shrunken government aims of the party establishment, to which his financially dependent rivals remain wedded. That gives him an apparently insuperable advantage. Mr Trump is no conservative, elite conservatives complain. Precisely. That is also true of the party’s base.
Mr Trump is egregious. Yet in some respects the policies of his two leading rivals, Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, are as bad. Both propose highly regressive tax cuts, just like Mr Trump. Mr Cruz even wishes to return to a gold standard. Mr Trump says that the sick should not die on the streets. Mr Cruz and Mr Rubio seem to be not quite so sure.
Yet the Trump phenomenon is not the story of just one party. It is about the country and so, inevitably, the world. In creating the American republic, the founding fathers were aware of the example of Rome. Alexander Hamilton argued in the Federalist Papers that the new republic would need an “energetic executive”. He noted that Rome itself, with its careful duplication of magistracies, depended in its hours of need on the grant of absolute, albeit temporary, power to one man, called a “dictator”.
It is unwise to assume constitutional norms in the US would survive the presidency of someone who neither understands nor believes in them
The US would have no such office. Instead, it would have a unitary executive: the president as elected monarch. The president has limited, but great, authority. For Hamilton, the danger of overweening power would be contained by “first, a due dependence on the people, secondly, a due responsibility”.
During the first century BC, the wealth of empire destabilised the Roman republic. In the end, Augustus, heir of the popular party, terminated the republic and installed himself as emperor. He did so by preserving all the forms of the republic, while he dispensed with their meaning.
It is rash to assume constitutional constraints would survive the presidency of someone elected because he neither understands nor believes in them. Rounding up and deporting 11m people is an immense coercive enterprise. Would a president elected to achieve this be prevented and, if so, by whom? What are we to make of Mr Trump’s enthusiasm for the barbarities of torture? Would he find people willing to carry out his desires or not?
It is not difficult for a determined leader to do the previously unthinkable by appealing to conditions of emergency. Both Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt did some extraordinary things in wartime. But these men knew limits. Would Mr Trump also know limits? Hamilton’s “energetic” executive is dangerous.
It was the ultra-conservative president Paul von Hindenburg who made Hitler chancellor of Germany in 1933. What made the new ruler so destructive was not only that he was a paranoid lunatic, but that he ruled a great power. Trump may be no Hitler. But the US is also no Weimar Germany. It is a vastly more important country even than that.
Mr Trump may still fail to win the Republican nomination. But, should he do so the Republican elite will have to ask themselves hard questions — not only how this happened, but how they should properly respond. Beyond that, the American people will have to decide what sort of human being they want to put in the White House. The implications for them and for the world of this choice will be profound. Above all, Mr Trump may not prove unique. An American “Caesarism” has now become flesh. It seems a worryingly real danger today. It could return again in future.
Donald Trump’s chances of winning the Republican nomination have hit 80 per cent
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Blah, blah, blah, Hitler.
Yeah, we heard you the first couple of hundred times, Mr. Godwin.
The original meaning of the word demagogue is an orator who speaks for the common people. I can understand why the folks at the top are worried about the ones at the bottom, especially considering the ratio involved.
As Mark Twain once said, “Men like him give me the fantods.”
The UK establishment are running scared on behalf of their American pals. The recent Economist article declared Trump unfit to run America. Is that because he is not a lying, murderous sociopath like his probable opponent, that they will come out and endorse in due course. Makes my blood pressure reach dangerous levels.
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21693579-front-runner-unfit-lead-great-political-party-let-alone-america-time-fire-trump?spc=scode&spv=xm&ah=9d7f7ab945510a56fa6d37c30b6f1709
This guy is clueless.
” But he has done so by partially dumping the free-market, low tax, shrunken government aims of the party establishment,…”
Anyone who thinks Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Rience Priebus and their gang of thieves has any intention of promoting the free market (crony capitalism perhaps, free markets no), low taxes (see the last spending bill? No way!), shrunken government (that’s a Tea Party goal, RINOs hate it) or anything else that lessens Leviathan is already so delusional he needs a meds change.
Trump is popular because he is an outsider. He is practical, energetic and has real-life experience getting things done. This guy is an ignorant hack, and Admin must have included this just for contrast to reality.
The U.S. and EU politicians in control have brought their countries down, down, down. Any words spoken by an elite in the EU is relegated to the outhouse.
“Donald Trump embodies how great republics meet their end”
Seems he has ignored all the data for the last 25 years – it is those rulers in office that have brought us to the precipice.
Any opinion published by the FT these days also has to be filtered by the fact the paper is now owned by Nikkei, publisher of the world’s largest circulation business daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun.
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jul/23/financial-times-sale-pearson
This organisation has a track record of doing politicians bidding in Japan and has to be viewed sceptically.
” Mr Cruz even wishes to return to a gold standard.”
Oh, the horror.
“The more mouthpieces for the oligarchs like them that hate Trump, the closer I am to voting for him.”
-Admin
Damn, Admin entertains the possibility of voting!
Welcome to the party, pal…
The EU needs to take care of its own problems like Muslim pedophile rape gangs, Muslim lawless no go zones, the people living in fear of even reporting crimes against them for fear they will be the ones prosecuted, etc. before it even thinks about making so much as a mild suggestion to anyone else about anything.
A “take that log out of your own eye first” sort of thing.
I saw this YouTube link below on the All News Pipeline blog today under this heading:
“Disgraceful Mainstream Media Fail! MSM Totally Destroying Itself Over Donald Trump – This Hilarious Video Will Put A Smile On Your Face And Should Help Put A Dagger In The MSM’s Despicable Agenda”:
If you ever want to watch an MSM racebaiting talking-head contort in agony as their narrative blows up in their face – Just watch the first 95 seconds of this video.
That’s a great clip. The negress chokes on her own words. Take that, bitch.
This guy is all over the place. From Alexander Hamilton he takes a detour to ancient Rome, and then of course winds up on Hitler. What a painful read. Still it is nice to see the local proprietor getting closer to recognizing the Grey Champion for what he is.
I listen to the talking heads on AM radio while driving, it is less painful than modern music. All the blowhard hosts are parroting the same narrative “Someone needs to stop Trump to save conservatism.” It seems the people and the Grand Old Establishment have vastly different definitions of the term conservatism.
The GOE thinks conservatism means: pandering to immigrants in the hope of future votes, out of control spending, importing future Bataclan/San Bernandino sleepercells, spending blood and treasure to promote Israel’s foreign policy goals, and giving hollow lip service to Jesus every four years. The people know conservatism is: a controlled border, not taking in immigrants until there are surplus jobs, a strong but defensive military, spending within our means, not becoming a colony of mercantilist Asia, getting government out of the way.
Trump may fail to win. He might fail to accomplish his goals, or he might sell out on them. But both parties, the entire media complex, Hollywood, foreign governments, non-profits, lobbyist groups… all the particular nasties that run our lives are allied against him. That counts for more than something.
The anti-Trumpers have come out of the woodwork during the past 2 weeks. Damn those guys are scared shitless of losing their gravy train!
Makes me want to vote twice for Trump….
He would have like Don when he was 9 years old…………..
I’ve never been a Trump fan, whether it was television Trump, politician Trump or businessman Trump, I’ve always doubted his morality and sincerity. In fact, I even typed some disparaging words about him in a comment on this site last year, I believe it was. I am still not sold on him as a presidential candidate for a number of reasons, but lately I must admit, some of those reasons are not weighing as heavily in the scales of my decision making that they once did.
Like many have stated, the fact that the braying pack animals that represent the establishment are screaming “all hands on deck” in response to Trump’s verbal attacks, and that they claim that Trump is more threatening to the contry and globe than man-made climate change, that they are the Summers, the Krugmans and their Keynesian cronies of the world, well, I have to admit that I am enjoying watching them squirm while Trump overturns their little apple carts.
The scenario that has been playing out has forced me to consider my previous stance concerning Trump and ask myself some questions such as: ” If not Trump, then who could you vote for in good conscience?” Could you vote for Hillary? No, not without feeling that I had fallen into a full septic tank. How about Kim Il Bernie? No, not without feeling that I must have undergone a lobotomy. How about voting for the shallow Rubio-con? No, I won’t cross that boundary. Well then, what about Cruz, Carson, or Kasich? No, no, and hell no. Establishment lackeys all, I say.
So, I ask myself why could I vote for Trump instead of the other candidates and there are, as it turns out, a number of reasons. First, precisely because he does piss off the ruling class – the establishment politicos, their party apparatuses, the presstitutes and and those that seek to maintain the status quo. Second, I like his stand on illegal immigration, and a severe tightening of our Southern border in particular. Obama’s open borders policies are not grounded in humanitarianism, but rather in politics, ideology and a will to alter American demographics. Third, I totally agree with Trump as it relates to a moratorium on Muslim immigration, at least until, we are one hundred percent certain that we can properly vet them, and then maybe. This is only common sense given the Middle East and Northern African situations, Islam’s inability to assimilate and their disdain for any other religion. Anyone who stands against this moratorium must have questionable motives for doing so. Those who would let multiculturalism and diversity trump the safety of American citizens in this case, that would let ideology overrule security, obviously believe that the former is more important than the latter.
On the other side of the coin, I see many question marks regarding a Trump presidency. Will he fall back into his Democratis party beliefs? Will he destroy Obamacare simply to replace it with a single-payer system? Just what are his economic plans? More Keynesian bat guano? Will he let TBTF banks be liquidated in the case of another major economic meltdown, or will he smooch the butts of the Blankfeins and Dimons and the rest of their criminal cabal? So many unanswered questions. The one thing that I do keep reminding myself is that in all likelihood he probably can’t be much worse than Obama, or any of the establishment candidates. Those that worry about Trump acting as a dictator need only consider the actions of the so-called POTUS currently dictating his ideology to the American people. His single-handed actions on immigration (DAPA), the TPP, HIS Iran nuclear ‘deal’, Fast and Furious, as well as using the IRS to punish his enemies. Can Trump be any worse than that? Personally, I rather doubt it, but if it is ‘all hands on deck’ on election day, then Trump seems to be the only logical choice.
Report: Egyptian Who Threatened to Kill Trump on Facebook to Be Deported
BY: Adam Kredo
March 2, 2016 10:10 am
A U.S. court has reportedly ordered that an Egyptian student living in the United States be deported after he was caught threatening to kill presidential candidate Donald Trump on Facebook, according to reports.
Emad El-Din Ali Mohamed Nasr El Sayed, a 23-year-old student, reportedly had his U.S. visa revoked as a result of the threats.
“I am willing to kill Donald Trump and serve a life sentence,” El Sayed wrote on Facebook, according to interviews with his lawyer conducted by Egyptian Streets. “[T]he whole world would thank me for doing that.”
El Sayed was arrested in mid-February but authorities dropped the charges after a decision was made to revoke his visa. A California immigration court determined on Tuesday that he is now in the United States illegally and must be deported back to Egypt.
El Sayed’s lawyer expressed opposition to the ruling.
“This is an extraordinary step taken by the U.S. government to pressure a school owner to terminate the attendance of someone at a school,” Hani S. Bushra was quoted as telling Egyptian Streets. “Emad never missed a single academic requirement while he was enrolled in the school.”
Another hearing on the matter will be held on March 4.
Kokoda, that POS belongs at the bottom of the outhouse hole along with all the other Godless NWO traitorous turds and their Useful Idiots. Agreed that Trump is no Saint but he sure as Hell is not the Devil herself or the Black Mahdi Muslim antiChrist. In fact, I’d put Trump in the company of the prophets Jeremiah (blowing the warning trumpet from a tower) and Nehemiah (rallying people to repair the wall and defend themselves). My advice to the Democrats and RINOs is to party like it’s you last: Eat Drink and be Merry until you are so totally stupid you eat your own vomit because in Nov, the FSA gets it’s Just Desserts.
Oh, Lordy, the Hitler card. When they pull that one out, you know you’re getting under their skin.
Good.
Here is a question for ya’ll. What do you think will happen if Trump gets elected and turns out to be a liar?
Will that be the tipping point that gets productive people into the streets? Is he the last ditch effort at working within the system to fix things, or can Americans tolerate another 4 years, or 8, of treachery?
In other words, how much fuse do you think this dynamite has left?
Here’s the thing and some of you won’t believe I’m saying this, BUT if Hitlery wins the Dem nomination I’ll vote for Trump. I still think he’s crooked and lacks character, but looking at Obama, he can’t be much worse, and I like what he says about illegal immigration which must be stopped. He blathers on about tax cuts which I never expect to enjoy, however I like him better than any of the other candidates with the exception of Bernie, who it seems is taking it up tuckus from the DNC.
I just hope he doesn’t turn out to be another Mussolini.
Damn, just when I think you are hopeless you say something intelligent.
“Wolf was born in London, in 1946. His father Edmund was an Austrian Jewish playwright who escaped from Vienna to England before World War II.[1] In London, Edmund met Wolf’s mother, a Dutch Jew who had lost nearly thirty close relatives in the Holocaust.[2] Wolf recalls that his background left him wary of political extremes and encouraged his interest in economics, as he felt economic policy mistakes were one of the root causes of WWII.[1] He was an active supporter of the Labour Party until the early 1970s.[2]” from Wikipedia.
First Kagan, then Summers and now Wolf, all Jewish NeoCons, and all attacking Trump because he is standing up for the European peoples who founded, built and sustain the United States of America. If I was a Jewish NeoCon, I would be worried because the days of control and subversion of the US Congress, central and fractional-reserve banks, stock and commodity markets, global corporations, mass media and popular culture are fast coming to an end. The election of Trump is not the end but just the beginning. And Trump’s first task as President should be to appoint a very capable Attorney General to indict and prosecute all the murderers, crooks and thieves who have been waging a War of Treason against the American people.
Yes wdg, the donald is taking a real ass reaming from the Jews in all quarters. They are squirming. I wonder why. Don’t they like democracy? After all, the Jew neo-cons brought war to the Middle East, using up corn fed white boys of course, to spread democracy, ’cause they hate our freedums, right? And Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, blah blah blah.
The truth is democracy sucks. And yet, when the masses turn against the oligarchs, boy how they moan and groan.
My guess is that the Jews will not allow the donald to win, by hook or by crook. He will be blackmailed, bribed, intimidated, or worse. A plane crash is not out of the question.
By the way, readers should check out a wonderful “painting” by the jewess artist Sarah levy, who used her own menstrual blood to depict the donald, with one of his eyes poked out. Charming. Gosh, how smart and talented the Jews are. Brilliant innovators, that lot. After all, the Jews invented radical feminism. She plans to “auction the piece off to raise money for an immigrants’s rights organization”. Gee, I’m surprised.
Hey Jews, you’ve had your victory. Well done. You’ve enjoyed unprecedented wealth and power over the goyim the last 70 years. Sorry, but nothing lasts forever and it will eventually end very badly for you. You will have deserved every bit of it.
Have a nice day.
Wait. Does a Donald want to build a wall to keep out the Moslems? Or the Jews? I’m confused.
The Donald, I mean. Or, is it the Mexicans and South Americans that we need to be worried about? Or, the immigrated European Jewish rapists that are overrunning all of the Western nations currently? I just want to figure it out so I can keep my priorities straight, ya know?
David Corn has no lips…I vote crummy kisser.
Martin Wolf is crazy. Using Kagan (intellectual neoconservative)
as an example of credible thinking is a bridge too far. Proves
he’s crazy. And BTW, Wolf, mind your own freakin’ business.
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“I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt
nkit – nailed it.
Westcoast, I always liked you. Now that you’ve admitted your admiration for me, I’ll tell you what. When I hang snowden, (who is a big trump fan) instead of killing him, I’ll just dangle him there for a while until he quits squirming, then I’ll cut him down and they can recessitate him. See, I’m getting more presidential every day.
Hey Archie you Jughead, if weve ruled the world the last 70 years why have I work my ass off the whole time instead of ordering everyone else around huh? U want inventors, how about Einstein and Oppenheimer for starters. Gloria Steinems and Bibi Yahoos speak for themselves and all the sheep from every country stupid enough to follow, but not for me u got it?
Donald Drumpf brags too much, I dont like that you should never have to praise yourself. His father Fred was a big shot too but not too stuck up to say shalom, so Ill give his kid a vote.
Notice Faux puts down Trump .They almost seem to endorse Hillary.If he gets under the establishments skin this much,I’m voting for Trump!