Author Topic: The Elements of Trumpism (Ross Douthat)  (Read 2051 times)

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Offline sinkspur

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The Elements of Trumpism (Ross Douthat)
« on: March 05, 2016, 11:20:37 pm »
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/opinion/sunday/the-elements-of-trumpism.html?rref=collection/column/ross-douthat&action=click&contentCollection=opinion&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection&_r=0

The Elements of Trumpism

 Ross Douthat 

MARCH 5, 2016 

MAYBE Donald Trump is doing us a favor.

The United States has long been spared a truly authoritarian element in our politics. Since Southern apartheid was crushed and far-left terrorism died away, we’ve had very little organized political violence, and few homegrown movements that manifest the authoritarian temptation.

Yes, our political institutions are creaking, and our presidency is increasingly imperial. But there are still basic norms that both parties and every major politician claim to honor and respect.

What Trump is doing, then, is showing us something different, something that less fortunate countries know all too well: how authoritarianism works, how it seduces, and ultimately how it wins.

But — God willing — he’s doing it in a way that’s sufficiently chaotic, ridiculous and ultimately unpopular that he will pass from the scene without actually taking power, leaving us to absorb the lessons of his rise.

That rise has four building blocks. First, his strongest supporters have entirely legitimate grievances. The core of that support is a white working class that the Democratic Party has half-abandoned and the Republican Party has poorly served — a cohort facing social breakdown and economic stagnation, and stuck with a liberal party offering condescension and open borders and a conservative party offering foreign quagmires and capital gains tax cuts. Trump’s support is broader than just these voters, but they’re the reason he’s a phenomenon, a force.

Second, you have the opportunists — the politicians and media figures who have seen some advantage from elevating Trump. The first wave of these boosters, including Ted Cruz and various talk radio hosts, clearly imagined that Trump would flare and die, and by being in his corner early they could win his voters later, or gain his fans as listeners. But the next wave, upon us now, thinks that Trump is here to stay, and their hope is to join his inner circle (if they’re politicians), shape his policy proposals (if they’re idea peddlers), or be the voice of the Trump era (if they’re Sean Hannity).

There is no real ideological consistency to this group: Trump’s expanding circle of apologists includes Sarah Palin and Steve Forbes, Mike Huckabee and Chris Christie; he has anti-immigration populists and Wall Street supply-siders, True Conservatives and self-conscious moderates, evangelical preachers and avowed white nationalists. The only common threads are cynicism, ambition and a sense of Trump as a ticket to influence they couldn’t get any other way.

Then third, you have the institutionalists — less cynical, not at all enamored of Trump, but unwilling to do all that much to stop him. These are people who mostly just want Republican politics to go back to normal, who fear risk and breakage and schism too much to go all in against him.

The institutionalists include the party apparatchiks who imagine they can manage and constrain Trump if he gets the nomination. They include the donors who’ve been reluctant to fund the kind of scorched-earth assault that the Democrats surely have waiting. They include the rivals who denounce Trump as a con artist but promise to vote for him in the fall. They include Republicans who keep telling themselves stories about how Trump will appoint conservative justices or Trump is expanding the party to pretend that Trump versus Hillary would be a normal sort of vote. And they even include the occasional liberal convinced that Trump-the-dealmaker is someone the Democrats can eventually do business with.

Then, finally, you have the inevitabilists — not Trump supporters, but Trump enablers, who encourage the institutionalists in their paralysis by acting and talking as if the support of 35 percent of the primary electorate means Trump Cannot Be Stopped.

Some inevitabilists are intoxicated with celebrity and star power. Cable news is riddled with such voices, who daily manifest Orwell’s dictum, “Power worship blurs political judgment,” so that, “Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.”

Others, especially in the intelligentsia, have a kind of highbrow nihilism about our politics, a sense that American democracy’s decadence — or the Republican Party’s decadence, in particular — is so advanced that a cleansing Trumpian fire might be just the thing we need.

I have a little bit of the last vice, which is why I spent a long time being anti-anti-Trump: not rooting for him to win, but appreciating his truth-telling on certain issues, his capacity to upset the stagnant status quo.

Which is the way it so often works with authoritarians. They promise a purgation that many people at some level already desire, and only too late do you realize that the purge will extend too far, and burn away too much.


Fortunately Trump’s fire should still be contained, by the wider electorate if not by his hapless party. Fortunately he’s still more a comic-opera demagogue than a clear and present danger. Fortunately this is just history giving us a lesson in what could happen, how the republic could slide into a strongman’s hands.

Fortunately.
« Last Edit: March 05, 2016, 11:20:58 pm by sinkspur »
Roy Moore's "spiritual warfare" is driving past a junior high without stopping.

A-Lert

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Re: The Elements of Trumpism (Ross Douthat)
« Reply #1 on: March 05, 2016, 11:48:40 pm »
"the Republican Party has poorly served"

You clowns are just beginning to see that??

Offline sinkspur

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Re: The Elements of Trumpism (Ross Douthat)
« Reply #2 on: March 05, 2016, 11:55:26 pm »
"the Republican Party has poorly served"

You clowns are just beginning to see that??

Trump is not the solution.
Roy Moore's "spiritual warfare" is driving past a junior high without stopping.

A-Lert

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Re: The Elements of Trumpism (Ross Douthat)
« Reply #3 on: March 06, 2016, 12:05:13 am »
Trump is not the solution.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/03/news/economy/donald-trump-jobs-created/index.html

 A CNNMoney analysis calculates at least 34,000 jobs attributable to the Donald.

It's not the most straightforward calculation. His company, The Trump Organization, is private, so it does not have to disclose information publicly about how much money it makes or how many people it employs. His campaign didn't give a specific figure either.

CNNMoney turned to PrivCo, which researches and tracks privately-held companies.

According to PrivCo, the Trump Organization has 22,450 employees and brought in $9.5 billion in annual revenue last year.

Offline sinkspur

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Re: The Elements of Trumpism (Ross Douthat)
« Reply #4 on: March 06, 2016, 12:07:37 am »
http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/03/news/economy/donald-trump-jobs-created/index.html

 A CNNMoney analysis calculates at least 34,000 jobs attributable to the Donald.

It's not the most straightforward calculation. His company, The Trump Organization, is private, so it does not have to disclose information publicly about how much money it makes or how many people it employs. His campaign didn't give a specific figure either.

CNNMoney turned to PrivCo, which researches and tracks privately-held companies.

According to PrivCo, the Trump Organization has 22,450 employees and brought in $9.5 billion in annual revenue last year.

If it's about jobs created, Bill Gates should be the GOP nominee.  Trump's a piker compared to him.
Roy Moore's "spiritual warfare" is driving past a junior high without stopping.

A-Lert

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Re: The Elements of Trumpism (Ross Douthat)
« Reply #5 on: March 06, 2016, 12:28:01 am »
If it's about jobs created, Bill Gates should be the GOP nominee.  Trump's a piker compared to him.

Your confusion is alarming, concentrate......Gates  isn't a candidate, is he?

Online mystery-ak

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Re: The Elements of Trumpism (Ross Douthat)
« Reply #6 on: March 06, 2016, 12:30:44 am »
Ha.....I was just at the NYT and saw this article and thought..I bet sink posts it...sure enough..I was write. :silly:
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Offline sinkspur

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Re: The Elements of Trumpism (Ross Douthat)
« Reply #7 on: March 06, 2016, 12:45:00 am »
Your confusion is alarming, concentrate......Gates  isn't a candidate, is he?

Just putting Trump's "accomplishments" in perspective.
Roy Moore's "spiritual warfare" is driving past a junior high without stopping.

Offline sinkspur

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Re: The Elements of Trumpism (Ross Douthat)
« Reply #8 on: March 06, 2016, 12:45:25 am »
Ha.....I was just at the NYT and saw this article and thought..I bet sink posts it...sure enough..I was write. :silly:

I follow Douthat on Twitter.
Roy Moore's "spiritual warfare" is driving past a junior high without stopping.

A-Lert

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Re: The Elements of Trumpism (Ross Douthat)
« Reply #9 on: March 06, 2016, 01:00:39 am »
Just putting Trump's "accomplishments" in perspective.

Concentrate.....Put them in perspective with the other candidates.

Offline GAJohnnie

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Re: The Elements of Trumpism (Ross Douthat)
« Reply #10 on: March 06, 2016, 05:33:08 am »
Just how stupid do you have to be Sink to post  bile laced tirades 24-7 at people and then think they are going to vote FOR your candidate?

A-Lert

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Re: The Elements of Trumpism (Ross Douthat)
« Reply #11 on: March 06, 2016, 05:41:15 am »
Just how stupid do you have to be Sink to post  bile laced tirades 24-7 at people and then think they are going to vote FOR your candidate?

A one note samba like Sinky is as grating as Hillary's voice.

Offline sinkspur

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Re: The Elements of Trumpism (Ross Douthat)
« Reply #12 on: March 06, 2016, 05:41:49 am »
Just how stupid do you have to be Sink to post  bile laced tirades 24-7 at people and then think they are going to vote FOR your candidate?

You like kittens Johnnie? I love kittens.  Here's one I picked just for you:

Roy Moore's "spiritual warfare" is driving past a junior high without stopping.

Offline sinkspur

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Re: The Elements of Trumpism (Ross Douthat)
« Reply #13 on: March 06, 2016, 05:43:45 am »
Just how stupid do you have to be Sink to post  bile laced tirades 24-7 at people and then think they are going to vote FOR your candidate?

Oh, I forgot. You have a ten word vocabulary. "Bile-laced tirade" is another one of your worn out insults.

Isn't it past your bedtime or did you run out of gin?
Roy Moore's "spiritual warfare" is driving past a junior high without stopping.