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Donald Trump is nothing more than the creation of the Right. He is the coalescing of the nonsense, misinformation, and lies they have been spewing for decades.
Will Donald Trump create an unrecognizable America in 2017
Scholars and political analysts may attempt to analyze the rise of Donald Trump. They may cloak it in a type of collective psychosis by a segment of the American people.
It is likely much more straightforward. Over the last several decades a concerted effort was made to distort reality and morality to justify power and massive wealth in the hands of the few. I made that case in my DailyKOS article titled “Republican assault on the American fabric a successful strategy so far” where I wrote that the Powell Memo was instrumental.
The Powell Memo illustrates the fear that Lewis Powell, a corporate lawyer and member of the boards of various corporations, had for the masses. Powell was subsequently confirmed as a Supreme Court justice.
Powell lays out the game plan. It is a plan that was forward looking. It is a plan that so far has been well implemented. How did they do it?
They created think tanks responsible for dispersing misleading information with a false cloak of authenticity. The Heritage Foundation is a classic example of this. They took control of the airwaves to disperse misleading information (e.g., talk radio, Fox News, CNBC, etc.). A relenting Chamber of Commerce uses corporate monies to bully policy and politicians that squeeze the masses (e.g., support for free trade agreements, outsourcing etc.).
They infiltrated college campuses with directed research for planned outcomes. They infiltrated the elementary and secondary schools’ textbook evaluation process to attempt right-wing indoctrination. They used graduate business schools to indoctrinate students on an irresponsible form of capitalism. They flooded the country with books and paid advertising promoting their message. They continue to destroy unions.
The implementation has been successful thus far.
In other words, many Americans with the propensity to be indoctrinated were. The Right conned Americans who have limited time to do their research. They misplaced their trust in the wrong sources of information. Many Americans who needed to believe that their failures were not their own acquiesced to the fallacies of the Right’s policies.
It should then be no surprise that the Right left themselves open to a charlatan, a demagogue. Most importantly it is no surprise that the misinformed would fall for a shallow candidate that told them everything they wanted to hear.
Unfortunately for America, a U.S. President plays an important role on the world stage. Ronald L. Feinman, author of Assassinations, Threats, and the American Presidency: From Andrew Jackson to Barack Obama says it best.
Trump has alienated many foreign leaders and governments, including friendly nations, by his statements and actions and declarations of his intentions including the future of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; our alliances with South Korea and Japan; and our dealings with the Middle East cauldron. His wooing of Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is absolutely horrifying to our military leadership, our national security and intelligence community, and our diplomatic personnel worldwide. All of these groups are alarmed at a “loose cannon” like Trump, who by his words alone, could cause massive international crises that could endanger American troops, diplomatic personnel, and our basic ability to protect and defend our interests in the dangerous world we live in.
Donald Trump is the bold instantiation of every negative sentiment many foreigners have of America. Boldly stating he will take a foreign country’s oil means he may justify taking rare-earths from Asian countries and bauxite from the West Indies.
Trump’s admiration for Vladimir Putin’s strength and perceived popularity should put fear into the soul of every journalist, blogger, or political opponent. His propensity to lie even when confronted with corroborating audios and videos should concern even his most avid supporters.
Donald Trump is an existential threat to the America we know and to the America known around the world. America was never perfect. However, America seemed to have the structures that allowed it to get better generation after generation, the elastic clause in the constitution, the growing progressivism of its population. A Donald Trump presidency upends that notion even if temporarily.
America has a few weeks yet to get it right. The Right successfully made many sources of relatively good information invalid to a large segment of the population. Getting to those people will require that those in the know interact with them respectfully, earn their trust, and change their minds. Absent that, we will have a new America few of us recognize.
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