The Trump Car Wreck

Donald Trump is like the second part of a chain reaction car accident. The first part, led by progressives and moderate Republican politicians, has already happened. They created the semi-socialist mess of a state in which we live now. Unfortunately, here comes the Trump bus, barreling down the road just as blindly, not looking at what's ahead. When they slam into the existing mess, it won't be pretty.

This leads to "This Is What Happens When Republican Voters Get What They Want", which is the silly title of an editorial at the progressive-leaning The Nation, by Joan Walsh. (So Hillary Clinton is what happens when Democratic Party voters get what they want?)

But the funny thing about this article is it never asks the important question: From where did these Trump voters come? Like most progressives, it just assumes the Republican Party is either a plurality or majority made up of racist constituents. This is a Democratic Party meme, or a dog whistle for politically correct progressives if you prefer. It completely ignores the Democratic Party's involvement in creating this constituency.

Affirmative action has for years created a reverse racism problem, whereby minorities get preferential treatment at the expense of white males who think themselves to be better qualified. Whether they are or not cannot be determined, since the playing field is leveled against them. The ideal would be a level playing field, but the black constituents of many Democratic politicians don't want that. This is strike one against the Trump voters.

Add in the preference of both parties to open the borders to the cheap and illegal labor from Mexico and points south, and you get the second strike for the Trump voters. They see jobs disappearing at the same time tens of millions of Mexicans enter the country to get jobs. Rightly or wrongly, they blame the Mexicans, especially when they see a government unwilling to enforce immigration laws that are already on the books. 

Speaking of immigration laws, opening the borders for Muslim refugees, in the age of terrorism, is the final strike for the Trump voters. They see our government, controlled by a Democratic president and a spineless Republican Congress, refuse to protect both their jobs and their security from terrorism. Throwing a PC line at them that "all Muslims aren't terrorists" doesn't help, because they know the opposite to be true: All terrorists are Muslims. (You can argue about "homegrown terrorism" all you like, but that is just a different brand of terrorism. It misses the point.) When you open the borders to Muslims, you will inevitably bring in a few terrorists. 

The Trumpists are correct, even if they make the same mistakes as the progressives and RINOs did before them: They don't look at the source of their problems. They just seek to fix problems with government intervention, which is what caused the problems in the first place.  

Consider affirmative action. This was a government over-reaction to the institutionalized racism present in government laws previously. People tend to overlook things like Rosa Parks was breaking the law by not sitting in the back of the bus. This was government-enforced racism, not some rogue KKK act. Segregation was created by government. So the liberals at the time used government to reverse the effects of racism, but they went too far in the reverse direction, creating an unlevel playing field. The consequences of this are coming home to roost.

Then the government spends decades overlooking the problem of illegal immigrants. This problem was exacerbated by Wall Street, which encouraged the illegal immigration by getting the government to look the other way, via the corruption of our campaign finance laws, which are nothing more than legalized bribery of politicians. Wall Street wanted cheap labor, and politicians wanted donations. Win-win! But "lose" for the American workers, who get shut out of jobs by this policy. Building a wall won't fix this problem either.

As for the Muslim refugee problem, you only have to look towards the American Empire's "democratic nation building" in the Middle East and Asia for the source of our problems there. We have yet to build a single functioning democracy that lasted longer than a news cycle, but we have created a bunch of disgruntled Muslims with the killing of innocent civilians (aka "collateral damage") via our attacks on terrorists over there. Maybe the Muslims wouldn't want to kill us if we weren't over there killing them? 

Doubling down on stupidity is never a good solution. The Trumpists are right to point out the problems, but they need to find the right solution. What Trump offers is just a different brand of stupidity to what the progressives did before. Adding more cars to the wreck is no solution.

(hat tip to MotiFake for the pic)