Against Trump
NOTE: This piece was originally written ahead of the 2016 election and has been edited for clarity since its original publication.
“In any integrated personality, the id is supposed to be balanced by an ego and a superego — by a sense of self that gravitates toward behaving in a mature and responsible way when it comes to serious matters, and, failing that, has a sense of shame about transgressing norms and common decencies. Trump is an unbalanced force. He is the politicized American id. Should his election results match his polls, he would be, unquestionably, the worst thing to happen to the American common culture in my lifetime.”
“But it is a kind of American fascism we haven’t seen before. This goes beyond George Wallace, who was merely a racist. This goes to authoritarianism and the desire for a strong man who doesn’t trust the institutions and democracy and government.”
I was wrong about Donald Trump.
I had assumed that the better angels of our nature would chase Trump out of the race. I had hoped that the Republican electorate would promote more reasonable candidates like John Kasich, Rand Paul, Jim Gilmore, or George Pataki.. I’ll be the first to admit that I got a perverse pleasure seeing Trump disrupt the political status quo (I still do), but I didn’t expect him to survive the primaries. Trump is dangerous, and if you haven’t internalized that already, just look at the people supporting him. Sarah Palin, who called waterboarding terrorists a baptismal rite. Chris Christie, who denies waterboarding is “torture” and wants to expand government surveillance. Ben Carson, who wouldn’t feel comfortable with a Muslim president and thinks that evolution is a Satanic plot. Stefan Molyneux, an Internet cult leader who maintains that being a single mother is abusive to children by default. David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, who said that blacks revert into decadence when divorced from white culture. Alex Jones, a conspiracy theorist that believes 9/11 was an “inside job.” Louis Farrakhan, an Anti-Semitic loon involved in the anti-vaccination movement. This is nothing to say of the many neo-fascists and white supremacists that are cheering his rise, but I think you get the point.
To parade Trump as a “conservative” is laughable. Trump is a pure opportunist, seizing the Republican candidacy because he knew which voting demographic would eat up his red meat. Conservatism, if I’m not mistaken, has its roots in reducing the size of government, the promotion of free markets to dictate economic growth, and the preservation of our democratic institutions from radical change. Trump won’t save money. That wall he intends to build most likely won’t be paid by Mexico without coercion, and sans that, the wall will be paid by our taxes. We should recall that net immigration to the US from Mexico was zero in 2015, with Politifact stating, “the population of people living in America but born in Mexico fell by about 40,000 since 2010.” So we’d be wasting money on a non-existent problem. Trump also wants to bring back Eisenhower’s “Operation Wetback” and deport all 11 million illegal immigrants. The plan was disastrous then, and it would be disastrous now. Not to mention the heavy economic costs of such a foolish strategy. The right-wing American Action Forum has found that deporting all 11 million illegal immigrants would take 20 years, cost between $400 to $600 billion, real GDP would drop by $1.6 trillion, and economic growth would decrease by 5.7%. This does not sound like fiscal conservatism to me.
Trump also wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, despite the fact that it has been largely successful. Politifact found that its benefits include: 1 to 3 million young adults have been able to stay on their parent’s coverage, 15 million Americans have been added to Medicaid, 60 to 160 million Americans no longer risk coverage denial due to pre-existing conditions, and millions of Americans with private insurance now have access to preventative care free of charge. So Trump would repeal a law that’s helping Americans. The Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation found that repealing the ACA would have a number of negative effects: federal budgetary deficits would increase by $135 billion over 2016–2025, that budget deficits would further increase at exponential rates after 2025, and the number of uninsured would increase by 22 or 23 million in 2017. Even if one doesn’t like the ACA, repealing the law would dramatically increase budget deficits, which goes against conservative goals.
As far as business is concerned, Trump wasn’t a character from a Horatio Algiers story who brought himself up from nothing like Andrew Carnegie or Bill Gates. Trump inherited millions from his father and took his father’s well-established business. In any case, a good businessman doesn’t always equal a good economist, and while Trump may have mastered the “art of the deal”, he isn’t without his failures. The National Review has a list: Trump Management’s violation of the Fair Housing Act, Trump Airlines failure to make a profit, four filings for bankruptcy, Trump’s fake university that swindled thousands, Trump Magazine, Trump Vodka, Trump Steaks, etc. Is this a man you expect to act responsibly with our finances?
Economywise, Trump wants to impose huge tariffs on goods imported from Mexico and China, which would discourage free trade. These would lead to increased prices, with Mark J. Perry of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute saying, “It would be actually be a tax on American consumers. And more than half of U.S. imports come in as raw materials. And those cheap imports benefit American companies that hire American workers to finish the production process. Trump is really hearkening back to the outdated mercantilist positions of hundreds of years ago.” Like most conservatives, Trump isn’t fond of taxes, and wants to cut them across the board. However, the Tax Policy Center found Trump’s tax reforms to be costly: his plans would reduce federal revenues by at least $9.5 billion, the national debt would increase by nearly 80% of the GDP by 2036, and the largest beneficiaries of these tax cuts would be high income households, not the poor, working class he appeals to.
Conservatism is about defending our democratic institutions, such as the Bill of Rights, to which Trump is a threat. He has repeatedly encouraged violence against protesters at his rallies, saying of one that he wanted to punch one in the face and that another should have been roughed up. This violent rhetoric often extends to behavior among his supporters, in which protesters have been beaten and spat upon. The violence that erupted in a Chicago rally seems to me an inevitable result. Trump has also declared war on free speech, pledging that he’ll expand the libel laws to sue newspapers who say “false” things about him. Libel laws are more often used to silence than to expose lies. We’ve seen this over and over again with Scientology and the Unification Church. Trump also has a long and pathetic history of suing anyone who mocks or critiques him. He often loses, but as president, he might start winning.
Trump also wants to discriminate on the basis of religion, calling for increased surveillance of mosques, is open to a database on all Muslims, and wants a ban on all Muslims coming to the United States. Trump is participating in collective blame, holding all Muslims accountable for the acts of ISIS. Further, to deny all Muslim refugees, many of them suffering in unlivable environments, would be an unpardonable act of cruelty. For Trump, Muslims, like Mexican immigrants, are easy scapegoats on whom we can pin all of our problems. This is made most evident when he repeated the false claim that he saw thousands of Muslims cheering on 9/11. Such blatant demonizations open the door wide for hate crimes, which will further alienate Muslims, and drive some into the arms of ISIS.
Notable conservative figures have come out against Trump, such as Glenn Beck, Thomas Sowell, Ron Paul, William Kristol, Jonah Goldberg, David Brooks, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and Mitt Romney, who went so far as to call Trump “a con-man.” I applaud the conservative opposition. As it is necessary for conservatives and liberals to find common ground on climate change, radicalism, poverty, and prejudice, but for that we need communicators and compromisers, not dogmatists and demagogues. We need a politic based on reasonable judgment and empirical facts. These aren’t attributes I’d align to a narcissist like Trump, who changes the truth depending on the time of day.
With the prospect of a President Trump, liberals need to get over their differences and unite under the Democratic nominee. Sanders was a once-in-a-lifetime candidate of profound integrity and principle. He marched with Martin Luther King in Washington and was arrested for protesting segregation. Sanders has been a longtime advocate for health care reform and paid maternity leave. He opposed the war in Vietnam and helped lead the opposition against the Iraq War. Sanders has been stalwart in combating the corporatism that buys off political influence, as well as challenging the detrimental income inequality that Thomas Piketty and Joseph Stiglitz have warned about. Sanders also seems most likely to invest money into poor communities, most of them communities of color, which require the economic uplift to break systemic cycles that often push them into lives of drug dealing and gang violence. This isn’t to say Sanders is perfect, as he has supported socialist authoritarians like Fidel Castro and the Sandinistas. I voted for Sanders in Michigan and I stand by that vote. However, it seems more and more likely that Clinton will secure the nominee. Nothing is set in stone, but in the event that she does win we have to stand by her.
I certainly have misgivings about Hillary, and I’m not shy about them. Clinton voted for the disastrous Iraq War, supports the continuation of drone strikes, probably won’t allow Snowden a fair trial, refuses to release her Goldman Sachs speeches, is a devoted acolyte of Henry Kissinger, and may have had a hand in silencing Juanita Broaddrick. Despite these misgivings, Clinton is still an accomplished politician far more suited to the presidency than Trump. She used the office of First Lady by promoting women’s rights in China and heath care reform in the United States. One could argue that Clinton also used this platform to support some of her husband’s worst policies, such as welfare reform and mass incarceration. However, while Clinton should certainly disavow these policies, she didn’t vote for them. The unique role of “First Lady” doesn’t exactly allow for disagreement with the President. No disagreements with legal power, anyways. As Senator of New York, she was among the first to investigate the negative health effects of 9/11’s first responders. She voted against the Bush tax cuts for the rich and against an amendment to ban same-sex marriage. As Secretary of State, she used the “Hillary Doctrine” to make violations of women’s rights matters of national security. Clinton wants to raise the minimum wage. Clinton accepts climate change is caused by humans. Clinton understands the problem of police brutality. Clinton supports Planned Parenthood and equal pay. Is she a perfect progressive? No, but then, neither was Obama. In the age of Trump, we can’t afford the nihilism of “Bernie or Bust”.
The Democrats are the last line of defense against Donald Trump. Not voting for one in this election over ideological purity is a form of suicide. This may be the most important election of our lifetime, and skipping out to stop the expensive, shouting toupee would be a betrayal of American freedom.
Originally published at http://sansuthecat.blogspot.com on March 17, 2016. The article has been revised since its original publication, specifically with reference to the Nazis. I did not mean to say that Trump was equivalent to the Nazis, but that his performative style of racism could drive us to dark places. I have cut that part out because I believed it would be easily misinterpreted and distract from the arguments made.
