Sunday, March 20, 2016

The Trump Sunami

Countrycollaboratores,

I know, another blast on the Trumpet.  But when will we have another target like this -- bloated, cock-sure, catastrophe in a cap?  Bear with.

I wish I could feel a little more honest resentment, but it is very hard for me to write off entirely the figure who introduced the term "pussy" to our political discourse.  Somebody really new, an utterly fresh presentation, if you can stand the smell.

The fact is, Trump is pretty largely what both parties deserve.  The years of starving out education, overpaying a handful of plungers while deflation eroded the blue-collar community, sitting on the minimum wage, permitting bankers to feast on brutally high interest payments crippling the newly-educated poor -- what had the gentility expected?  They created this dumb-ass electorate, why shouldn't it take the government away from the greedy and the privileged?

Bernie Sanders may be exhorting the masses to take the government back and parcel out the benefits, but it is Donald Trump who is cannibalizing the established parties.  By bringing up the issue of trade, the results of exporting so much of American manufacturing consequent to NAFTA and the subsequent agreements during the Clinton presidency, Trump nails Bob Rubin and the policymakers of the nineties. Why was Glass-Steagall abandoned, derivatives and credit default swaps conceded to the unscrupulous bankers around Bill and Hillary Clinton, three-strikes-and-out instituted to control the unrepentant blacks in the streets, welfare slashed  -- whatever it seemed to take to propitiate the rising Democratic elite?

After which Trump  rounds on the Republicans.  What about the heretofore unmentionable blundering into Iraq, the broken bodies and wasted trillions of dollars resulting from that misbegotten oil-grab?  Where was our intelligence community when those Muslim volunteers were learning to fly into the World Trade Center?  When do we start to penalize the corporations that ship their jobs and profits overseas and duck American taxes while Detroit goes dark?

Trump is definitely a primitive.  If there were history and government courses at Wharton when he was gracing the institution Trump obviously stayed away. To call his grasp of  the Geneva Conventions and parliamentary procedure shaky would amount to a cover-up.  Challenge Trump one time too many about his manhood and he is likely to show the mob out there.

Still, Trump has held up this far because he speaks to -- and for -- the aggrieved millions.  Obama has brought the overall society back much of the way, but so many millions are failing.  Donald Trump is speaking to them.  We had better listen too, or The Donald is likely to achieve his fantasy.

Cheers,

Burton Hersh