Trump-mania: The anger is real

I've been struck by the level of bitterness, vitriol and sometimes even profanity being bandied about by supporters of Donald Trump when they comment on the political establishment.  Here are three articles that caught my eye during the past week or so.  Click the link above each excerpt to read the whole article (which I do recommend).


1.  An Open Letter to the Conservative Media Explaining Why I Have Left the Movement

... it doesn’t appear to me that conservatives calling on people to reject Trump have any idea what it actually means to be a “conservative.” The word seems to have become a brand that some people attach to a set of partisan policy preferences, rather than the set of underlying principles about government and society it once was. Conservatism has become a dog’s breakfast of Wilsonian internationalism brought over from the Democratic Party after the New Left took it over, coupled with fanatical libertarian economics and religiously-driven positions on various culture war issues. No one seems to have any idea or concern for how these positions are consistent or reflect anything other than a general hatred for Democrats and the Left.

Lost in all of this is the older strain of conservatism. The one I grew up with and thought was reflective of the movement. This strain of conservatism believed in the free market and capitalism but did not fetishize them the way so many libertarians do. This strain understood that a situation where every country in the world but the US acts in its own interests on matters of international trade and engages in all kinds of skulduggery in support of their interests is not free trade by any rational definition. This strain understood that a government’s first loyalty was to its citizens and the national interest. And also understood that the preservation of our culture and our civil institutions was a necessity.

All of this seems to have been lost. Conservatives have become some sort of schizophrenic sect of libertarians who love freedom (but hate potheads and abortion) and feel the US should be the policeman of the world. The same people who daily fret over the effects of leaving our society to the mercy of Hollywood and the mass culture have somehow decided leaving it to the mercies of the international markets is required.

2.  Why Trump?

We used to think the conservative machine had our back, that you would protect us from political correctness and left-wing pogroms. We working-to-middle class white men are your base, we thought you’d fight for us us. Maybe you’d let a nazi or two twist in the wind, but you’d at least have our backs. But now we’re the nazis for simply advocating what the people who beat the nazis did.

You don’t have our backs. Instead, you sneer at working-class whites. You call us, your ******* base, illiterate, crazy, and stupid. You attack us, the people you supposedly represent, as racist, the same slur leftists use against us to destroy our lives (and against you to score political points, but your heads are too far up your own asses to see the irony of that). You deride us and sneer at us at every turn.

But you aren’t even content to sneer at us. Instead, you traitorous bastards attack and mock us as cowards for writing anonymously because we don’t want to lose our jobs and be the subject of a national two minute hate. Not once did any of you even wonder why your base, the people you supposedly represent, have to hide behind pseudonyms and proxies simply to talk openly about politics. Instead, you insulted us for not wanting to lose our jobs.

We support Trump because we now know that you’re just like the leftists. You have shown repeatedly you do not have our backs, you hate us just as much as the progressives. You will run us out of jobs, you will engage in the public shaming, and when the time comes, you will happily march us to reeducation camps.

3.  The Hollow State Politics: The Left Behinds vs. Technorati

The forces hollowing us out have enabled the development of a unified ruling class. A class united by global outlook, education, financial success, status, and technological adoption.

This milestone became crystal clear after Super Tuesday, when everyone in the establishment, from the Democratic and Republican party regulars to the media elites to academic policy wonks to senior government employees to the heads of large corporations and financial firms, banded together to denounce Trump.

In that moment, connected as they were on social networks to confront their existential enemy, America's technorati was born.

. . .

The left behinds are the supermajority of Americans getting creamed by the hollowing out of America. 

Americans who lose more good good jobs, benefits, and status with each passing year. Americans who went deep into debt for college (in order to ascend to a slot in the technorati) but are perpetually underemployed. Americans who work all day but can only make enough to buy food with the money they earn.  Americans now adrift in an America so culturally unmoored, it makes the “people of walmart” not only possible, but common.

The problem for the technorati is that the left behinds are starting to realize they've been conned.

All the articles are well worth reading.  One wonders whether anyone in the establishment is listening . . . and if so, whether they'll be willing to do anything constructive about it.

Peter