Following is an excerpt from an article published in the NEW REPUBLIC July 12, 2016. On Presidents’ Day 2017, as we pay respect to President’s of the past as well as witnessing widespread dissatisfaction and protests of our current siting president, the words following now seem prescient
If making sense of Donald Trump requires regular reminders that he is an outgrowth of powerful, ingrained political forces, rather than an unfortunate aberration, the world is certainly obliging. He is the patron saint of resentful whites, who are in turn the dominant faction of the Republican Party. But these reminders provide little information about how the American political economy should be reordered to meet the needs of both white nativists and ethnically diverse liberals.
In a country divided such as ours is, an election can help break impasses by providing reasonably clear guidance on what changes the majority of people want to make. But the strangeness of Trump’s campaign is sidelining that guidance. Rather than serving as an exponent of white working-class interests, advancing a policy agenda that would materially benefit his supporters, Trump serves merely as their id.
This has made collateral damage out of ideology. Not since 2000 has a U.S. election been so untethered from substantive questions about how to make people more satisfied with the ways the government serves them. Trump has made this election a referendum on our national identity—are we the kind of country that turns to a demagogue when enough people are frustrated?—rather than on our policy status quo. Once that identity issue is resolved, the question of what comes next won’t have a clear answer.
America choose a demagogue and they got what only 40% of Americans apparently wanted. The other 60% either mildly or vehemently disapprove of the man America placed in the most powerful job I the world.
Aside from Trump’s gross incompetence on other thing can be said bout the man. He is keeping the promises he made on the campaign trail. Most of which are as in American and borsch and Putin.
America got what it voted for. Let the intense buyer remorse, and, extreme resistance begin.
