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Donald Trump — the real estate investor and one-time reality TV star –
defeated a long list of high-power primary candidates, ignored the
disdain and rejection of his own party, took on the Washington elites
across the political spectrum, revealed the entire mainstream media to
be collection of propaganda hacks, tolerated persistent physical
assaults upon his supporters without the benefit of police protection,
overcame all manner of voting irregularities, and won the presidency.
How did that happen? And what happens now?
First of all, let’s forget about all the “American people are stupid”
commentary you’ll hear from the elites and their paid-for media.
Americans are now smart enough not to listen to those people anymore. I
think Trump won because he gave Americans what they want:
Trump is against foreign wars. For
a long time, I’ve thought that the Republican party has been
compromised by its enthusiasm for knocking over legitimate and peaceful
governments worldwide, using a succession of lame pretexts. Iraq was
invaded due to “weapons of mass destruction” that didn’t exist;
Afghanistan supposedly to get one man, Osama bin Laden. (Afghan heroin
production soared afterwards; a marketable commodity even more
profitable than oil.) Democrats weren’t much better (Libya, Ukraine,
others). But the people behind this globalist agenda of war are known
as “neo-cons,” not “neo-libs” – the Republican Party was their main
base of operations. Now that the neo-cons want to incite a war with
Russia, instead of the usual oil-bearing sandpit, it all gets a lot
more serious.
Trump is a tax-cutter: The best
part of the Republican agenda has long been its focus on tax reform,
going back to Reagan in 1980. If not for Republicans’ embrace of
“neo-con” war-making, I think voters would have given Republicans a big
enough majority in Congress to pull this off, long ago. With Trump in
the Oval Office, able to block the warmongers, Congressional
Republicans and like-minded Democrats can get around to finishing the
tax-reform project they began in 1980. Besides Trump's existing
proposals, which include a corporate tax rate of 15% and reductions in
individual tax rates, I think a Jack Kemp/Steve Forbes-style flat tax,
with a top income tax rate under 20%, is possible during a Trump
presidency.
Trump is against open immigration: Europe
is being torn to pieces by open immigration from the war-torn Middle
East, plus a flood of black Africans unrelated to war. Some people,
such as Patrick Buchanan, fear that the great European civilization,
stretching centuries back to the Greeks, will soon be no more.
Trump is against globalist trade agreements: As
we have seen in Europe, where a European common market morphed into a
non-democratic European Union run by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels
– basically, a Chinese mandarinate – so too free trade agreements
around the world threaten to undermine and eventually replace sovereign
democratic governments. And who controls the mandarins? The North
American Free Trade Agreement has long been suspected as the precursor
to a North American Union – the effective end of the United States. The
more recent Trans-Pacific Partnership is full of similar
sovereignity-destroying arrangements. Trump says he will renegotiate
NAFTA and refuse the TPP.
Trump might terminate the bankers’ biggest con-job: floating fiat
currencies. Although he did not mention it much during his campaign,
Trump is clearly open-minded about returning to the monetary principle
that made America great in the past: a dollar based on gold. A return
of Glass-Steagall is also in play.
Trump might end the epidemic of vote-rigging and restore American
democracy. Vote-rigging, and related practices like gerrymandering,
have been a factor in U.S. elections from the start. However, the
introduction of electronic voting brought a whole new world of
corruptibility, beginning around 2000. At first, the phony results
contradicted polls, including exit polls, but that problem was later
solved. If we could know the real vote, Trump might be shown to have
one of the largest margins of victory in the last hundred years. Many
people think that Bernie Sanders was the real winner of the Democratic
primary.
Trump would clean up Washington, beginning with Congressional term
limits. Trump promises six measures to reduce corruption in Washington
D.C., beginning with a proposal for a Constitutional Amendment for
Congressional term limits.
All in all, it is a long list of attractions, and also, a beefy agenda
for office. There was also a lot of enthusiasm for president Obama at
the beginning of his term – even comparisons to Abraham Lincoln — but
by the end he seemed like little more than a public spokesperson for
globalist interests. Trump will face similar pressures. If he can
overcome them, he could be a great president. Let’s hope for the best.
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