Trump Is a Threat to the Establishment and This Is a Good Thing

¶ … Donald Trump Being a Wrecking Ball Could Be the Best Thing to Happen to American Politics

A lot of people have a lot of different reasons for supporting Donald Trump as the Republican Presidential nominee in the upcoming 2016 November Presidential election against whomever the prevailing Democratic nominee will be (Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton). Some like Trump's stance on trade (Beversdorff). Others like his policy on immigration (Hahn). Still others like him simply because the "Establishment" -- represented by men like Mitt Romney, William Kristol and Karl Rove -- appears bent on stopping him, and, so the logic goes, if the so-called "Establishment" hates him, he has to be all right (Buchanan). But what should one make of Trump from a dispassionate perspective? What, in other words, does Trump represent that America is in need of? Change? Obama represented that (theoretically) in 2008 and all the country received was more of the same (Stone, Kuznick). On the other hand, if Trump truly does pose a threat to the "deep state," as it has been identified by Peter Dale Scott in his book entitled The American Deep State, then there may be a legitimate reason to support him. There is no easy way to know for sure just what good (or bad) Trump might bring to the country if he were elected. Just this week, he spoke to AIPAC, one of the more repellent of the moneyed interest groups that regularly buys and sells lawmakers (Mearsheimer, Walt). In that speech, Trump pledged his support of Israel, which is, in all objectivity and fairness, a genocidal, terrorist state, whose former Prime Minister Menachem Begin is on record as self-identifying as the world's "Father of Terrorism" (Howe 38). Thus, no matter which way you look at it, Trump is a wild card. However, this paper will argue that of all the options currently available to the voting public, a wild card may be the only chance America has to pull itself out of the political, economic and social abyss yawning at its feet.

One of Trump's supposed strong suits is that he is not being controlled by special interests, as his campaign is widely acknowledged to be self-financed -- which means that Trump is essentially free to do as he likes -- if he can, that is. Scott has written extensively about how moneyed lobbies influence politics and shape the course of legislation from within the "deep state," so the thought that one man could challenge them just because he hasn't been "bought," so to speak, is perhaps to forget the lesson of November 22nd, 1963. Trump, however, brings his own brand of candor and authenticity -- something that is antithetical to the PC Culture of today and which some find refreshing. It is a kind of honesty, presumably, something that Clinton never had (the only reason she has not been indicted for her violation of security laws is that the White House is protecting her from the FBI's desire to prosecute) (Hugh-Smith) and something that Cruz has yet to learn. Sanders may have the vote of the college young because he vows to get their education paid for, but where all the money for "free" education is going to come from is something no one wants to talk about. The fact is that education is over-priced -- just like everything in the marketplace today, from homes to autos -- and a sub-prime bubble in the latter is about to burst from the looks of it (Alloway). Can trump stop a bubble from bursting? No. But what he can do -- or at least what he says he will do -- is bring back jobs from overseas so that people can once more afford the things they now require 30-year loans to purchase. Indeed, it is one of Trump's consistent points in every one of his rallies: the trade deals over the years, from NAFTA to GATT, have decimated industry in America. How could anyone afford anything anymore? It is a fair question -- and Trump appears to be the only one addressing it. Whether or not he could legitimately force Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, to bring jobs home from China remains to be seen -- but he certainly does have Cook alarmed enough to join the rest of the Sea Island gang in discussing just how to thwart Trump's nomination (Buchanan).

What all of this means is that the merger of government and business that is the cornerstone of modern American democracy is in danger of being upset by a Trump presidency. Trump may miss the mark when it comes to Israel, and he may miss the mark when it comes to "waterboarding" (he is in favor of it because he imagines it produces "results" -- but it is most likely just him posturing in his never-ending bout to appear tough). However, when it comes to jobs and what the multinational corporations have been allowed to get away with by exporting labor to Asia so that they can pay slave wages to Chinese workers, Trump is right. The multinationals have to be brought to heel. Obama is not doing it. Sanders and Cruz have both voiced opposition to the TPP (Plott) but whether either of them has the resiliency to be as effective at following through as Trump appears to have is a question that voters are not likely to get a chance to find out. It appears more and more certain, regardless of the FBI's desire to prosecute Hillary and the Establishment's desire to steal the nomination from Trump come convention time, that Clinton and Trump will be their party's respective nominees.

Nonetheless, Trump is still a wild card -- and a wild card is better than anything else at this point. Trump could be the hammer that delivers a fatal blow to the number of reckless laws that lawmakers have put on the books in recent years. The origination of laws in America is so deeply entwined with the question of "who benefits" ("cui bono?") that one cannot accept lawmaking or lawmakers at face value. With so many corporations now able to contribute money to political campaigns and thereby influence the election of lawmakers, it would be folly to believe that these lawmakers are not being bought in order to make the nation a better place for the companies that stand to benefit. For instance, the Affordable Care Act has done nothing to make health care more affordable and everything to benefit the health care cartel (the AMA) that pushed for this piece of legislation within the Obama Administration. Why should this law be taken at face value -- even as Justice Roberts laughably called it a "tax" in order to justify its validity? Lawmaking in the U.S. has in fact reached its farcical crescendo: anarchy is truly the next step down from here and popular media films like The Purge (and its sequels) appear to profit from exploiting the very real and dangerous lurking desire among the American public to overthrow the current Establishment.

The law, in other words, has become the tool of powerful interest groups, lobbies, companies, multinationals, and other considerable behemoths of modern global markets (i.e., banks). Take the way in which members of the big banks go on to be Treasurers of the U.S. right before launching the biggest tax-payer funded bailouts of said banks (Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner come to mind).

In short, there is no solution to the mess that the nation has gotten itself into other than a total and complete reset -- and perhaps someone like Trump would bring that to the table and perhaps he would not. But the fact that the Establishment (which consists of lawmakers, corporate leaders, bankers, think tank heads, corporate media sponsors, editors and columnists, and globalists) is so obviously dead-set against him may be a clue as to what a genuine outsider free from the corrupting influence of Establishment money could do to reverse the trend of legalism and lawmaking that benefits none but the elite and powerful.

Still, the dispassionate may suspect the cloying nature of today's hopefuls as they toss tidbits of information to their needy public (needy because they need to believe in the political process, in their candidate, in the thought that their vote matters and that they can make a difference). This could easily be believed the case for most pundits. However, Trump appears to have inspired something in the electorate: a sense of civic duty is returning.

With the unexpected surge of popular support for the outspoken, brash and anti-PC/anti-Establishment Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, whose candidacy (along with that of Bernie Sanders) is seeing record turnout at primaries and caucuses, the claim could be made that all that was wanting for civic engagement to increase was a man who would stand up to the Establishment powers that have been allowing the nation to bleed its public dry. In fact, the solution appears to be more than evident in the rise of Trump: what Americans want is a leader who will unite them across the board (in spite of their smaller differences and divisions) and make an assault on the fundamental problems that have led to joblessness and a failure of academic promises to come true. The answer to boosting civic engagement in the U.S. has been there all along -- it just needed an entertainer to make it apparent and mainstream: the answer to boosting civic engagement is, pure and simple, civil disobedience in civic form.

The Establishment has been happy enough to allow Civil Disobedience in the streets ala the Occupy Movement following the bailouts of the Too Big To Fails (such protests were easy enough to co-opt and control), but what it cannot tolerate is when such Civil Disobedience actually turns into a legitimate political movement that resists labeling and identification: its only main attribute is total dissatisfaction with the Establishment trying to keep its voice unheard. Such is why when Kanter asserts that the best way to promote civic engagement is to teach it in the schools and to ensure that "Americans today and tomorrow will have the opportunity -- and will be able to afford -- to go to college, earn their degrees and certificates, and contribute to our social, civic, and economic prosperity," (Kanter 22) one has to laugh: this is the same author who admits that half of college graduates cannot get a job (Kanter 21).

In conclusion, the disenfranchised need to be taken off the streets where their protests are quietly indulged and led back to the polls to vote for leaders who actually stand up for them and prove it by their actions. If there is no one worth following, there is no reason to be engaged: it is a closed system. With Trump -- with men like Ron Paul before him (who had some support but nowhere near the level that Trump has) and others who have come along, the eyes of the disenfranchised have been opened. The question is -- will this time be different? Or will the disenfranchised, given a small glimmer of hope, be lost should their leader fail to make good? In other words, is this a long-term solution -- or just a passing hope? Trump is, after all a wild card: sometimes he hits the mark, other times he is as far off as any of the other candidates are. Yet Trump also has something that makes him seem more impressive than the others: he has a target on his back that the Establishment has placed there. If that does not say something to those who despise the current trajectory of American politics, American society, and the American economy, then nothing else will. Trump may not be America's savior, but he may be just the thing to bring about an end to the reign of Establishmentarian politics. He may be the wrecking ball this country needs.

Annotated Bibliography

Buchanan, Pat. "The Sea Island Conspiracy." Buchanan.org, 10 Mar 2016. Web. 22

Mar 2016.

The main point of this article is that the powers-that-be have it out for Trump because he is an existential threat to their way of life and stronghold on American politics. Trump has vowed to crush the trade agreements that have allowed multinationals to export jobs overseas and that could mean cutting into the profit margins of these companies.