To undo the complete range of slanders and lies told about Donald John Trump by a partisan and dishonest media would take an entire book, and even then, he’d only be a neutral entity, with no merits or demerits to his candidacy. This article is not a defence but a positive statement of support for Mr Trump and an explanation of why he is the right choice for America, not just a lesser of two evils.
We are told Mr Trump does not have the “temperament” to be President. This line of logic is accentuated by the fact that no former president has yet endorsed Mr Trump, and Bush the first has recently announced his support for Clinton the second. Since at least the retirement of Ronald Reagan, America has elected smooth-talking, but ultimately uncontroversial, presidential candidates who do not fundamentally disrupt the status quo, even if they promise to do so. What has electing these characters achieved these last twenty-eight years? What is this status quo Mr Trump is such a direct threat to?
The status quo is an overstretched, decaying empire, directionless in foreign policy, yet an empire in the process of starting a new Cold War with Russia and signing away its sovereignty to corporate trade cartels, NATO and the UN.
The status quo is the weakest economic recovery since the 1940’s, with millions of jobs leaving the United States and a crumbling healthcare system whose very creator admitted it was only passed after a campaign of deception ordered from the White House.
The status quo is totalitarian political correctness on our campuses, a dishonest media out of touch with broad swathes of society and a nation at its most racially divided since 1968.
Overthrowing a corrupt status quo was how America was founded, and it is how it has been renewed once in every generation
How is this changed? As a student of history, one notices that fears of decline and collapse have permeated American political culture since the foundation of the Republic. Often the fear of decline coincides with presidential elections. Examples of such “decline elections” include but are not limited to 1828, 1860, 1868, 1920, 1968 and 1980 which elected Jackson, Lincoln, Grant, Harding, Nixon and Reagan to the presidency respectively. In each election, America faced a dire crisis dividing the nation, and in each election firm, mostly Republican, leadership identified the problem (whether it be the divisions between North and South in 1828 and 1860, the divisions between races in 1868 and 1968 or the declining economy in 1920 and 1980) and solved it. They often did so against much popular prejudice, Jackson, Lincoln and Reagan all being viciously attacked as hicks before being admitted into the pantheon of presidential greats. Each president overthrew a corrupt status quo and reformed America through vision and perseverance. Overthrowing a corrupt status quo was how America was founded, and it is how it has been renewed once in every generation.
Is Trump such a candidate? It is clear Clinton is not. She is the epitome of status-quo preservation. Her “radical” plans on women’s rights or the minimum wage are just extensions of Obama’s policies. When forced to concede ground to the Trumpite insurgency, such as her recently found opposition to the TPP, she looks directionless and adrift. Her opposition is opportunistic and will likely expire come November 9th.
it’s pretty clear that on foreign policy and political correctness, Clinton is even worse than Obama
When electoral politics prevents her from speaking truthfully about the growing epidemic of crime in African-American communities, she first denies crime is going up (it is) then claims that it’s all okay because black churches are vibrant. Trump relating the racial disquiet to areas in which he owns property may sound crude but it underlies a fundamental point: Trump has an incentive to fix these problems. Rioting in the vicinity of luxury hotels is bad for business. Clinton can only give meaningless inoffensive platitudes that don’t stop the bloodshed of African Americans on the streets of New York and Chicago. She doesn’t care because she doesn’t have to care.
As on racial disquiet, so on other issues, Trump has a personal stake in solving America’s problems. He cannot simply cut and run to an expensive mansion in the Hamptons come 2021 or 2025. Trump’s stake means that, however colourful some of his comments may be, he has never deigned to call a quarter of Americans, “deplorables”. It may be good politics for Clinton to disparage the white working class, but it’s bad business for Trump to insult customers.
And it’s pretty clear that on foreign policy and political correctness, Clinton is even worse than Obama, whom to all his credit has ignored the idealists and stayed out of Syria (though not completely), and has condemned political correctness on campus. No such unpopular pronouncements have been forthcoming from Clinton, and of course her policy in Syria is to hand a secular stable regime to such lovely gentleman as these and these.
Trump’s nomination has sprouted one of the most intellectual dialogues about American policy since 1980
None of the above presidential greats had all the answers on election day, and it is folly to expect the same of Mr Trump. Evidently his policies have changed since he announced his candidacy 16 months ago and they will change over the course of his presidency. But the questions guiding his thinking have remained the same. These questions include, but are not limited to.
- Why not America first? The only logical alternative is America Second? America thirteenth? America last?
- The US has spent $6 trillion in the Middle East? How has US national security benefitted from this expenditure and could the money have been spent better?
- Is peace with Russia to be maintained or is a new Cold War to be started?
- When US-backed forces appear to be fighting each other, what exactly is our objective in Syria?
- What is the purpose of NATO in the 21st century and how has the US benefitted from NATO over the last 25 years? If it hasn’t, how can NATO be made to work for its biggest benefactor?
- How has American trade and immigration policy over the last 30 years benefitted the average American, particularly the average American on low incomes?
- How does living in lawless cities benefit law-abiding African Americans?
- Does telling the truth matter more than avoiding offence?
- Is it more democratic to determine the discourse of politics on Twitter or by elites in network boardrooms?
- Is the nation state still the paramount actor in international politics?
Trump’s average voters do not read Edmund Burke or William Buckley, they don’t peruse the pages of National Review every week and they don’t speak the way the media wants them to. But far from him being a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal, Trump’s ascent to the Republican nomination has sprouted one of the most intellectual dialogues about the direction of American policy since the nomination of Ronald Reagan in 1980, and the most intellectual discussion on American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War.
In an election in which Clinton has no answers and Trump only has half answers, it is prudent to support for the candidate who is at least asking the right questions. That candidate is Donald John Trump.
