What Can We Learn From Trump’s Victory?

What We Can Learn from Trump’s Victory

In the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, Trump was the victor over H.Clinton (‘Clinton’). Any presidential campaign election contest is complex and multi-faceted. However, in extracting significance, we can say that Trump more successfully appealed to the rage of the U.S. white male working class and its nationalist sentiments.

Trump played to the prejudices of the North American white working class¹, whilst the white working class – particularly those without a college degree – were suspicious of Clinton’s campaign contributions from ‘the rich liberal establishment’. They were further suspicious of Clinton’s elitist rhetoric in her leaked emails, with Clinton falling ‘victim’ to and as exposed by Wikileaks activist hackers.

Trump captured the anti-establishment and conservative vote, appealing to their rage at so-called ‘globalist’ liberals, who are seen as undermining U.S. sovereignty, the very design of the republic as intended by its founding fathers and its constitution.

The State of the Nation, Pre-Election

Pre Trump’s election as President of the U.S., the country was virtually bankrupt, with a national debt at an all time record of $19.57 trillion. Furthermore, the U.S. was gutted of its manufacturing industry with its domestic manufacturing base unable to compete with state capitalist enforced sweat shop labour abroad. Without domestic tariffs on importing goods from other countries, giant multi-nationals are better able to profit from off-shore ‘havens’  of cheap sweatshop labour in industrial manufacturing jobs and industrial sectors at large. Furthermore, importing goods that can be made domestically is utterly insane from a valid global environmental perspective. This is because it wastes resources and contributes unnecessarily to the anthropogenic climate change crisis.²

This national debt blowout was caused by and the result of, primarily, the derivatives bubble and the ensuing bailouts of unaccountable financial institutions and banks. For the vast majority of the U.S. populace, this bailout, to many, was nothing less than a treasonous act of ‘corporate socialism’. The implicated financial institutions initiated an irresponsible barrage of toxic and unsustainable paper assets they called ‘financial derivatives’. These paper assets resembled not reasonably and tangibly much of the real world economy, neither the domestic U.S. economy, nor the international economy at large. Financial assets hold legitimacy, only in that they represent tangible real capital capable of productivity from which everyone can and should benefit and enjoy, or so the finance investor capitalism theory goes. Here it’s necessary to paint the latter as lesser of two evils: regular and less abstracted financial assets are a lesser evil when compared with the fictitious and highly abstracted paper assets that are financial derivatives.

They – unaccountable finance oligarchs, created a panic atmosphere and intimidated congress. Allegedly they were ‘too big to fail’.  To many, this is an insult to free-market ideology, and the principle of taxation only with representation upon which the U.S. was founded.

If they weren’t bailed out, they threatened that the entire U.S. economy would collapse, and that there may even be martial law instituted.

Some commentators have labelled this behaviour, as a form of financial terrorism.

The bailout has been estimated to be $16.8 trillion by certain sources.

Campaign Promises & Rhetoric

Clinton, insofar as her campaign promises, was by far the better candidate on most issues – on climate change, workplace equity (profit-sharing for employees), the corporate tax rate, college fees/debt, pro-choice for women, and was/is generally, less inflammatory and more sensible with her rhetoric than Trump. However, Trump may have been less inflammatory regarding U.S. relations with Russia.

But could the U.S. populace, and the global populace at large really be certain that Clinton would hold true to her promises? After all, Obama did a 180 on most of his campaign promises including tax hikes on middle income earners, the undertaking not to use signing statements to subvert congress, expanded the so-called ‘Patriot’ Act inaugurated by Bush Jnr and filled his administration with finance and Wall Street oligarchs.

Cogswell further deconstructs and dispels the myth of Obama:

“Obama addressed the issues that concerned the American people, promised to restore law to government, close Guantanamo prison camp, to end the war in Iraq, to stop torture as a U.S. policy. But once he got into office he appointed prominent Wall Street and financial industry kingpins to most of his cabinet posts, and one by one turned his back on most of the promises he had made during the campaign. As his campaign promises collapsed, it increasingly looked to those who had supported him and believed in his call for change, that the power that rules America had not changed hands at all. The same financial elite that created the conditions that led to a collapse were put in charge of managing during the collapse. The country went into what became glibly referred to in the mass media as a “jobless recovery,” which meant that Wall Street’s profits recovered quickly and were soon soaring, as the companies that were bailed out by taxpayers lavished giant bonuses on banking system insiders, and an increasing number of mainstream Americans lost their homes, their jobs, their pensions…Obama became the perfect right wing enabler, the perfect foil.”³

This raises the issue of differing types of democracy. I allege that capitalist representative democracy lacks political accountability. Our evolution is based on person-to-person social accountability in small tribes. Elected politicians in capitalist representative democracy are too far removed from the lives and livelihood of voting citizens, and are thus unaccountable, especially considering the powerful lobbying groups which have amassed great wealth. The citizens’ right to impeach an elected president or prime minister if they breach their campaign promises, which must become a form of legal contract with their electorates, simply must be mandated and legally enforced.

President Obama’s stance on healthcare was refreshing from a left-liberal or democratic socialist perspective, and the battle for socialized healthcare for North Americans still rages on. The right criticized Obama for insurance company corporatism and was fearful of “big government” ‘top-down’ healthcare calling it “Obama-Care”. Were Obama’s healthcare reform proposals excessively ‘corporatist’ with excessive kickbacks to the health insurance companies?

Somewhat alarmingly, Clinton is a member of the unelected capitalist elitist think-tank Council On Foreign Relations (‘CFR’), which is a non-democratic organisation of political, finance, and big-business oligarchs. (See https://www.cfr.org/event/hillary-rodham-clinton). Could we really believe that Clinton was and/or is a woman of the people? Ultimately, where do her allegiances lie? Is real political policy being developed covertly here without input and representation of all democratic stakeholders? The CFR is certainly excluding the voice and interests of small business and unions in its membership representatives and thus in its political representation. I am not alone in believing that this organisation is serving the narrow economic and political interests of the globalist ruling elite, using the U.S. and its foreign-policy as a political spearhead, despite the flowery-language adopted in its publications and discourse.

Trump appealed to the general sentiments amongst a large portion of the U.S. population that the invasion of Iraq was wrong. Trump’s argument was that this invasion fueled the spread of ISIS. This is a valid reason for opposing the invasion. A better reason for opposing the invasion, is, however, that the war killed over one-hundred and fifty thousand innocent civilians⁴. Trump also alleged that the ‘early’ withdrawal of troops from Iraq was a further geopolitical mistake.

Trump somewhat audaciously promised he would build a wall at the U.S. southern border with Mexico. Ab initio, this seems a red flag to those who are socially minded. However, it is not necessarily a bad idea, as long as the U.S. takes in a responsible number of peoples genuinely fleeing persecution in their native countries, through conducting robust and proper background checks on would-be immigrants and asylum seekers. It seems an expensive endeavour, and one that may really not be worth the amount of taxpayer money spent on it? Why not at the Canadian border also?

Clinton Versus Sanders

Sanders contested Clinton in the Democratic Party Presidential Primary in 2016.

Sanders was streets ahead of both Trump and Clinton with his genuine social-democratic stance on economic issues and was more progressive on environmental issues than Clinton.

On environmental issues, I would add that good environmental policy should be incrementalist in nature: i.e. firstly, the government should implement financial incentives for renewable energies, before more drastic measures are made. This is to prevent economic and industrial meltdowns and collapse, that would come about through implementing too drastic environmental policy too quickly. Many people were sceptical of Sanders, seeing his environmentalism as extremist.

However, Sanders had real potential to appeal to the rage of the working class, especially since his campaign contributions did not come from rich political donors.

Sanders also has a good track record of standing up to Wall Street, and sticking up for Main Street. He has done this from a left leaning perspective, in contrast with the free-market Republican congresspeople like Ron Paul who have challenged unaccountable financier factions in both major parties, but for different ideological reasons.

Sanders is attacked by voters on the right (and sometimes on the left) on his stance on gun control. However, Sanders is merely for universal background checks, and the banning of assault rifles. The right to bear arms for citizens of any country is an important right, which acts as a deterrent to centralized police forces and paramilitary policers that have been given exorbitant authorization(s) in the wake of draconian ‘anti-terror’ legislation, all across the world. The so-called ‘Patriot Act’ in the U.S., is one such alarming example of this insidious phenomenon. The right to bear arms should not be granted unequivocally but rather to citizens 25 years or older. Current scientific research shows that the brain does not reach full biological maturity until the mid-twenties, with women’s brains maturing faster than men’s. I allege that blanket bans on the right to bear arms, is currently one of the many blind-spots of some on the left. Countries with stricter licensing protocols on the sale of and right to bear arms have much less gun violence than in the U.S..

Weapons must be mandatorily locked away in safes, so that children, teenagers, and young adults cannot access them. Furthermore, there should be restrictions on the types of fire-arm weapons that can be purchased by matured responsible adults.

Sanders is also attacked by many on the right for vying to introduce tax increases on the middle class. In my view, much of the middle class is underprivileged as many middle-class individuals do not own their own house or piece of land outright, and instead may only own these as couples with families. We should be cautious of increasing taxes on the middle class, as it is the richer classes which have much larger systems and mechanisms of wealth leveraging which can lead to more passive forms of income generation which points to a direct exploitation of the labour of others.

On Granting Privacy to Election Candidates & Public Officials

Arguably, Clinton’s leaked emails by Wikileaks, were inflated in importance and taken out of context in many ways. The damage done to her campaign by those leaked emails may have been unfortunate.

However, without socially and legally instituting direct democratic structures into the political system in the U.S. and in all other countries, the use of activist hacking by social justice advocates, may have some political expediency, to reveal and expose, in particular, Manchurian and otherwise corrupt political candidates.

After we succeed in implementing direct democratic controls (which, of course, requires a mass movement: a critical mass of well-enlightened, politically engaged peoples), with the populace being allowed to vote more on ‘ideas’ rather than on demagogic personalities, the lesson is that we should learn to respect people’s right to privacy and judge politicians on the policies they stand for in public rhetoric and political praxis. Just like, or similarly, one should judge a philosopher on their formally published works – formally published ebooks, books, journal articles, magazine articles, blog-posts and formal corrigendum – the works, in these ways, that they intend to publish themselves!

The lesson here is that Clinton would be right in alleging that stateswomen and men (as well as citizens generally) can ‘vent’, adopt different ‘personas’ in interaction with different and diverse people and stakeholders in intersubjective exchanges and more privately, in your private life, including private emails. But, at the same time, concurrently enact humane social discourse-dialectics and performance for citizens, and humane political dictates in executive decision-making, and legislative enactment for politicians and public officials.

There are different modes of intersubjective social interaction: public, quasi-public, semi-public and semi-private, and private. These intermix with different forms of socially-reified expression in (human) communication: written communication and verbal face-to-face communication, as well as mixed-types such as engaged-videos of people reifying auditory and visual communications (which entails additional-utilizing kinesic and paralinguistic forms of (human) communication).

Clinton’s actions, in regards to her emails, are further validated in that politicians, in order for efficacy and proper discharge of their public duties, must be diplomatic in negotiations with campaign donors and different power interest blocs – the graceful art of political compromise in political negotiation – to (help) maximise the public (and social-political) good.

And, there is unnecessary damage done in breaching privacy of any citizen (stateswoman/man or not), especially since leaking these is to, in some way, take them out of their private context.

This is why many working people have disclaimers at the end of their emails.

I argue, there is an implied disclaimer in any email – that it is inherently intended for recipients in the mind of the sender. And thus the burden is on any recipient (genuinely intended (by the sender) or otherwise) to reasonably discharge their obligation to the sender to keep that email private.

Conclusion

As well as implementing direct democracy, we have to eschew and overcome the reactionary stance that just because rich people support something, or that a candidate is wealthy, that it automatically follows that their political praxis is bad or precludes good political praxis! Are they politically supporting the working class and redistributing their own wealth (excess) to economically less fortunate peoples?

1. Naureckas, Jim 27 November 2016, ‘Appeal to the Working Class? Don’t Bother, Says Krugman’, Common Dreams, last accessed 9 December 2024, http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/11/27/appeal-working-class-dont-bother-says-krugman ↩︎
2. In these ways, the capitalist unfettered economics’ doctrines of absolute and comparative advantages, in particularly informing laissez-faire free-market trade between nation states, seems to me to fail to fully factor in environmental costs and concerns as negative externalities in its appraisals of economic efficiencies; further to this is in the failing to factor-in the territorial humanizing qualities and wide-reaching benefits of edifying and instituting domestic and localized production as a guiding environmental, economic, (culturally) diversifying and political principle; comparative advantage is “the ability of an individual or group [or nation/country] to carry out a particular economic activity more efficiently than another activity [compared with another person, group or country]”; absolute advantage is “the ability of an individual or group [or nation/country] to carry out a particular economic activity more efficiently [using less resources] than another individual or group [or nation/country]”. Oxford Languages, last accessed on Google 9 December 2024. These economics’ concepts are independently reputable and politically durable – immortal scientifically rigorous principles and truisms if you like, just not in the narrow ideological deployment serving capitalist free-trade agreements that tend to undermine nations’ capacities for more autonomous domestic and localized productions. ↩︎
3. Cogswell, D and Butzer, C 2012, Unions For Beginners, For Beginners LLC, Hanover, New Hampshire, pp. 155-156. ↩︎
4. Iraq Body Count, last accessed 9 December 2024, https://www.iraqbodycount.org/ ↩︎