Introduction
Is Trump a
reflection of America, at least a segment of the population that has proved it
wants him as the next president, or is he a historical accident, an aberration
from the norm in politics? Despite both Republican and Democrat, conservative,
liberal and leftist critics that Trump is not a reflection of the American
mainstream, the astonishing results of the primary voting process reveal a very
different story for a man who could easily win the nomination. This would be
especially the case if the Republican Party establishment owned by billionaires
like Trump supports his candidacy instead of undermining it in every respect
possible.
Although Trump
has opportunistically toyed with right-wing populism - racism, xenophobia,
misogyny, jingoism - and although he is indeed a con-artist as Marco Rubio
calls him and a fraud as Mitt Romney calls him, he is very much a reflection of
mainstream America as much as Bernie Sanders representing the anti-neoliberal
pro-Keynesian wing of the Democrat party.
It is indeed true that he is an embarrassment at home and overseas because
of who he is and because he is a right wing populist approaching as close to
neo-Fascism as any candidate for president.
However, Trump is
a product of and reflects the traditions and institutions as much as any
Republican who in essence represents the same ideological and policy position. Nor can it be argued that the corrupt
billionaires and Republican political establishment is against Trump on moral
grounds as though these people are on a higher moral plane like Pope Francis
who criticized Trump for lacking compassion for the poor trying to cross the
border. Therefore, the issue comes down to the degree to which the Republican
political and business establishment wants Trump as its presidential candidate
no matter what the voters want, and the degree of control the party machinery
and billionaires wish to exercise in the political arena as they are looking
beyond the presidency to House and Senate seats that may be at risk because of
Trump at the head of the party ticket.
Legitimacy and Democracy
Regardless of
whether Trump becomes the nominee or the next US president, the larger issue is
one of a “bourgeois democratic” society’s institutional mechanisms and sources
of legitimacy. If legitimacy rests with the party machinery and the wealthy
people funding it, then the system parading as democratic is a fraud, and it is
not just Trump. The issue of legitimacy is at stake in American democracy and
especially with this campaign of 2016 where the frontrunner and presumptive
nominee after striking a deal with the party bosses finds himself isolated from
the party bosses and those funding the party.
In US, does
legitimacy emanate from the political party apparatus that chooses candidates
and presents them to voters for election? If the people by majority vote for a
candidate that the political party establishment has chosen to be on the ballot
but does not want that candidate does this mean that popular vote is
meaningless as is the electoral process? According to 19th century German
sociologist Max Weber, the sources of legitimacy converge in an open society
and they are based on tradition, charismatic leadership and legal authority.
Based on a constitutional system and laws, legal authority by elected and/or
appointed officials is one source of legitimacy.
The powers of
legal authority are not without limits considering checks and balances in the
US democratic system and popular consent as the underlying source of political
power, at least in theory. It should be stressed that Max Weber never created
linkage between social justice and political legitimacy, whereas his
contemporaries ideologically to the left did exactly that. The question of
popular sovereignty and legitimacy is one with limits in American history that
had excluded slaves, women, and for all practical purposes the poor and
minorities from the voting process. Although in the early 21st
century the system ideally permits for all citizens to vote for pre-selected
candidates of the party machinery, the issue of legitimacy remains a big
question mark because the preservation of the public and private institutions
take precedence over any elected official whose goal must be to serve the
institutions and not change them without congressional authorization.
The Historical Role of the
Wealthy in Politics
Historically in
Europe the very wealthy recognized the symbolic significance of not running for
office and simply manipulating the political process from behind the scenes.
After all, money has always bought political influence at all levels of
government, and one way of protecting the interests of capital has been to rely
on the legislative branch of government because one never knows if the
executive deviates from serving capital as faithfully as the socioeconomic
elites expect. This rule of the very wealthy staying out of politics was broken
in the Age of Imperialism in Europe (1870-1914) when the stakes became so
important that competing interests at the national and international levels
were fighting for market share on a world scale.
More recently,
there have been billionaires like Silvio Berlusconi who was Italy’s prime
minister and many European politicians have used their political office as a
vehicle of moving into the socioeconomic elite class. Last spring a millionaire
businessman Juha Sipila was elected to Prime Minister of Finald by promising to
make the country competitive just as Republicans have been advocating, never
mentioning income inequality or social justice. Therefore, Europe is not
entirely free of the businessman-politician promising the moon to voters.
From its
founding, the US carved a different path than Europe that tended to be
skeptical of wealthy oligarchs in political power. George Washington, Thomas
Jefferson, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover,
Franklin Roosevelt were all multi-millionaires and saw their class interests
converging with the nation’s interests, without necessarily neglecting
completely the marginalized in society.
It is true, of course, that after 1850 and the era of Lincoln we have
layers and professionals with a record of public service running for office,
but they were just as representative of big capital’s interests as the wealthy
presidents. The Gilded Age (1870-1900) proved as much despite presidents in the
White House that were not super wealthy like Washington and Jefferson. There
are remarkable parallels between the late 19th century Gilded Age
and the new Gilded Age of the late 20th-early 21st
century America.
The Progressive
Era (1900-1920) that started at the local level in Wisconsin during the age of
mass consumerism as the Industrial Revolution was expanding the economy
prompted calls by the rising professional middle class for limits on the role
of the wealthy in politics. After all, American politics was blatantly bought
and paid for by the wealthy in all levels of government to the degree that
calling such a system democracy could not be taken seriously.
Ironically,
Theodore Roosevelt who was very wealthy and a Republican favored the role of
the state as an arbiter of capital and he favored reforms that would rationalize
the political economy. He recognized that capitalists left to their own devices
were predatory and the rise of big business meant the need to create large
government bureaucracies to regulate and assist the private sector. In short,
Roosevelt had no illusions that capitalism must be rationalized otherwise it
would cause havoc in society and destroy democracy rooted in pluralism. He knew
first hand that the wealthy had politicians in their back pockets and tried to
broaden the process to integrate the lower middle class into the political
mainstream largely to afford legitimacy to a corrupt system. Progressivism only
regulated big businesses and hardly placed restrictions on capital accumulation
to the detriment of labor.
The Great
Depression forced Franklin Roosevelt to expand on many programs of the
Progressive Era that started at the turn of the century under Roosevelt and
continued under Wilson. Despite opposition by the wealthy who did not want the
state used as an agent of growth and development and an arbiter in society, FDR
had no choice if he wanted to save a system from chaos and collapse. He
broadened the political process and co-opted the lower classes into the
Democrat mainstream, thus affording legitimacy to the system. When the Second World
War ended, however, the US began to slowly deviate from the premises of
government’s role in society, justifying it on the basis of the Cold War and
the need to compete in the world considering the US was the world’s number one
economy having inherited Europe’s and Japan’s imperial role.
Just as people
today complain of wealth concentration among the top one percent, so did the
people in the late 19th century. Just as people today complain that
government is corrupt, bought and paid by the rich, so did the people in the
Gilded Age (1870-1900). Just as people today are receptive to populism from the
center-left and the extreme right because the so-called middle represents the
very rich, so did people in the Gilded Age. The fundamental difference is that
the US economy was expanding very rapidly in the late 19th century
in every sector from agriculture, mining, manufacturing and services. In the
early 21st century there is no comparable expansion, making politics
and the role of the billionaires in society much more controversial. Finally,
whereas in the late 19th century the US had room to expand its
middle class, in the recent Gilded Age from Reagan to the present the middle class
has been contracting and the future prospects are very bleak for upward
mobility.
Billionaires and Trump
The challenge
for Republican or Democrat party politicians who represent the existing social
order and capitalist political economy has always been to forge consensus by securing
a broad popular base in order to govern in what is supposed to be a bourgeois
democracy. It is never easy to convince people from the middle class and
working class that their interests rest with a political representative of the
rich, although it has been done around the world for the last two centuries.
The politicians with the ability to make their case and secure public support
win elections.
The Republican
Party invited Trump knowing that it needed a “star quality” candidate, a
celebrity billionaire with mass appeal to broaden the party’s popular base.
This is exactly what this man did but the idea was to broaden the popular base,
not to win. Someone more mainstream establishment would actually be the one to
win the nomination. Political parties have always sought popular figures to run
for office precisely because of their mass appeal and ability to convince
voters to identify with the candidate, despite the reality that the candidate
is beholden to those who chose him/her to run for office.
The Trump brand
in the age of pop culture sells as much in real estate development as in
politics. After all, Trump made hundreds of millions of dollars selling his
name that he equated with business success; this despite massive losses and
three bankruptcies, failure of an airline business, the phantom Trump
University, etc. Just like the Democrats, the Republicans are a well oiled
political machine and no one can run without the blessing of the party
hierarchy as Trump is doing with self-financing campaign, which in essence
means he does not have to answer to campaign donors. The billionaires and party
operatives invited Trump to run because they knew he was selling the brand name
to voters, mostly white and male without a college degree that aspire to dreams
of becoming billionaires or at least identify with the anti-establishment
nationalist rhetoric, often bordering on Fascist considering he has borrowed
quotes from Mussolini that Trump preaches to win votes.
Just in case
there is any doubt that the wealthy own politicians, just follow the money
trail and look at newspaper endorsements and media coverage. The media built up
Trump as a political messiah so that people would vote Republican. The media
follows the marching orders of its billionaire and millionaire owners. On 3
March 2016, FOX news instructed its reporters and guests to stop giving
Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio any sort of favorable coverage.
In itself this is hardly newsworthy that a news organization would pick
favorites, considering this is how it has been throughout the history of the
press. However, it does reveal the factionalism within the Republican Party at
a time that the economic elites in the US are split over which candidate even
within their own party best represents finance capital. Usually, the wealthy
rally around one candidate and recognize the need to sell that individual to
voters as though he is a popular choice. There have been cases from the 19th
century to the present when the elites have been split about political parties
and leaders, mostly obviously during the election of 1860 that brought Abraham
Lincoln to the White House.
A number of
billionaires, including the founder of Home Depot, the Ricketts family that
owns the Chicago Cubs, the Koch brothers and many others have become public
with their adamant opposition to Trump. Considering he too is from the
billionaire class just like Mitt Romney who ran on the Republican ticket in
2012, there is no reason to oppose Trump if his policy positions are not so
very different from Romney’s and if he is as malleable as some like Jimmy
Carter believe. There are of course many reasons that conservative billionaires
oppose Trump to the degree that some have publicly stated Hillary would make a
better president.
The underlying
assumption that there is solidarity among capitalists is simply wrong, although
there is indeed a common interest among them to keep profits high, and wages
and their taxes low. There are competing capitalist interests and always have
been in the political economy.
a.
The
inability to buy the election, as Bernie Sanders and Trump have argued,
frustrates billionaires, even if the candidate is one whose policy positions
are very close to theirs.
b.
There
are competing interests that believe Trump will favor one or the other. For
example, he has argued that drug companies are engaged in price gauging and
that Apple is taking away jobs from the US and shipping them to China. Clearly,
he would probably favor construction firms because he is on record favoring
rebuilding of the aging infrastructure, probably with mob-connected firms,
although there is hardly a difference between mob money and legitimate one
given the interactivity that takes place between banks and the mod.
c.
His
proposal of taxing Hedge Funds has not been well received by Wall Street and
the banks involved in such products.
d.
Defiance
toward congress, even toward Majority Leader Paul Ryan that Trump threatened of
getting along or paying a big price is no way to forge alliances in Washington
and on Wall Street. This kind of bravado and reckless rhetoric is what the
billionaire-politician Romney alluded to when he asked Americans to oppose
Trump.
e.
Promising
to do something about illegal immigration but in essence winking at the elites
that the Obama policy will continue does not sit well with right wing ideologue
billionaires of the Republican party.
A closer
examination of Trump’s positions on policy, without actually knowing what he
would do once in office if elected, reveals that he is indeed no different than
his colleagues still in the race and hardly different on many issues from
Hillary Clinton a many issues once the hyperbolic populist rhetoric is taken
out.
1.
Ever
since Republican presidential candidate announced he would run for office.
Trump began to denigrate Mexicans, women, Muslims, and just about every
non-white male Protestant group, including Catholics offended by Trump’s
trashing of Pope Francis. The reasons for this is that a segment of American
society that includes the establishment agree with Trump, but disagree on the
modality of expressing such views considering one must abide by political
correctness to cover up bigotry in America.
2.
Although
he proposed assassinating the families of ISIS jihadists, a war crime as the
United Nations defines it, the media stayed silent because they agree and would
never dare support international law.
3.
When
he berated the Pope, the media sided with Trump against Francis who argued that
Christians built bridges not walls. Pope Francis is the most leftist Pope in
modern history and a critic of American consumerism and the culture of greed
that the US media and establishment support as part of the value system.
4.
When
he proposed sending back more than 11 million illegal aliens, conservatives
found it difficult to justify defending illegal aliens, except to argue that
they do provide cheap labor and it would cost too much to ship them back. How
could they oppose Trump considering this is a core issue for the Republican
Party that rhetorically opposes non-white immigrants but in practice uses them
for cheap labor just as Trump has in his hotels and construction projects?
5.
When
he argued that he would go to an economic war against China, Japan, South Korea
and Mexico, no politician or media bothered pointing out that the world economy
is tightly integrated and economic nationalism makes no sense for the US at the
core of globalization. How could anyone argue that that products coming from
Mexico and China are made by US firms and in Japan and South Korea exporting companies
in which US investors have a stake. How could anyone argue that Japan finances
the US debt and unleashing an economic war would also have geopolitical consequences
that would only strengthen China and weaken US strategic allies in Asia?
6.
When
he argued that he would have the Chinese “get rid of” the leader of North
Korea, no one criticized such a proposal because political assassinations and
coup d’etat hardly pose a problem for either Republican or Democrat.
7.
When
he proposed cutting the Department of Education, no Republican or the press
asked why because they agree. After all, the teachers and their unions have a
long-standing history of usually voting Democrat. Moreover, the media and the
Republicans have cultivated the perception that the Department of education is
to blame for all calamities befalling the country’s educational system. Never
mind that schools well funded in rich communities have excellent schools while
the ghetto suffers along because its schools are underfunded owing to funds
going to support prisons.
8.
When
Trump argued that he would send in massive forces to defeat ISIS, no one in
either political party or in the media bother pointing out that jihadists
operate in roughly fifty countries and employ unconventional methods of warfare
that have proved almost impossible to eliminate with conventional means in the
last two decades.
9.
When
this man employed the nebulous slogan “Make America Great Again”, only Clinton
insisted that America is already great because she is running on the Obama
legacy, such as it is with a record of pursuing neo-liberal policies that make
the rich richer. No conservative dared to argue that America is already great because
that would be an endorsement for Obama. Therefore, Trump reflects their view.
10. When he proposed eliminating OBAMACARE, no Republican
or mainstream media objected because it is an anathema for the conservative
elites and big business to support social welfare. However, they have no
problem when Trump proposed lowering corporate taxes at home and to have
corporate money repatriated. How could the media and the conservatives
criticize Trump for wanting to erode social welfare and strengthen corporate
welfare?
11. When he proposed cutting funding for Planned
Parenthood, there was no criticism from the Republicans because they advocate
the exact same thing.
12. When he offered unqualified support for the Second
Amendment, neither his Republican colleagues nor the media argued that
something must be done to bring under control the epidemic of shootings with
handguns.
13. When he admitted that he hates to pay taxes and there
are reports he pays very little taxes, no one had a problem with this issue
because it is ubiquitous among conservatives who want the working class and
middle class to carry the brunt of the tax burden through direct and indirect
taxation. There are studies indicating Trump’s proposed tax cuts for the rich
would cost an estimated $1 trillion per year; this in a country that has $19
trillion in public debt soon to rise at $21 trillion. The irony here is that
Trump has said his plan would lower the debt but non-partisan groups looking at
his tax policy insist the opposite would be the case.
14. Although he is on record opposing the war in Iraq, and
argued that Saudi Arabia is the world’s biggest “funder of terrorism”, he has
repeated the need to bomb ISIS in Syria and Iraq, and placing troops on the
ground to bring down Syria’s Assad.
15. Trump alarms US allies so he is unacceptable. Reagan
alarmed allies as did George W. Bush, but they were both presidents that much
of the world viewed very unfavorably and destabilizing for the world. Why would
Cruz or Rubio be any less destabilizing for the world than Trump the deal
maker? It is indeed true that conservatives, centrists and leftists around the
world are amazed that the US has Trump as a frontrunner, but they would be more
interested in making sure he does not pursue economic nationalism or start new
wars as his hyperbolic rhetoric would suggest. They have the exact same concern
about Cruz and Rubio, and they realize that any president would have
constraints from congress.
16. When he publicly stated that he wants to repeal the
law to after the media legally on libel cases, there was no outcry by
politicians, business people or even most of the media about the First
Amendment and freedom of the press.
17. Even when he
was forced to repudiate David Duke, a well known KKK member, many conservatives
argued that this is not as bad as some present it because the late West
Virginia Democrat Senator Robert Byrd was also a former KKK member in his youth
during the 1940s. Ultra right winger Mike Huckabee among others noted that Sen.
Byrd endorsed Obama and that was acceptable but Duke endorsing Trump is an
anathema. In short, we are all Klansmen here under these three-piece suits so
let’s just stop pretending. Trump’s hesitancy to denounce emphatically
the KKK has been cited as proof he does not belong in the Republican Party.
However, institutional racism as manifested in the criminal justice
system, the educational system,
infrastructural policies such as the Flint Michigan water poisoning afflicting
blacks, all these are acceptable.
18. Business deregulation that would be in line with the
neoliberal mainstream all administrations have pursued since Reagan. This would
result in fewer environmental, labor, health and safety regulations. Republicans and many Democrats hardly have a
problem with neoliberal policies such as these considering this is the general
direction they have been going in the last three decades.
Many critics of
Trump pretend as though he is a recent visitor from a distant planet, as though
he is not a reflection of the Republican Party and at least a segment of
American society. Although “Trumpism” has similarities with “Reaganism”, among
them Nativism and xenophobia, underlying racism and sexism, jingoism and right-wing
populism embodying the popular issues already part of the Republican Party
mainstream, there are many who insist he is outside the mainstream of
Republican politics.
Organized Crime: It is true that he may be an embarrassment because Trump
has worked with organized crime in New York. When confronted with the
allegations, he replied that he had to work with organized criminal elements to
have his hotels constructed because organized crime controlled the cement
business. A number of US banks have paid fines for laundering drug money, so
why should Trump be an exception to major banks?
Trump University: He may carry a stigma because he created an unaccredited
makeshift real estate university that was in essence a “get-rich quick scheme”
where students’ tuition ran as high as $35,000. Trump University turns out to
have been another of the billionaire’s many ways of making money promising the
moon and delivering nothing. The US government has been investigating a number
of online and brick and mortar colleges that promise the moon and deliver fast
food jobs to their students. Why should Trump be any different?
Illegal Workers: It is true he may have hired illegal workers
knowingly and had to pay more than $1,000,000 in fines. He publicly justified
on the basis of worker shortage, not low wages. It is also true that he used
tax abatements to make money in real estate and there are reports he probably
pays very little or no taxes.
KKK: Only when Trump was not emphatic and categorical about
disavowing former Ku Klux Klan member David Duke and the Klan did some elements
of the mainstream media turn on him. It is one thing to embrace aspects of the
Klan’s belief and entirely another to remove the thin veil of political
correctness that exposes a mainstream politician as just another Klansman and
neo-Nazi. White Anglo-Saxon Protestants want to project the appearance of
respectability by distancing themselves from neo-Nazis and the Klan, while all
along wholeheartedly supporting institutional racism as evidence by the
criminal justice system that weighs heavily in the black and Hispanic
communities; poising blacks in Flint Michigan for profits; police shootings of
black youth in the inner city; black youth unemployment at 50%, and a series of
other real life measures that keep the apartheid society alive and well. Obama
not Trump has been the president in the last seven years when all of this has taken
place. If Obama is not doing much about racism, why should a right-wing
populist trying to win the White House?
Conclusions
It hardly
stretches credulity to conclude that Trump is not the ideal candidate for a
“normal” individual to be displayed at a psychologists’ convention.
Nevertheless, within the realm of what is acceptable as normal in politics,
Trump may be granted a generous pass. One could argue that a politician would
have to be inhuman to propose massive displacement of 11 million illegal
immigrants; or the deaths of thousands of innocent people as a result of a jingoistic
foreign policy? But Reagan and George W. Bush were harsh toward minorities and
carried out foreign interventions resulting in millions dying and displaced.
Yet, Reagan and Bush are heroes, while Trump who advocates similar measures is
outside the Republican mainstream?
I am amazed that
even leftist critics of Trump have difficulty assessing the situation. Some
have argued that the Trump phenomenon represents white anger and fear because
society is changing demographically and the economic pie is becoming smaller.
Demographic change and smaller economic pie has actually hurt minorities more
than whites, but it is true the absence of upward social mobility among whites
has driven a segment of them to the right politically. Another critique by the
left is that the Trump phenomenon represents a breakdown of society and or the
two-party system essentially representing the same class. It is true that both
parties have always represented the same capitalist class, but it is just as
true that American society was on verge of breakdown during the depression of
the 1890s and of the 1930s. Yet, it bounced back and revived itself.
What is so
different in the early 21st century? The US has actually slipped
very rapidly into a role of interdependence with China that is headed for
global economic hegemony. This is hardly good news for those who believe in the
American Dream accessible to all who work hard. The increasingly secondary role
of the US in the world economy and its dogmatic insistence on policing the
world as political and economic leverage is running its course and will
continue to erode living standards.
All candidates
agree that the debt at $19 trillion will rise to $21 and probably well in the
upper 20s in the next ten years. This means that unless there is a radical
shift in the political economy, America of the 2030s will probably resemble
that of the 1930s. The political arena reflects the ugly realities in the
economy and society. In the end the larger question is how the electoral
process has exposed the reality of the wealthy in control of the political
class trying to sell a dream to voters, a brand like the “Trump band” when in
fact there is nothing but empty air behind it because the real economy is faltering
under the existing system. The future is bleak and the stakes very high for the
wealthy trying to make sure they retain their privileges as the economy is on
its way to a long steady decline relative to China and Asia at large.
