Trump Upon a Time The Fairy Tale That May Destroy a Republic

[babylonsister]

http://americannewsx.com/oped/trump-upon-time-fairy-tale-may-destroy-republic/

Trump Upon a Time – The Fairy Tale That May Destroy a Republic

March 19, 2017 Kit Thorton Op/Ed, Politics 0

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“Once upon a time, America was strong.

It was strong because it had factories, more armies than anyone and everyone knew their place. Daddies worked at the factories and the really smart daddies owned the factories. Mommies were pretty and compliant and didn’t mind the daddies being in charge because everyone who was willing to work hard was happy.

But all that changed when some people started complaining. They complained that America was too strong, and a bully to smaller, weaker nations. They started letting in foreign people who didn’t love America the way we do. These foreigners broke the law and made the cities dangerous. They stole jobs from daddies and did terrible things to mommies. The countries these foreigners came from stole our factories, and daddies couldn’t get work, at all.

The President then might even have been a foreigner himself. He had a foreign sounding name, after all. But anyway, he was weak, and wouldn’t get rid of the foreigners, or stand up to the countries that were stealing our factories.

Finally, the real Americans had enough. They rejected the weak President and his helpers and elected Donald J. Trump by millions and millions of votes. Donald Trump believes in the real America, and he knows how to make it happen because he used his intelligence and negotiating ability to make billions and billions of dollars. He stood up to the foreigners and built a big, beautiful wall to keep them out. He stood up to the countries that were stealing from us and made them stop. He brought the factories back because he is a billionaire and knows how to bring factories back. Most importantly, by being inspiring and always insisting on the best, he inspired Americans to believe in themselves again. Truly, President Trumplestiltskin is to millions of real Americans, the one who will “Make America Great Again!” He will spin gold from our straw, he will save the country, and he asked nothing for himself in return.

The End… or, Back To Reality:

Obvious racism and sexism permeate every part of this malignant fairy tale. And every part of this narrative is provably false. There was no time in American history when economic opportunity was equally accessible to all Americans.

Immigrants, legal and otherwise do not steal jobs from other Americans, and no one opened a door to a great rush of immigration. In fact, illegal immigration is in decline, and the crime rate is at near historic lows. Factories are closing primarily because of the rise of automation. Many jobs are lost to vulture capitalism – the practice of buying a business in trouble and then stripping its assets to pay stockholders, or to corporate owners moving them offshore to take advantage of abysmally low wages and working conditions in developing countries – not because foreign countries are unfairly “stealing” them.

Donald Trump didn’t win the election by “millions of votes,” though he continues to make that claim. He has no experience with, or demonstrated ability to “bring factories back” (or coal mining) because he has no experience or record of success with anything but real estate speculation. He isn’t “inspiring,” he has approval ratings substantially lower than those of any President in at this point in his term back to 1953.
But it simply doesn’t matter what the truth is. This story is fervently believed by millions of Americans.

Why? Why do these millions believe that America is on the verge of collapse, when all the data – the stock market, the unemployment rate, the crime rate and every other indicator suggests otherwise? It is because all this happy data is meaningless to someone who has lost their job, their home, their community and their hope. They inflate their personal tragedy to encompass the nation as a whole. When you are thrown down to the bottom of the well, it matters little if it’s a sunny day on the surface.

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Rather than prove Godwin’s Law right once again, I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to think about what has happened historically to Republics that fall to authoritarian, nativist, populist movements. But consider this:

Four years ago, did you think Trump was possible? So what will you consider impossible four years from now?

[Hortensis]

1. Rump billionaire Robert Mercer is a fairy tale consumer

as bad in his way as any of the idiots the lies he paid for influenced. Mercer himself, besides being the single person who did most to get Rump elected, is a gullible billionaire fond of righwingnut conspiracy theories, which he also picks up the same places Rump does. According to former colleagues and employees, here are details his version of this fairy tale:

“Bob believes that human beings have no inherent value other than how much money they make. A cat has value, he’s said, because it provides pleasure to humans. But if someone is on welfare they have negative value. If he earns a thousand times more than a schoolteacher, then he’s a thousand times more valuable.”

Mercer has asserted repeatedly that African-Americans were better off economically before the civil-rights movement. He has also said that the problem of racism in America is exaggerated. The source said that, not long ago, he heard Mercer proclaim that there are no white racists in America today, only black racists.

"The paper argued that, if climate change were real, future generations would “enjoy an Earth with far more plant and animal life.”

Patterson also recalled Mercer arguing that, during the Gulf War, the U.S. should simply have taken Iraq’s oil, “since it was there.” Trump, too, has said that the U.S. should have “kept the oil.”

(Strong-man thinking, not weak man.)

I especially like this one from someone Rump listens to.

Another onetime senior employee at Renaissance recalls hearing Mercer downplay the dangers posed by nuclear war. Mercer, speaking of the atomic bombs that the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, argued that, outside of the immediate blast zones, the radiation actually made Japanese citizens healthier.

Mercer insisted at a staff luncheon that (Bill) Clinton had participated in a secret drug-running scheme with the C.I.A. The plot supposedly operated out of an airport in Mena, Arkansas. “Bob told me he believed that the Clintons were involved in murders connected to it,” Patterson said. Two other sources told me that, in recent years, they had heard Mercer claim that the Clintons have had opponents murdered."

Propagandists at the American Spectator manufactured that conspiracy for a target audience they call the "Clinton Crazies."

Another former high-level Renaissance employee said, “Bob thinks the less government the better. He’s happy if people don’t trust the government. And if the President’s a bozo? He’s fine with that. He wants it to all fall down.”

And one of the Spectator's archconservative audience is a billionaire libertarian fairy tale addict who believes "government should be shrunk to the size of a pinhead." All government. Like Rump, he's a winner a strong man who's above it and doesn't need it.

This is a significant article about one right-wing nutcase who is very important to us.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/27/the-reclusive-hedge-fund-tycoon-behind-the-trump-presidency

[Solly Mack]

2. K&R