Trump Undermines America’s Tattered Authority – Rigg
“Hillary Clinton and the Democrats deserved to lose the presidential election,” writes Bob Rigg, Wellington-based researcher and writer specialising in nuclear issues, the Middle East, Central Asia, and US foreign policy, in an opinion piece for the Asia Times.
Rigg argues that under Hillary’s husband Bill the Democratic Party “abandoned their traditional working class and black constituencies” when moving to the center. At the same time they were “continuing to rely on their support at the ballot box.”
“Slowly, over decades, it began to dawn on traditional Democratic voters that the Democratic Party was no longer dedicated to serving their interests,” writes Rigg. The Democratic elite, “which lined its pockets with congressional salaries, pensions and benefits and supported the nakedly self-seeking Clinton dynasty” simply disregarded mass unemployment and immiseration, especially in the so-called Rust Belt but also nationwide. Rigg states that the “predatory practices of the Washington elite were actively supported by congressional carpetbaggers who approved legislation that opened the floodgates to every imaginable form of financial manipulation.”
“What does this potted Democratic prehistory have to do with Donald Trump, the unlikely hero of the hour?” Everything, according to Rigg.
Bill and Hillary “were rapidly accumulating a personal fortune in excess of $100 million and were playing a starring role in the life of the nation’s elite” even “hobnobbing” with the Trumps.
“Hillary then, with the sublime arrogance of someone who knew that she was in absolute control of the Democratic Party machine, decided to stand for the presidency. She felt entitled to it, until a renegade pretender called Bernie Sanders emerged from the woodwork and had the temerity to challenge her,” as reported in the article. “If Hillary had been politically smart, she would have invited Bernie to be her vice presidential candidate.” “Her arrogance led her to assume that she could win without Bernie and his loyal constituency,” writes Rigg. “Under the Clintons, the Democratic Party betrayed and radically alienated a sizable chunk of its traditional constituency.”
When Donald Trump, who Rigg describes as a “bully, a bounder, a narcissist and a serial sexual predator”, unexpectedly entered the presidential race “almost the entire GOP elite and many of their financial backers publicly turned against him. But his demagoguery resonated with very large numbers of Americans who felt that both major parties had lost all interest in their concerns,” writes Rigg.
He compares the fervor many were demonstrating for Trump with the “way in which crowds of ordinary German men and women thronged the streets to applaud their beloved Führer, Hitler, who, like Trump, would liberate them from poverty and hardship, and would make their country great again.”
“Trump scathingly attacked financial, business and political elites, although he and his family could throw around more money than most of them. Trump advocated seemingly radical change in US society, yet was advised by conservative GOP troglodytes such as Rudy Giuliani, Chris Christie and Newt Gingrich.”
“Because Trump was discarded by the GOP establishment he turned increasingly to Breitbart news, which is on the far right of the US political spectrum” and “a broad spectrum of far-right groups including even the Klu Klux Klan declared their support for Trump” and “several hundred current and former senior members of the armed forces, all on the right,” publicly declared their support for a President Trump,” writes Rigg. Now “Trump is indebted to this unholy alliance of right wing groupings and GOP troglodytes for their unwavering support when the going was at its toughest” and they are in a position to call in their debts.
Rigg predicts “a short-term honeymoon for Trump”, but that the “temporarily concealed splits and divisions in the GOP will bubble to the surface” sooner or later. The senior GOP members, who crossed him “will be waiting for the axes to fall.” “The honeymoon is likely to end abruptly, with the public beginning to see the Trump administration and the GOP members of Congress as increasingly at odds,” which “will begin to erode public trust in him,” writes Rigg.
Rigg goes on to outline some of the decisions Trump will face when aiming to deliver on his campaign promises. Rigg writes:
“My medium-term perspective is that the unwieldy Trump coalition will begin to fragment, and will become mired in internal differences. The Trump army will increasingly judge him, not by what he says, but by what he does, or does not do. The chickens of Trump’s populism will come home to roost. It’s early days yet. Almost anything can happen. In Nietzsche’s words: ‘Nothing is true, everything is possible.’”
Article Source: Asia Times, Bob Rigg, November 13, 2016
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