Trump’s Fake Populism Exposes Republican Party’s Fake Conservatism

Charlie Barber ’60
The High Plains Reader, Fargo, ND, October 18, 2017
Reprinted by permission of the author and The High Plains Reader

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution”

– Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, 1789

 

“(Auschwitz) is where people were turned into numbers…(It) was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave…We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.”

– Jacob Bronowski, 1973

 

“The most depressing thing of all (in 1981) was the hatred for the poor that developed all across America. Almost overnight, there was a new and widespread hostility on the part of the haves toward the have nots…The (Reagan) administration had people believing that their fellow citizens were getting something for nothing. Millions of Americans who had achieved some success now wanted to pull up the ladder to prevent anyone else from climbing aboard…whenever you have people supporting a Republican while they’re working for the minimum wage, the Democrats don’t have a prayer.”

– Thomas P. “Tip” O”Neill (D-MA) Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1977-1986

 

“If all Republicans were like (Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair) Bob Corker (R-TN), we’d actually get some things done.”

– (Former Governor [D-VT] and Democratic Party Chair) Howard Dean, 10/10/17

 

“I began my political career in 1936, on a slogan of ‘work and wages.’ …I’m still a bread-and-butter liberal who believes (the American dream) that every family deserves the opportunity to earn an income, own a home, educate their children, and afford medical care…In my view the federal government has an obligation to help you along the line until you achieve that dream. And when you do, you have an obligation to help out the next group that comes along…In recent years, this idea has fallen out of favor. Today, there are those who argue that the way to achieve the American dream is to go it alone. This new morality claims that the young should forget about the old, that the healthy should ignore the sick and that the wealthy should abandon the poor.”

–Tip O’Neill, 1987

 

As evidence of a Russian “Cyber Pearl Harbor” attack on U.S. elections in 2016, compiled by “Establishment” Agencies such as the CIA, FBI, U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, and Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, continues to pile up, one glaring generational connection stands out. New Age Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, and his Silicon cohorts at Twitter and Google, may have been more effective “Pimps for Putin” than the 70- something President, Donald Trump.

Evidence also mounts of heroism and dedication of our “Establishment” military and civilian agencies of U.S., State and Local Governments, as well as private individuals and agencies in the face of rain, wind and fire across southern America.

The competence of vast numbers of ordinary Americans stands in stark contrast to the incompetence of President Trump. Their self-sacrifice is a daily rebuke to Presidential and Cabinet officials’ lavish spending at taxpayers expense.

This isn’t a President and his Cabinet which seeks to “promote the general welfare” of the American people. This is a king and his court, caring only to serve themselves and their fellow “aristocrats” among the top 1% of the wealthy in this country.

These men and women are REACTIONARIES, not Conservatives. They wish to turn the clock back, not keep it in place, as a genuine Conservative might be wont to do; or fix a few more things that need fixing, as a genuine Liberal might.

And unless he changes his tune really fast, Mark Zuckerberg is one of these terrible people who wish to undo the very real progress of American history and replace it with his monstrous vision of “virtual reality,” as applied to Puerto Rico.

Thanks to a leakier White House ship of state than many boats caught in recent hurricanes; his overtures to Democrats “Chuck” (Senate Minority Leader, Charles Schumer (NY) and “ Nancy” (House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (CA); and his continuing courting of fellow Fake Populist, Steve Bannon, we also know that “The Donald” is currently doing a fairly convincing, and alarming, reenactment of the “Madness of King George (Broadway, 1994).”

For those who have not had the means (most of us) to see the musical “Hamilton” or heard its marvelous songs on CDs available in any music store; or who were not paying attention in civics or U.S. History classes, the King George in question is George III of England (1760-1820): the real king against which the real American Revolution (1776-1783) was fought, and after which the real U.S. Constitution was formed, which so severely “constrains” the Reality TV star who would be King.

So where are outspoken “Conservatives” in the Legislative Branch among the Majority Republican Party of October 13, 2017, that claims that term as part of its brand or creed, and who do not hide behind specious phrases like “supply side economics” (ie. screw the poor, the middle class and anyone who isn’t filthy rich)?

In the Senate: A few: four or five at most, but not enough to properly redefine the Republican Party as more than a den of reactionary wolves in the sheep’s clothing of Conservatism. One can only hope that, with each daily dysfunctional disaster of the Trump White House, the ranks of Republican Senators who have voted, or spoken out as conservatives; Susan Collins (R-ME); John McCain (R-AZ), Lisa Murkowski R-AK) and Bob Corker (R-TN) will continue to swell.

In the House of Representatives: None to date. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) is a devotee of Ayn Rand, chief intellectual wolf of reaction masquerading as conservatism. Back when neo-conservatism was in vogue, during the Reagan administration Ms. Rand had more company; for example: George Will and William Kristol, currently hiding out in the guise of “wise men” on MSNBC.

MSNBC? Wait a minute! Isn’t that that liberal home of “nattering nabobs of negativism” and Donald Trump’s major source of “fake news” as opposed to the friendly confines of Sean Hannity’s Fox News?

Well, “yes!” But also, “no!” Msnbc is the closest thing American TV viewers have to a “fair and balanced” discussion of today’s political issues, in my humble opinion, since I still wince when I watch the likes of former, but un-confessed reactionaries, Kristol and Will cover themselves in the octopus ink of “confusing and mellifluous cerebrations” (Will-speak for baloney).

Steve Schmidt, a Republican Party stalwart commentator, qualifies as a genuine Conservative to any rational viewer, but I wish he could have followed his denunciation of the “intellectual rot” in the leadership of the Republican Party, with the term “moral rot.” But, as Mr. Schmidt’s avowedly liberal colleague, Rachel Maddow might say: “stay tuned to this channel.”

I am also puzzled and dismayed at the inability of MSNBC “house historian,” Michael Beschloss, to bestow the term “reactionary” on a political party that has deserved it for over three decades. Perhaps he wishes to do so, but the corporate bosses at parent company NBC may not be that keen on letting such “respectable ilk” utter the ghastly truth. That would explain why “bread and butter” liberal commentator, Chris Matthews, recently called openly reactionary Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) a “true conservative” for voting, along with Susan Collins and John McCain, against the “Fake Repeal and Replace of Obamacare” that he helped kill.

For a glimpse at the reality of Republican Party Reaction and moral rot, we can, however, turn to Msnbc’s Ari Melber show, featuring hip hop icon Eminem (a white man) taking his stand as a penultimate anti-Establishment voice on the side of fellow black rappers against Trump’s and Bannon’s fake populism; telling his followers to stop buying his poetry and music if they think their support of Eminem means support of racism and misogyny.

Bill Kristol was a commentator on that show, and he had a chance to say something; but, wisely, was visibly speechless. Bill Kristol knows very well that his own past shilling for reaction has helped produce Americans who are not properly described as: racists, religious bigots, angry white men, or self-hating women, but, more accurately as suckers.