Neoconservatism, for those who showed up late to this party, has nothing to do with traditional conservatism which has been dead in the Republican Party for decades. It is either uninformed or dishonest to call present-day GOP elites or corporate donors “conservatives.” In the interests of balance, neither does neoliberalism, which I’ll get to in a minute, have anything to do with the classical liberalism of Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill which is just as dead in the water.
We see abject terror among the Western power elites generally, those with real privilege gained from having financialized the U.S. economy (production having been offshored) or moving money around all day (the way Soros got rich): abject terror that Trump may actually win this election, set out to keep his promises, and end the party. Whether he’ll be able to build a wall on the Mexican border, I have no clue. I’m not even sure it’s a good idea when there are better strategies for dealing with illegal aliens (penalizing employers caught hiring them, for example), but Trump would be the first president in decades to take securing the border seriously.
Trump might also stand firm on his previously-stated moratorium against unvetted Muslims being resettled in medium-sized U.S. cities and towns, in light of events such as that of San Bernardino, California. Yes, yes, I know: there are over a billion Muslims on the planet, and the majority are peaceful. True, and completely irrelevant! A minority of Muslims, especially those from the Middle East, are not peaceful! We cannot read their minds. Therefore we have no advance means of knowing who has evil intent until a bomb explodes in a workplace or a nightclub or a supermarket somewhere in an American city instead of Paris!
Folks, this is not rocket science!
Even more frightening for the elites and those who identify with them (I have both received email and corresponded with others about this, sometimes in agreement and sometimes in fierce disagreement): Trump may follow through with his plan for the global economy, working to implement responsible trade instead of “free trade” (corporate-controlled trade). He charges China with protecting its industries and manipulating its currency to boost exports. There is every reason to take such allegations seriously and to hold the Chinese accountable. Incidentally, last time I checked, China was still a Communist country, its corporations state-controlled. How Americans can have “free trade” with a Communist country, one of the most centralized and repressive regimes in the world, is one of those mysteries of neoliberal-globalist economics.
No comments:
Post a Comment