on being in a trumpist's shoes

TL;DR: there might actually be rational reasons to support trump. the article below is an attempt to put myself in their shoes and see how it feels, in an attempt to understand where magas are coming from.

 

NOTE: i contend that a big reason for the large and growing divisiveness of our american political climate stems from people talking too much and listening not enough. as i mentioned in my last article, the problem isn't that we're divided per se, rather the problem is that we have no right to be divided before we truly understand the perspective of those who think differently than us.

your media bubble of choice will completely invent a caricature version of your opponent for you to attack. it's easier to win a debate with a strawman edge-case version of your opponent, than the otherwise valid ideas of your opponent.

so for this article, i'm going to try to write this as if i'm a trump supporter. i'm going to do my best to really understand why they feel the way they do, and more importantly, try to show where the natural end result of what they all want would be taking us.

ok here we go...

ahem... (pulls on a kanye west styled red #maga hat)

the american people have spoken!

duty, honor, standards, ethics, morals, pragmatism, cooperation, are nice, and well-meaning.

these values that john mccain laments are gone or eroding from our culture. and yes, all of these value have their place at certain scales of human interaction. but these values, as the basis of a national political structure, they've all failed us. the corruption of the pre-trump conventional political structures (one obvious example being the clinton machine) have all failed us. trump is achieving results by replacing these values with business principles that actually work: loyalty, winning, self-interest, profit, identifying and crushing enemies, and a political shift that is bending toward giving the president more power, to accomplish more, by eroding the outdated three-branch checks-and-balances model. 

meaning, just like someone who is president, ceo, and chairman of a company, whatever trump wants, a trump-supportive congress should simply provide (rino's and lefties need to just get out of the way), and a trump-supportive supreme court should simply declare constitutional. at that point, they become three branches in name only, and just make everything more efficient by allowing The Leader *we chose* free rein to move this country toward the vision we pulled the lever for.  

(hmm, this is starting to smell like something. eh, nah, let's keep moving.)

while the donald has serious personal flaws and suffers from some toxic psychological issues, so what? blah, blah, yeah, we all do. anyways, the undeniable fact is, it took a trump to disrupt the entire corrupt disfunctional system, and show us through his life, and now his term, that the pursuit of happiness is measured by Results, everything else is secondary. the jury is in: the ends are more important than the means, period full stop. trump's moves toward isolationism are working, and so are more americans. recent economic metrics show that very clearly. 

as for those around the world who dismay over america's evolution away from a loving and giving beacon of freedom, well, they really should let that one go. maybe that was all true, or maybe it was just something cooked up by the America Inc marketing department, but in the end, let's be clear, america is now fundamentally disinterested in anything outside our borders that doesn't generate us a profit. win-win is a kumbaya illusion. fact is, in the end, we have enemies who will not shed a tear if america collapses like rome. in fact, many would party. and i think we all know who they are: hint, they've been invading america and europe for decades, infesting us, playing the long game. so to prevent this requires that we understand that survival depends on winning, nothing more. it's simple folks.

1. if we don't win, we lose.

2. we cannot let anyone want to win more than us, else we lose.

3. we cannot win without forcing that opponent to lose.

4. history will judge us as right, because history is only written by winners.

as for foreign policy, these countries need to start looking out for themselves. figuring out who they are and what they want to be. we are no longer anyone's role model, and we can no longer afford to foot the bill to police the world. foreigners can continue benefitting from our products, services, and technological innovations, but they can do so by continuing paying for them. and when they have resources we need in order to sustain our winning, we will pay for them, or find a way to take them. sounds rough, but check history, folks. it's really been the only way it has ever worked. you know i'm right.

americans are speaking loud and clear. today's results are what we want. today. as for our concept of a long term view, that's what quarterly reports are for. that's it. anything beyond that has too many variables to control, and too complex to waste time thinking about. as for the old core principles for maintaining the foundation of freedom so that future generations decades and centuries from now have place where they can be free. sorry, that is no longer important to us. today's results are on us. tomorrow's results are someone else's problem.

everything above, while billions across the world, many within our own borders view as a disgusting way to run a country and lead a world, is how business has worked for centuries, and not many have had a problem with it. trump is showing us now that while a business approach has always been looked down upon as a basis of international geopolitics, it actually works in this realm too.

i don't think trump hates kim jung-un, i think he envies him and aspires to be him. or maybe it's both. the problem with kim is this: his failure stems from the fact that his family built a dictatorship on top of a structure that is completely unproductive. 

as for putin, trump is obviously inspired by him. putin took an cultural and physical infrastrcture built up for almost a century by communism, and replaced the top tier with a layer of capitalistic oligarchy. it's working out pretty well for him, unconstrained by a pesky media, human rights constraints, or a shackling constitution. communism built for him a cultural and political infrastructure that ended up giving him total authoritarian power.

the foundation trump inherited was even more productive than russia, which should work out even better. 

trump's problem is that he has his own unique constraints kim and putin never had to deal with. there's an american independent media who digs into and exposes everything, dammit. putin doesn't have to deal with that shit. not to mention a pesky constituion that gives him so much less power than putin has. 

so the first war is against the media. repeat your claims of fake news so often that it eventually sticks. as a result, people distrust the media, probably more than we ever have. i mean, to trump, the best measure of a media outlet isn't their truth ratio, it's their ratings. well, you don't get ratings by telling truths, you get ratings by telling the audience what they want to hear. so, two years into that war, it's going really well. majority of americans don't trust the media. 

next up, second war is against federal agencies and civil servants. they control too much and are politically motivated. get your citizens to not believe anything they say. that one's going well too. 

the last war is on a US constitution that provides him almost no power. i can hear him now:

"[trump voice]

hey folks, this old constitution?
is on its third century, amirite?
it's time we all grew up don't you think? 
what would it hurt for us to take a look at this thing? 
maybe rewrite it so that it reflects modern ideals? 
look people, even jefferson said that this thing isn't etched in stone, the quote on his monument about the little boys pants not fitting as a man or something like that. 
or was it his coat?
i don't remember. not important.
anywho, 
this constitution here? 
so outdated, so sad really. 
no one in the world is dealing with something this old. 
it's holding us back. believe me. 
ok, so let's go with jefferson on this. 
constitutional convention, who's with me?
i mean, right after i get this judge confirmed.
you know, the party guy, who's pretty sure i can't be indicted while in office?
maybe the constitutional convention can help me with the after office stuff too.

[jimbarry takes the #maga hat off]

yep, that's coming. ask trump supporters, as much as they love the constitution (or rather, their cherry picked version of the constitution; kinda like their cherry picked Bible) if they'd want to see a constitutional convention to rewrite it from scratch. i bet most of them would.

don't the trumpists see that a congress and judiciary that rubberstamps what the president wants pretty much turns him into a third-world dictator? no? really? no? hmmmm, ok.

eww... ok, that was interesting. i feel grimy.