Posted on 03/01/2016 5:37:11 PM PST by Kaslin
The difference between Donald Trump and Barack Obama amounts only to whatever difference may exist between each emperor’s set of cronies.
The Obama years have brought America to the brink of transformation from constitutional republic into an empire ruled by secret deals promulgated by edicts. Civics classes used to teach: “Congress makes the laws, the president carries them out, judges decide controversies, and we citizens may be penalized only by a jury of our peers.”
Nobody believes that anymore, because no part of it has been true for a long time. Barack Obama stopped pretending that it is. During the twentieth century’s second half, both parties and all branches of government made a mockery of the Constitution of 1789. Today’s effective constitution is: “The president can do whatever he wants so long as one-third of the Senate will sustain his vetoes and prevent his conviction upon impeachment.”
Obama has been our first emperor. A Donald Trump presidency, far from reversing the ruling class’s unaccountable hold over American life, would seal it. Because Trump would act as our second emperor, he would render well-nigh impossible our return to republicanism.
Today, nearly all the rules under which we live are made, executed, and adjudicated by agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and countless boards and commissions. Congress no longer passes real laws. Instead, it passes broad grants of authority, the substance of the president’s bureaucracy decides in cooperation with interest groups.
Nancy Pelosi’s remark that we would know Obamacare’s contents only after it passed was true, and applicable to nearly all modern legislation. The courts allow this, pretending that bureaucrats sitting with their chosen friends merely fill in details. Some details! Americans have learned that, as they say in DC, if you are not sitting at one of these tables of power, “you’re on the menu.”
Trump’s claim to be an enemy of rule-by-inside-deal is counterintuitive. His career and fortune have been as participant and beneficiary in the process by which government grants privileges to some and inflicts burdens on others. Crony capitalism is the air he breathes, the only sea in which he swims, his second nature. His recipe for “fixing” America, he tells us, is to appoint “the best people”—he names some of his fellow crony capitalists—to exercise even more unaccountable power and to do so with “unbelievable speed.” He assures us that, this time, it will be to “make America great again.” Peanuts’ Lucy might reply: “This time, for sure!”
In recent years, Obama and the Democratic Party (with the Republican leadership’s constant collusion) have prevented Congress from voting to appropriate funds for individual programs and agencies. They have lumped all government functions into “continuing resolutions” or “omnibus bills.” This has moved the government’s decision-making into back rooms, shielding elected officials from popular scrutiny, relieving them of the responsibility for supporting or opposing what the government does. This has enabled Obama to make whatever deals have pleased him and his Republican cronies.
Trump touts his own capacity to make good deals. But good for whom? And who is to say what is good? Who or what causes would benefit from continuing government by secret deals? Who or what would lose? Trump’s stated objective is to wield whatever power might be necessary to accomplish whatever objectives upon which he—in consultation with whomever—might choose from time to time. But the difference between Trump and Obama amounts only to whatever difference may exist between each emperor’s set of cronies.
By contrast, the U.S. Constitution of 1789, as explained by James Madison, envisages a continuous mutual effort at persuasion among the American people’s many parts, to “refine and enlarge the public views” and to result in ”decisions based on the “cool and deliberate sense of the community.” For two centuries, the government’s main decisions have happened through open congressional proceedings and recorded votes. That’s the republic we used to have.
Like Obama, Trump is not about persuading anybody. Both are about firing up their supporters to impose their will on their opponents while insulting them. Throughout history, this style of politics has been the indispensable ingredient for wrecking republics, the “final cause” that transforms free citizens into the subjects of emperors.
This style of politics has grown, along with a ruling class that rejects the notion that no person may rule another without that person’s consent. As I have shown at length elsewhere, America is now ruled by a uniformly educated class of persons that occupies the commanding heights of bureaucracy, of the judiciary, education, the media, and of large corporations, and that wields political power through the Democratic Party. Its control of access to prestige, power, privilege, and wealth exerts a gravitational pull that has made the Republican Party’s elites into its satellites.
This class’s fatal feature is its belief that ordinary Americans are a lesser intellectual and social breed. Its increasing self-absorption, its growing contempt for whoever won’t bow to it, its dependence for votes on sectors of society whose grievances it stokes, have led it to break the most basic rule of republican life: deeming its opposition illegitimate. The ruling class insists on driving down the throats of its opponents the agendas of each its constituencies and on injuring persons who stand in the way. This has spawned a Newtonian reaction, a hunger, among what may be called the “country class” for returning the favor with interest.
Ordinary Americans have endured being insulted by the ruling class’s favorite epitaphs—racist, sexist, etc., and, above all, stupid; they have had careers and reputations compromised by speaking the wrong word in front of the wrong person; endured dictates from the highest courts in the land that no means yes (King), that public means private (Kelo), that everyone is entitled to make up one’s meaning of life (Casey), but that whoever thinks marriage is exclusively between men and women is a bigot (Obergefell).
No wonder, then, that millions of Americans lose respect for a ruling class that disrespects them, that they identify with whomever promises some kind of turnabout against that class, and that they care less and less for the integrity of institutions that fail to protect them.
Trump’s voters expect precisely such turnabout. Within good measure, not only would this right any number of wrongs and restore some balance in our public life, it is also indispensable for impressing upon the ruling class and its constituents that they too have a stake in observing the limits and niceties that are explicit and implicit in our Constitution.
But not only do opposing sets of wrongs not make anything right. As I have argued (Sophocles did it a lot better), trying to stop the cycle of political payback with another round of it, while not utterly impossible, is well-nigh beyond human capacity.
Neither Obama nor Trump seem to know or care that cycles of reciprocal resentment, of insults and injuries paid back with ever more interest and ever less concern for consequences, are the natural fuel of revolutions—easy to start and soon impossible to stop. America’s founders, steeped in history as few of our contemporaries are, were acutely aware of how easily factional enmities deliver free peoples into the hands of emperors. America is already advanced in this vicious cycle. The only possible chance of returning it to republicanism lies in not taking the next turn, and in not following one imperial ruler with another.
Yep, a narcissist will do what he thinks is the way to go, the hell with the US Constitution.
But immaterial in the current environment, unfortunately.
“Angerlo” is getting very frustrated!
Kaslin, I’m guessing the moderator who immediately moved your post to Chat, and gave it the dismissive “Cheese, Moose, Sister” topic label—I’m guessing that person is a Trump supporter. Same thing happened to an article I posted recently that was critical of Trump. It seems that it’s OK to be against some candidates but not The One.
Seems like it.
“Obama isn’t running.”
Hearing the hyperboles and seeing the fanatical cultists, I wonder whether it is Obama or is it Trump.
People are blaming Bush for Trump, but really it’s Obama. He was the one who set all of these patterns and established revenge and grievance as the means of controlling and motivating people. Yet the group he stoked up and weaponized, blacks, is actually worse off than it was before his arrival in the scene.
I think the white voters who seem to believe that Trump represents their turn to get revenge will be equally disappointed, because just as Obama was using blacks, so Trump is using whites - for nothing but to get power. And he’ll dump them, except, of course, for the media celebrities, as soon as he gets what he wants. Obama did the same thing - the only blacks he cares about are people like JayZ or other mega-rich entertainment personalities.
The real fault of the GOP is that they honestly didn’t know how to respond to Obama’s unconstitutional acts because he acted so fast and so aggressively that by the time they even thought about it, it was too late to mount a unified opposition and he had consolidated his power. So now the Obama pattern is established and, as the author says, it is going to be very difficult if not impossible to go back to being a republic with a constitutional government.
The Donald will not just have a pen and a phone, he will also have Congress.
Make America Great Again!
Bmk
I am watching the Hillary Clinton “victory speech” right now. She is telling us all about how she will unite us all, how she will not build walls but bridges. How we need her because of so many reasons - after 8 years of Obama. But - we need more jobs that a family can live on. I guess Obama forgot to give us that.
So, she is the next Obama, 4 more years of Obama. More illegal aliens flooding in, more refugees. No wall. Open borders.
And these idiots are saying Trump is the next Obama?
We will have another Obama, for sure, if anyone listens to these worms with personal agendas. Trump IS the Republican base. They hate the Republican base.
Trump has achieved more in the REAL WORLD MAIN STREET ECONOMY of America than all presidents combined, from George Washington to Burack Obuma. Obuma could not run a hot dog stand at profit by himself.
This is great, I look forward to tomorrows National Review anti Trump screed. I look forward to it every day, can’t even imagine what they’ll come up with next, it’s like a soap opera, I can’t wait to see the next episode, is he Hitler, is he Mussolini, I dunno, what’s next. I can’t wait.
If what you say is true that moderator isn’t doing this site any favors.
TRUMP [on the Larry King Show (April 15, 2009), referring to the then newly elected communist president (Obama)]: "Well, I really like him. I think that he's working very hard. He's trying to rebuild our reputation throughout the world. I mean, we really have lost a lot of reputation in the world. The previous administration [GW Bush] was a total disaster, a total catastrophe."
CNN LARRY KING LIVE Interview with Donald Trump
April 15, 2009
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0904/15/lkl.01.html
_________________________________________________________
The President's Apology Tour
Great leaders aren't defined by consensus.
By Karl Rove
April 23, 2009
President Barack Obama has finished the second leg of his international confession tour. In less than 100 days, he has apologized on three continents for what he views as the sins of America and his predecessors. ..."
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB124044156269345357
_________________________________________________________
"Well, I really like him. I think that he's working very hard. He's trying to rebuild our reputation throughout the world."
--Trump, CNN's Larry King Live, April 15, 2009
Your candidate is toast after tonight.
Congress makes the laws, the president carries them out
***********************************
The fact is that of the past Presidents since the last amnesty, the one who deported the most illegal aliens was Slick Willy.
We haven’t had a President that will carry them out is the problem and Trump says he will. Rubio says he wants new laws to benefit the illegal aliens. Until recently Cruz was saying we needed to secure the border (duh) and then talk about what to do about the illegal aliens. Enforcing the law means deporting them, nothing to talk about.
“Donald Trump Is The Next Barack Obama”
Since it means RUNNING OVER CONGRESS to build the wall and deport the Illegals...then I’m all for Trump being the next Obama.
Russert asked Trump about gay marriage. Trump didn't want to comment on it, but said he has no problem with gays in the military.
He explained, "I've lived in New York City and Manhattan all my life, okay? So my views are a little bit different than if I lived in Iowa."
When Russert asked Trump about abortion, he said he's "pro-choice in every respect" and again cited his New York background, which he said has a "different attitude" from most of the country
_________________________________________________________
October, 2013:
Fred Dicker: What is it going to mean for Donald Trump to have Bill de Blasio as [New York City] Mayor? "
Donald Trump: "He's a smart guy that knows what's going on really big league and I think he is not going to want to destroy New York."
(Voice Over: That was Donald Trump a little over two years ago, endorsing [Marxist] Bill de Blasio for New York Mayor)
Donald Trump: "I think pretty strongly that he'll end up being a good mayor, maybe a very good mayor."
(Voice Over: De Blasio ran on class warfare, sanctuary cities and ending stop and frisk. De Blasio's sided with looters and cop killers against the police, with teachers unions against schoolchildren and with PC liberals to let the homeless run wild on city streets)
Donald Trump: "I think he is going to want to make New York great. ..."
http://www.redstate.com/2016/01/19/trump-endorsed-bill-de-blasio/
One obvious difference is that Barack Obama hates freedom, hates Western Civilization and hates this country most of all.
There’s no evidence that any of that applies to Donald Trump.
_________________________________________________________
Aug 2015
"It's not the first time Trump has taken a pro-LGBT stance. As far back as 2000, Trump was advocating the idea of amending the 1964 Civil Rights Act to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation - something the currently-pending Equality Act would basically do if lawmakers on Capitol Hill ever decided to pass it.
"Amending the Civil Rights Act would grant the same protection to gay people that we give to other Americans - it’s only fair," Trump told The Advocate in February, 2000.
In the same interview, Trump said he favored "a very strong domestic-partnership law" that guaranteed same-sex couples equal legal rights as married, heterosexual couples.
Trump also said he believed Don't Ask, Don't Tell - the military's then-ban on openly gay service members - had "clearly failed."
Trump's spokesperson, Hope Hicks, did not immediately respond to msnbc's request for comment on where the presidential candidate stood on the Equality Act. But his longstanding support for ending discrimination against gay people has been well documented. ..."
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/donald-trump-2016s-most-lgbt-friendly-republican
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