Could Donald Trump be the saviour of Europe? He might be. The papers are full of people telling us how much they hate Trump and lamenting that the US is now a racist swamp where the vilest of sentiments have suddenly been given currency. This is the predictable line, but maybe it’s not accurate.
Let’s drop the hyperbole and analyse what is likely to happen in the US. What if the man who the European elite vilify is the one person who can save the EU from itself? It is possible that Trump could offer Europe a way out.
Forget all the hysterical comment about Trump; while his campaign was full of xenophobia, vulgarity and coarseness, I suspect that language will be toned down and his presidential rule will be, well, more presidential. Trump is an unpleasant character, but that’s not a reason for not analysing why he won or what he’s likely to do.
Before we examine what Trump is likely to do, let’s first try to establish why he won. Throughout the summer, this column has been saying that Trump could win and lots of “serious” people dismissed it as a fantasy. Serious people argued that when the average American got into the polling booth, they would vote for “stability”. We heard the same arguments around Brexit. In fact, the opposite happened.
The reason is very clear: what feels like stability and security to the “serious” people in the media, the think tanks and those around power, actually feels like chaos and insecurity for the “average” guy.
With this disconnect in mind, let’s see what happened and is still happening.
The first major question is why did large swathes of white working class Americans abandon the Democrats for Trump? This was where the swing came from. These people are not racists. Otherwise how do we explain that the same people voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012? Yet in 2016, they voted for a man who counts the KKK and the Alt-Right movement among his supporters. Why was this? Did large swathes of white working class Americans become racist overnight? That’s not convincing. Committed racists don’t put a black man into the White House, not once but twice.
The root of the political alienation of white working class Americans lies in the direction the Democratic Party has taken under Bill Clinton and then Barack Obama, reaching its zenith under Hillary.
The Democratic Party used to be the party of labour. It agitated for the trade union movement, higher wages and better conditions for the working man; in return working people voted, in their millions, for the Democrats. That was the social contract up to the arrival of Bill Clinton at the top of the party.
Thereafter, we see the emergence of what are called New Democrats. This was also called the Third Way, and its British strain was Blairism. Both Bill Clinton and Tony Blair showed an aversion for the Labour movement, preferring instead to curry favour with business, celebrity and finance. The assumption was that the lumpen proletariat would always be counted on to vote Left, so the concentration would be on power and focus groups, rather than class and social issues.
In the US, this led to Clinton signing Nafta, which hugely benefited American corporations and drove down American wages, because no longer were American workers competing with each other, but were pitted against Mexican and Chinese workers as American companies outsourced. Wages fell and employment became less secure – for white working class Americans.
Clinton, also under huge pressure from his rich friends in Wall Street, repealed swathes of financial regulation, most notably the Glass Steagall Act – allowing investment banks to involve themselves in all sorts of speculation, which up to then was regulated. This caused an avalanche of credit to dump on America, with the result of rising indebtedness but more profit to the institutions that deal in credit, the banks.
Therefore, the only way that poorer white working class Americans could sustain the consumer lifestyle that advertisers told them they should have was not through their wages, which were stagnant, but through debt. So they became more indebted, and therefore more insecure.
To make matters worse, all Democrats wedded themselves – after Bill Clinton – to austerity and more or less balanced budgets. This is political suicide, particularly when your opponents – the Republicans – only care about austerity when they are in opposition.
When Republicans get into power, they spend like drunken sailors. But the New Democrats, to appear ‘responsible’ to their new mates on Wall Street, shackled themselves with fiscal probity. Not surprisingly, when you limit public infrastructure spending, your roads, railways and public services become outdated and overcrowded.
And who depends most on public services? Working people, not the elites.
At the other end of the spectrum, the New Democrats made three key elite alliances and you could see this very forcefully in Hillary’s campaign. The first was Hollywood; the second, Wall Street and the third, Silicon Valley. This tripartite alliance ensured that the Democratic Party shone with the luminous gloss of progressive liberalism, hippy dippy tech evangelism and, of course, lots of Wall Street money. But for the average guy in Flint, Michigan, places like Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Hollywood might as well be on Mars.
When the white working class gets angry and insecure in the US, race always enters the equation.
Then what about Obama? If these things had been going on for years, why did the white working class vote for Obama so overwhelmingly?
First, because Obama was an exceptional candidate, but second, because when race or intolerance surfaces, there is lots of evidence that middle-of-the-road white people will make one big gesture to minorities so as not to appear intolerant, like having one black friend or one gay mate.
It makes us feel better and, more than anything else, it covers us from the label of being in some way intolerant. “How could I be racist? Look, I voted for Obama!”
So the Democratic Party under Clinton and Obama, despite having power, as in the seat of power, were losing their grassroots support as they were becoming more and more removed from their own people without realising it.
Then along comes Trump and pushes all the right buttons, and Hillary can’t connect with the people because she has never spent any time with them and has made a powerful, glitzy alliance with success, when in fact what she should have been doing was listening to failure.
Trump, if he does what he says he will do, will abandon austerity, supercharge public investment and build infrastructure.
This will turn on its head the notion of austerity and balanced budgets, first in America and then in Europe because what happens in America, will be replicated in Europe.
As needless austerity is a root of much of continental Europe’s malaise, Trump may actually give the Eurozone the permission to do the right thing and invest in public infrastructure.
If Europe doesn’t do something to listen to its white working class, they too will jump ship and, vote for patriotic nationalism, or nativists if you prefer, whose ultimate goal is to leave the EU.
https://youtu.be/Ql4YDKaKqVA
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US against the world? Trump’s America and the new global order In 1989, the political scientist said liberal democracy signalled ‘the end of history’. He looks at the nationalist politics now reshaping the west Francis Fukuyama FT NOVEMBER 11, 2016 by: Francis Fukuyama Donald Trump’s stunning electoral defeat of Hillary Clinton marks a watershed not just for American politics, but for the entire world order. We appear to be entering a new age of populist nationalism, in which the dominant liberal order that has been constructed since the 1950s has come under attack from angry and energised democratic majorities. The… Read more »
The reason is very clear: what feels like stability and security to the “average” people in the media, the think tanks and those around power, actually feels like chaos and insecurity for the “serious” guy.
Fixed that for you!
Accurate assessment. But the Trump voters voted for Obama because he promised better economics for them. Early on he rescued GM with a successful stimulus but wages for new workers at GM were set very low. And the Republicans blocked any further stimulus (including for infrastructure). And Obama focused all his efforts on two things: ONE, quantitative easing (printing money, supposedly to be invested in operating but mainly invested in trading of and acquisition of financial instruments). Thus supposedly job creating quantitative easing ended up mainly increasing the value of financial assets (a huge boon for Wall St and the… Read more »
Good comment. But Trump lost the popular election. He was selected by the Electoral Congress.
The biggest problem for the EU is the arrogance of the people at the top which judging by Merkel’s and Hollande’s reaction has changed. They’ve learned nothing from Brexit. Brexit happened because they made no effort to prevent it happening. Talk to the common people of the EU countries and they’ll all tell you that immigration is a huge issue. Britain should have been knocking on an open door in relation to this issue but our continental neighbours just wanted to give them the two fingers. And now they want to do the same to Trump. I don’t often praise… Read more »
Good article David Let us hope we will see the turning away from the irrationalism of austerity and market fundamentalism. Human beings live in societies, not markets. Markets are suppose to serve societies – not the other ’round. The tail has been wagging the dog for too long. Like you I think Trump will be a different man in office than he was on the campaign trail. He had a tough battle on his hands; and he knew what he had to do, and he did it. Along the way Trump whooped the Republican party, the Democratic party and the… Read more »
“Clinton, also under huge pressure from his rich friends in Wall Street, repealed swathes of financial regulation, most notably the Glass Steagall Act – allowing investment banks to involve themselves in all sorts of speculation, which up to then was regulated. This caused an avalanche of credit to dump on America, with the result of rising indebtedness but more profit to the institutions that deal in credit, the banks. To make matters worse, all Democrats wedded themselves – after Bill Clinton – to austerity and more or less balanced budgets. So which is it. Massive credit expansion or austerity. The… Read more »
@CitizenWhy
That’s the way things are done in the USA!!!
Replace Thatcher with May and Reagan with Trump without the bureaucracy of the EU to work around and there you have the next four years to look forward to.
“Imagine Trump proposing reparations for slavery. That’s as out-of-box as you can get. And imagine that reparations take the form of a special tax on the top 1% of the wealthy to fund free college for any African-American students (including adults returning for trade school or college) for the next 25 years.
“I’m in the top 1%, but I wouldn’t mind a tax that had such a positive long-term impact on the country. It seems like I would get my money back from that sort of investment.
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/152998516891/the-de-hitlerization-of-your-brain
From Gilad Atzmon about George Hemorrhoid / Sore-Ass Schwartz
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And, so, what will Trump do to stop Mr. Hemorrhoid / Sore-Ass ?
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http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/2016/8/18/george-schwartz-soros-the-oligarch-who-owns-the-left
Hi, Another superb offering. When you mentioned glass seagulls the thought crossed my mind that the bonbons must be bouncing off the inside of their padded cells. What the article doesn’t say is how Trump will pay for the infrastructure in a country so bankrupt. I am fuc*&d if I know. I suspect what he will do first is cause a collapse in the value of US bonds so that he can buy them back for cents on the dollar and hand them back to the muppets who were so stupid as to “invest” in them in the first instance.… Read more »
Good read.
Maybe, Someone should bring to Tubridy’s attention, to show him the intellectual caliber of person he should consider having on Late Late Show, to debate Trumps election. and redeem himself for last week.
Redeem? He was a fucking puke before last week, he will be a little snot nosed loafer wearing punk this week, and a slack jawed pencil necked little bitch next week. Redeem?? Not the Turd man. He is a halfwit chickenshit withot any originiality whatsoever. A wet fart. You
Redeem? He was a fucking puke before last week, he will be a snot nosed loafer wearing punk this week, and a slack jawed pencil necked little bitch next week. Redeem?? Not the Turd man. He is a halfwit chickenshit without any originality whatsoever. A wet fart. You redeem yourself by reaquainting others with your past goodness. His past, present, and future is wellknown shite, pure sickening vomit laden shite. I hate his stinking rotten gutty wutts. Ryan, little Ryan Turdity.
More dirt on USA establishment ;
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EXCERPT ;
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Besta Pizza is owned by Andrew Kline of the Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit of the DOJ [Pizza Parties Exposed]
2 days ago by ausbitbank64 in wikileaks
Another connection has been made on the international child smuggling / pedophile ring being exposed thanks to the wikileaks revelations.
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https://steemit.com/wikileaks/@ausbitbank/besta-pizza-is-owned-by-andrew-kline-of-the-human-trafficking-prosecution-unit-of-the-doj-pizza-parties-exposed
Apropos of Trump specifically :
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http://anotherdayintheempire.com/meet-neocons-911-criminals-goldman-bankers-team-trump/
RT’S PETER LAVELLE INTERVIEWS DR. RON PAUL
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Published on Nov 11, 2016
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With the surprise election of Donald Trump, can we expect an equally surprising foreign policy from him ?
During the campaign he provided us with a glimpse of his thinking.
Will there be a Trump Doctrine ?
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWrVJHtejkQ
It is strange to hear David advocate for governments what he railed against for homeowners i.e. unsustainable debt. The present sovereign debt of the EU and the US apart, apart from lesser economies like the UK, is already unsustainable. Ireland for example has €200 billion in sovereign debt, i.e. €40,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. We borrow another €2 billion per annum just to run the country. How unsustainable is that? Yet David wants Trump to “come to our rescue” by teaching us how to borrow more and spend without limit. What will be the currency… Read more »
Maybe it is no longer possible from saving the EU from the consequences of it’s own stupidity ? The whole thing was turned into a Ponzi-scheme by Trichet. He did it bail out the people who had money. And he did it many times over. and he “suceeded”. And now the problem is that the people have woken up. The demand of te media is striaghtforward. It is “appropriate” that there is outrage over the outrage against the crime (which the media demanded, in the Trichet period). Trump is not the problem. The problem is Ponzi-economics. The Clintons were a… Read more »
[…] Will Trump ride to Europe’s rescue? (DavidMCWilliams.ie) […]
[ At the other end of the spectrum, the New Democrats made three key elite alliances and you could see this very forcefully in Hillary’s campaign. The first was Hollywood; the second, Wall Street and the third, Silicon Valley. This tripartite alliance ensured that the Democratic Party shone with the luminous gloss of progressive liberalism, hippy dippy tech evangelism and, of course, lots of Wall Street money. ] The economics of those three sectors is highly suspect. Hollywood relies on an oligopolistic control of distribution systems, and clout to keep out competition. Celebrities were left out, but they are presumably… Read more »
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiWY0iRLV94
SOROS ON 60 MINUTES
https://youtu.be/p8Ux5b6YM9A?t=435
[…] Will Trump ride to Europe’s rescue? (DavidMCWilliams.ie) […]
[…] Will Trump ride to Europe’s rescue? (DavidMCWilliams.ie) […]
[…] Will Trump ride to Europe’s rescue? (DavidMCWilliams.ie) […]
[…] Will Trump ride to Europe’s rescue? (DavidMCWilliams.ie) […]
[…] Will Trump ride to Europe’s rescue? (DavidMCWilliams.ie) […]
[…] Will Trump ride to Europe’s rescue? (DavidMCWilliams.ie) […]
[…] Will Trump ride to Europe’s rescue? (DavidMCWilliams.ie) […]
‘While his campaign was full of xenophobia, vulgarity and coarseness’ The Czech author Milan Kundera writes, in his Le Rideau, that kitsch is a word which originated in Munich in the mid-19th century and describes the syrupy residue left by the Great Romantic Century which dominated Germany and Central Europe where, in the end, there built up a great resentment towards ‘the rose-coloured veil thrown across reality’, the tyranny of the tenors, the shameless exhibition ‘du coeur sans cesse ému’, bread on which perfume has been poured. The French, he said, never developed this acute aversion to kitsch and translated… Read more »
” MEASURE THE VICTIM ” . During michael noonans wet fart banking inquiry Dan O Brien told us that the media are just generalists that were unable to hold the bankers to account. He told us that the economic community were more to blame. Blame and witch hunt are not the best forms of problem solving. ” The economics community is far more culpable than the media in failing to see the crash coming and, in particular, in failing to see the risks in the banking sector.” – Dan O Brien at the Irish wet fart banking inquiry. Failing to… Read more »
[…] Will Trump ride to Europe’s rescue? (DavidMCWilliams.ie) […]
Will Trump ride to Europe’s rescue?
Why not rescue the whole world while he’s at it.
http://kingworldnews.com/is-president-trump-really-going-to-revalue-gold-to-this-jaw-dropping-price/
Go back to the currency gold standard. A value of 10-20,000 dollars per ounce will probably work.
http://kingworldnews.com/james-turk-what-donald-trump-faces-is-very-different-than-ronald-reagan/
Trump is a disaster Hillary just could not connect with people. If working class Americans think Trump is going to change their lives for the better , their wrong. Trump will be as much into War as the next idiot, neocons and the military industrial complex will continue with their Empire building. America fights for resources, America has no hope of paying down debt, nor any desire.. If he does get funding for infrastructure projects ,that would be great, it’s financed through interest free federal funding and repaid over decades in sales & labour taxes and taxes collected from material… Read more »
[…] Will Trump ride to Europe’s rescue? (DavidMCWilliams.ie) […]
Rte generalists tell us that if you overpay one group of workers then you have to overpay all workers in Ireland. That is the Rte measurement. They call it the genie is out of the bottle.
Rte have NEVER measured all the costs of our services.
They allow Liam Doran state that our health system is understaffed.
Junior cert students would understand that you have a duty of care to measure the staffing levels of our health system against France, Spain, Portugal, UK and Poland.
Rte need to measure our victims with competitor countries and not one overpaid group.
Can a single nation enjoy free trade and restrict immigration at the same time? UK & US think so, EU thinks not. It will be decided by EU. https://twitter.com/patflannery
[…] Will Trump ride to Europe’s rescue? (DavidMCWilliams.ie) […]
Beyond the pale with the social media. All these jokers with their threats of violence should be rounded up and brought to court. Free speech has a limit when threats of injury and harm are made.
http://www.gopusa.com/?p=17238?omhide=true
http://crooksandliars.com/2016/10/what-do-when-trump-supporters-threaten
http://www.infowars.com/kill-donald-trump-twitter-explodes-with-violent-threats/
When alien entities control the nations money supply , de facto, the nation loses economic sovereignty. When the state in turn bans the use of cash the citizen loses individual sovereignty. The control of money is the fast route to slavery. That is why I advocate free money and the right of individuals to use what ever money they desire. A free people have always used gold and silver. Whenever the state controlled the money the result was undue taxation and lost of freedom leading to tyranny. So let us hope Trump sets constitutional minded judges into the supreme court… Read more »
Meet Judy Shelton Posted November 15th, 2016 at 11:11 AM (CST) by Bill Holter & filed under Bill Holter. Dear CIGAs, As we spoke of in our last interview and my last article, “meet Judy Shelton”. Please read the following as Ms. Shelton appears to be part of the Trump administration. Could she be senior economic advisor, or even Fed chair? Who knows but she is a sound money advocate and has her head screwed on correctly. If you do not know of her now, I believe you soon will! Bill Holter “”In terms of gold being involved, some people… Read more »
“Conclusion
The political upheaval of Donald Trump is best understood through the lens of economic erosion suffered by the vast majority of people. If a democracy is measured in how well it serves the interests of the majority, the United States is not a democracy at all.
Of course, nearly everyone already knows this. But it’s been all but unspeakable in polite circles to say so.
Now, it is finally becoming okay to voice”
https://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/103343/get-ready-change-upon-us
Will Trump ride to Europe’s rescue?
After due consideration I have decide that is the wrong question. It is indicative of an expectation that somebody else is going to fix your problem. The question should be asking “are we going to recognize that we have a problem. Can we identify the problem . What are WE going to do about it.
The socialist mine set always looks for some else to not only fix the problem but pay for it too.
@ Michael Coughlin, . I am not a fan of Communism — neither in Theory nor in Practise — when it is the total system for a society ; But, I do see Communism’s usefulness & / or worthiness for : 1. civil service ; There to be no permanent Civil Servants. Rather, every Citizen must do national service for some years in : their late teens into their 20’s & later if applicable their middle-years & later again if applicable their senior-years. When in that national service tenure, they are a Civil Servant. 2. times of emergency ; “All… Read more »
Links from Henry Makow’s — Ref. henrymakow.com — Twitter page : . . Poll: 80% of Americans do not want U.S. aid going to Israel Lawsuit aims to help . http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/poll-80-of-americans-dont-want-us-aid-going-to-israel—lawsuit-aims-to-help-300334852.html . . Putin’s purge ; Russian leader sends chilling message to political elite with round-up of top officials Economic minister Alexei Ulyukaev’s detention on corruption charges has sent shock-waves throughout Russia’s elite. . http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/putins-purge-russian-leader-sends-chilling-message-political-elite-round-top-officials-1591858?spMailingID=970109&spUserID=MTI0NzI2OTMwNTIS1&spJobID=670275163&spReportId=NjcwMjc1MTYzS0 . . THE TAKE DOWN OF GEORGE SOROS HAS BEGUN . NOVEMBER 13, 2016 . How a Rogue Alliance betrayed the Rothschild’s & attempted to hijack the One World Government . By JC Collins .… Read more »
The notion that Freemasonry “locally” rules Ireland — both The Irish State + The North East of our Country — is FACT ! . A useful handle for getting to know so is in this extract from recent essay by Ms. Judith Duffy. And, it has to be acknowledged that regardles whether u agree with her sentiments or analysis or not, she does write very well. I for one am given to reading with interest some writers whom I totally disagree with on sentiment & analysis because they are worth reading for use of argument, style, & also because it… Read more »