Donald Trump on his “Thank you” tour stated that as President he will impose on Americans “two simple rules”: “Buy American and hire American.”
And that would contribute to “Making America Great Again”? No, not really.
You see, what made America great in the first place were freedom and free markets. So this is yet another example of Trump’s anti-capitalistic mentality (.pdf), in which ordering people to buy American or to hire American interferes with Americans’ freedom to buy what they determine to be the highest quality goods or services at the lowest prices. But Herr Trump says that Americans’ purchasing assessments and decisions don’t matter and the government must force or coerce them to have to buy only American-made products and even at higher prices.
So instead of free markets, the tariffs, taxes, fees and fines Trump would impose on people for not obeying his orders are all examples of theft by bureaucrats as a central-planning means of controlling and punishing economic activity.
No, Mr. Trump, letting Americans have their freedom to buy and sell to and from whomever they want to anywhere in the world, and you government bureaucrats not getting in their way, is what will make America great again. For what made America great in the first place was the economic freedom and respect for private property and contract rights that Americans had prior to the 20th Century. That economic freedom is what led to the greatest economic boom and highest levels of prosperity and standard of living, up to that point in history.
The 20th Century changed all that, and progressives caused the slide into chaos and growing impoverishment and escalating governmental powers over and enslavement of the people, with the income tax, the Federal Reserve, the unnecessary wars, the New Deal, the Great Society (that’s not so great), and all the rest.
Sort of related to that were Trump’s tweets and statements about Boeing (one of the merchants of death) supposedly preparing to build a new “Air Force One” 747 for the U.S. President, but saying that “$4 billion” is “out of control” and to cancel the order.
Trump explained, “We want Boeing to make a lot of money, but not that much money.”
Now, the reason I don’t think he is saying that mainly out of concern for taxpayer dollars being wasted for a corporate boondoggle is because we know that Trump wants to spend — more accurately, waste and squander — trillions on so-called infrastructure, and other Big Government schemes he has in mind.
So I think that some of Trump’s more anti-capitalistic mentality, that I have mentioned previously, is coming out in that statement. Is Trump’s high level of narcissism such that, in his world it’s good that he make as much money as possible, but his progressive envy takes over when it comes to other people‘s profits and wealth? Does he even understand in any way what capitalism is?
And how can Trump or the government “make America great again”? Hmmm? Except for repealing all the socialist, intrusive central planning schemes that cause chaos and destruction, which those damn bureaucrats in Washington don’t want to do, and it’s not what Trump wants to do. No dismantling of Washington’s criminal racket, only expanding it!
But Trump’s nationalist followers and collectivist-minded cheerleaders are behind him 100% in the same irrational way that the Obama cheerleaders supported Obama in 2008, with an emotional mysticism in which they don’t care that Trump is an authoritarian Big Government planner-obsessed ignoramus. I’ve been listening to some of these talk radio personalities, such as Jeff Kuhner and Michael Savage — these people respond emotionally to Trump’s nationalistic message. Very collectivistic mentality. They don’t care about Trump’s specific central-planning schemes. The nationalists seem to see “America” as one big collective, one big thing, and in a mystical way as well.
One of Trump’s recent tweets also expressed his authoritarian America-worshiping mentality that the nationalists seem to have. He wrote, “Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag — if they do, there must be consequences — perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!”
Nationalists seem to agree with Trump on that. The conservative ones are “pro-life,” after all, and they obviously value the life of a flag more than the actual human being whose life they want to throw in a cage for his having burned the flag that the flag-worshipers want to protect. They see the flag as a “national symbol,” because it symbolizes “our freedom,” “America the beautiful,” and all that. They seem to see the flag as an actual living being, with rights, and deserving of protection by law. If they see that someone has burned the flag, they are offended. Like some people on the left, “I’m offended by that.” (Are they “triggered” by a flag-burner?)
Yes, the American flag represents certain things officially, such as with a certain number of stripes and a certain number of stars, which represent something. But outside of what the flag officially represents with those specific markings, what it symbolizes to people varies, and is subjective. Therefore you can’t impose a mandatory perception of a symbol onto others. You can’t say that “You must perceive the flag as symbolizing our freedom, our Constitution,” etc., because some people perceive the flag differently than many amongst the sheeple. For example, some people perceive the flag as symbolizing our government in Washington, its bureaucrats, its criminal wars of aggression, or as a symbol of the drug war and the police state that many flag-worshiping authoritarians have been supporting.
Sadly, there are people who view the American flag as “sacred,” like a religious artifact. And that is part of the religious worship that many people have of “America” like a god. In fact, Michael Medved on the radio just released a whole new book on that, that America’s founding was divinely inspired and that God protects America and all that (except for 9/11, ObamaCare, and other acts of destruction, but we’re not allowed to say that, for doing so is … politically incorrect.) Right, the Constitution was divinely inspired. A more rational and realistic view of this subject can be found in Larken Rose’s The Most Dangerous Superstition. (Here is a good interview on that.)
It’s very mystical, this America worship, and there is a culture of superstition surrounding all this. And that is why so many people blindly and obediently respond to Donald Trump’s emotionalistic rhetoric, his nationalistic, collectivistic claptrap, and are so supportive of the Big Government socialism he wants to force on us. I know, I can be a bit acerbic in my criticisms, and some people don’t like that. But the pussyfooting political correctness out there, from both the left and the “conservatives” and nationalists, is extremely sickening now.
The nationalists, by the way, have a lot in common with the people on the left, such as what we have seen from the anti-Russian propagandists who have been spreading smears about certain writers or websites allegedly promoting “fake news.” The leftist propagandists see as “fake” news anything that expresses disagreement with their ideology and which promotes actual discussion of important issues contrary to the left’s propaganda. But also, what makes the list of “fake news” are many of those in the alternative media who question and criticize U.S. interventionist foreign policy.
And that is where the America-worshipers and flag-worshipers connect to the propagandists, in my view. We saw examples of that throughout the 2012 Presidential campaign the way the nationalists and interventionists would smear Ron Paul, such as when debate audience members would “boo” Dr. Paul’s suggestion of using the Golden Rule in U.S. foreign policy.
God forbid one should suggest that, if we don’t want foreign governments invading our country, or bombing our cities and killing our people, then maybe we shouldn’t be doing those things to other countries. How un-American to suggest some kind of moral behavior.
And we can’t say that the Japanese wouldn’t have bombed Pearl Harbor if they weren’t provoked by FDR’s oil embargo which mainly targets the civilian population, or that there wouldn’t have been a 9/11 had President George H.W. Bush not invaded and bombed Iraq in 1991 and destroyed Iraq’s civilian water and sewage treatment facilities and imposed sanctions and no-fly zones for the next decade. That’s “blaming America,” the nationalists say. But really it’s blaming the U.S. government and these lowlife psychopaths who rule over us. Would Michael Medved say that George H.W. Bush’s war of aggression was divinely inspired? I hope not.
Nationalism is a very bad thing, and Donald Trump’s Presidency is bringing about a new resurgence in nationalism, as well as collectivism, another very bad thing. And mix his socialism in with all that and, well, I don’t think these things will make America “great,” except it will greatly slide America further into the banana republic ditch that similar “great” Presidents have thrown us into.
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