Trumpism, not Trump, has always been the real problem. A political strategy of just beating Trump in any way and at any cost is insufficient to the broader dynamics of the political moment.
This article is from The Editor’s Corner, with insights, short-posts, links, and general ramblings from Editor/Owner Justin Stapley.
If someone had managed to kill Hitler in 1933 and re-establish the Weimar Republic, Nazism would have been far from defeated. That’s because the conditions that engendered the rise of fascism in Germany would have still existed.
Similarly, populist nationalism in the United States is not something that can simply be defeated at the ballot box. That’s especially the case if the progressive approach that fueled its rise is given the wheel of government.
Trumpism, not merely Trump himself, is the problem to which we must find solutions. And, it is the rise of Trumpism that’s the very thing Democrats have continuously demonstrated a refusal to understand and credibly grapple with.
At every turn, the Democrats and their media surrogates have played the game Trump has laid out for them.
He rose to prominence in 2016 because they wouldn’t take their cameras off of him. They aided and abetted his consolidation of Republican support because they willingly played the foil he wanted them to be.
The Democratic Primary was a veritable demonstration of how to bring a political opposition’s scapegoats to life. Even the supposed “moderates” demonstrated a shocking level of tone-deafness when it came to the priorities of center-right and conservative Americans.
Trump is a performer. He has no idea how to wield the power of the White House to gain true power. Removing him only changes his stage. If you give him the foil of a Democratic Presidency, he’s not going to go away.
Mark my words, if we don’t bring the Democrats and their progressive vision to heel alongside the populist nationalism of this new GOP, Trump will just be back running again in 2024.
This cycle of madness will just continue until we choose to break it. The Democrats are just as guilty as the Republicans in crafting the conditions of where we find ourselves today. Neither party deserves our support as things presently stand.
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