EDITORIAL The trouble with Trump

Aswitch was flipped this week regarding the public perception of Donald Trump. The candidate for the Republican nomination for president of the United States had been portrayed as a harmless crank, the punchline of a joke, the bottomless source of juicy quotes that showed how rude and offensive and ridiculous he was. Then he declared he wouldn’t let Muslims into the country in the interests of national security. The laughing stopped and the outrage took over. Trump’s views are repulsive and offensive but he remains a political force because he’s the only one brazen enough to say what millions of Americans are thinking. Trump is quick to dismiss anyone who disagrees with him as a “loser” but the people most inspired by his anger and resentment are themselves losers. These are the castoffs of the American economy, the millions of unskilled workers in manufacturing, construction and the service sector who lost their jobs in the past decade. These decent-paying middle class jobs were shipped overseas, made redundant by robots and other technology or permanently disappeared during the global economic crisis in 2008 or in its aftermath. The lack of training and education among this working class gives them no chance to improve their increasingly desperate plight in the modern knowledge-based economy. They are the working poor, furious that the American dream has left them behind and fearful of losing what little they have left. Trump also likely enjoys the support of many middle-aged and recently retired middle Americans who lost their life savings in 2008 while Washington gave a trillion dollar bailout to rich bankers on Wall Street. These Americans share the same rage as the working poor against a system that has screwed them over to benefit a wealthy and intellectual elite that seems to care more about refugees and minorities than it does about salt-of-the-Earth Americans. Few members of the mainstream media have any meaningful ongoing contact with these two groups, hence their surprise, and now alarm, at Trump’s enduring popularity. No mainstream politician, in either Canada or the United States, is speaking with such blunt, relentless honesty about these concerns, except for one bombastic billionaire. In Trump, these individuals have found someone as mad as hell as they are, someone preaching not to stay the course or bring about token change but someone vowing transformation back to a better time, before globalization, before civil rights, when Main Street mattered more than Wall Street. Trump has made a career and a fortune seizing opportunities either unseen or undervalued, two words that apply directly to his base of supporters. Trump himself is not the real trouble. The conditions that allow a message like Trump’s to find a captive audience is the true problem. Closer to home, there are likely more than a few Canadians and Prince George residents who feel the same way for the same reasons. Rob Ford is proof of that. The support for the Fords and Trumps of the world is broader than political observers care to admit. Even citizens who don’t agree with their harsh rants find them a breath of fresh air – a politician who says what they really think, rather than a word-twisting weasel willing to say anything to get elected. Furthermore, it’s wrong to think Trump’s message only appeals to angry white guys. His anti-immigrant stance would find supporters among some first and second-generation Americans, annoyed at the idea of opening up the borders to the masses, particularly if those masses are of different ethnicity, religious and/or cultural background than their own. Trump’s rebellious, in-your-face image would appeal to young people from lower-income families with no resources to obtain higher education, facing a lifetime of labour uncertainty and bad pay. Finally, anyone who believes all Christians are revolted by Trump’s religious intolerance towards Muslims is mistaken. “Love your neighbour as yourself ” is not as unconditionally charitable as it sounds. The full phrase, from Leviticus, Ch. 19, is “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself.” The phrase “among your people” sets a clear limit on that love and many God-fearing Americans would argue that should come to a full and complete stop at the border of the land of the free and the home of the brave, a good Christian nation. The Donald is dangerous and must be stopped from reaching the Oval Office. What’s also wrong are the reasons behind the festering rage building in the hearts and minds of a growing number of Americans.