Tag Archives: messiahs

Donald Trump Failed To Break The Techno-Managerial Dictatorship

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Scott Gibbons at The Millenial City:

“As I wrote in my book, Trumped by History: The Resurrection of the Great American Middle Class, then suddenly, out of left field came the perennial celebrity Donald Trump. He did not come from within any institution or discipline, and his ideas and platform coalesced rapidly through interaction with various populist personalities, frustration and thought waves. Trump most famously recognized and sanctioned the downtrodden great American middle class and drew those people out of long-term seclusion into increased and open expression of opinion. He resuscitated them and suddenly by just wearing MAGA caps their long suppressed opinions were clear to everyone.

As I wrote in Trumped by History, in bypassing the mainstream institutions and processes, Donald Trump starkly defined the conflict between the middle class and the techno-managerial elite, drawing his supporters fully into the open for the first time since they had lost their social dominance in the 1960s. At the same time, he elicited a virulent opposition to himself personally from establishment conservatives whose ideology was thought in principle to be nearly the same as that of his supporters – revealing both left and right to be the true techno-managerial elite enemy of the great American middle class.”

Gibbons suggests that the Trump presidency failed to dislodge the techno-managerial ruling class and only enriched its own self, thereby leaving its followers even more vulnerable than before.

This is a pessimistic and widely-held analysis that I don’t share, because I never subscribed to the belief that Trump came from no where. I was quite clear-eyed from the beginning about who Trump was. I realized he was a liberal from the heart of the establishment – he was, after all, sent out to sell the financial bail-out to the public. There was his family’s decades-long coziness with mob figures, his ties to the Clintons, and his family ties to the media and to the Jewish establishment. He would never have become that popular without that.

However, to me he represented an opening, a disruption that had the potential to shake things up and move them in an unexpected direction. That potential did not exist with Hillary Clinton.

Trump blew up the place verbally.

And that created a space for the middle class to express itself. Whatever else did not get accomplished by his presidency, that did.

And it can not be undone.

 

 

Trump As Coriolanus

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Glenn Ellmers at American Greatness:

“Coriolanus turns the impudence of his accusers back on them. They are the true betrayers of the republic who, by rights, should be expelled. Trump, in my opinion, should use this line: “I impeach you!”—and then spell out the details of the Democrats’ shameful conduct, which has undermined the Constitution.

Let every feeble rumour shake your hearts!
Your enemies, with nodding of their plumes,
Fan you into despair!

These lines—about the melodramatic cowardice of the accusers—seem especially appropriate in light of the hysterical overreaction to the events of January 6. The so-called insurrection is now being used to prepare public opinion for draconian new measures against “domestic terrorism,” and to justify a proposed wall around the Capitol complex reminiscent of a Third-World dictatorship. This, in spite of conflicting and uncertain accounts of what happened, as well as video evidence of Capitol police opening the doors to the protestors, and even engaging in friendly banter with the “Viking guy”—who hardly appears to be leading a murderous coup.

Still your own foes, deliver you as most
Abated captives to some nation
That won you without blows!

This means, “You idiots are just tools of our country’s enemies!” The mob is so consumed with partisan jealousy and bloodlust, they don’t even notice or care that they are weakening the nation, and making themselves patsies for foreign powers. (Of course, it’s possible they do notice, and don’t mind.) Consider, in this context, that the despots in Beijing are surely smiling right now at this spectacle of the United States destroying itself from within, while they don’t even have to lift a finger.

Thus I turn my back: There is a world elsewhere.

It’s not clear what Trump will do with his wealth and influence now that he is out of office. Rumors are circulating that he will start an alternate media empire. This is certainly a more measured response than what Coriolanus did: he joined up with his old war enemy to threaten an invasion of Rome. In the play, that conflict is resolved when Coriolanus’s mother helps to broker a peace. In our time, this farce may still lead to tragedy.

The late professor of political philosophy Harry Jaffa explained that in Coriolanus, Shakespeare shows, “with all the poetic genius that only he could command . . . the inner connection between virtue and republics.” No political stunt can change that.

Shakespeare’s deepest lesson, according to Jaffa, is “the inexorable and inescapable vindictive power of the moral universe.” With control of all three branches of the federal government, the Democrats may imagine there are no limits to their power. But they will never remake the human soul. It may be possible for a while to pretend that passion can replace virtue, and that ideology can replace truth—but this can’t last. Even Washington, D.C. cannot defeat the nature of reality.