Authored by StraightLineLogic's Robert Gore via The Burning Platform blog,
December 2014, SLL posted an article: “Can’t Wait For That Next Election.” The article argued the positions of the two front-runners at that time—Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton—were virtually indistinguishable.
Other than which campaign contributors get paid off, there would be very little difference between the potential presidencies of Jeb and Hillary. Commentators and opinion organs masquerading as news outlets will champion their guy or gal, and hyperventilate about perceived sins of the other side’s gal or guy, but when you get right down to actual policies, there has been little difference between Republicans and Democrats for many years; they are both the parties of government. It gets bigger, spends more, piles new programs on top of failed old ones, sticks its nose anywhere on the planet it sees fit, makes more promises, and goes deeper in debt. None of that is going to change—Jeb or Hillary—and the permanent Washington oligarchy and its dependents are fine with either one.
The first of the article’s two closing sentences was spot on, the second dead wrong.
The prospect of a Jeb-Hillary election should put the body politic in the same frame of mind as a restless teenager, ready to do something rash, dangerous, and destructive, just to relieve the tedium. That, unfortunately, is giving the body politic far too much credit.
A year-and-a-half later, critics denigrate Donald Trump as restless teenagers’ car keys and beer. Even those more sympathetic to Trump’s candidacy have identified emotional factors as the primary basis of his support (see “Much More Than Trump,” SLL, and “‘Dilbert’ Creator’s 6 Reasons Why Trump Will “Win In A Landslide” In November,” by Scott Adams). That’s not incorrect, but Trump has dramatically altered the terms of debate on the playing field that all right-thinking, civic-minded Americans believe that elections should be waged: the issues. Support or oppose him, Trump has performed a public service, mentioning the unmentionables that our minders and keepers would rather avoid (for the good of the people, of course).
Immigration has been a blessing for America. Seeking an opportunity to build better lives for themselves and their families, millions have flocked to this country and helped make America great. A substantial number of immigrants to this country today are similarly motivated, but some are not. Since the Industrial Revolution heyday of immigration, the US has erected a welfare state, conducted a futile war on drugs, and intervened extensively in Latin American political affairs. Currently, some immigrants come for the freebies, some to ply the drug trade and engage in criminal acts, and some to escape turmoil and intolerable conditions in their own countries.
A nation going broke providing freebies to its own citizens cannot afford them for non-citizens. A nation that criminalizes drugs creates an economic risk premium for dealing in those drugs, which is especially attractive for the relatively impoverished in Latin America. A nation that helps make conditions intolerable in other countries may be confronted with escaping refugees (as Europe has discovered). Those are simple, indisputable facts.
There has been no shortage of commentators pointing out these facts—for years, even decades—but by definition, even if their audiences were in the millions they were “fringe.” Back in late 2014, immigration reform—a “path to citizenship,” de facto amnesty, and meaningless promises of tighter border security—was the prevailing mantra, chanted by both parties’ candidates, endorsed by all right-thinking pundits as necessary to secure the increasingly important Latino vote (support from Republicans was paradoxical—most immigrants vote for Democrats). There would be no immigration issue because dissenting views were marginalized or suppressed, and the “solution” to the problem was a done deal regardless of who was elected.
Then Donald Trump called Mexican immigrants rapists and proposed building a wall at the border, funded by Mexico. The epithet and proposal were outrageous, but the concerns of millions of Americans had been ignored or dismissed as racist and xenophobic. It took something outrageous to get those concerns on the table and force the Cloud People to pay attention. They did so not out of any solicitude for the unwashed, the Dirt People, but because Trump jumped to the top of the polls. Immigration will be a front burner issue through the general election, and attacks on Trump supporters by Mexican-flag-waving thugs will only help his cause. He doesn’t even have to say: “What did I tell you?” It’s implied.
Like open immigration, free trade has been distorted beyond recognition by governments. In a free world, a decision either to migrate or trade across the artificial construct known as a border would be recognized as an act of self-interest that should not be hindered. Today’s decidedly unfree world means that so-called free trade arrangements augment the power and wealth of governments and their cronies at the expense of everyone else, just as “open immigration” expands welfare states with resultant political and economic advantages for the few.
Again, with rhetoric and proposals designed to roil the elite and agitate the electorate, Trump has exposed the sham of “free” trade. Real free trade among two or more countries would not be negotiated in secret and add thousand-page agreements, plus thousands more pages of implementing regulations, to a world already drowning in laws and regulations. A real free trade agreement would reduce laws and regulations—tariffs and trade barriers—and there would be no need to negotiate it in secret.
Real free trade increases the US’s economic well-being. By definition, two parties don’t engage in voluntary trade unless both parties benefit. However, present trade agreements have facilitated outsourcing of manufacturing and jobs. David Stockman persuasively argues that they are part of a one-two punch, the other punch being anti-deflationary monetary policies, that have frozen real incomes for decades (see his four-part series, “Losing Ground in Flyover America.”
Trump has broken through the mainstream narrative, highlighting the ongoing deterioration of the American economy and resonating with the millions who have been living through it. SLL has argued that since 2000, we’ve been in the midst of a Humungous Depression, an argument not confirmed by Wall Street’s and Washington’s statistic mills, but which finds support in Trump’s ascent. (Interested readers are referred to the linked article and SLL’s Debtonomics Archive.) Trump has struck a chord with his criticism of the economy, and by implication, statistic mills, equity markets, and the media that paint a much rosier picture than the one his supporters see.
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