Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Why Donald Trump?

Most of the people I have talked to express this sentiment about the upcoming Republican Nomination for President Donald Trump: "I cannot believe he is winning!".  This is normally followed by a negative expression (disgust, despise, hatred) of Trump as well as confusion to who actually supports this guy, since they have never spoken to an actually Trump supporter, and anyone indicating they would vote for him is normally using  South Park's 'Douche VS Turd' logic.  Another interesting thing is that the people I'm referring to are actual Republicans, although most of these arguments also pertain to independents and even liberals (though they would likely never support Trump).

I myself have pondered this question constantly and after some careful study and evaluation, I'd like to put forth my analysis of the situation and hopefully start to answer the question of 'Why Donald Trump?'

Political Failure

In the past, the Republican party was considered the conservative party, which loosely means they believe in limited government and often associated with Ronald Reagan.  The current Republican party is NOT seen as being conservative, you will hear it in the rhetoric of Republican candidates, but not in their policies.  No politician wants the bad reputation of cutting programs, think of all those helpless babies!  So over the past couple decades, America has sat by watching the politicians rushing toward economic disaster with escalating spending and a denigration of every value America holds.  Election after election, candidate after candidate, people have lost faith in politics.  Even as more and more responsibility is given to government (some say taken), the government has shown it is inept at solving problems.  How many times have the political candidates been arguing about illegal immigration, fixing the education system, the middle east, and so on.  Because of the political failure by career politicians, anyone who is NOT a career politician is seen as better.  Donald Trump is NOT a career politician, he is primarily a businessman.

Vilification

The way the politics work in a two party system is that each side needs to stress its differences from the other side, this is a normal technique for making a binary decision, listing the pros and cons.  However, in politics, you will never list your own cons or your opponents pros; you ONLY list your pros and your opponent's cons.  But your even bigger impact, you will say that your opponent's con is VERY bad, in fact, SO bad that a vote for him/her is going to destroy the world.  This is normal in American politics today, each side continuously vilifying the candidate from the other side; and guess what?  Most people think both sides are right.
So when Donald Trump comes along and everyone says "He is the worst", what does that mean?  It means nothing!  He's just another candidate that everyone is attacking, in fact, many will think he's better since he's not a politician.  I've slightly modified a great line from the movie "The Incredibles" which speaks to this point: "If everyone is special THE WORST...then no one is".

Facts and Consistency

When people talk about Donald Trump, I have heard people argue "Name 3 policies he will implement and tell me how they will work" or mention some of Trump's history to show why he is a bad person or blatantly contradicts himself on a daily basis, or many other fact based issues with him.  I watched a very interesting interview with comic "Dilbert"s creator.  In it he talks about how people do NOT care about Trump's incorrect facts or contradictions because he is connecting with them on an emotional level.  This MUST be true since if people cared about that stuff, why would they vote for him.  Now before you think, "see, all Trump's supporters are idiots since they ignore facts", let me try to explain that this is actually a quite rational position.
As I have explained, for decades politicians have been quoting facts and statistics, and policies they will implement, and shouting about why they are consistent and did not actually contradict themselves.  But guess what?  They they took the facts out of context, fudged their statistics, did NOT implement the policy they said they would, and denied they were inconsistent.  How is that any different from Trump?  How is that any better than Trump?
Politicians have huge groups of professional political science majors working to ensure the facts are defensible and the politician has every ounce of wiggle room to adjust his position as necessary.  Any modern Presidential candidate can give a speech to a far leftist group in San Fransisco and a far right group in Texas in the same afternoon and not say one thing the audience disagrees with.  The fact that Trump just shoots from the hip is just evidence that he is at least more open and honest in his contradictions.

Campaign Finance

Here is a subject I know very little about, but what I do know is that it takes a LOT of money to run for president Donald Trump is VERY wealthy.  This just further indicates to people that politics is untrustworthy and even though Trump may be using his money to buy a nomination, people will still view him as better than politicians because he is not a one, and because he is financing his own campaign so he won't have obligations to his campaign investors.

Conclusion

 In conclusion, the reasons for Donald Trump's rise to Presidential Nomination are not actually as surprising as it initially appears.  This article is not intended to encourage or discourage people from voting for Trump; however, I think it is important to understand the reasonings behind his nomination, so that we might be educated accepting of alternate points of view, whichever side you may fall.

All I will say is this, IF Donald Trump is elected President, I will pray that will be a good President, and not the monster we all fear.  I will also advocate for a valid 3rd party, so we may once again have quality candidates.







3 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. I should have worded it better, by 'accepting' I mean accepting that it is a valid point of view, not that it is accurate or right; only that it is a point of view held be someone of inherent worth who's opinion should be respected.

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  2. I love that Tim's first comment was from Holly. And that Tim's first action as administrator was to censor Holly.

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