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The Braselton News
Wednesday, May 31, 2017
Opinion
Why I reject Trumpism
Regular readers of this column know
that I’m not a fan of President Donald
Trump. That may sound
strange to some since
I live in an area which
heavily supported Trump
during last year’s elec
tion.
I guess I’ve never
marched the same di
rection as the rest of the
band.
While I have written
against Trump both
during the election and
since he’s taken office,
I’ve never broadly artic
ulated in a column why
I’m opposed to him and
Trumpism as a political movement.
For those who are curious, here’s is
why I march to a different drummer
and reject Trumpism:
• Trumpism is a political outlook
made of fog and vapor. It is neither
liberal nor conservative. It has strains
of populism, but is void of populism’s
roots of the “common man.” Trump
ism is only a combination of sound
bites designed to appeal to people’s
emotions. It is whatever its follow
ers want it to be — a blank slate onto
which they can project anything. And
it is whatever policy or thought Trump
himself decides to tweet at the mo
ment. Trumpism has no substance and
changes on a whim. It is impulsive,
even schizophrenic in the extreme.
• Trumpism is rooted in fear. Both
during the election and since, Trump
ism has sought to stoke fear among its
followers — fear of “millions of illegal
votes,” fear of immigrants, fear of the
courts, fear of the media, fear of other
nations. Fear is a very powerful emo
tion. If you make people fearful, they
will agree to anything, even to limit
ing their own individual liberties for a
veneer of security. But making people
afraid is no way to run a free, demo
cratic nation. Any political movement
that depends on fear as its fuel is a po
litical outlook that should
be rejected.
• Trumpism rests on
a cult of personality.
Without Trump, there
would be no Trump
ism. The entire faqade
depends on cultivating
an aura around a single
man, a cult that worships
him as an “outsider”
political savior. But po
litical movements built
on personality cults are
always bad and always
crash into failure. Hitler
built his Third Reich around a cult of
personality. Lenin and Stalin created
the USSR around their personal cults
of personality far more than on the
mechanics of communism. More re
cently, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela was
a cult leader who, before he died, led
his once wealthy nation into what has
become starvation economics. For a
political movement or philosophy to be
legitimate, it has to be larger than any
single individual. Trumpism isn’t.
• Trumpism has the trappings of
a monarchy. Gold curtains now adorn
the White House and Trump’s daughter
and son-in-law are official advisors, like
a princess and prince in waiting. Amer
icans have long derided kings — we
fought the British to get rid of one. But
Trumpism embraces the aura of kings
and queens where good looks (“isn’t
his family beautiful!”) and nepotism
are more important than experience
or expertise. Trumpism is style over
substance both in appearance and in
policy-making.
• Trumpism is isolationist in
tone. It promotes the idea that Amer
ica can stand alone and doesn’t need
or want alliances with the rest of the
world. But no nation is an island. The
American economy depends on inter
national trade, both to sell our goods
and to import needed raw resources.
Isolationism is a failed political and
economic model, yet Trumpism plays
heavily on the idea of America vs. the
world. America can’t and shouldn’t
withdraw from the world.
• Trumpism is tainted with the
stench of white nationalism.
Trump has surrounded himself with
people (Bannon, Miller) who flirt with
the fringes of these nativists move
ments. Much of Trump’s anti-Muslim,
anti-immigrant rhetoric was to play
to the anxieties of whites in a nation
where minorities are growing faster
than natives of Western European back
grounds. White nationalists cheered
Trump’s election as their chance to
stop the diversification of America
and to marginalize minority influence.
More than economic insecurity, Trump
ism grew from a sense of ethnic-cultur
al insecurity among white voters who
see the world around them changing in
ways they are afraid of. America is bet
ter than this Trumpist tribal mentality.
• Trumpism depends on lies and
gross exaggerations to sustain it
self. Trump didn’t have the largest in
augural crowd ever. Millions of illegals
didn’t vote in the election. Trump at
first lied about why FBI director Com-
ey was fired, until he later admitted
it was because of the Russian probe.
Any government that depends on the
massive repetition of lies to survive is
a government without a moral founda
tion. Trumpism is illegitimate because
it devalues truth and disdains any in
stitution (the courts, the media) that
dares to question it. The level of lying
and exaggerations under Trumpism is
extraordinary and a sign of gross im
maturity and insecurity on the part of
its leadership. It is immoral.
• Trumpism is not about govern
ing, it’s about winning and losing.
But government isn’t a football game.
Providing services and protecting the
nation from enemies is a mix of money,
diplomacy and power. To dumb-down
governing into black-and-white terms
of winners and losers is to totally lose
sight of why governments exist in the
first place.
• Trumpism is a political river
flowing the wrong direction. It’s
not about leadership where a president
outlines a vision, then works to rally
legislative and popular support toward
those goals. Trumpism works the oth
er way around — it seeks to rally legis
lative and popular support to feed the
fragile ego of the president himself. His
campaign rallies are more about Trump
needing to absorb adoration from the
crowd than about his articulating a vi
sion. His intense fixation on his person
al media coverage and his public image
is emotionally debilitating. The White
House is in disarray because the deci
sion-making is more about stroking the
king’s inflated ego than about govern
ing. Trumpism is always about the “me”
and not the national “we.”
Whatever happens with the ongoing
probe into Trump’s ties with Russia,
Trumpism as a political movement will
have a short lifespan.
Trumpism depends on a false nar
rative of America: That everything is
getting worse; that liberals and “oth
ers” (blacks, Muslims, immigrants) are
bringing the nation down; and that the
existing political “establishment” and
media elite are part of a vast conspiracy
to undermine “real Americans.”
I reject that false view of our nation. We
are not a nation of victims, as Trumpism
propaganda preaches.
America has problems, but this ugly
embrace of victimhood as preached by
Trumpism is false.
Trumpism will fail because it depends
on lies, exaggerations and a cult worship
of a false god as its moral foundation.
Eventually, the bright light of truth, the
harshness of reality and America’s long
culture of political moderation will strip
away the facade of Trumpism and un
mask it for what it really is: A shallow
cult designed to service one man’s giant
ego.
Mike Buffington is co-publisher of Main-
street Newspapers. He can be reached
at mike@mainstreetnews.com.
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