The following is an answer, by Andrew T. Post, who describes himself as a "registered Libertarian,"to the following question:
My first reaction was simply disgust: What's wrong with these people? I downvoted it -- which I've done only two or three times in my entire experience reading Quora for nearly ten years -- and then deleted it. Then, over a period of hours, I had second thoughts; I fished it out of my "Deleted" folder, and here it is.
What I was thinking over that period was: This is frightening. I bet there are not millions, but even tens of millions, of people who think this way. And their thinking is the result of profound ignorance.
Reagan's inaugural address in 1980 contained the following phrase: "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." (Here's a link to Ronald Reagan's inaugural address, January 20, 1081.) That's a statement that shallow thinkers love; they think it's profound. And it illustrates not the entire problem, but a significant part of it.
What is government? "We the people" -- another phrase that shallow thinkers love to parrot -- are a society. The United States has a population estimated in February 2024 to be about 336,000,000 people. How on earth can this unimaginably large number of individuals be brought together to work for the common good of society?
The sad answer is that it can't. The number is too huge; the interests of all those people are too diverse and cannot possibly be unified. So government is only -- and can only be -- a compromise.
Over millennia, societies have grappled with the problem of how best to govern themselves. It's a perpetual struggle between ideologies -- people with differing visions of how society should be governed. We face that problem today, and it's a problem that will never be solved; it's a back-and-forth struggle which will always be present.
“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” That quotation is often attributed to Churchill, and he said something very like it in the House of Commons in 1947, but he was quoting an unknown predecessor. Democracy is messy and it's cumbersome, unlike autocracies, which can turn on a dime on a whim of the dear leader.
Anyway, here's Mr. Post's answer to the question:
Erstwhile conservative here.
I want you to try to imagine something:
Imagine that, for your entire life—or at least a significant chunk of it—the people who run for high office in your country have been, essentially, carbon copies of each other.
You’ve quit watching presidential debates, because there’s no point. You already know what everyone will say. The candidates are just talking heads. Zombies. Robots. They don’t give straight answers to moderators’ questions. They dodge, they prevaricate, they bring every conversation back to themselves and their pet issues. Their statements are a meaningless mishmash of buzzwords carefully calculated to appeal to their base and avoid offending anyone. And at the end of the day, they’re all the same: career politicians who just want your vote and the status quo to continue.
You are desperate for a candidate who’s different. Who says what’s on his mind, consequences and image be damned. Who promises to make real change, clearly means it, and isn’t just saying what he thinks you want to hear. Who is, in other words, not a member of the establishment, that shadowy political class currently running the country and driving it deeper and deeper into debt and chaos. In fact, he’s someone who will fight them and stick it to them, horrify and disgust them. (Them and their useful idiots, the woke progressives, who claim to stand for justice but in fact support tyranny and injustice.)
For such a person, you’d be willing to overlook almost any flaw.
And so it was with Donald Trump. People who only consider the man’s personality and character without really understanding what he represented (and still represents) to the American people are missing the key aspect of his appeal. The 2016 American presidential election wasn’t just Trump vs. Clinton. It was self-made man vs. professional thief. Private businessman vs. corrupt corporatist politician. Dark horse vs. reigning champion. Scrappy underdog vs. galactic overlord. Outsider vs. insider. Anti-establishment vs. establishment. The disenfranchised vs. the enfranchised. The real America vs. the privileged coastal political elite.
Get the idea, now?
The American political arena is chock-full of smarmy, slimy, wishy-washy politicos who speak in sound bites and talk a big game but never deliver. It doesn’t need any more. What it needs is more Archie Bunkers—assertive, unvarnished, politically incorrect types who care less about their positions and more about fixing what’s wrong with the country.
When the hero you’ve waited for your entire life finally comes along, you don’t turn your nose up at his hairdo or his spray-tan or his ego-stroking. You load him into the barrel of a gun and fire him at the enemies of the American people.
Let's break that down.
"The people who run for high office in your country have been, essentially, carbon copies of each other."
That's complete nonsense: To say that Bernie Sanders is a carbon copy of Ted Cruz is ludicrous.
"You’ve quit watching presidential debates, because there’s no point. You already know what everyone will say. The candidates are just talking heads. Zombies. Robots. They don’t give straight answers to moderators’ questions. They dodge, they prevaricate, they bring every conversation back to themselves and their pet issues. Their statements are a meaningless mishmash of buzzwords carefully calculated to appeal to their base and avoid offending anyone."
Agreed -- to a point. That's not entirely true, but it's definitely true in a lot of cases, and it's very frustrating. But where Mr. Post goes wrong is in his next sentence: "And at the end of the day, they’re all the same: career politicians who just want your vote and the status quo to continue." And that is very far from true.
Yes, they're all "career politicians," a phrase which is treated with contempt by people who don't know any better. If I get to choose the pilot of my plane, I want a "career pilot." I want my doctor to be a "career doctor." Get the point? I want someone knowledgeable and trained in the field, not some angry dilettante who thinks the world is flat or that the best medicine is the application of poultices and leeches. And while some politicians do indeed want the status quo to continue, others most decidedly do not, and they fight against it every day.
I can't tell you how many times, reacting to the news of some corruption or dishonesty by a particular politician, I've heard someone say "Politicians are all the same." They're not! And that's the core of the problem. People have to learn to realize which are the bad ones and root them out.
"You are desperate for a candidate who’s different. Who says what’s on his mind, consequences and image be damned. Who promises to make real change, clearly means it, and isn’t just saying what he thinks you want to hear." Well, that has its attractions, though perhaps a bomb-thrower who just wants to burn down the existing system without constructive ideas about how to replace it is not the best choice. And if you think Trump matches that description, you're way off the track: He's an empty vessel, totally without principle, who believes in nothing and will take any position today he thinks will benefit him in the short run, even if he expressed the opposite position last week. He was a Democrat most of his life, and expressed ideas such as support for abortion rights -- completely contrary to what he now claims to be his beliefs. He saw a fractured Republican party after the George W. Bush debacle, the 2008 economic meltdown, and an angry Tea Party, and he knew that he would have no chance to succeed in the Democratic party; opportunist that he is, he chose a badly injured Republican party as his vehicle to con the people into voting for him.
"Who is, in other words, not a member of the establishment, that shadowy political class currently running the country and driving it deeper and deeper into debt and chaos." Again, a glib misrepresentation: "the establishment" is a phrase treated with contempt by the uninformed, and it's a consequence of the widespread belief I referred to earlier, that "all politicians are the same." They're not, and it's lazy and dangerous to claim that they are. And "deeper into debt and chaos"? You realize Trump increased the national debt by $7.8 trillion with his huge tax cut for the rich, right? And believe me, if you don't want chaos, you'd better stay far away from Trump.
"In fact, he’s someone who will fight them and stick it to them, horrify and disgust them." Yes, I'm sure that's what a lot of uninformed people think, and it horrifies me to watch the glee that they express when political leaders express their hatred for the right people -- that is, the people that Mr. Post, and people like him, hate. I hear time and again, "He's saying what we're all thinking!" Yes, he's expressing the racist, bigoted feelings that you have but until now have had to suppress; now that the leader of a "legitimate" political party (it used to be, but it isn't anymore) is saying and doing these things, that gives you the license to say and do them yourself. In many cases their objective seems not to be to introduce good legislation, but simply to "own the libs"; if you've made the liberals cry, you must be doing the right thing. That's not only cruel, it's ignorant.
"(Them and their useful idiots, the woke progressives, who claim to stand for justice but in fact support tyranny and injustice.)" I'll leave that one alone. I'm a progressive (from what you've already read, does that come as a surprise?), and I think that a long list of politicians -- Bernie Sanders, AOC, Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown; I could go on and on -- are fighting every day for a more fair and just society. Mr. Post apparently disagrees.
"For such a person, you’d be willing to overlook almost any flaw." Boy howdy, how true that is. Choosing Trump as your champion, you've overlooked not one flaw, but a multitude. I honestly can't think of a good personal quality that man possesses.
"The 2016 American presidential election wasn’t just Trump vs. Clinton. It was self-made man vs. professional thief. Private businessman vs. corrupt corporatist politician. Dark horse vs. reigning champion. Scrappy underdog vs. galactic overlord. Outsider vs. insider. Anti-establishment vs. establishment. The disenfranchised vs. the enfranchised. The real America vs. the privileged coastal political elite."
There's the core of Mr. Post's argument -- a colorful list of positive/negative stereotypes which are far from the truth, but have been presented as an image by a skilled, charismatic con man who is dishonest to the core. (Honestly, I use the term "charismatic con man" with some reluctance -- I have found him to be a shallow, disgusting person since he was tabloid fodder in the '90s, and when he entered politics he didn't "con" me for ten seconds.) You do realize "The Apprentice" was scripted to portray Donald Trump as all-wise and all-powerful, right? He's actually the opposite -- he inherited his wealth, nearly lost it all with his bad business decisions, and was resurrected by a phony "reality" TV show.
"The American political arena is chock-full of smarmy, slimy, wishy-washy politicos who speak in sound bites and talk a big game but never deliver. It doesn’t need any more." I get your point there, Mr. Post; there are people like that -- a lot of them. But your solution -- "What it needs is more Archie Bunkers -- assertive, unvarnished, politically incorrect types who care less about their positions and more about fixing what’s wrong with the country" -- is entirely wrong. What the country needs is to pay attention to what's happening in Washington; to identify the "smarmy, slimy, wishy-washy politicos" and GET RID OF THEM! Vote them out! Your generalization that all politicians are like that is wrong, wrong, wrong, and voters need to be educated to discern which are the politicians who are wrong for the job and replace them.
"When the hero you’ve waited for your entire life finally comes along" -- I'm very sorry that you've been deluded into thinking that this disgusting lowlife con man -- who believes in nothing and is the absolute epitome of the type of politician you claim to despise -- someone lazy, vain, and utterly dishonest -- is the hero you've waited for your entire life. That's sad. I recently read that when an acquaintance called Trump out for cheating at golf, he replied "I cheat on my taxes, I cheat on my wives, I cheat at golf. Get over it." You have to take these stories with a grain of salt, but it's true that he cheats, and he sees cheating as a virtue: Everyone else is cheating, so if you don't cheat too, you're a sucker. This is who you want to lead the country?
Finally, "you don’t turn your nose up at his hairdo or his spray-tan or his ego-stroking. You load him into the barrel of a gun and fire him at the enemies of the American people." Do you really think that people oppose Donald Trump because of his hairdo or his spray-tan or his ego-stroking? Far from it. They mock those things, it's true -- but their opposition is based in their assessment of Trump as a man and as a leader. He is a despicable human being, and he should never again be allowed to hold any position of leadership.
And "the enemies of the American people" are not the people you think they are, and they're not the people Trump has named as such -- the mainstream media, who work hard to dig out the truth; they're a main difference between a free society and a repressive regime such as exists in Russia, China, or North Korea, where reporters are jailed or murdered. No, the enemies of the people are the "slimy, wishy-washy politicos" you complain of. Learn who those people are and get rid of them.
And that's the problem with America: glib, shallow, uninformed people like Mr. Post -- tens of millions of them. They don't think for themselves, and they're easy prey for a con man. I thank my stars every day that Donald Trump is as stupid as a box of rocks -- if he was smart, the country and the world would be facing a far bigger problem.
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