The left vilifies “Trumpism” as the racist ideological offshoot from Donald Trump. It’s not.
It’s actually a reconnection with the middle class and workers. Ironically, a man whose name is on top of skyscrapers has been more in tune with the working class in this country than the elite who’ve tried to replace American democracy with technocracy.
Our bureaucrats, the wealthy, and the left have enriched themselves while screaming about taxing the rich. Blackrock is advancing its ESG initiatives pushing companies left while buying up housing forcing Americans into permanent tenement settlements. Hollywood and the teacher unions are more interested in teaching our kindergarteners how to have sex than how to read.
People are really fed up. Donald Trump tapped into that.
It makes traditional conservatives like me a little nervous because part of Trumpism is the aggressive assertion of federal power in spending initiatives that I don’t think the government should play a role in. But also, it connects at a cultural level with Americans who are regularly belittled by the talking heads on television and the American aristocracy.
Trumpism keeps them on their toes. Sure, it is not perfect. Some of the people in the movement have noxious ideas. But those people are not the movement despite what some say.
At its heart, Trumpism is about correcting the imbalance between an American elite and cultural tastemakers and the American worker who has chosen not to live in urban, mostly coastal America where those elite and cultural tastemakers dwell.
It is not then surprising that President Trump’s endorsements are mostly falling flat at state levels. He came late to the party in Pennsylvania with Mastriano and Mastriano’s November loss will be hung around Trump’s neck by his opponents. Trump has lost his gubernatorial picks in Idaho and Nebraska and will shortly lose a whole slate in Georgia.
But at the federal level, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and more are showing the American people continue to be fed up with a progressive left/media and even Republican elite who think one-size fits all cultural garbage should be imposed on the people.
Trumpism does not exist in a vacuum, but is a reaction to something. That something started around the time the left interpreted Barack Obama’s election as their final victory over the right and started suing nuns and bakers. The pendulum has been swinging back ever since.
Like you, I marveled at how a billionaire (Trump) could connect with the working class. It wasn't his brash attitude so much as his refusal to apologize for being rich that connected with me, almost as if to say "Hell yes I'm rich, now come be rich with me!" I also loved him using the Dems' own playbook, Alinsky's "Rules," against them ("Ridicule is man's most potent weapon...."). Hoping we can see a return to his policies without the baggage of his narcissism.
Great summation. The disdain and discard for the working class by the elites of the Left, and some of the Establishment GOP is shameful.