How The Democrats Can End Trumpism.
With the polls showing Biden with a double-digit lead, Donald Trump has seriously violated the Constitution by declaring that he might not accept the results of the coming presidential election and suggesting that it be postponed. The most crucial element of a democracy is elections, and for Trump to say or do anything to undermine confidence in our elections or to interfere with them is a grave impeachable offense. He has also repeatedly asserted that mail-in voting is necessarily fraudulent, that millions of bogus ballots will be mailed in by foreign states, and that the election will be rigged, preparing the ground for delegitimizing an election he loses, without offering a shred of evidence. Outrageously, he has his recent Postmaster General appointee engineering a post office slowdown in order to hinder mail-in voting, going so far as to remove automated mail sorting machinery and mailboxes! Instead of protecting the voting, Trump is damaging it, violating his oath to defend the Constitution. He should be impeached and removed for this, now! The House Democrats would be stupid not to impeach him without delay. And they should announce they will impeach any senator not voting to remove Trump for being complicit with his egregious violations of the Constitution.
In addition, Trump’s favorite foreign leaders are dictators and egregious human rights violators, and his top advisor, his son in law, wanted to have a direct telephone line to the Kremlin from Russia’s embassy in order to bypass White House phone lines, a very worrisome fact suggesting a desire to hide inappropriate Trump relations with Russia. Scandalously, what alarmed all patriotic Americans, Trump stated on a live broadcast press conference with Putin at his side, that he believed Putin, not his own intelligence service! That suggests he is in Putin’s pocket, as does his televised 2016 campaign request “Russia, if you’re listening…” Trump praises dictators and insults our democratic allies.
Trump is hiding his tax returns and bank records, a clear sign he has something damning to hide, and he refuses to release his college transcripts, probably because they show a very poor academic record. Very possibly, he did not even graduate! He has shown general ignorance and behaves boorishly, even insulting women for their appearance. He, a draft dodger, disgracefully insulted John McCain for being a prisoner of war after being shot down over North Vietnam.
He lies constantly. He was an incompetent businessman, with several of his companies going bankrupt. American banks, which love to do business with successful companies and individuals, stopped doing business with him when he failed to repay loans, so he ended up banking with Deutsche Bank, a shady bank being investigated for money laundering.
He called the coronavirus a Democratic hoax, and discouraged the use of masks, leading to a much longer crisis with thousands more hospitalizations and deaths, demonstrating he is an incompetent, even stupid, manager. Had he declared a national health emergency and imposed universal masking in early April, the Covid-19 crisis would have ended by the end of May.
He has been despicable, putting migrants in cages and separating children from their parents, just like the Nazis did in Auschwitz. He has demonstrated an affinity for fascism, which we fought against in World War II, and his favorite foreign leader is a former head of communist Russia’s KGB, a life-long enemy of the United States, an insult to the enormous sacrifices the nation made to defeat fascism and communism.
In spite of Trump’s incompetence, his outrageous boorishness, his gross dishonesty, his repeated lying, his affinity for neo-Nazis and dictators, his fascist leanings, and his being a real threat to our democracy, Republicans stick with him. How have we gotten to this point? Why are so many Republicans still backing a violator of the Constitution, a treasonous, incompetent con man president? For various reasons.
First, we have a totally deficient public high school curriculum, which leads to very large numbers of undereducated citizens, with little knowledge of 20th Century history, a low capacity for analysis, and a poor appreciation of ethics, democracy, and human rights. They are thus easy prey for disinformation, demagogues, and autocrats, even dictators. Those undereducated citizens who are Trump supporters represent one of our nation’s biggest failings, along with our not ending widespread poverty, racism, discrimination of all sorts, violence of all sorts, crime, addiction, mental derangement, abusive behavior, and police brutality.
How to correct the totally inadequate high school curriculum? By adding the following courses to the high school curriculum: 1) logic and critical thinking; 2) economics and investing, including explaining why QE-financed tax rebates (not ultra-low interest rates) should be the standard economic stimulus tool, and why QE financing makes budget deficits no longer problematic; 3) analysis of domestic and world history in great detail from 1900; 4) ethics and empathy; 5) the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the history of human rights violations; 6) introductory law, including Constitutional law; 7) comparative religion; 8) history of art, architecture, and design; 9) history of music; 10) the major mistakes in economic, social, and foreign policy over the past 100 years and which would have been the correct policies; 11) a four year psychology course accompanied by indispensable “group therapy” and “good parenting” workshops. These courses are essential in order to have an enlightened curriculum and well-educated, psychologically well-adjusted citizens.
Beyond having an enlightened curriculum, of critical importance is to have strict class discipline and lots of homework, without which learning is greatly diminished. Equally important is to have individual assistance for students having academic or psychological problems, in order to prevent them from falling behind and dropping out. This public school reform is essential for the nation, and the Democrats should implement it.
Since a truly excellent education of all our youth is in the national interest, public school education should be federally funded, we should have an ambitious core national curriculum, and have a prestigious, demanding national high school graduation exam. We absolutely need a uniformly high level of education for our citizens if we want a socially and economically prosperous nation. Again, QE financing whenever necessary avoids raising taxes. What the Democrats should emphasize is that having every single American truly well educated results in the practical elimination of poverty, addiction, and crime and in much lower tax rates.
Second, many Trump supporters are fundamentalist Christians whose priority is criminalizing abortions, which Trump has opportunistically promised to work for by appointing conservative judges inclined to overturn Roe v. Wade. But criminalizing abortions has never ended abortions anywhere in the world, only made them happen illegally at great risk to women having them. That is not Christian! The real solution, even the Christian solution, is to promote policies which end unwanted pregnancies and to encourage adoptions. Since most unwanted pregnancies involve high school dropouts, the obvious solution is to prevent students from dropping out. The Democrats have been narrow-minded in stubbornly endorsing abortions instead of policies to end unwanted pregnancies, which has led many Americans to back any Republican candidate against abortion, with little regard for character deficiencies or the lack of qualifications.
Third, many Trump supporters are anti-immigrant precisely because of their low level of education which has them falling behind economically and socially. The solution is to have every single American youth get at a minimum a truly excellent high school education as suggested above. Furthermore, the Democrats have not offered an effective solution to illegal immigration in order to drag Republican voters away from Trump. Yet the solution is simple: it simply requires enforcing our immigration laws (it would be absurd to have open borders) and our asylum law (which applies only to people being persecuted by their own governments, not to people escaping poverty and violence), while requiring all asylum requests be made at American consulates in the country of origin, not at our border. Another solution for the problem of illegal immigration is to have a major Peace Corps program for Central America, to help it develop socially and economically through schools, medical clinics, and urgent infrastructure projects. A prosperous Central America is in our own economic interest, not just to end illegal immigration.
It is important to ensure that immigration does not dilute respect for our fundamental values, a matter of great concern for many Americans, not just Trump supporters. The Democratic Party should state that it is logical to accept only immigrants who fully endorse our fundamental values of democracy and human rights, including equality for women and non-discrimination on the basis of race, religion, or national origin, and who demonstrate a desire to fully integrate into American society and become faithful patriotic Americans. Democrats should unambiguously state it is completely illogical and counterproductive to admit immigrants whose values are counter to ours. The point must be made that freedom of religion does not mean freedom to violate our laws and fundamental values. Religions, which through their practice or holy books incite hatred and violence against people of other religions or atheists, violate women’s equal rights (including requiring women to cover their heads or even their faces, and to be segregated from men in public places), or threaten censorship, must reform in order to be legal in the United States.
Fourth, many of Trump’s supporters are fond of having guns and don’t want the regulations and limitations proposed by the Democrats. The Democrats are narrow-minded in insisting on gun control which is not a solution for gun violence. Making guns illegal or tightly regulated would never work, just like making addictive drugs illegal has never worked. There are always black markets. Democrats must be open-minded and admit that gun violence (particularly mass shootings) is the result of having many uneducated and psychologically disturbed citizens. Therefore, it’s true that “guns do not kill, people kill”, apart from the fact that there are many ways of killing other than with firearms. So, Republicans against gun control would not have to vote for Trump if the Democrats would abandon their clearly ineffective, futile gun control policy and focus on the roots of gun violence and the real solution, having our public high schools promote mental health and provide a truly excellent education.
Fifth, the Democrats need to understand that they can reach their social goals (ending poverty, ending violence, providing a truly excellent public school education to every single youth, providing excellent affordable health care, and undertaking urgent infrastructure projects) without being “socialists” and without raising taxes on the rich. They need to understand economics and the great recent discovery of QE financing which makes raising taxes unnecessary. If Democrats were not socialistic and the party of increasing taxes, particularly on the upper middle class and the wealthy, many Trump supporters would vote for a Democratic presidential candidate. Isn’t that the urgent priority? Why risk losing to Trump for invidious, economically counter-productive socialistic ideology? The fact is, many Democratic politicians openly state that they want to soak the rich (v. NYC Mayor Bill DeBlasio). That is counter to the American free enterprise, capitalist ethos which is against punishing economically successful people and companies. The Democrats must understand that poverty is not the result of capitalism; it is the result of failed social policies.
Sixth, in order to attract many Republican voters, the Democrats must be clear that they will never take away anyone’s private health insurance. Democrats must make very clear that Obama Care does not require eliminating private health insurance, which many Americans have and are satisfied with, nor does it require single payer. Also, they must make absolutely clear that QE financing of healthcare whenever necessary will avoid the need to increase taxes.
Seventh, the Democrats need to explain to the many Republicans who object to kneeling during the national anthem and to burning the American flag, that such gestures are not unpatriotic at all, rather they are an expression of dismay and protest against social injustice and against what is considered incompetent, immoral or gravely mistaken government policy, such as the conduct of the Vietnam War. Citizens who protest because they want their country to be moral are very patriotic. Trump’s demagogic criticism of entirely justified protest marches against police brutality, violently attacked by unmarked federal troops on his orders, appeals to kneejerk feelings of undereducated and misinformed citizens with fascist tendencies, oblivious to social injustice and grave governmental incompetence or immorality.
If the Democrats had candidates who understood economics, particularly QE financing by the Federal Reserve, they would not insist on raising taxes and be so preoccupied with budget deficits. The Republicans have seen the light on that, even though they won’t let on and continue to give lip service to reducing budget deficits, wanting the Democrats to remain in the dark. Republican leadership has realized that contrary to conventional economic theory (which has been grotesquely mistaken on the effects of budget deficits, just as it has been on many other matters), QE financing (essentially printed money by the Federal Reserve) is not inherently inflationary. In fact, QE financing is only inflationary when it is excessive, resulting in excess aggregate demand, the situation of “too much money chasing too few goods”.
The Democrats must realize they can use QE to pay for important social programs and not raise taxes, which are already too high. In fact, the Democrats should propose eliminating long-term capital gains taxes, which are economically counter-productive and unfair, often taxing illusory gains due to inflation. That would out-Trump Trump in economic policy! And be good economic policy! If eliminating long-term capital gains taxes and not raising income taxes were in the Democratic platform, many Trump supporters would abandon him and vote for the Democrats. The Democrats must also understand what wealthy individuals and companies do with their money: they consume and invest, both of which are essential for economic growth. Every society needs many very wealthy individuals and companies in order for there to be lots of intelligent, innovative, and productive investment. Where would we be without venture capital?
The Democrats must become the party of enlightened capitalism, dedicated to solving our social problems with practical, truly effective programs, using QE financing whenever necessary in order to avoid raising taxes. They must clearly reject socialism, explaining that it is not the solution to our problems and would damage our dynamic free enterprise economy. They must drop ineffective, counter-productive ideological policies which alienate many Republican voters if they want Trump voters to abandon him. That’s how the Democrats can solve our severe social problems, have a very prosperous economy with low taxes, unite the nation, and save us all from a would-be fascist dictator who would kill our democracy.
© Edward Sonnino 2020
August 15, 2020
