Why Are So Many Republicans Sticking With a Treasonous Con Man President? 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. Furthermore, he has his recent Postmaster General appointee engineering a post office slowdown in order to hinder mail-in voting. Instead of protecting the voting, Trump is damaging it, violating his oath to defend 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 important to hide, and he refuses to release his college transcripts, probably because they show a very poor academic record. 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 various 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, 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 are 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, easy prey for disinformation and demagogues. Those are many of Trump’s supporters. 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; 3) analysis of domestic and world history in great detail from 1900; 3) ethics and empathy; 4) the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the history of human rights violations; 5) introductory law, including Constitutional law; 6) comparative religion; 7) history of art, architecture, and design; 8) history of music; 9) the major mistakes in economic, social, and foreign policy over the past 100 years and which would have been the correct policies; 10) a four year course on psychology accompanied by indispensable “group therapy” and “good parenting” workshops. Of critical importance 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.
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 never has 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 occur with 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, white and black, 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 for people escaping poverty and violence), while requiring all asylum requests be made at American consulates in the country of origin, not at our border. The solution is also 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. 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.
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), which 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.
If the Democrats had candidates who understood economics, particularly QE financing, 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 (essentially printed money by the Federal Reserve) is not inherently inflationary. In fact, QE 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 be for 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, productive investment. Where would we be without venture capital? The Democrats must finally understand that greatly reducing poverty and providing an excellent education and health care for everyone does not require raising taxes. That can be done through QE financing. The Democrats must become the party of enlightened capitalism, solving social problems with practical, effective programs and without raising taxes. 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 7, 2020
