- Dec 3, 2006
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Opposition To Trump Is Rooted In Contempt For Ordinary Voters
In Trump, his supporters hear a spirited defense of the hard-working despised and a fearless denouncing of the fashionable despisers.
thefederalist.com
The author then gives a few paragraphs with that historical background. Allow me to go deeper into the article for some of it's conclusions.A
complaint I hear increasingly leveled at contemporary American politicians is that they are out of touch with voters, if not downright contemptuous of them. On a number of core issues, politicians seem less concerned with pursuing policies that are deeply unpopular with ordinary Americans than with upholding the ideologies and self-interests of the ruling elite. Two dramatic examples of this political disconnect with average citizens are the refusal of urban governments to prosecute violent criminals, which has caused a surge in crime, and the White House’s tolerance of mass immigration, which threatens jobs, security, and the rule of law.
As I survey the current political and intellectual landscape, I cannot help but see a resurgence of the arrogance and disdain of the 18th-century French revolutionaries for those they considered to be incapable of rational thought and moral behavior. But I am moving too fast. Let me slow down and give some historical background.
As a citizen in a representative democracy, I expect our political leaders, including Donald Trump, to be held up to public scrutiny and questioned, even investigated, when the facts warrant it. What I do not expect, and find increasingly troubling, is the widespread and ongoing demonization and character assassination of all those who support Trump and approve of his candidacy and his policies.
I am old enough to remember how roughly the political establishment treated supporters of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, especially if they identified with a conservative branch of Christianity. Reagan and Bush supporters routinely had their concerns ridiculed, motives suspected, and intelligence doubted. Still, the dismissal of Reaganites and Bushies as boobs and rednecks pales in comparison to the viciously sanctimonious profiling of Trump supporters as authoritarian, narcissistic white supremacists utterly unconcerned for the common good.
Whereas the liberal progressives of the 1980s expressed some compassion for the needs and struggles of the working man, the woke philosophes of today express only contempt for those who work with their hands. While carrying on the oppressor/oppressed identity politics of Karl Marx and his heirs, they have reduced America’s blue-collar proletariat to a racist, sexist, transphobic rabble who must be suppressed, managed, and reeducated.
Convinced, as philosophes were, of the “wickedness, stupidity, inhumanity, unreason, and prejudice” of the rabble, today’s progressive philosophical, political, and social engineers have appointed themselves the task of redefining for the masses what Diderot believed the general will should define for them: what it means “to be a man, a citizen, a subject, a father, a child, and when it is suitable to live or to die.”
No wonder the majority of working men and women in America look to Trump as their advocate. He not only defends their traditional family values, common sense, and God-given humanity. His seems to be the only voice in Washington speaking up for, or even understanding, the joys and woes, hopes and fears, victories and struggles of that “rabble” that the political establishment, on both the left and right, seems only to dismiss, disparage, and despise.
Most of “polite” society attacks Trump for his caustic tone, his cutting remarks, and the obvious glee he takes in labeling and mocking his opponents. They fail to understand that Trump’s rhetoric is central to his appeal. The “masses” who flock to his speeches do not go merely to be entertained. They go to witness a much-needed turning of the tables, a political topsy turvy during which the weapons of the progressive philosophes are turned against them.
Far from the bully, Trump is the champion of those who have been bullied relentlessly and mercilessly by a self-appointed elite who holds them in contempt. In Trump, they have found a modern George Bailey — albeit a crasser and more combative one — who is willing to stand up to the Mr. Potters of the world.