It was refreshing , as well as surprising, to read a balanced, well-written, substantive book about our current political environment and the "Trump paradox." Victor Davis Hanson, soft-spoken author of over 20 prior books, has the uncommon ability to effectively and passionately communicate the subtleties of complex issues without resorting to sophistry. Hanson identifies the underlying reasons Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election and provides numerous details about the subsequent responses from those who opposed him. To his credit, although he does support Trump, the author does not ignore Trump's faults and setbacks.
In making the case for Trump, throughout the book the author emphasizes the fact that the forgotten voters - those in blue-collar professions, those living in rural areas of America, and many others who were not seen as "elites" were concerned about the way things were going and how their views were being portrayed by the media. These are the voters that Trump supported in his many speeches and pronouncements and they - in return - supported him.
Trump comprehended the negative effects on American workers when jobs are exported to other countries. He realized that China does not respect copyright, patent and intellectual property rights and is becoming even more autocratic in their international relationships. He has committed to fight back against China's unfair trade practices. He realized that there is a human cost of exporting jobs to other countries. Without good jobs, government grows, crime increases, and families disintegrate. His jawboning of companies caused several corporations to reconsider their plans to close down plants in the United states and his new repatriation tax rate of 15.5% - less than half the old rate - would possibly even return over one trillion dollars to our country.
Unsurprisingly, we learn that half of all immigrants came from the far southern states of Mexico - most lacking a high school diploma or English skills and likely to support Democratic-sponsored open-border and welfare-entitlement policies. And, that a majority of Americans who had firsthand knowledge of illegal immigration felt that illegal aliens had made their own communities worse off, including a majority of black Americans. Nevertheless, the Democrat party abandoned their prior opposition to illegal immigration and now promoted open borders, sanctuary cities, and lax voting laws, much to the dismay of many Americans.
Trump wanted immigration laws enforced - like our other laws. He wanted to separate the "bad" illegal alien chaff consisting of criminals and welfare chiselers from the "good" wheat of hard-working immigrants from a variety of countries. He wanted to ensure that law-abiding and skilled or professional applicants - from whatever country - have an equal opportunity at achieving the American dream. Mexico's practice of exporting its poor, unskilled, and uneducated to the United States in exchange for importing $30 billion in remittances while claiming to be morally superior did not please Trump. He felt that there was a huge economic benefit to ending illegal immigration: the entry-level worker's wages would rise, more money would stay and be spent in our country, welfare expenses would decline, identity theft would decline, and we would experience more rapid assimilation and integration of new arrivals. Trump had the better argument and this is one of the reasons he won the nomination and went on to defeat Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College.
Trump's crude language and name calling had been widely criticized but typically was only in response to previous attacks from his competitors or opponents - not a first-strike attack. He is a counter-puncher and will not hesitate to strike back at those who attack first. This behavior was evident in both his domestic and international relations - sending a clear message to all.
An explanation for Trump's apparent "nine lives" that invariably occurred after the many obituary predictions by the media was provided by Salena Zito, a new york Post columnist: "The press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally." The press obsessed on Trump's gaffes but missed the purpose of his rhetoric - to resurrect the forgotten working class.
The author devotes fifteen fascinating pages to analyze Obama's articulated goal of "fundamentally changing the United States of America" that instead resulted in fundamentally changing and diminishing the Democratic party - allowing the far left to gain control of its platform while relinquishing moderate voters to the Republicans. The opportunity to capitalize on this trend was wasted on the Republicans because they had ineffective national spokespeople, dismal presidential candidates, and seemed to care more about how they were perceived by the public rather than focusing on winning elections. It was considered bad taste to publicize Reverend Jeremiah Wright screaming "God damm America" and it is left to our imagination how the Wright-Obama connection would have been handled if Trump had been the Republican nominee in 2008.
Clandestine activities and the many lies committed by those associated with the "Deep State" are brilliantly summarized in the chapter titled "The Ancien Regime," the details of which continue to emerge as investigations progress. Not long ago, liberals had feared the deep state but increasingly have considered the unchecked and unaccountable powers of the deep state as more of an ally than a threat. During the Robert Mueller investigations, progressives did not complain about FISA court-ordered surveillance of private citizens and failed to expose the multitude of conflict of interest at the Obama Department of Justice and FBI that distorted their presentation of the Steele dossier to the FISA court. Any criticism of Mueller was considered by liberals to be an obstruction of justice and unpatriotic.
In general, the deep state had admired Obama, who grew it, and now loathed Trump, who promised to shrink it. In fact, nothing was sacred to Trump - throughout his campaign and afterwards, he blasted the CIA, the FBI, the IRS, and Department of Justice as either incompetent or prejudicial. In the recent terrorist incidents - the Fort Hood shootings, the Boston Marathon bombing, the San Bernardino attacks, or the Orlando nightclub killings - the perpetrators were already known to either the FBI or local authorities, or both, yet no one took preemptive action.
Trump was the first Republican candidate to fearlessly portray the deep state as a tumor that grew and devoured the flesh of our nation and he mocked bureaucracy's use of euphemisms when he called out "radical Islamic terrorism" on multiple occasions and promised to bring back the use of the word "Christmas" as a Christian holiday rather than a secular seasonal celebration during the end of the year holidays. In response, the deep state did not meekly surrender but instead used every available resource in their attempt to discredit, destroy, and remove him from office.
The author discusses the issue of Google, Twitter, and Facebook exerting monopolistic control over the information we receive through those sources. He points out that their political bias is apparent, but not surprising, given that 99% of all political donations from "Silicon Valley" (i.e., Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Mountain View, and their environs) were given to the Clinton campaign. Facebook, which the government does not consider a public utility, can decide what is "proper" political expression. Google, by itself, can decide what information billions of users will see on their monitors. Yet its management is unapologetically partisan. At a Google "all hands meeting" following Trump's victory, Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, proclaimed to the audience "I certainly find this election deeply offensive, and I know many of you do too." This opinion is not without consequence: if a particular historical video does not coincide with Silicon Valley's ideological position, YouTube will stifle it through "restrictive mode filtering," as it has with many offered by non-profit conservative Praeger University.
High-tech companies have managed to escape the wrath of both political parties. Although the Democrats have been the traditional trust-busters and hyper-regulators, why would they now regulate companies that are a veritable cash cow for the Democratic Party and that promoted progressive ideology daily via their vast control of internet content. On the other hand, Republicans supported unfettered free markets and were ideologically adverse to imposing controls on Silicon Valley firms, even if they were opposed to the high-tech monopolies and even targeted by them. Now, Republicans were so ideologically straight-jacketed that they were incapable of biting the hand that starved them.
Drawing on his vast knowledge of history, the author compares the current complaints of cultural decline to prior epochs in ancient Greece and Rome. The ancient Greeks perceived a state's rise, fall, and rise again as an unending organic cycle, analogous to human aging, dying, and birthing. The Roman poet Horace, in the first-century BC, informed his readers "Worse than our grandparents' generation, our parents' then produced us, even worse, and soon to bear still worse children".
During his worldwide apology tour, Obama sermonized about America's shortcomings and faulted us for a variety of pathologies from past biases ("The United States is still sorting through some of our own darker periods in our history") to laziness ("But we've been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades." "If you're in the United States, sometimes you can feel lazy and think we're so big we don't have to really know anything about other people.")
In striking contrast, Trump loudly condemned others, but not his like-minded fellow citizens. He focused his criticism on foreign economic "cheaters" like the Chinese and the Mexicans or the free-loading and pampered Europeans. He was especially critical of our own clueless leaders who made "dumb deals" - consequently allowing foreign nations to take advantage of us. Trump's message resonated with voters who were tired of accepting blame for their own malaise as Obama told them they must.
By any historical marker, America was wealthy, but rather than feeling guilty about America's wealth, Trump's message was that America deserves to be even richer than it was - or at least that those Americans who were not now rich could be. This vision did not coincide with the agenda of the aging "tenured radicals" from the sixties who now ran the universities; who weaponized their sixties pop theories of radical economics and permissive culture as they grabbed the reins of twenty-first-century establishment power in Hollywood, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and the deep state during both Republican and Democratic administrations. These had become anti-Trump bastions where elitists made up rules that benefited themselves at the expense of working-class Americans. Rather than accept the "managed decline" of our nation as proposed by Obama, Trump's advisors were confident about restoring the fortunes of the red-state middle class, and, with it, America's as well.
Again, the author draws on his knowledge of history to inform us that, to the rare extent that declining nations have reversed course, their recovery is brought about by returning to the values that originally made them great. Renewal focuses on investing more than consuming, limiting the size of state bureaucracies and entitlements, restoring confidence in the currency, and avoiding costly optional wars. It also requires preserving the rule of law, enshrining meritocracy, and reinculcating national pride in ancestral customs and traditions while ensuring citizens equality under the law.
During the 2015-16 campaign, the public learned that Russian-related entities had purchased a Canadian energy corporation, Uranium One, as a method to gain access to strategic North American uranium deposits. During this time, Russians with ties to the Kremlin mysteriously had given multimillion-dollar gifts to the Clinton Foundation, and an exorbitant honorarium of $500,000 to Bill Clinton to speak just once in Moscow. Indeed, Uranium One was emblematic of how Hillary Clinton had seen her own net worth soar from near zero in 2001 to $50 million in 2010, while the Clinton Foundation had raised over $2 billion by 2016. Before the election, money flowed in various ways to the Clintons. After the election - after Hillary lost - no one was interested in paying the Clintons or their affiliates much at all.
As a reality check, the chapter in the book titled "The New/Old Crude Messenger" was replete with examples of the crude language and questionable behavior from various presidents in the past and from otherwise well-respected and successful leaders. In the pre-Twitter age, Truman could never keep his mouth shut: "My choice early in life was either to be a piano-player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference." This chapter dispels several commonly held naive misconceptions about human nature.
The author makes the point that "One of the greatest ironies of our age is that we have somehow managed to become far more sanctimonious than previous generations-and yet far more immoral by traditional standards as well. We can obsess over an untactful presidential comment, but snore through the systematic destruction of the manufacturing basis of an entire state or ignore warlike violence on the streets of Chicago." Were euphemisms or crudity the real issue? How honest and ethical was it to refer to the Fort Hood massacre as "workplace violence," or to rename deadly Islamic terrorism as a "man-caused disaster"? Euphemisms can be more obscene than coarse obscenity.
Since Trump was elected, many of the "Never Trumpers" abandoned their vitriol against the president and some actually became his supporters while others continued non-stop to issue their spiteful proclamations against Trump - culminating in the "insurance policy" created and promulgated by a few corrupt officials at the FBI and CIA in collaboration with a number of individuals in foreign governments - in an attempt to discredit, destroy, and remove him from office. This - as well as other political maneuvers by Democrats - has failed and Trump's popularity has grown along with the strength of our economy since he became president.
Since Trump took office, the economy grew at an annualized rate exceeding 3%, a number thought impossible while Obama was in office - likely true as long as Obama's policies were in effect. Our economy - as measured by the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) - had grow faster than at any comparable period from 2009 to 2016. This phenomenon was contrary to the predictions of Nobel prize-winner Paul Krugman who predicted immediately following the election, that the economy would never recover. Equally as embarrassing a proclamation came from Larry Summers, who was the former chief economist of the World Bank, treasury secretary under president Bill Clinton, director of the National Economic Council for President Obama and former president of Harvard University. In response to Trump's claim that he would achieve 3% economic growth, Summers claimed that was the kind of nonsense heard from those who believed in "tooth fairies and ludicrous supply-side economics."
Since Trump was elected, unemployment has reached unprecedented lows in over a dozen states - including California. The labor participation rate reached its highest level in fifteen years. Applications for unemployment benefits dropped to the lowest figure in 48 years. In response to an improving economy, Trump's critics flipped their narrative - from predicting impending stagnation to worrying about a wild inflationary boom that would invariably lead to a bust.
Trump has suffered several failures and setbacks. He promised to eliminate optional interventions in other countries but he had kept US troops in Afghanistan even after ISIS was decimated - although, his madman act with North Korea, acting as unhinged and threatening as Kim Jong-un may have sufficiently scared both China and North Korea to negotiate with him.
Trump has suffered a few significant setbacks. In order to end illegal border crossings, he had promised to build a wall and that Mexico would pay for it. Little progress has been made on building the wall and Mexico has not paid for it. Trump probably underestimated the reluctance of both Democrats and Republicans to end illegal immigration from Mexico. Many businesses, large and small (and some households), benefit from paying lower wages to undocumented workers. The fact that immigrants overwhelmingly vote for Democrats encourages Democrats to welcome foreigners who will most likely swell the ranks of party members. In addition, the Democrats benefit from the identity politics and class warfare created by unfettered immigration.
Even though the economy is heating up and the Treasury is receiving record amounts of revenue, given the failure to control the expanding Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid outlays in addition to the growing military expenditures, reduction in the deficit is not likely to occur.
Trump will continue to face criticism from his enemies and even from the establishment Republicans in his own party as he continues in his campaign to "Make America Great Again" but he continues to survive in the face of unfathomable attacks from both sides of the aisle. Perhaps Trump has internalized a quote attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche: "That which does not kill us makes us stronger."
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Top reviews from other countries
Richard M, Derbyshire
I get it now…
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 25, 2023
Richard M, Derbyshire
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 25, 2023
I then heard Victor Davis Hanson on a podcast and thought I’d read this. Although he is very slightly biased (in my opinion) toward Trump he does soberly lay out Trumps aims, style and approach to acting as a disrupter of the bi-partisan deep state model of US politics. The arguments are convincing and confound the media portrayal of The Donald.
The thread through the book is that Trump had no cultural shared history with then Beltway or career politicians and so was able to shake up the system.
Well worth a read - especially to anyone who hates the man.
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