What Is Really Behind Donald Trump?

We all know the bluster and the seemingly absurd “everyman” language he uses that endears him to many Americans, even the blue-collar set.  Much of it is unclear, vague, and often contradictory.  Each of us thinks we understand what he means.  Perhaps that’s the point.  Speak with “fill-in-the-blanks” vagueness and let the listener hear what they want.  He is the carnival barker of our time.  He can whip an audience into a frenzy and they will do his bidding.

Some might ask, how is it that a wealthy tycoon is relatable to such a wide audience?  He has easily carved out a solid base of hard-core followers estimated to be about one-third of the Republican party. 

He promises simple “magic bullet” solutions to complex problems.  Paint a picture of immigrants as drug-crazed pedophiles and rapists coming to take your jobs, then promise to “build a 2,000-mile steel wall on our southern border and have Mexico pay for it.”  The crowd will cheer.  The crowd won’t see the lunacy in this, or the fact that it still doesn’t solve the problem of immigration.  They just see a simple “solution.”  People understand walls and fences.  People don’t understand that others, facing death and starvation, are highly motivated.  Immigrants will see such a barrier as just another obstacle in a long line of hazards they have already faced.

Trump’s appeal is further enhanced by citizens feeling their government is in chaos and unresponsive to their needs. Who can blame them, it’s true.  You don’t have to be a political scientist to see the dysfunction of our government.  Politicians fight, not just with the opposition, but among themselves. It’s not a pretty picture.  Trump is still seen as an outsider and he is now an “outsider” with four years of experience.

This part of the Trump equation is easy to understand.  What worked for Il Duce (Benito Mussolini) in the 1930s is working for Donald Trump.  Mussolini too was originally a socialist who promised the working class a better life before making a hard turn to the right.  We must remember that Donald Trump was originally a Democrat before his hard right turn.  Mussolini asked to be allowed to ignore existing laws and to be allowed to become a dictator for just one year.  Trump, in recent speeches, promises that his dictatorship will only last one day.  If you believe that, he has some classified documents he will sell you along with pieces of the suit he wore for his mug shot.

The term fascist was created to describe Mussolini’s paramilitary groups which were called “fasci di combattimento” or fascismo.  The word is from the Latin word fasces which is described as a bundle of wooden sticks topped with an ax head used by Roman authority figures to express their rank.  This symbol has been adopted by the alt-right as a favorite icon.  The Charlottesville killer who drove his car into protestors used this symbol.  In ancient Rome, the ax was to be used for punishment when needed.

Mussolini supporters wore black shirts at rallies, not red MAGA hats.  Il Duce spoke theatrically, often in a repetitive manner, expressing opinions that were contradictory and not based on facts.  He was malicious and often used metaphors emphasized with vigorous repetitive gestures.  He inspired the creation of independent militias who terrorized those who might oppose his agenda.  Does any of this sound familiar?

While this perhaps explains a little about Trump and his appeal with some of his hard-core group, it doesn’t explain why he is even in politics beyond his own ego, which is another topic altogether.  What’s in it for him and, more importantly, for others in his class?  What motivates big business and other extremely wealthy people to support the likes of Trump?  What are their motivations and goals?  Using the current chaos in government as cover, and using popular empty rhetoric about lowering the national debt, this group wants to overhaul the constitution, install an authoritarian government that they control, and add to their coffers on the backs of those unaware of their tactics.

ALEC, or the American Legislative Exchange Council, formerly called the Conservative Caucus of State Legislators, was founded in 1973.  The newly anointed Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, was their keynote speaker this year.  Their current initiative is to use Article V of the Constitution to amend that document to benefit businesses.  It all sounds rather innocuous on the surface but their call for an Article V Convention has an agenda that may benefit the rich at the expense of the poor.  This financial shift would be paid for by those who aren’t owners of private Boeing 757s like “Trump Force One.”  [aside-Trump’s jet was formerly a Mexican airliner based in Mexico City]

To invoke Article V, they need 2/3 of the 50 states to support a constitutional convention.  Those living in the conspiracy netherworld should note that 2/3 is point 666.  They need 34 states to call the convention and 38 to ratify any amendments.

The overall objective seems to be to enforce a conservative agenda by changing the balance of power from the federal government back to the states where they feel they can make changes.  Such changes would be more difficult at the national level.  Currently, 25 states have a conservative advantage with 19 of those having a significant advantage.  At the national level, voter registrations showed Democrats outnumbering Republicans in 2020 by around 12 million.  The count in October of that year was 48.5M Democrats, 36.1M Republicans, and 34.8M fence-sitters.

So, if ALEC can get enough states to back their call for a convention, they can then amend our Constitution to suit their needs.  This can be done through the individual state legislatures and Congress has no say.  They currently have petitions circulating with innocuous language that few could find egregious.  Terms like, “impose restraints on the federal government, limit its power and jurisdiction, and calling for term limits for members of Congress,” all sound like the only question should be, “Where do I sign?”  If you expand the details of their petition, you will see that it also calls for the elimination of “crushing regulation.”

American Legislative Exchange Council

If you go further into their plans and read their brochure, you will see that they feel businesses are being forced to comply with onerous regulations enacted by agencies that are not directly accountable to citizens.  While I would agree that this is the case, I would question the sanity of having everyday people voting on how much E. coli O157:H7 is safe in our ground beef. 

Some might argue that, if you cook all your hamburgers well and make them look like charcoal briquettes, it is not much of a problem.  Certainly, the meat packing industry would like those regulations to go away.  It costs them money to comply with these rules.  They could make larger profits without regulations.  In fact, most businesses could see larger profits if government regulations went away.  Let me pollute that stream with my industrial runoff because everyone can switch to bottled water.

This group also sees Social Security and other so-called “entitlement” programs as part of a problem that they need to fix.  I’ll leave it up to you to figure out how billionaires would decide to fix Social Security.  I seriously doubt that they would like to eliminate or raise the current $160,200 cap beyond which income is no longer subject to that FICA tax.  The current tax rate is 6.2% for employees and a similar amount for the employer.  Big business, and the very wealthy, don’t see much benefit from Social Security and view it as a government intrusion into their ability to make maximum profits.

The “Article V Convention of States Pocket Guide” further identifies their goal as shifting more control to the states.  The 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision would be an example of such a shift.  The conservative SCOTUS ruled that since the Constitution did not specifically list abortion as a right, that issue must be decided individually by each state.  It apparently did not matter that, until the mid-19^th century, abortion was legal as established by common law.

ALEC supports the NRA and the expansion of “stand-your-ground” laws.  They want voter ID voting requirements to limit access to the polls, laws that require all immigrants over 18 to “carry their papers” of alien registration with them at all times, and laws that would outlaw the filming of livestock farms by animal rights activists where violators would be placed in a terrorist registry. 

ALEC wants to privatize prisons as profit centers for the penal-industrial complex.  They want to limit EPA restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions and limit access to environmental agencies’ right to track fracking contaminants that may leak into drinking water.  They want to penalize homeowners who install private solar panels and want to sell electricity back on the grid.  They support the total privatization of education.  They would outlaw public broadband services in favor of big business control by the likes of ATT and Verizon.  They want to eliminate the Affordable Care Act.  They promote the idea that homosexuality leads to pedophilia and recruitment.  [Russia just outlawed gay]

ALEC supports all these things and actively writes the legislation and bills that participating officials can sponsor.  Their model legislation comes with training and assistance as a “resource” made available to legislators.  Their authorship is not disclosed, and ALEC membership is a guarded secret.  In one instance, however, a Florida-sponsored bill (by Rep. Rachel Burgin) was introduced that mistakenly included the “boilerplate” mission statement of ALEC.  This group has been called “a dating agency for Republican legislators and big corporations.”

If you are still in doubt as to the goal of ALEC, just know that it is fully endorsed by Ron DeSantis, Sean Hannity, Rand Paul, Sarah Palin, Greg Abbott, Andrew Napolitano, Mark Meadows, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, Jeb Bush, and Bobby Jindal.  While I support their call for term limits for members of Congress and SCOTUS, I doubt that such limits would make the final cut.

Trump’s broad appeal to the uber-wealthy and the blue-collar set, who would not seem to have similar goals, comes from his careful crafting of his pliable positions on the issues.  He has garnered support from ultra-conservatives and the religious right with his anti-abortion stance.  He has paired this with his desire to be an authoritarian strongman who could force-feed their agenda against the will of most Americans.  His anti-regulation, anti-tax, and small government posture gets the support of big business and the uber-wealthy.  His racism and xenophobia win votes from others who share those views.

There are many seemingly willing to overlook his lack of integrity and morals in the hope that their little slice of the pie will get bigger.  They are also willing to put our democratic way of life on hold to give authoritarianism a chance.  They seem to think that the examples of other countries where authoritarian rule is the norm couldn’t happen in America.  Russia, China, North Korea, Hungary, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are somehow different.  Authoritarian rule in America would be different.  Trump would only govern by fiat on “day one,” and after that, he would follow the Constitution.

Captain Edward J. Smith
RMS Titanic

I will be the first to admit that the system is broken.  Our government seems to be suffering from “locked-in syndrome” where we are conscious and aware of what is happening but are paralyzed to act on anything.  There are solutions to our problems but electing “Capt. Edward Smith,” disguised as Donald Trump, to right the ship and move full speed ahead, means it is time to start counting the lifeboats.