The Trump Distraction

Whether it’s due to actual incriminating words and actions, or due to endless assaults without merit, or some combination of both, there are millions of Americans for whom Donald Trump has no credibility. Beyond the damage this has wrought on Trump’s personal and political life, this has dire consequences for the nation. It has enabled the special interests who oppose policies that Trump supports to fatally stigmatize those policies by associating them with Trump.

It’s a dirty trick, but politics is a dirty business. Every political sentiment that special interests who run the country find objectionable is labeled “Trumpism,” and hence becomes toxic.

This game of distraction is bigger than Trump. Americans are beginning to realize that they’ve been betrayed by their elites. The globalist agenda of open borders, unfettered movement of capital, the rejection of traditional values, the rejection of meritocracy, the deliberate overreaction to “climate change,” and the heedless accumulation of debt to fund the development of foreign economies—including the Chinese military—has been accepted and promoted by virtually every major institution in America: unions, corporations, academia, K-12 public education, the media and entertainment industry, Democrats, and most Republicans. They profit by this agenda, and in so doing elevate the cost-of-living at the same time as Americans are deprived of good jobs.

When Trump entered politics in 2015, he exposed and rejected this agenda in its entirety. Within a few years, tens of millions of Americans who hadn’t considered these issues as part of a connected whole, if they’d even considered them at all, were awakened and voting for a politician that was committed to dismantling the entire globalist project.

Trump’s continued relevance promises to blur even further the conventional dividing lines in American politics. What is the significance of Left vs. Right, when communists and corporations in 21st-century America are working together to advance big government globalism; they both support an authoritarian, collectivist, micromanaged society. There is ample evidence for this seeming paradox.

On most of the big issues of our time, including the rejection of traditional moral values, the centrality of “climate change” as a transformative economic and political agenda, and the need for affirmative action, racial redress, and open borders, communists and corporatists share a surprisingly congruent agenda. Only on the issue of private property do they diverge, and even that may be illusory when considering the realistic prospect of publicly held corporations with activist directorates and activist shareholders owning and controlling virtually the entire economy.

Trump blew the lid off this whole artificial dichotomy, and from coast to coast, Americans are still digesting the implications. No wonder there is a coordinated, ongoing corporate obsession with race and gender disparities, paired with a constant effort to nurture tribalism. Because if you take away a polarizing perspective on race and gender, what can unite the grassroots on the Left with the grassroots on the Right may be bigger than what divides them.

The common thread in the globalist agenda is that it will disproportionately harm middle and low-income Americans regardless of their group identity. Children need a father and a mother. Climate change policies that enrich corporations and empower leftist bureaucrats will impoverish everyone not wealthy enough to be indifferent to the crushing cost. Abandoning meritocracy in favor of quotas will destroy America’s ability to compete and innovate at the same time as it will breed cynicism and alienation. Unregulated immigration drives down wages and bankrupts social services.

It is no wonder, then, that Democrats, establishment Republicans, and corporate globalists want to distract us by turning us all into alleged bigots and anti-bigots who consume one another in endless conflict. Without this massive distraction, how would globalists get away with destroying America’s standard of living while enriching themselves?

It is an opportunistic, debilitating lie to define everyone as either a victim or an oppressor in order to get everybody fighting. It is a devious, epic, diabolical fraud and hidden agenda that must be exposed at every opportunity. But there is also a positive message, promoting hopeful solutions, that is desperately necessary in order to avoid radicalization.

There are alternatives to every one of the pillars of corporate globalism that must be promoted without apology and unequivocally. The traditional family is the backbone of society. Fossil fuel, hydroelectric power, and nuclear energy are absolutely necessary to grow a healthy and prosperous economy, not only in America but even more so in the aspiring nations of the developing world. Domestic manufacturing to maintain self-sufficiency in essential products creates good jobs and is vital to national security. Immutable colorblind standards based on merit are the only fair and legitimate way to allocate opportunities in all aspects of society. Immigration must be strictly regulated to protect the interests of American citizens, even if that conflicts with the interests of global corporations.

With these principles forming an uncompromising foundation, opponents to globalism have an appealing, prosperity-oriented narrative that will attract wavering adherents of MAGA as well as reluctant globalists. These principles offer common sense and hope. They offer calm unity. They can reject extremism of all types, whether it’s classic racism or teaching transgender ideology to prepubescent students in the public schools. And they embody a love for America.

Apart from Trump and the MAGA movement, emphasizing all these policies—pro-family, pro-conventional energy, and pro-meritocracy—have not been the common currency of Republicans. Instead, with good reason, they’ve been stereotyped as waffling on immigration, lukewarm on climate realism, AWOL on expressing the problems with race and gender quotas, and, all too often, antagonistic to pro-family sentiments. No wonder they are barely relevant. And no wonder Trump’s enemies get away with accusing him of catering to ethnic-nationalists and conspiracy theorists. They claim nobody else is out there, and in one important respect, they’re right. The MAGA movement, despite its potential to become the center of gravity in American politics, lacks a critical mass of committed leaders with the voice and visibility to give it an undeniable presence.

This may sound inaccurate and harsh, but it isn’t. Those Republicans with access to major donors and establishment recognition use Never-Trump rhetoric as a smokescreen to obscure their commitment to the globalist agenda. At the same time, too many MAGA Republicans have either drifted into peripheral and often extreme territory, or they emulate Trump’s rhetoric while lacking any underlying sincerity. The focus of the MAGA movement, if it is to earn the massive tide of votes that realignment requires, needs to convert its unifying principles into a pragmatic agenda that thousands of candidates from the local to the national level articulate and fully intend to carry out. At the least, that agenda must embrace restoring quality and apolitical public education, dramatically reducing crime, and lowering the cost of living through managed immigration, deregulation of domestic industries, and realistic energy policies. Focusing on those priorities will win elections.

The one candidate who appears to agree with Trump on these critical and winning issues is Vivek Ramaswamy. Among all politicians on the national stage whose policies emulate Trump’s, he is the only candidate that has the brains, the youth, and what appears to be the uncompromising passion.

Ramaswamy also offers Americans an example, which he emphasizes in his campaign speeches, of how Americans can unify as a single, colorblind culture. There is no reason why any American citizen, of any color, cannot read the founding documents of America and be inspired by them. There is no reason why any American, regardless of ethnic background, cannot appreciate America’s unique commitment to individual rights and free enterprise and private property, and understand its transcendental value. There is no reason why Americans of all races cannot view America’s history not as “deeply flawed,” but instead as an illustrious story of evolution from an inspiring beginning to what it is today – through perpetual refinement—a nation of unparalleled opportunities for everyone willing to work hard.

America’s destiny can be to remain a leader and an example to the world, while caring for its own citizens in a way that doesn’t alienate the world, but inspires other nations to do the same. America’s destiny can be to invest in practical, prosperity-oriented projects at home and abroad, to maintain technological and military preeminence, and to blaze a trail into the solar system. This is a vision that every American needs to know they can share.

It will be a shame, and a national tragedy, if the allegedly toxic Trump and MAGA distraction, piled atop the race distraction, the gender distraction, the “trans” distraction, and as if that isn’t enough, the distraction of a horrific proxy war in Eastern Europe, prevents the American people from seeing the future being prepared for them. Globalism as it is being currently prosecuted is death to America. It can and must be rejected.

An edited version of this article originally appeared in American Greatness.

Edward Ring

Edward Ring is a contributing editor and senior fellow with the California Policy Center, which he co-founded in 2013 and served as its first president. He is also a senior fellow with the Center for American Greatness, and a regular contributor to the California Globe. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Forbes, and other media outlets.

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