Monday, May 1, 2017

This is How Trump is Destroying the Anti-War Right

When President Obama was in office there was negligible support for bombing strikes in Syria amongst Republicans.
This has totally flipped under President Trump. The GOP has become the War Party.

There is virtually no difference in Democratic support for Syrian strikes during the Obama administration and the Trump administration.

If Hillary had become president, libertarians would have found fertile ground amongst Hillary haters to teach them why the expansion of the Empire is bad. With Trump in power that opportunity is gone.

It's the same situation as was the case under President Ronald Reagan. In 1989, Murray Rothbard explained  Reagan's evil function.
There was no "Reagan Revolution." Any "revolution" in the direction of liberty (in Ronnie’s words "to get government off our backs") would reduce the total level of government spending. And that means reduce in absolute terms, not as proportion of the gross national product, or corrected for inflation, or anything else. There is no divine commandment that the federal government must always be at least as great a proportion of the national product as it was in 1980. If the government was a monstrous swollen Leviathan in 1980, as libertarians were surely convinced, as the inchoate American masses were apparently convinced and as Reagan and his cadre claimed to believe, then cutting government spending was in order. At the very least, federal government spending should have been frozen, in absolute terms, so that the rest of the economy would be allowed to grow in contrast. Instead, Ronald Reagan cut nothing, even in the heady first year, 1981....
I am convinced that the historic function of Ronald Reagan was to co-opt, eviscerate and ultimately destroy the substantial wave of anti-governmental, and quasi-libertarian, sentiment that erupted in the U.S. during the 1970s. Did he perform this task consciously? Surely too difficult a feat for a man barely compos. No, Reagan was wheeled into performing this task by his Establishment handlers.
Is it any different with Trump? He has strong followers who are "anti-government" but who now cheer on attacks on Syria?  A president who has no principles nor deep understanding of history, who has surrounded himself with generals who at every turn whisper into his ear about the evil world and how only the military can save it.

No, I take it back, We are not seeing a replay of Ronald Reagan. Trump is much worse.

-RW 

5 comments:

  1. I wonder if that was the plan all alnog

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    1. The Deep State won no matter who got in back in November

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    2. Yes. Barry allowed more war when Bush was poison. Hillary would have been resisted. Donnie isn't.

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  2. This is interesting because in 2013 Obama had two years earlier assassinated Gaddafi in Libya to disastrous effects. As a horrible man once said, "Fool me once, shame on--shame on you. Fool me twice -- you can't get fooled again." Maybe Americans just needed time to forget about Gaddafi before moving on to another coup.

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