The Trump Plan on Energy and the Environment: You Don’t Want to Hear It
Here’s some apocalyptic stuff for your Friday morning: an article from today’s New York Times entitled: Donald Trump’s Energy Plan: More Fossil Fuels and Fewer Rules, explaining his plans to add jobs in coal mines and cancel the Paris climate accord.
It’s surreal that we’re living in a U.S. that is so much more profoundly backward than it was just a few short decades ago. I can’t be the only one who’s horrified by this bizarre reality that has emerged, seemingly out of nowhere.
My explanation: we’re experiencing the decline and eventual fall of the American Empire, and lots of our countrymen are not dealing with this well. Wages have stagnated, the middle class is shrinking, our educational system is inferior, and the only thing we’re really good at is war. Worse, given the inexorable path of globalization and the rise of China, none of this is likely to change. We’re angry, and we’re behaving like barbarians.
Here’s the thing with Donald Trump that serious journalists like Ashley Parker and Coral Davenport of the New York Times haven’t yet grasped.
Donald Trumps speeches during the primaries are not a sort of excerpts from a carefully thought out political platform or”manifesto”. Instead they are opportunistic ” conversations”, with delegates and voters, during which he evokes and gives voice to the sentiments of his audience .
Normally this inconsistency and level of disingenuous behaviour would destroy most candidates. But with Trump it’s perceived by his supporters as part of his willingness to listen and adopt the views of the “ordinary man” .
His followers don’t really care if his uttering’s are sensible, practical or even possible. In their hearts they know Trump isn’t really the ignorant buffoon the left portrays him to be, they also know that they are being hustled by a smart showman, but they just don’t care.
His followers believe he’s like “Professor Henry Hill” of the Music Man, fundamentally a man like themselves.(or what they’d like to be).
In the unlikely event of his attaining the office of President, he would be the only politician capable of not fulfilling his most extreme promises without suffering a loss of support. In fact, it would probably just make him more popular !
Donald Trump is not a good development in US politics, but his Democrat opponents, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Saunders are certainly poor successors to the party which once produced outstanding mcandidates like RFK.
Donald Trump doesn’t an “energy policy”. What he has, is a policy not to be seen as buffaloed by wild extremists, patronizing “experts”, exploitative leftists using environmentalism as a cloak to disguise discredited agendas.
For years I have been trying to explain that Donald Trump is what you get by destroying moderate conservatives and rationale environmentalists.
His support is the most obvious reaction to fanaticism and excessive self-righteous zeal. It’s also the reason for hypocritical, self-serving, all style and little substance mediocrities like Barak Obama obtaining office.
I still hope the battle scarred, cynical old war political horse, Hillary Clinton, will surprise and lead her nation out of its morass. Presidencial responsibility may be the inspiration she needs to reveal the greatness and strength hidden in her character.
(It’s possible,… after all who would have thought it would be LBJ to force the Civil Rights Act into law ?)
Wow, this is really wonderful. Thanks very much.