My take on Trump, whom I like, is that he’s the only candidate who qualifies as a businessman, and in today’s world, the President should be a businessman. The Japanese and the Chinese are rightfully persuaded that the job of government is to favor and succor their national industries, to the betterment of their people. Why this is not true of American politician is that we have the naive notion that statesmen are above these things. Politicians today are Keynesians, thinking that if they prime the economy with low interest rates and lax laws on housing lending, they will keep the economy going, the populace happy, and themselves in office. Keynesian economics are predicated on the idea of a closed, national economy. Spending by the government has a multiplier effect, where a dollar spent by the government goes in somebody else’s pocket, who then spends it, and so on and so forth. This is particularly true of industries like housing. Nowadays in a globalized economy, spending quickly goes out of the country, and multiplies in some other place, and Keynes just gets the government more and more in debt. The politician then lowers interest rates to zero, fucks all savers and elderly in the process, and then wonders why John Maynard doesn’t work anymore. Of all the candidates, only Trump is talking about the pernicious effects of globalization, the manipulation of currency rates, and the national debt. Everybody else, including the Republicans, is talking vague platitudes about “getting America going again” and not saying just how they are going to do it. For too long evangelicals have made the mistake of doing what Democrats used to do, but then figured out to avoid, and that is to insist on the philosophical purity of their candidates on moral issues, ensuring that they will not get elected. Reagan was prolife, so were the Bushes, but nothing changed because Roe v. Wade states that the Court cannot ascertain when life begins, and lacking that knowledge, the state can intervene in human reproduction. It will take at least an act of Congress and probably a Constitutional amendment to state that life begins at conception, which everybody knows but nobody wants to say, because it means that we’re being a lot more careless about morality in general and human life in particular than we want to admit. So I couldn’t care less that he’s perhaps a jerk, as I think all rich people are, and I don’t care if he’s unPresidential, because I care about content, not form. I care about knowledge and skill, not making me feel better on some emotional level. Trust? Trust Hillary, who couldn’t pour the piss out of a boot if you put the instructions on the heel, as Smokey Yunick said of Bill France’s son? I urge everybody to listen to one of Trump’s press conferences, where he speaks extemporaneously and winsomely about the issues. I hate his hair, but I can live with it if he delivers content to the office. Is he a serial polygamist? Yes, and I don’t care. A president is supposed to enforce laws and protect American’s interests in a world that’s much more sophisticated than we in economic matters. Can’t wait ’till he wins.
