Posted on 01/18/2016 6:49:04 AM PST by AndyJackson
Coined by political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, the term Davos Man was meant to refer to members of the global elite who view themselves as completely international. They have no need for the term "nationality" and feel that governments are merely shadows of time past to be used as facilitators in their global operations. ~ Akash Arasu
The pundit and activist class can't seem to figure Donald Trump out, but as I have attempted to argue elsewhere, Trump's politics are not really as inscrutable as all that. Trump is that guy at the barbershop who says "We need to run the US more like a business. What America needs is a CEO, not another President." Trump just happens to have a lot of money and the credentials to be that CEO himself. The theme that the US is getting out negotiated on the international stage and we should start acting more in our own economic best interests have been there since Trump first became a public figure in the 1980's. Trump, for example, opposed NAFTA before opposing trade deals was the cool thing to do on the right. The consistency of this message suggests that it is sincere, regardless of whatever one might think about the Trump phenomenon that has erupted since he announced his campaign. This economic nationalist message is the key to understanding Trump's politics. All the rest is noise.
Due to their confusion about where Trump is coming from, an argument that I have encountered frequently in social media and the conservative blogosphere is the contention that Trump is actually himself just another member of the Establishment. Therefore, his anti-Establishment supporters are misguided and being played. But if Trump is just another member of the Establishment, why does he have the Establishment so panicked? There is more to being a card carrying member of the Establishment than being rich, hobnobbing with stars and giving money to politicians in both parties. People who mistake the trapping of wealth for Establishment status are allowing the details to distract them from the big picture.
In fact, Trump's economic policies and theoretical framework challenge the Establishment's basic operating assumptions to the core. The Establishment economic policy is globalist neoliberalism. They want to decrease the importance of national borders and national sovereignty in order to make the world safer for international finance and commerce, hence their support for mass immigration and sovereignty compromising "free trade" deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Trump's opposition to "free trade" deals and open borders and unabashed advocacy of economic nationalism directly challenges the Establishment consensus in a way that no other candidate dose. All the major candidates in both parties with the possible exception of Bernie Sanders actually take Establishment neoliberal presumptions for granted.
I wince a little when I hear Trump says that America's leaders are "stupid" and are being out negotiated by the more clever leaders of Mexico, Japan, China, etc. This is grating and potentially unhelpful. What is really the issue here is not smarts but priorities. The leaders of these other nations negotiate with the economic interests of their own countries in mind, while the US negotiates on the basis of fidelity to some imagined set of international rules of fair play, which just so happen to perpetuate the current system that enriches the global elite at the expense of national integrity. But regardless of Trump's less than ideal formulation, who else is saying this?
Trump is ultimately a patriot who loves his country and wants to restore it to its former glory, as suggested by his campaign slogan "Make America Great Again." Imagine that. But this chauvinistic attitude is contrary to the rootless cosmopolitanism of the global elite. If you're still struggling with Trump's place in relation to the Establishment, ask yourself this: "Would Trump fit in at the World Economic Forum?" Trump is not Davos Man described in the introductory quote. He is the antithesis of Davos Man. He is a red-blooded American patriot from Queens, New York who just happens to have a really big bank account. Criticize Trump's policies and ways if you must, but let's not have any more of this nonsense that he is just another member of the Establishment. If you don't see the fallacy of this claim, you don't get why Trump's rise represents such a fundamental challenge to the ruling order.
Trump and Bernie can run on the same ticket.
Great article.
And, your post, I agree with 100%, though I do hate Trump’s use of hypocrisy in stealing land from people...not too thrilled in that he has never really supported conservatives in his, “Patriotism”. If he is president, IFFFF he appoints a Souter or Kennedy I will rant and rave to all the Trump supporters here who said he wouldn’t do that - and those who pointed out Cruz supported Roberts (I’d wager Cruz is certainly not a Roberts fan now) (Roberts was blackmailed).
Cruz is my first choice by a huge margin. I’m still looking for a second choice better than Trump, but I haven’t found him (other than Scott Walker, who dropped out).
Funny, those of us who don’t trust the liberal New York Trump are crazy?
You Trumpbots have tossed all your conservative principles aside for simple revenge. We are angry with GOPe too, but we are not willing to sell our souls for revenge. We want to get back, but to do it in a way that will not take the country even further left.
Good luck with your carnival barker. Oh, and did you know, he’s really smart? Very very smart. And rich, very very rich. And great. Really. Always a winner. You will be sick of winning.
I would be startled if that were not true. However, the excuse does not matter morally. When you accept a responsibility like Chief Justice, meeting that responsibility takes precedence even over family. I lost all respect for Roberts when he betrayed America.
I suspect General Petraeus was also blackmailed. While I am thoroughly disgusted both with his adultery and with his mishandling of classified material, I retain some respect for him because he didn't give in to whatever demands the left may have had. I have no respect at all for Roberts - in acquiescing to the demands of Obama's minions, he dropped to the moral level of those traitors.
Well, in Walker you might have found, at the end of the day, another Marco Rubio or Mike Huckabee: conservative on the outside (during the primaries), compromising and e-GOPping on the inside.
I opined in another thread that McCain, if elected, would probably turn out to be more like Dick Nixon. On second thought, he might remind people of Dubya as well, economically literate but deaf as a post to social conservatives and their concerns. In fact, the Bush family has always been hostile to Southern conservatives and actually looks down on them unremittingly; Trump would probably do the same.
Where this good article -- I like "Davos man" -- points out Trump would differ from Dubya and the other Bushes is Trump's resistance to the internationalist economic order (NWO) and their welter of trade "agreements" (not treaties, no Senate ratification, none of their advocates want that!) that thoughtfully and with great purposefulness screw over the People of the United States.
First, I am not a Trumpbot. The man has a lot of baggage that I am not too thrilled about. So does Cruz and so does every other candidate.
Fact of the matter is that GOPe has already sold your soul, and you are not going to get back your soul or your country until they are gone. Your view is Cruz or nobody. Unfortunately nobody is not the option that everyone else will pick in place of Cruz.
Really? It's called America, and it's being attacked by zombies from the District of Columbia and the old New Left (which is really the Old Left -- the COMINTERN -- in drag).
Cruz has proposed emptying Washington agencies of as many Clintonista holdovers and Obama appointees as possible; Trump doesn't care about that stuff.
Trump wants to take on the NWO types, Manor Bush and all the school-tie, Ivy League ring-knockers. Cruz wants to take all those guys on, and also the subversive ACORN- and Revolutionary Communist Party-driven riot "activists", Truthers, and anti-Americans who want to put our country's majority under their bootheel dirigisme.
Silly me. I meant to say that Donald Trump might turn out to be like Nixon.
'Course, my statement might also have been true of McCain. He was another National Greatness Republican who spat on Southern conservatives.
I am not talking about Cruz, but his followers, and I am talking not about a far off foreign land, but a battle in a far off social space, a battle that a small minority of voters care about and a vast majority are repulsed by. While they fought that battle, we have elected Clinton/Bush/Obama - all denizens of the new world order that the subject article describes so eloquently.
And by clinging on to whatever they cling to they lose it all. Everything.
Then I suppose the thing they should do is lose gracefully by supporting Marco Rubio or some other elite errand boy, and then fall on their swords like noble Romans.
Thanks for the stern advice.
Barabbas was popular.
That’s a pretty good description. As I’ve said, this election is GLOBALIST vs. NATIONALIST, and those will be the competing ideologies for the foreseeable future.
This is an EXCELLENT piece! This, more than the nonsense going back and forth about birth certificates and “NY”values, is what this election is about! Trump & Cruz “supporters” need to cut the petty B/S and stay focus on the target!
“Lenin was popular. Hitler was popular. Shoot, the Kardashians are popular.”
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WOW! Just WOW! Statements like these are really starting to make me wonder sometimes! You’re comparing Trump to those cast of characters? Really? I like Cruz and started this election cycle supporting him but have now changed my mind. Not because of “him” but because I am now convinced that it will take a special kind of General to fight in the upcoming election! You really need to think before posting....JMHO!
“Washington was popular. Churchill was popular. Shoot, Reagan was popular.
See, I can play that game, too. When you have all of human history to pick and choose from, you can come up with any example to “prove†your point that you’d like.
Popularity is neither good nor bad in and of itself - but it IS an indication of whether someone can be elected. Once you’ve found someone you like, you then have to filter that person through the electability filter. If he/she doesn’t make it, then move on to the next on.
Cruz is a great guy - I even sent him money when he first declared - but this is not his year. He needs more people to know who he is through his accomplishments, he needs to be like Reagan and DEMONSTRATE that he’s not the monster that the other side paints him as being. His time will come, and I look forward to it - but it isn’t this year. This year we need a wrecking ball, someone who will destroy the edifice of the Leftist establishment that has controlled this country since 1933 when FDR was inaugurated. Trump is the ONLY one who can do it who can ALSO be elected.”
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Also keep in mind that Trump started off as the candidate that almost NO ONE believed he had a chance to be the Republican nominee and even a less chance to win the general election! Now people are starting to ask themselves...”can he actually do it?” THAT is a major accomplishment!!
I am not a Cruz supporter. But nice try.
I was comparing the lemming like attitude of some Trump supporters to those that elected eventual dictators. There are multiple threads here that show that is precisely the mindset among some slobbering Trump sycophants.
“I am not a Cruz supporter. But nice try.”
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There’s nothing wrong being a Cruz supporter as I still like him and would support him 100% if he were the nominee. Trump maybe an egomaniac at times but he wouldn’t be a “dictator”! I have faith in our system and the majority of the American people and a “dictator” would never be permitted without a civil war 2!
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