Against what would Trump supporters revolt?

According to some news reports, some Trump supporters say they’ll start a revolution if Clinton is elected president.

Revolt against what, that not enough economic power is concentrated at the top?

During a news segment in Philadelphia about an employee of a judge posting to Facebook “anti-police hate speech” some of the all-white protesters that had gathered all had matching teeshirts that read “The Revolution Starts Here.” The TV anchor who was indignant about the alleged “anti-police” Facebook post said nothing about the messagw on the teeshirts.

I intend to open-mindedly engage Trump supporters and those who did support him but after the election, instead of just asking this rhetorical question. But so far I see no evidence that shows that Trump is addressing the concentration of political and economic power. Instead to my knowledge, he’s focusing populist anger by framing it in racist ethnocentric terms and other intolerant terms.

To ask this question genuinely and not rhetorically to what extent is trumps approach or has trumps approach been a form of right wing populism?

Consider his birther instigation, his comments about Mexican immigrants, his stance regarding the Central Park Five, his proposal to ban all Muslim immigrants…what else?

To what extent would it be accurate to characterize the economic and political views of Trump supporters as isolationist (or non-interventionist?) regarding foreign policy, and right-wing populist, regarding domestic policy?

Here something else to consider.  To what extent is Trump either lying or grossly misinformed when he says that the current leaders of the US are stupid and making policies that are bad for US interest, and that China and Russia don’t respect the US and don’t respect Obama and Hillary Clinton?  What Trump is not saying is that promoters of economic globalization–such as Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama—have been acting according to the priorities of the very wealthy and the most powerful multinational corporations, many of them companies from the US, and that that is due to who funds political campaigns, who lobbies legislators, and who influences government regulatory bodies, and who owns media conglomerates.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day. When Trump says trade agreements are bad for our country, he’s right, but from that point on, he gets most of the rest wrong. Trump would like the working and middle classes to believe that trade agreements and foreign policy  are bad for the US because our leaders are stupid and treasonous and that he is brilliant and selflessly loyal to our nation.

But trade agreements are bad is so far as they undermine sovereignty,  undermine protections for workers, and undermine protections for public health. Big business pretty much writes those trade agreements, and some people at the very top of the economic pyramid can get even richer by doing things that are bad for the US, in terms of our political freedoms, and our long-term economic and military competitiveness.

Along comes a billionaire such as Trump to tell us that We won’t address those problems by voting for someone who behaves like a dictator

Assuming Trump is a real candidate, and not a spoiler for the Clinton’s, he can’t fix what’s wrong with the US.  He’d be assassinated or driven out of office with a scandal if he tried, as president, to stop the very rich and the big corporations from making trade agreements and foreign policy which are, long-term, bad for our country. Contrary to what Trump says, politicians make policies that hurt ordinary Americans and detract from US national interest not because they are stupid or personally intent on destroying America, but because those at the very top heavily influence them.

It’s good that Trump has politically motivated heretofore apathetic people, in so far as those people sooner or later think beyond right-wing populism.

To what extent which the political and economic isolationism among Trump supporters be problematic? If a President Trump tilts the US away from its global leadership and away from economic globalization, it could drive a wedge between the US and its political allies and economic partners?

To what extent could the above pattern be similar to how the Brexit might weaken the EU and strengthen China? To what extent might nativism, right wing populism, and isolationism or ‘non-interventionism’ as some folk call it, may further the decline of US power in relative and in absolute terms? China holds a lot of the US national debt.

To what extent is right-wing isolationism problematic abroad similar to how right wing populism is problematic domestically, with the former detracting from cooperation among economic partners and political allies and the latter increasing gridock in government and racial, class, religious, and class strife in our communities? Thinking of this question, to what extent is Trump’s campaign slogan “Make America Great Again” bitterly ironic ?

I don’t want to be sensationalist or alarmist but it may be useful to suggest that right-wing populism and right-wing isolationism is not the solution to what ails our nation and our communities.  To what extent is the solution building a more robust civil society  to curb the excesses of economic globalization and of corporate power ?

Notes regarding taxes

Of course some people at the bottom of the economic pyramid abuse the social safety net. But there’s plenty of abuse of taxpayer money at the top of the economic pyramid. Big corporations and the very wealthy should pay more taxes because (1) it’s unfair and eventually politically and economically disruptive for the middle class to shoulder the burden; (2) probably ever increasing national debt erodes US sovereignty (the US owes a lot to China ); (3) cutting government spending won’t work because our nation needs to invest in a wide variety of scientific research and development in fields such as (a)medicine, (b) space exploration, (c) alternative energy sources, (d) adaptation to climate change and other environmental remediation; and (4) because of all us have a longterm stake in addressing the needs of those who aren’t thriving in our market economy because of (a) old age, (b) discrimination, (c) lack of available jobs paying a living wage; and (d) mental and/or physical disability. —–Without such investments, we not only lose our political freedom (think Third World countries ) but companies don’t have the human and environmental resources to create wealth. —-Some of the economic elite know this and support taking steps to undo trickle- down economics.——- But the inducements to act according to short-term maximization of profit is probably too powerful for big industry to regulate itself. Government and the private sector should be in partnership.—– We shouldn’t undermine our national interest by allowing government to be a servant to the private sector, and by allowing a society where ordinary folk risk not meeting basic needs so that some of those at the top can try to satisfying their exorbitant wants.

But what’s to stop big firms from going outsude the US to avoid paying more in taxes ?

Regarding another aspect to this, in the likely evebt that federal and state revenues don’t increase and our nation is hit (or hits itself ) with the one-two punch of diminished sovereignty because of national debt combined with public-disinvestment-induced loss in standard of living, economic competitiveness, loss of the ability to have enough unity to act on the global stage, ….this may lead to ???? Fascism or and civil war between competing narratives for what or who is to blame and regarding solutions? To what extent might one side be authoritarian and the other a movement for broad-based liberation?

Farming, Big Government, Big Corporations, the concentration of power

Regarding farming, it may be the case that state and fed gov is hassling ordinary people, while doing the bidding of agribusiness. Meanwhile, many people in rural communities blame big government, in terms of environmental and other regulations. The corruption may be such that state and federal government are working hand in hand with big corporations. Meanwhile, the left tends to blame big corporations while the right tends to blame big government.

To me, the key issue is addressing the problem of political and economic power being concentrated among a relatively small number of people, who make decisions in ways that they get a disproportionately large share of the benefits and a disproportionately small share of the risks and costs of the decisions.

A better political condition should be possible, a situation in which society much more closely approximates having the people who are affected by the decisions playing a meaningful role in the process of deciding how, for example, resources are allocated.

So, a big government with lots of power over people’s lives and big corporations with a lot of power over people’s lives are different manifestations of the same problem : the concentration of power.

I don’t know enough about ‘anarchist political theory’ if there is such a thing, to say whether I think there is some ‘constructive’ roles for anarchism to play in getting beyond the confines of the left-versus-right perspective. But thinking about the problems of big government combined with the problems of big corporations having, in both cases, too much power over people’s lives, I am reminded of someone I met in Pittsburgh during the protests against the G-20. He seemed to speak derisively of ‘liberals’ while also not being, in any stretch of the imagination, a conservative.

One possibility is that anarchist ideas are not what I, and the vast majority of people think they are. But I think that corporations and various other government structures are beneficial for the human condition. Corruption is the problem, not corporations or government, per se.

Could it be that what ordinary people have in common with each other is that we are affected by the concentration of power that results from corruption, and that that corruption involves government and big corporations, not just one or the other.