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The Trump Distraction

Whether owing to his actual words and actions, or due to the endless, baseless assaults of the deep state and corporate media, or some combination of all of these things, there are millions of Americans for whom Donald Trump now has no credibility. Beyond the damage done to Trump’s personal brand and political future, this reality portends dire consequences for the nation. It has enabled the special interests who oppose the policies Trump champions to fatally stigmatize them by associating them with the man.

It’s a dirty trick, but politics is a dirty business. Every political sentiment at odds with the special interests that run the country is labeled “Trumpism,” and hence becomes toxic.

The Globalist Game of Distraction

This game of distraction is bigger than Trump. Americans are beginning to realize that they’ve been betrayed by their elites. The globalist agenda of open borders, unfettered movement of capital, rejection of traditional values, rejection of meritocracy, deliberate overreaction to “climate change,” and heedless accumulation of debt to fund the development of foreign economies—including the Chinese military—has been accepted and promoted by virtually every major institution in America: unions, corporations, academia, K-12 public education, the media and entertainment industry, Democrats, and even a majority of Republican politicians. They profit by advancing this agenda, and in so doing elevate the cost-of-living for all Americans while at the same time depriving them of good jobs.

When Trump entered politics in 2015, he exposed and rejected this agenda in its entirety. Within a few years, tens of millions of Americans who hadn’t considered these issues as part of a connected whole, if they’d even considered them at all, were awakened and voting for a politician who was committed to dismantling the entire globalist project.

Trump’s continued relevance promises to blur even further the conventional dividing lines in American politics. What is the significance of Left vs. Right, when communists and corporations in 21st-century America are working together to advance big government globalism? How do the old distinctions apply when they both support an authoritarian, collectivist, and micromanaged society? There is ample evidence for this seeming paradox.

On most of the big issues of our time, including the rejection of traditional moral values, the centrality of “climate change” as a transformative economic and political agenda, and the need for affirmative action, racial redress, and open borders, communists and corporatists share a surprisingly congruent agenda. Their only point of divergence concerns private property, and even that may be illusory when considering the realistic prospect of publicly held corporations with activist directorates and activist shareholders with virtual ownership and control of the entire economy.

Trump blew the lid off this whole artificial dichotomy, and from coast to coast, Americans are still digesting the implications. No wonder there is a coordinated, ongoing corporate obsession with race and gender disparities, paired with a constant effort to nurture tribalism. This can be explained by understanding that without the polarizing perspective on race and gender, the grassroots of the Left and the Right may be united by more than what divides them. So it is important for those in power to keep us apart.

The common thread in the globalist agenda is that it will disproportionately harm middle and low-income Americans regardless of their group identity. Children need a father and a mother. Climate change policies that enrich corporations and empower leftist bureaucrats will impoverish everyone not wealthy enough to be indifferent to the crushing cost. Abandoning meritocracy in favor of quotas will destroy America’s ability to compete and innovate at the same time that it will breed cynicism and alienation. Unregulated immigration drives down wages and bankrupts social services.

It is no wonder, then, that Democrats, establishment Republicans, and corporate globalists want to distract us by turning us all into alleged bigots and anti-bigots who consume one another in endless conflict. Without this massive distraction, how would globalists get away with destroying America’s standard of living while enriching themselves?

A Message Without Voice

It is an opportunistic, debilitating lie that defines everyone as either victim or oppressor in order to get everybody fighting. It is a devious, epic, diabolical fraud and hidden agenda that must be exposed at every opportunity. In response to all of this there is a positive message, promoting hopeful solutions, that needs to get out in order to avoid further radicalization, polarization, and enmity.

There are alternatives to every one of the pillars of corporate globalism that must be promoted without apology and unequivocally. The traditional family is the backbone of society. Fossil fuel, hydroelectric power, and nuclear energy are absolutely necessary to grow a healthy and prosperous economy, not only in America but even more so in the aspiring nations of the developing world. Domestic manufacturing to maintain self-sufficiency in essential products creates good jobs and is vital to national security. Immutable colorblind standards based on merit are the only fair and legitimate way to allocate opportunities in all aspects of society. Immigration must be strictly regulated to protect the interests of American citizens, even if that conflicts with the interests of global corporations.

With these principles forming an uncompromising foundation, opponents to globalism have an appealing, prosperity-oriented narrative that will attract wavering adherents of MAGA as well as reluctant globalists. These principles offer common sense and hope. They offer calm unity. They can reject extremism of all types, whether it’s classic racism or teaching transgender ideology to prepubescent students in the public schools. And they embody a love for America.

Apart from Trump and the MAGA movement, Republicans who emphasize all these policies—pro-family, pro-conventional energy, and pro-meritocracy—have not been common. Instead, and with good reason, they’ve been stereotyped as waffling on immigration, lukewarm on climate realism, AWOL on expressing the problems with race and gender quotas, and, all too often, antagonistic to pro-family sentiments. No wonder they are barely relevant. And no wonder Trump’s enemies get away with accusing him of catering to ethnic-nationalists and conspiracy theorists. They claim nobody else is out there advancing these views, and in one important respect, they’re right. The MAGA movement, despite its potential to become the center of gravity in American politics, lacks a critical mass of committed leaders who can give it an undeniable presence.

This may sound inaccurate and harsh, but it isn’t. Those Republicans with access to major donors and establishment recognition use NeverTrump rhetoric as a smokescreen to obscure their commitment to the globalist agenda. At the same time, too many MAGA Republicans have either drifted into peripheral and often extreme territory, or they emulate Trump’s rhetoric while lacking any underlying sincerity. The focus of the MAGA movement, if it is to earn the massive tide of votes that realignment requires, needs to convert its unifying principles into a concrete agenda that thousands of candidates from the local to the national level articulate and fully intend to carry out. At the least, that agenda must embrace restoring quality and apolitical public education, dramatically reducing crime, and lowering the cost of living through managed immigration, deregulation of domestic industries, and realistic energy policies. Focusing on those priorities will win elections.

Someone Must Step Up

There is no reason why any American citizen, of any color, cannot read the founding documents of America and be inspired by them. There is no reason why any American, regardless of ethnic background, cannot appreciate America’s unique commitment to individual rights and free enterprise and private property, and understand its transcendental value. There is no reason why Americans of all races cannot view America’s history not as “deeply flawed,” but instead as an illustrious story of evolution from an inspiring beginning to what it is today—through perpetual refinement—a nation of unparalleled opportunities for everyone willing to work hard.

America’s destiny can be to remain a leader and an example to the world, while caring for its own citizens in a way that doesn’t alienate the world, but inspires other nations to do the same. America’s destiny can be to invest in practical, prosperity-oriented projects at home and abroad, to maintain technological and military preeminence, and to blaze a trail into the solar system. This is a vision that every American needs to know they can share.

It will be a shame, and a national tragedy, if the allegedly toxic Trump and MAGA distraction, piled atop the race distraction, the gender distraction, the trans distraction, and as if those aren’t enough, the distraction of a horrific proxy war in Eastern Europe, prevents the American people from seeing the future being prepared for them. Globalism is death to America. It can and must be rejected.

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About Edward Ring

Edward Ring is a senior fellow of the Center for American Greatness. He is also the director of water and energy policy for the California Policy Center, which he co-founded in 2013 and served as its first president. Ring is the author of Fixing California: Abundance, Pragmatism, Optimism (2021) and The Abundance Choice: Our Fight for More Water in California (2022).

Photo: Lindsey Nicholson/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

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