STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
First Tea Party, Now Trump: Battle Against Globalization Gains Strength
By Joe Jarvis - May 06, 2016

Republicans can drag democracy down with them … US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump campaigns in South Bend, Indiana Donald Trump’s pending presidential nomination has confirmed what many have argued for years: The Republican Party is not well.  – Bloomberg via Chicago Tribune

More and more, Donald Trump seems to us at least partially an extension of the Tea Party movement that the US mainstream media declared dead a few years ago.

Whether Trump wins or not, or whether his campaign and then his presidency is considered a “success” is in a sense incidental.

The larger question, (and this Bloomberg article addresses it in its own way) is one that we used to ask with some regularity: Are Western elites going to have to take a step back?

From a social, political, economic and investment perspective, what will the West and the world look like if the quasi-libertarian impulse represented by Trump and the Tea Party somehow emerge victorious in the US?

What Trump represents is like an incoming tide. You can divert it or dam it momentarily but it will not be halted in the longer term. It will reach its destination, whatever that is.

We’ve written a number of articles, for instance, pointing out that one of the unfortunate results of the Trump candidacy may be to inflame tensions between Hispanics and white, Western culture.

The idea is that these tensions can lead to a rapprochement that reignites a previous movement to further align and consolidate Mexican and US economies and even sociopolitical elements.

Additionally, some Trump statements have an authoritarian and populist ring to them that seem to indicate a Trump presidency would reinforce certain oppressive and anti-freedom aspects federal power.

But as Trump approaches, potentially, a successful destination, the ramifications of what he has accomplished – and may yet accomplish – should be considered seriously by anyone living in the US or affected by Western power.

This Bloomberg editorial is one attempt. Here’s more:

The party’s heightened political obstruction and ideological extremism during the presidency of Barack Obama undermined governing norms and political standards.

Now Republican voters have gone the distance, choosing a presidential candidate who functions as a … rhetorical riot, smashing to bits rudimentary expectations of competence, coherence and civility.

As Seth Masket, a political scientist at the University of Denver, wrote at Vox, “This represents the most colossal failure of an American political party in modern history.”

Which raises an uncomfortable question. If one of the parties in a two-party democracy is a “colossal failure,” how secure can that democracy be?

We can see that this editorial has an extreme anti-Trump bias.

But putting aside this bias, the Bloomberg editorial makes an overarching prescient point: This Republican “crisis” is representative of a larger socio-political one.

But having raised this larger issue, theBloomberg editorial retreats into parochialism.

It concludes that “Trumpism” will “remain a threat until the party halts its cultural and regional retreat, and engages the cosmopolitan, multiracial 21st century without a crutch of nostalgia and resentment.”

This marks the editorial’s wrong turn. What it construes as  a “cultural retreat” is actually a manifestation of both a free society and representative democracy.

The article sees the hallmarks of cultural progress as “cosmopolitan” and “multiracial.” It decries “nostalgia.”

And here’s the concluding line: “The Republican candidates who offered alternatives to that mix were crushed in 2016. This could take a while.”

Indeed this conflict will likely present itself ever-more powerfully throughout the 21st century. It is the conflict between globalism and freedom.

It is, as well, the crux, foundational element of our publication. As long as a decade ago, we were predicting that the Internet would generate a popular comprehension of elite, globalist manipulations.

We called what we would emerge the “Internet Reformation.”

We predicted that a public awakening would lead directly to a conflict with elite trends and intentions.

With Trump, it seems, this battle is ever-more directly joined. But it is not really – or only – Trump’s battle. He is its latest manifestation.  It is not a battle that will end with Trump’s ascension or defeat.

Trump may be a failed candidate or perhaps a failed president. Or Trump may turn out to be someone who fights to retain and advance certain kinds of freedoms and thus blunts the globalist trend.

But let us not end here. Having made the case for the importance of Trump and what he represents, we want to remind readers, as we have before, of other ramifications.

The biggest one is counter-intuitive. Trump’s emergence has galvanized people to try to utilize formal elements of the American political system. We’d tend to believe this is a mistake – a waste of time and energy.

The US political system is NOT engineered to allow a rejection of elite, globalism. The modern Western political system is almost entirely in thrall to this sort of internationalism.

The ultimate solution to what has occurred in the 20th and now 21st century will evolve from individual action and people literally find new ways of addressing and rejecting elite control.

Wealth, success and personal fulfillment await those who confront the system with imagination and create solutions not yet imagined.

For instance, are there lands in or around the Antarctic that constitute a kind of “New World?” Are they yet being hidden or disguised by the powers-that-be?

Almost everything we currently understand about our world is in some sense untrue – from nuclear weapons to space travel to health care and energy itself.

The Internet has done a terrific job of stripping away some fundamental misconceptions (for those who wish to look). As a revised reality of our world begins to permeate public consciousness, this enlightenment will likely only evolve and strengthen.

It has little to do with current political conditions and much to do with the almost incomprehensible ramifications of the world’s second “communication’s revolution.”

Conclusion: To the degree that you understand these ramifications and make others aware of them, you will be increasing the speed at which they take hold. But they will take hold regardless. Anticipate and utilize insights you develop from a larger frame of reference to increase prosperity, success and safety.

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