Thread: OpEd: Who's to Blame for Donald Trump?

News
Jan 4 2016, 2:51 am ET
OpEd: Who's to Blame for Donald Trump?

by Jason Johnson

With just about a month to go before the Iowa Caucuses the political pundit class has come to the painfully sobering reality that Donald Trump is actually a serious candidate. And now that everyone has realized that Trump won't just disappear, and will likely live past Iowa, a plethora of ink has been spilled over the last month trying to explain "who's responsible" for the rise and continued success of Donald Trump.

Jeb Bush (and a lot of Republicans) claim that Trump is Obama's fault because the president has divided the country.

W. Kamau bell says that Trump is white America's fault because white folks won't take responsibility for bigots.

One analyst even said that Trump is the Buffalo Bills' fault (no seriously).

Of course, none of these answers are right and we're not even asking the right question. The whole "who's responsible for Trump" discussion is actually more disturbing than Trump himself, because it reveals a degree of cowardice and dishonesty about our current political system.

The public discourse on American elections has become so degraded, so foolish, so downright divided and nonsensical that it's extremely difficult for your average American to get a decent handle of what's going on or why.

Consider that for months, especially last summer, dozens of respected journalists and pundits swore up and down that Donald Trump wasn't a serious candidate.

A serious candidate? This year we've had candidates for party nominations that didn't bother to vote for almost a decade, don't know the difference between a terrorist group and dipping sauce, and considered killing someone with their bare hands to be their crowning achievement.

"He's not some impossible trend like Crocs or men's body spray that we're just forced to accept no matter what. He's just a political candidate."

The mere notion that Donald Trump was the biggest pair of floppy shoes in the clown car that is the 2016 campaign season requires an almost pathological insistence on ignoring the other red noses and powdered wigs dancing across our airwaves.

However the discussion of who is responsible for his rise to polling prominence and frontrunner status is even more ridiculous. Asking who is responsible for the rise of a particular candidate is implying that said candidate is this inevitable force that we all have to stare down in shock and awe with no idea how to stop it.

Donald Trump isn't a meteor crashing towards earth. He's not a plague of locusts. He's not some impossible trend like Crocs or men's body spray that we're just forced to accept no matter what. He's just a political candidate. No more. No less.

By speculating about his rise and trying to find a singular "reason" it gives political elites, journalists and yes, even regular people who are not fans of Trump a pass. They can pretend that his behavior, rhetoric and belief systems are somehow unique and confounding. If we find a reason we can isolate it and pretend that all the other factors that come into play in American campaigns didn't play a role in his rise. We can pretend that we haven't seen candidates like Donald Trump before.

Trump has been successful because we have a persistent myth in American society that business people are inherently good leaders. He is successful because Americans trust people who are on television. He is successful because our political system rewards people with a lot of money. He is successful because Americans are clueless about foreign policy. He is successful because lots of white Americans are racist. He is successful because candidates who play on racial fears often do well in American political primaries.

These are all bigger problems than Donald Trump, long ingrained problems with our democracy and economic system. Problems that will persist and erode any semblance of functionality in our government whether Donald Trump is in office or not. So how about we talk about those?

Perhaps let's have discussions about the primary system, the Republican party, Citizen's United and ISIS? Donald Trump is not the first, last or even most successful unqualified demagogue party candidate we've ever had in America (Pat Buchanan anyone?)

But the more he's treated as an unstoppable force, the easier it is to not analyze the system, the entire system that he plays in. No one thing is RESPONSIBLE for Donald Trump any more than one thing was RESPONSIBLE for Barack Obama (a guy who actually won something….TWICE).

Hopefully these questions will be put to rest in the next 30 days. Or better yet, let's leave them in 2015 entirely. No one has cast a vote yet, and there is enough to discuss, critique and explain about our political system as a whole that we call Donald Trump what he is: just another guy who wants to be president.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/o...-trump-n489556

Hopefully these questions will be put to rest in the next 30 days. Or better yet, let's leave them in 2015 entirely. No one has cast a vote yet, and there is enough to discuss, critique and explain about our political system as a whole that we call Donald Trump what he is: just another guy who wants to be president.

Actually, Donald Trump is not just another guy who wants to be president. Donald Trump wants to fix our country and make it great again, and so far the only way for him to do that is become President. If there was some other way for him to do it, you can bet your sweet bippy, that's what he would do. For over 35 years, he has hoped beyond hope that someone, anyone, else could and would do it.

After 3.5 decades, half his life-time and more than the age of many of our young Americans, have been wasted by the ills of bad, evil and incompetent politicians who have turned our beautiful country into a seething mess, he has decided to do it himself if he can win the Presidency and with it the ability to do so.

Anyone who asks "who to blame for Donald Trump", needs to straighten up, clear their crowded minds and ask "where do I send my thank you to Donald Trump" for putting his own wonderful life on hold to step in and help us fix our country.

The people who ask "who to blame for Donald Trump" aren't afraid that he'll fail, they're afraid he won't. These are the people who don't want secure borders, who don't want to fix illegal immigration and excess immigration, who don't want more jobs and higher wages for American Workers, who don't want American Kids to get the seats in our colleges and universities, who don't want to end free trade treason and restore our economy, who don't want to balance the budget, who don't want to take care of our Vets or Senior Citizens, who don't want peace on earth. Oh no, they aren't afraid that Donald Trump won't make America great again, they're scared to death that he will.

And SHAME SHAME SHAME on them!

More alphabet soup news network liberal propaganda. I ignore them on purpose and don't go out of my way to read the drivel that they put out.

CNN, CBS News, ABC News Honchos Have Obama Administration Family Ties
by JOHN NOLTE
7 Sep 2013

If you want to understand why the mainstream media is so in love with the Obama administration, this can in part be explained by the fact that a number of big shots who control levers of media power actually do love high-placed officials within the Obama administration. By blood and through marriage, there is more than just a shared belief in left-wing politics that ensured the American media became a mouthpiece for the Obama administration.

David Rhoades, the current president of CBS News, is the brother of Ben Rhoades, a White House national security advisor. If Ben’s name sounds familiar, that is likely due to his reported role in the editing of the now infamous Benghazi talking points.
Claire Shipman, a senior national correspondent at ABC News, is married to no other than Jay Carney, the White House Press Secretary.

If those ties between the Obama White House and ABC News aren’t disturbing enough, the president of ABC News, Ben Sherwood, is brother to Dr. Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, a special advisor to Barack Obama.

Virginia Moseley is a CNN Vice President and Washington Bureau Chief married to Tom Nides, a Deputy Secretary of State under Barack Obama.

What is especially interesting is that three of the White House officials listed here, who are related in some way to mainstream media big shots, have ties to the Benghazi scandal. Tom Nides is at State, Ben Rhoades was part of the talking point debacle, and Jay Carney spent over a week repeatedly making false claims about terrorists not being behind the September 11th anniversary attack on our diplomatic outpost.

This might help to explain why the media spent the better part of a month in the run up to the election blasting Mitt Romney for his comments on Benghazi as opposed to the Obama Administration for their bungling and lying about Benghazi.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-journal...use-officials/

Oh, how convenient. Media/White House Nepotism.

Well, hopefully we can put an end to that when it's not in our best interest.