Let me begin by stating three things that might be useful to know in understanding what I am about to write:
- I was born in Germany 1969. I visited East Berlin in 1988.
- I lived in the US in 1993/94.
- I am a conservative with a special interest in political extremism, especially in the inter-war period.
Why is that important?
- Building a wall does not work. Ronald Reagan knew it, and his famous plea to Mr Gorbatchev to "Tear down this wall!" was essential to that wall actually coming down. If you need to resort to building walls, whether it be to lock up your own people, or keep away another, your political system is doomed. Like Germany, the US has benefited greatly from globalisation, and one aspect of globalisation is freedom of movement. When Mr Trump says, "Make America great again", not only does he portray today's America as a failure (which, by any standards known to the rest of the world is a pathetic joke), he is also appealing to angry, old white people to turn back the clock to the 1950s. And that is just not going to happen.
- The US has changed fundamentally. The country I got to know was everything they tell you about the American dream. It was unbelievably friendly, it was open, and it was forward looking. I met some of the most optimistic people in my life, and quite a few of them. I had a chance to briefly speak with Dan Quayle, who was a personal friend of my landlady's, and although he had been depicted as the antithesis of a sane politician in my country (and, admittedly, almost everywhere else), he was a charming man, genuinely interested in listening to criticism of his party's politics. Whereas Mr Trump, by his own admission, only listens to himself. Now, if you take his businesses as a benchmark, that spells doom. He is a failed businessman, leaving in his wake thousands of ruined subcontractors, and defrauded working class people - and not just the ones who applied for a study program at Trump "university".
- Donald Trump bears all the hallmarks of a fascist. When I say that, I do not mean that in the way left wing extremists use it. I mean it in the scientific sense of the word. There are excellent reasons not to use this term for modern day politicians, but in Mr Trump's case, it is actually fitting. Mr Trump is currently mixing left wing economic policies aimed at his sole constituency (angry, old white people) with a level of racism and nationalism not seen for decades. The words "freedom", or "liberty", cornerstones of what is considered to be America's essence, do not feature in his speeches. Instead he sounds like a talk radio host, inciting fear, anger, violence, but most of all divisiveness. He is not only not a RINO, he is not a Republican at all. Neither is he a Conservative. He is a right wing radical populist, with all that entails. Including, but not limited to, support of the likes of Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, and David Duke. Not to forget other Kremlin sponsored radicals, such as Marine le Pen of France, or Viktor Orbán of Hungary.
If leading Conservative intellectuals like Avik Roy or William Kristol have the gravest concerns with Mr Trump, that should give his supports pause. But it does not. And that is making many people across the world nervous.
Because we live in dangerous times. Russia, Turkey, North Korea are just the better known examples. Right wing radical movements across Europe are less known, but equally dangerous. Saudi Arabia, and the rest of the region that was plunged into armed conflicts that will take decades to fix, too.
And the answers to this require in-depth knowledge of foreign policy, patient diplomacy, and level-headedness. Mr Trump is anathema to all three, and that makes him uniquely unqualified for being president of the United States. What the world needs now is a president that understands, and acts based upon, facts. Not feelings. And in this regard, the RNC was an abattoir. The GOP I used to know, and like, is dead. It was killed by a frenzied lynch mob stuck in a past that never existed and that is hell bent on putting a person in the White House that is most likely financed by the Kremlin, and whose policy proposals are worthy of a banana republic. Which is shameful, given how great a country America could be.
