Politics & Prose: David Frum- 'Trumpocracy'

Source:Politics & Prose- talking about his book at Politics & Prose in Washington.

“David Frum, former White House speech writer and senior editor at The Atlantic, discusses his book, “Trumpocracy”, at Politics and Prose on 2/7/18.

Frum’s ninth book expands on his eye-opening March 2017 Atlantic column, “How to Build an Autocracy,” which argued that Trump is leading the nation into authoritarianism. An experienced Washington insider and one of the country’s leading conservative commentators, Frum examines the implications of Trump’s behavior as well as his policies. From Trump’s admiration for strongmen such as the Philippines’ Roderigo Duterte and Turkey’s Tayyip Erdoğan to the president’s threats against the media, his impulsive decision-making, and flouting of tradition and even law, Frum sees evidence that Trump’s presidency, if left unchecked, will seriously damage America’s democratic future.”

From Politics & Prose 

David Frum’s Trumpocracy argues that thanks to President Donald Trump and perhaps other people and other things our liberal democracy and liberal democratic form of government is at risk. That Donald Trump represents a right-wing nationalist populist movement that puts their political and cultural values over everyone else and everything else, including the U.S. Constitution.

The one clue that you need to know about the Trump Nationalist Tea Party populist movement is not conservative, is that they’re not traditionalists. They don’t believe in conserving the status quo. They want to blow up the system and the Washington way of doing things and replace that system with their own political system which wouldn’t be democratic.

Just as political and current affairs junkie, I hate it when political commentators and reporters, call people Conservatives when they’re not conservative. The tax bill and budget that the Republican Congress passed in the last two months that will add trillions of dollars to the national debt and as a result we’re looking at a deficit of over a trillion-dollars next year which would be our first trillion-dollar deficit since 2012.

Conservatives don’t borrow and spend and they don’t blow up tradition and the status quo. They protect and conserve the system that they’re part of because it works and they helped design it. Donald Trump represents an anti-conservative movement that is nationalist, tribalist, and authoritarian, that believes their movement are the real Americans and everyone else are Un-American.

Donald Trump by himself I don’t believe is as scary as people want to believe. As much as a wannabe nationalist dictator that he wants to be the problem is he operates in a system with checks and balances and still is part of a liberal democratic form of government and there real limits to what he can do by himself and he like no other President in American history is above the law. If he’s guilty of anything illegal or impeachable, we’ll know about it and Congress will have an opportunity to act on that.

What people should really worry about are the people and voters that Donald Trump represents and the prospects for those people coming to power in America. Not just at the Federal level but the state and local levels which is more important, since a lot of members of Congress come from state and local government. And establish regimes that pass laws that make it close to impossible for members of the opposition to even vote. That is what we should worry about as people who believe in checks and balances and liberal democracy. 

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