Trust can be a double-edged sword when it
is not founded on insight. In politics as in personal relations, one can trust
the wrong person or distrust the right one -- with unfortunate consequences. Political
candidates almost universally craft their public image to play to the voter’s
perception of their character -- the “kissing babies” syndrome. They know that
their audience is susceptible to emotional manipulation and so present
themselves as deeply concerned with the public welfare, as scrupulously honest
and, most importantly, as likeable and trustworthy.
But let the candidate refuse to play by the
rules of the electoral game, to cast politically-correct caution to the wind,
and to say directly what is on his mind without hedging or skirting contentious
issues, and he will immediately be trashed as a moral pariah or an
unsophisticated pleb. Establishment politicians will turn against him in an
orgy of vilification and horror, and a partisan media will launch incessant
volleys of contempt, vituperation and slander against both his character and
his candidacy, dismissing him as a demagogue-in-the-making, a
Republican version of Bernie Sanders, a social barbarian, a ruthless
capitalist, and so on. In an access of unconscionable blindness, even so
generally astute a commentator as Carolyn
Glick has fallen for this canard, erroneously claiming that Trump
offers no solutions to America’s problems, merely focuses on blaming others
while channeling hate. The disreputable tactic of blaming Trump for the
programmatic violence of the Left -- a disingenuous maneuver of which even
Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz (aka TrusTed) were not innocent -- is another instance
of such malfeasance.
Such
is the fate of a candidate who has dared to speak truth to cowardice and to
grapple with the hot button issues of the current social, cultural, and
political scene: Muslim immigration and the problem of jihad, open borders and
the massive influx of illegal aliens, trade imbalance, the deterioration of the
manufacturing industry, galloping debt, the shrinking of the middle class and
the plight of the American blue-collar worker. The message may not
always be carefully articulated (to put it mildly), but it is the one message
that addresses the critical dilemma in which the nation now finds itself. It
is a message that is anathema to the gated elite, both political and
intellectual, which is preoccupied with preserving its palatinate of power and
privilege.
The
primary strategy of the elite, as I contended in a
recent article, is to promote public trust in its chosen candidates and,
especially, corrosive distrust in those who have run afoul of its agenda. Cue the
Donald. Republican politicians, conservative intellectuals and many common
voters are willing to risk the dissolution of the party in ganging up on the
one candidate who does not rely on corporate donations and the unsavory
commitments that come with them, and who, for all his flaws (and who is without
them?) has been willing to take a stand in defence of national security and
restored solvency.
In effect, the electorate is influenced to
trust the aristocracy of correct sentiment and presumably educated opinion and
to distrust the swashbuckling outsider who has not been groomed by the keepers
of the political estate and does not adhere to the standards of approved
discourse. The individual voter is never encouraged to distrust both his vocal
preceptors and his own endocrinal reactions, to engage in research, to reflect
on the basis of evidence, and to acquire genuine insight in the process. That
is, he is not schooled to think, to struggle for objectivity,
since the press and the political establishment implicitly agree with ObamaCare
architect Jonathan Gruber that the American public is terminally
stupid. Whatever the level of public intelligence, the nomenklatura plainly
is not to be trusted.
Whom, then, can one trust? Certainly
not oneself -- at least, not one’s initial reactions, whether pro
or con. Self-distrust is a healthy position from which to begin one’s search
for truth -- or if undoubted truth is not available to the human mind, let us
say credible verisimilitude. Nor is it a question of whom one
personally likes or dislikes. The issue is larger than that. To base one’s
voting decision on personal liking or disliking of the man or woman in
question, on the assessment of a candidate’s perceived personality or public
manifestation, on a gut reaction to the face, the voice, the manner and the
language is at best problematic. It
is like living in an Oculus
Rift world.
Trust, as we have noted, can be deceptive.
People trusted Obama, possibly the biggest mistake the American people have
ever made, and a vote for Hillary or Bernie, diligently angling for voter
trust, would only prolong and intensify the agony. In my country, people did
not trust former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, who navigated ably in
the treacherous waters of a stormy political and economic world; instead they
placed their trust in Justin Trudeau, who in six short months has amassed
a $29.4
billion deficit, imported thousands of unvetted “Syrian” refugees at public
expense, and is set to raise an already prohibitive tax rate.
Advocating for voter responsibility is
a scarcely tenable proposition, and yet it is the sine qua non for
democratic survival. I cannot say with assurance that Trump is the best man for the
presidency, but I can say with confidence that his potential qualifications for
the job have been obscured by an unremitting campaign of calumny and
misapprehension that seems almost demented. The Michelle Fields controversy is
an excellent example of how the media and the pundits have inflated a tempest
in a teacup to tsunami proportions. I was once quite emphatically shoved aside
by a pair of bodyguards when I approached Robert Spencer as he was being led to
the podium --my bad, not his or his bodyguards’. A speaker under threat has a
right to a protected space.
Admittedly, there is no yellow brick road
to the right choice. One can only work to be as well-informed as possible and
to study the issues with close attention. And to distrust
one’s own subjective -- that is, immediate, visceral, idiosyncratic or ad
hominem -- reactions to the politician who lobbies for your unearned
favor or challenges your congenial assumptions.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/04/distrust_yourself_before_you_distrust_the_candidate.html#ixzz46ZlFPr28
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