TRUMP: DISTILLING (SOME) GOOD WITH THE (VERY) BAD

I stand with the majority who feel that Trump is a human and political disaster. He is an “ugly” American….vile, misogynistic, rude, narcissistic, dishonest, deceitful, ignorant…are just a few of the adjectives that Trump wears like an Armani suit.…

But, unlike most all of the other candidates who will go home at the end of the day as “losers”, Donald Trump has some very important messages that we are likely to miss if we let the ridiculous cloud out the sane.

Donald Trump is nothing if he isn’t outrageous…he questions sacred cows and old paradigms and recently sent some chills into the media and the electorate when he said that he “wouldn’t rule out using nuclear weapons” in Europe and that maybe we should give Japan and South Korea nukes so that they can defend themselves. Yes, much of this is ridiculous and reckless…but let’s not throw out the pearls with the poison. Trump is unconventional....he doesn’t care how things used to be done in the past…that is oftentimes a good thing…he has questioned and criticized several paradigms that never get a fresh look…he questioned the efficacy of NATO…of our contribution that allows other members of NATO to skip out without paying their fair share…he has called into question our attitude towards the outside world as babysitter and referee. He has called into question our trade policies over the years that have allowed many of our industries to be gutted by unfair trade practices.

In the 50’s and 60’s the United States owned the TV market...we created it from scratch…it was our invention…we were the envy of the world…. we had two dozen different American television brands that were churning out ALL of our televisions.…with brands like Magnovox, Emerson, Zenith, and RCA, but now, these companies are either extinct or bought out by Korean or Japanese companies...the Japanese were allowed (while the United States slept) to destroy the U.S. market by dumping huge quantities of low priced Japanese “knock-offs” on the U.S.. Essentially, Japan was allowed to export T.V’s to America and deliberately charge a fraction of what the American TV companies were charging…sounds like free markets at work, right? But they were selling TV’s in the United States at below cost…and charging their own Japanese citizens a much higher price than the market required and making it very difficult for American TV’s to enter the Japanese market. It’s called price dumping….and it is against the law…so, the United States TV companies were forced to compete on an unfair playing field and they couldn’t stay in business..it broke the market in the U.S. …American TVs could no longer compete…and the forensics showed the fingerprints of inept US trade policy…it was a crime. Where was our Commerce Department..where were our Presidents during this surrender that killed a thriving American manufacturing institution..? Japan has historically been notorious for being closed to many imports from the U.S. but even when they did officially open up their markets they perfected the art of imposing non tariff barriers that made it almost impossible to enter the Japanese market….

It was a one way street that was facilitated by a negligent United States of America.

Now, apply this to the automobile industry …many of the same business practices occurred in helping to decimate the U.S. automaker…and, why was the United States allowing this destruction of it’s own manufacturing market?

Trump has brought this issue to the forefront…more than anyone else…actually, only candidates who are taking on the status quo (Trump and Sanders) are questioning the bedrock Institutions and paradigms that are driving the United States. For everyone else it is just an adjustment at the margins….I heard HRC say today in a speech that “We need to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and start being nicer to each other and we can move forward to a better tomorrow”. That is so incredibly hollow and condescending and status quo…more of the same. It is insulting in my opinion.

This country is loathe to change…We don’t question our institutions very easily…Heck, we adhere rigidly to a Constitutional text that was written almost 250 years ago (probably a good idea) and most people on this planet adhere to a religion that was founded anywhere between 1300 and 4,000 years ago. We don’t like to change or abandon our institutions…even one, religion, that is arguably responsible for more deaths historically than anything else.

Let’s look at the public school system (K – 12) in our country….they have been largely substandard for decades and decades…and they have totally underserved the poor and minority communities. The United States ranks 17th out of 40 developed countries in Education (Finland is ranked first)..yet, there is NO plan to do anything but to “pick ourselves up by our bootstraps”. We don’t look at any other countries that are doing better than us and ask, “What are they doing that we can learn from”. Any private business would do that if they were getting crushed by their competition, not the proud and omniscient United States. In fact, that is how you get to be great…by learning from every source available. Have we gone to Finland just once to ask how and why they are so successful in educating their citizens? Of course not! We have an arrogance…. that we know everything…and everyone else is inferior….yet, in Quality of Life Indices that are published every year, the United States typically ranks in the teens…behind all the Scandinavian countries, Switzerland, Australia, and many others…

It took us more than a half century to catch up with the rest of the developed world and guarantee health care to ALL of our citizens….why? That is an embarrassment ...not just because we owe it to our citizens ..but because it is incredibly costly to our country to provide medical services under that model.

The only times when we get a real self examination as a country is when people take to the streets….when grass roots movements become so vocal and powerful that Congress and the courts have no choice but to “lead from behind”. This happened with MLK and the Civil Rights Movement…it has happened with the Gay Rights movement….imagine, we have federally guaranteed rights for same sex marriage…this would have been unheard of just a few years ago….Congress would have never taken this up on their own….but, the LGBT community is very well organized and relentless…and they carried “torches”. That is what Bernie Sanders is trying to do with his candidacy…educate the people as to the breathtaking corruption that exists in our election processes…how money is buying influence and how our democracy is one in name only. He is trying to bypass trying to change the recalcitrant minds of Congressmen…those who benefit from status quo thinking and stagnation. He realizes that real change happens when you get the people to demand change.

Maybe, in spite of the grotesque messenger (Trump), we should seriously re-examine NATO…maybe we need to revisit all of our institutions to see if they are still relevant and not obsolete and serving us effectively…You can be sure that Apple and GE and WalMart, and any other successful company is looking at all of it’s institutions to see what is working and what isn’t.

I find that Institutions tend to be very insular and resistant to any scrutiny or change…change disturbs a lot of people…we can’t even get a bipartisan commitment to agree that there is climate change…..

We need to have leaders who question the old paradigms……Private companies tend to be much more open to change because they know that if they don’t evolve to meet the competition and the marketplace…..they will die out…they have to live by the Olympic motto…”Faster, Higher, Stronger” or else they will become extinct. They must be linear and not circular. The government is, more often than not, circular…and poorly at that.

The government is not similarly driven..they are not trying to make a profit and they don’t have competition so there is absolutely NO motivation to get better …to become state of the art, cost effective, and to serve the marketplace…..there is no board of directors that is asking why the business is dying…the Government doesn’t care…do you think the DMV has ANY motivation to become efficient? Of course not…what options then do the consumers have? Zero….

Things haven’t changed on Wall Street…the new Dodd/Frank bill that was passed by Congress was restructured by Wall Street lobbyists..it has no real teeth….things are virtually the same….status quo! We get Congressman and Senators who are elected over and over….for decades and decades…that is status quo cronyism…we have term limits for Presidents…why not for those serving in Congress? It is so hard to run against an incumbent for many reasons but perhaps mostly because fundraising against an incumbent is almost impossible…you will likely not be able to compete.

I say explode the box….take a look at every institution in our government, every treaty or trade policy….revisit them the way any private company that is successful would.

Why be afraid of privatization….? You can still have regulatory bodies and set rules for fairness, etc., but you might get a better mousetrap.

Could you imagine if our Government owned and operated the airlines..?, not just the regulation, but you could only fly U.S. Gov airplanes and government employees as pilots if you wanted to go anywhere on a plane. Imagine if there was no competition and it was a total monopoly….Could you imagine how much of a disaster it would be, how inefficient and unpleasant….? We would still be flying bi-planes…

Make me an airtight argument why the Veterans Administration could not be privatized (with oversight and regulation), or why we shouldn’t have voucher systems in the U.S. to open up a whole new opportunity for private investment in education to help give choices and introduce competition---why not? After all…we rank 17th out of 40, hardly American exceptionalism. I thought all of these people are condemning Socialism….well, in many ways we have much more of it than we need…and in other ways we have less of it…. What are we afraid of by letting private companies profit off of owning and operating schools? One thing is for sure…if they were not successful, they would lose business and close.

So, let’s agree that Trump is not the answer…but let’s not forget some of the redeeming things that he has brought to the campaign….

I hope we will look back on the Trump candidacy, and the Sanders candidacy, though very different in almost every way, as candidacies that made us think about challenging the status quo…thinking outside the “box”, re-examining our sacrosanct institutions to see if they are truly serving our interests…..

I am not holding my breath, though….status quo is always the 2,000 pound gorilla in the room!

My opinions….