“I’m concerned the election is going to be rigged,” Donald Trump told Ohio voters and Sean Hannity on Fox News. And that hit a nerve.
“Dangerous,” “toxic,” were the negative comments in the media.
Trump threatens to ‘overturn’ 2016 election results
Well, if that is what Trump is trying to do, then it is not insignificant. Consider what he promised in 2016 and what he apparently intends to deliver.
This longest election cycle has been rightly called the Year of the Outsider. It was a year that saw a massive surge in economic populism and patriotism, a year in which a 74-year-old socialist senator ignited primaries with huge crowds that dwarfed Hillary Clinton’s.
This was the year that a political outsider, Donald Trump, won the Republican primary with historic turnout, and his biggest rival was an ostracized nonconformist from his own GOP caucus, Senator Ted Cruz.
More than a dozen Republican challengers, billed as the GOP’s strongest field since 1980, were thrown out. This was the year Americans rose up to overthrow the establishment in a peaceful storming of the American Bastille.
But if it ends with the Clintons being restored and the same elderly Washington policies being ratified, wouldn’t that suggest that there was something wrong with American democracy, that something was rotting in that state?
If 2016 taught us anything, it is that when the establishment’s hegemony is threatened, it will unite in fierce solidarity – in order to preserve its privileges, benefits and power.
All elements of this establishment – corporate, cultural, political and media – are today issuing an ultimatum to Central American society:
Trump is unacceptable.
Republican Party leaders are being instructed to either abandon Trump or cease to be seen as morally sound partners in power.
It is a testament to the character of Republican elites that some of them are looking for ways to implement these instructions, even if it means undoing and disrupting the democratic process that led to Trump’s election.
But what is a rejected institution doing by giving orders to anyone?
Why is it not the middle part of America that is making demands, but rather the other way around?
Specifically, the Republican Party electorate should say to its discredited and rejected ruling class: If we can’t get rid of you at the ballot box, then tell us how, peacefully and democratically, can we get rid of you?
You want Trump gone? How do we get you out?
The Czechs had their Prague Spring. The Tunisians and Egyptians had their Arab Spring. When are we having our American Spring?
The British had their “Brexit” and declared independence from the arrogant superstate in Brussels. How can we free ourselves from the rule of the Beltway superstate, which is stronger and more resistant to democratic change?
Our CIA, NGOs, and the National Endowment for Democracy are working strenuous to bring about “regime change” in distant countries whose rulers we don’t like.
How can we achieve a “regime change” in our home?
Donald Trump’s success, despite near-universal hostility from media outlets, even conservative ones, was largely a result of public reaction to the issues he raised.
He called for sending illegal immigrants home, for securing America’s borders, for no amnesty. He called for an America First foreign policy to keep us out of wars that have done nothing but bleed and bankrupt us.
He called for an economic policy in which the Americanism of the people is replaced by the globalism of transnational elites, their K Street lobbyists, and congressional water carriers.
He condemned NAFTA, trade agreements and the trade deficit with China, and called for the rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
By the end of the campaign, he had won the trade dispute, as Hillary Clinton agreed to TPP and admitted she had doubts about NAFTA.
But if the TPP is revived at the urging of Wall Street oligarchs, the Business Roundtable, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — with the support of conscripted op-ed writers who rely on advertising revenue — how much will the election matter anymore?
And if, as the polls show, we are joined by Clinton, TPP, amnesty, and endless migration of Third Worlders who spend more taxpayer money than they earn and who will soon swamp the Republican coalition, then what was 2016?
Did a majority of Americans really vote for this in the most stimulating presidential election of all?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable,” said John F. Kennedy.
The 1960s and early 1970s were a time of social revolution in America, with President Nixon presiding over what one columnist called “the cooling of America” by ending the draft and the Vietnam War.
But if Hillary Clinton takes power and maintains America’s current course, which most Americans rejected in the primaries, we are in for a bad day.
The fresh protesters on the streets will not be the children of privileged Ivy League students.
