COULD DONALD TRUMP’S CANDIDANCY END AMERICAN DEMOCRACY?

…If “The Donald” loses, he will throw a tantrum & yell “fowl” !!!!

 

Trump supporters are not receiving the honest political data that democracies require for survival.

 

It is true that if facts don’t matter, how will our American democracy survive?

 

Here are some of the frightening numbers:

 

>>> Of all those Americans asked about their trusting any data coming from the government, 55% either totally or usually trust the data coming from the government, however 25% do not trust any government data.

 

>>> Of the self-claimed Clinton voters, 85% of them trust government published data, while only 5% do not trust any government data.

 

>>> Of the self-claimed Trump voters, 31% of them trust government published data, but a whopping 68% don’t trust any government data.

 

This last particular group of Americans for Trump also think the elections are rigged and regardless of the experts, the facts, the math, the polls or the data, they distrust them all.

 

The Republican politicians have for years sown this distrust in data from the government such as info on global warming, unemployment numbers, the government not agreeing to privatize Social Security, government’s air & water pollution programs, any government sponsored bank regulations, and a host of other government offered data.

 

But this time, with their following of the outrageous political liar, Donald Trump, these non-believers are now devouring everything that comes out of Trump’s mouth.  With all his false noise about voter fraud, about foreigners being allowed to register & vote for the Democrats, with Donald Trump at every stop of his Boeing 767 saying that if he loses, then it’s a rigged election.  These Trump lemmings will follow Trump off of whatever political cliff he decides to lead them using his verbal flute.

 

The latest sign of this anti-government trend was when the annual Marketplace-Edison Research Poll was released last week.  In this usually very accurate survey, 4 in 10 Americans somewhat or completely distrust the economic data reported by the federal government.  Among Donald Trump voters, that share of distrust is at 68%, with half of those saying they don’t trust “any government economic data 100%”

 

As to the US always having a peaceful change in government power, that is because that in the past, virtually every American has believed the US elections are always “fair & square”.  Americans have traditionally trusted the election systems.  But this latest negative attitude, spurred on by the Trump campaign, could make it increasingly difficult for US policymakers to make good choices and govern peacefully.

 

This distrust goes across every bit of data from the government.  That includes government issued unemployment rates, inflation numbers, household spending figures, health insurance coverage rates, gross domestic product (GDP), growth rates.  It includes other stats that companies and consumers rely on when making financial decisions. Nearly half of all Americans, and a supermajority of Trump voters today believe the elections are false and that the government’s books are cooked.

 

These negative issues started back when the Republicans in 2008 decided to not agree to anything that the newly elected President Obama wanted to do.  Today, with the “Birther-in-Chief” at the head of the GOP, most data skeptics are primed to believe the” book-cooking” is meant to make the economy look stronger for Hillary while making President Obama look better.  It’s all believed by these doubters to be a “Russian style cover-up of what’s really going on in the government”.

 

This is very dangerous for a functioning democracy.  If enough people and businesses believe the economy is bad government data, they will then behave in ways that will make it even worse, just by curbing their own actions, including their spending and their business hiring. 

 

The point of all this distrust lies directly on Donald Trump’s shoulders.

 

All you need to do is look at all the B.S. theories that have come from Trump’s own mouth.

 

“Unemployment is actually at 42%!!!!  The elections are totally rigged!  Global Warming is a hoax started by the Chinese!!!  There is massive voter fraud in America!!!  American jobs were sent away by bad trade agreements!!!”  Saying all of this, Trump totally discredits any official figures from the government.

 

Trump and his supporters claim that all the surveys and all government data is skewed, and that any positive results are just government sponsored, pro-Hillary Clinton propaganda,

 

Basically, Trump knows he’s losing, so he says that all the polls are shewed, all the data is wrong, and that it is all part of the left-wing media support for Clinton.  They seem to forget that the House and the Senate and a majority of US governorships are led by Republicans.  Even the US Supreme Court is split 50-50 between conservatives and liberals.  But let’s not let any facts get in the way.

 

This way, if Trump were to win, all would be fine and the elections would be considered fair.  But as he’s down in the polls, he has obviously decided to just blame the system.

 

When offered nonpartisan analyses that Trump’s so called “fiscal plans” would add trillions to US deficits and jeopardize the economy, his supporters claim these government assessments must all be total lies because the analysts are against him.  And of course, his supporters believe that, “Trump the big business billionaire” would never let bad things happen to the US economy. 

 

In other words, the Trump gang says to just ignore the experts, ignore the math, only trust their message….nothing from Hillary.

 

Dr. Ben Carson, who has been referred to as “The World’s Worst Trump Surrogate”, last week on MSNBC, Dr. Carson said, “Let’s throw the economists out, and let’s just use common sense.” OK, I guess by that he means forget all forms of expertise in favor of what he calls “common sense,” of which Donald Trump hasn't displayed any.

 

If you recall, this kind of thinking was exactly what occurred back in the 2012 election.  That was when the GOP thought that Mitt Romney would easily be winning the White House. Back then, as we see it now, large Romney rally crowds were also cited as evidence that the pollsters simply had to be wrong.  The votes weren’t for Romney then and they aren’t for Trump now.

 

This anti-intellectual, ignore-the-data attitude owes its growth to a conspiracy league of conservative politicians and FOX news pundits. They elevated themselves by sowing distrust in traditional institutions and sources of authority.  And those groups of their distrust includes the main-stream media, civil servants, scientists and anyone that doesn’t salute Trump as “The Best”. The Republicans that bought into this have presented themselves as the “sole truth-tellers, and statistic unskewers,” while maintaining that everyone else was feeding the public total lies.

 

Today, some of these GOP message-bearers are now the victims of their own success. The most prominent right-wing media outlet, Fox News, is today being attacked by these outlets that are even more right-wing than Fox.  It's hard to believe, but Fox News’ own polls have actually been accused of being pro-Clinton….?

 

Many of the GOP politicians who rose to power on their anti-everything establishment position, they now find themselves in the cross-hairs of an even more, “anti-all-those-things outsider of a Trump candidate”.

 

The problem with elevating yourself by tearing down the existing authoritative institutions (as Trump continues to do) is that once you succeed, you’ve established a road map for others to go after you as well.

 

There will always be someone waiting in the wings with an even juicier conspiracy theory.

 

The problem is that this is the way a working democratic system can start to crumble.  Yes, this is how a democracy starts to lose its support.  It doesn’t necessarily die with a big bang or a civil revolution, but instead, it just slides away as the people lose faith in the system.

 

You may be saying that there’s no way that could happen in America…….but if you think about it............

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016