The Official "Damned Trump" Thread: Phase II

[Angrboda]

I think the underlying issue is aptly expressed in the movement's namesake. Make America Great Again. That U.S. industry, if recreated as it was at some point in the past, will duplicate the competitiveness that it had at that once upon a time. But the reality is you can never go home. American industry evolved to where it is today because selective pressures revealed a competitiveness that was diminishing over time, due to a change in the international environment. You cannot reduplicate that earlier success by remaking American industry in the mold of that earlier time because its success depended upon a global environment which no longer exists. If you recreate American industry successfully under the protection of tariffs, it will simply succumb to the pressures which eventually killed it once you remove the tariffs. And you can't keep tariffs up perpetually, as there is a cost to them which is even worse than the cost from American industry incrementally failing, and not recovering.

I think that Trump is a victim of the same type of simplistic thinking that infected voters in 2024. There was the presumption among Americans that once the pandemic subsided, things would just spring back to the way they were before the pandemic. Once you remove the cause, the effect should disappear. But that's an overly simplistic and optimistic view of reality. In a similar vein, Trump, and the Maga believers in America First believe something similar, that if you just recreate the factories and companies and jobs that existed when America was ostensibly great, we will go back to being great. There's an even more insidious aspect of this being the idea that if we are returned to that former greatness, it only takes good stewardship to ensure continued greatness. Just as the stewardship which prevented things from springing back to normal was bad and the root cause of trouble, so good stewards can overcome whatever obstacles past stewards failed to adequately resolve. I suppose in a sense, it becomes a narrative in which, if America's greatness is not returning, not remaining, or not continuing, then the fault lies with those in the liberal wing of society who, through an inability to see the clear course toward success, are stuck repeating bad ideas and failing to successfully steward the country.