I haven’t seen it written anywhere, but if you hope to know what issues will drive – or not drive — the political conversation in an election year, poll people under 30 to see what they’re thinking about.
Why? Because these are the Americans who grew up in the electronically over-connected age where news travels at the speed of a few clicks and hardly anyone in the demographic category reads a newspaper or book to fully understand what’s happening in the world around us.
The average young person these days is more aware of how many times Taylor Swift was shown during the Super Bowl than they are about what’s transpiring in the Middle East, Ukraine, Russia, Taiwan… or anywhere else. And it’s also the reason why the political leaders of this nation can make endless machinations to send money overseas and hardly anyone – except those already well versed in facts and figures – is disturbed.
To the young and blissfully uninformed, their leftist teachers or classmates might complain about Palestine being oppressed, or women being denied their “reproductive” rights, or that Americans with African ancestry continue to be held down because of “systemic racism”, or the earth is doomed if citizens don’t renounce gas-fueled cars and appliances, or the world will end if consumers demand meat (as in beef, chicken, pork, fish, etc.) when human beings should, according to the smart set, be consuming insects or plants or some other “renewable” source – usually whatever isn’t produced by ingenuity.
It’s all a big scam, yet the political establishments of both parties make it sound like people should dwell on Ukraine and the future of NATO, too. Good luck tearing young folks away from their videos or social media interactions to join with the DC swamp lizards in obsessing over that.
Donald Trump understands what gets the media’s attention, however, and therefore takes the opportunity to insert topics into the commonly discussed contemporary vernacular. In an article titled “Trump, NATO and the media”, the always reliable Byron York wrote at the Washington Examiner earlier this week:
“On NATO, Trump essentially said what he always says… To illustrate that, Trump said: ‘One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, ‘Well, sir, if we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?’ I said, ‘You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?’ He said, ‘Yes, let’s say that happened.’ ‘No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills.’ And the money came flowing in.’
“What was new there was Trump’s statement that he told the European president he would ‘encourage’ Russia to attack if the president’s country did not pay enough for his country’s defense. That was enough to set the outrage machine in motion again. There were headlines in all the papers and websites. Excerpts of Trump’s speech shown on television. Commentators condemning Trump. If Trump had simply bragged that he strong-armed NATO to pay more for its defense, as he has done a zillion times, then there would have been no reporting. When he tossed in the ‘encourage’ line, he dominated another news cycle. So much for the blackout.”
Maybe it was because I was too engrossed in how to hedge my Super Bowl bets last weekend, but I didn’t even learn what Trump had said regarding NATO until I saw a news blurb with Nikki Haley throwing a conniption fit about Trump’s lack of foresight and how he’d placed America in real danger, because Vladimir Putin can’t be trusted and the Russians want to take over the world, etc.
Or something like that. Whenever Haley or senile Joe Biden or Mitch McConnell or Chuck Schumer or any DC swamp lizard blubbers over Ukraine, I reflexively tune it out. But when Trump talks about it, ears perk up. Therein lies the difference.
It doesn’t take a genius to notice that Trump recognizes what makes voters tune-in, too, and it isn’t some mundane discussion about NATO’s role in the international balance of power or why such and such or so and so needs billions more in American aid to keep such and such or so and so from invading country-X or nation-Y on continents that aren’t even represented on a RISK game board.
By the same token, do you get this from a smart phone? Seen any Instagram posts lately where a celebrity ditches culture to wax over NATO deterrence? Heck, I doubt they even talk about such things in Europe.
There are lots of topics that conservatives at the grassroots level want to bring up that the Washington swamp establishment is blind and deaf to. They also seem to be the subjects Donald Trump likes to raise. Those are, in no particular order:
Trade – Industry workers and tradesmen may not grasp the purported benefits of completely free trade (which doesn’t exist), but they do get how countries like China are duping the United States into allowing their manufactured and priced-at-below-cost goods;
Immigration – What’s not to comprehend? Millions of uninvited newcomers supported by generous welfare benefits who pay no heed to the law. Does the establishment get this?
Elections integrity. Americans who pay attention to facts see the danger of universal mail-in balloting without proper screening protocols. The establishment counts on citizen ignorance to make claims of “fair elections” and “the BIG LIE” (2020 election was stolen) and a squeaky-clean airtight system. What happened to the old way of voting on Election Day only with paper ballots except in narrowly defined exceptions?
NATO. For one thing, Trump is absolutely right to question NATO. In a day and age when the American population, by and large, has become preoccupied and governed by the content contained on a four-inch – or less – screen, most people don’t remember what NATO was originally intended to safeguard and even fewer have a good grasp of what the multi-national agreement signees are supposed to do.
In essence, the nations, as a group, have bonded together to prevent an aggressive move westward by Russia, figuring, correctly, that there’s strength in numbers and Vlad Putin wouldn’t dare take on any of the NATO powers because then he’d have to deal with all of them at the same time. There’s some truth in the belief that the NATO alliance has kept Soviet leaders – and now Putin – from overstepping their political boundaries and have therefore tempered their military ambitions accordingly.
This isn’t 1947 any longer, and it’s not even the 1960s or 1970s or early 1990s when Americans lived in general and realistic fear that the Soviet Union was governed by potentially suicidal leaders who didn’t give a hoot about their own people and would therefore lend the impression that they might use ICBMs to strike the U.S. homeland. Anyone remember the 1980’s movies, with their persistent use of the Red Scare to steer public opinion?
If you grew up in the 80’s, like I did, you remember “WarGames” and “Red Dawn” and “Rambo II” and “Rocky IV” and other Saturday afternoon-type flicks where Americans were always the good guys and the nameless, faceless Soviets threatened our very existence. Ronald Reagan’s popularity was based in part because of his “We win, they lose” unshakable orientation.
But those days are gone. If it were up to the Republican leadership – and Nikki Haley – now they’d have everyone believing that Putin’s primary goal is to have Russia reemerge and be in position to have Russian-accented actors reach full employment by scaring a new generation of theater-going Americans into accepting that the real menace is still the Russian bear rather than the redder than red commies dwelling over in the far east under the command of Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un.
Poor NATO – they’ve only got the scary looking and evil but resource-poor Vladimir Putin to demonize while China’s unabashed and uncontained leaders use non-conventional means – trade wars, stealing information technology, cyber attacks, “Gray Zone” tactics and psychological weapons (fentanyl murders, Confucius Institutes, illegally infiltrated military aged men, TikTok, electric cars, rare earth mineral dependency, COVID, bio weapons, etc.) to win a non-shooting war with the west by taking over minds instead of capturing territory.
And they’ve got the current American leadership in their pockets, too, knowing full well that the compromised Biden family won’t object too loudly lest they be exposed for their corrupt dealings with the world’s most dangerous and untrustworthy regime.
Then you have Mitch McConnell and his cohort of establishment Republican senators feigning shock and horror that Donald Trump would dare to suggest that he’d leave certain NATO countries stranded unless they foot their share of the bill. The elite class – and some in the conservative media – might vaper lock over the notion, but the conservative grassroots won’t.
Be honest… have you and yours EVER had a conversation about NATO at the dinner table? I doubt it. But there’ve probably been many such talks about illegal immigration or racial preferences or COVID lockdowns. And that, in a nutshell, is how Donald Trump has taken over the heart of the Republican Party.
It’s painful to watch sometimes as the political class devotes weeks debating aid to Ukraine while the interior of our country deteriorates by the minute due to neglect and misplaced policy priorities. Donald Trump knows everything he needs to know about how to treat NATO and U.S. foreign aid, a lesson he’ll teach the swamp if he wins again this year.
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2024 presidential election