* I agree that Trump’s victory is part of a wave of nationalist and immigration-skeptical politics gaining strength in many democracies this year, for good reasons. One thing though that explains Trump, but also probably obscured him as an outcome, is the differences between the US and most foreign political systems. America’s two mainstream political parties effectively serve as semi-permanent versions of what would be coalitions of smaller political parties in other countries. The various “wings” or “blocs” of the Democrats and Republicans are the equivalent of what are smaller political parties in parliamentary coalition systems, but much less well-organized or defined.
Coalition systems allow for adjustment and bringing in or kicking out coalition members, which is one trick, for example, Western European political systems have done to keep anti-immigration/anti-globalist parties out of power. Party discipline is an actual real thing within political parties in many countries too, with parties having the power to decide on and expel members. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans can do that. American political candidates are essentially self-declared and self-sustaining political entrepreneurs, at least by comparison, and any attempt to ostracize a political candidate is only informal, i.e., whether they get cut out of party outreach or fundraising apparatuses, endorsements, or convention rules (the amorphous “party establishments”). Another feature of the American system is the relative power and prominence of the President, which is not only the head of state and government but also leads a co-equal branch of government, the entirety of the federal government’s Executive Branch, and who is elected independently of the legislature.
All of this may mean that the American system is more subject to “wave”-type events: a system with an amorphous, loose, and largely undisciplined configuration of political alliances and no real way to control or check sudden reconfigurations in relative power within those alliances can thrust a surprise candidate into the paramount position very quickly, by comparison to other countries. (Would anyone have predicted in 2004 that Barack Obama would be elected in 2008?) No equivalent movement in Western Europe (UKIP, AfD, FN, etc.) has managed to get this close to power this quickly.
* When policies result in off-shoring jobs for the cheaper foreign wages, and importing unskilled third-world immigrants for cheaper domestic wages, the result is the destruction of millions of lives and families because–effectively–you’ve imposed a lowered standard of living through fewer jobs and lower wages on the domestic population.
Free trade: In theory, it should work in practice; in practice, it doesn’t work in theory.
* Black people often leave out verbs when they talk.
like
“he a fool”
“she nasty”
“he a jiveass turkey”
so maybe ‘matter’ in Black Lives Matter is meant as a noun.
maybe it means ‘black lives be matter’
so, maybe, we should call blacks ‘matters’.
