{"id":91790,"date":"2016-03-29T09:16:30","date_gmt":"2016-03-29T17:16:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=91790"},"modified":"2016-03-29T09:16:30","modified_gmt":"2016-03-29T17:16:30","slug":"trump-is-a-realist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=91790","title":{"rendered":"Trump Is A Realist"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Politico<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s basic philosophy of living, instilled by his fiercely ambitious, workaholic father, enforced by the tough-as-nails coach at his military high school and honed over a lifetime of ruthless deal-making, is fairly simple and severe: Life is mainly combat; the law of the jungle rules; pretty much all that matters is winning or losing, and rules are made to be broken. It is largely a materialistic worldview; even the brand of Christianity Trump was raised in was fairly materialistic, the product of pastor Norman Vincent Peale, who wrote: \u201cLearn to pray big prayers. God will rate you according to the size of your prayers.”
\nThus, for those of us who have followed Trump\u2019s career from the start, the worldview he has trotted out to the public is no surprise. Some people seem shocked that he embraces torture without compunction; openly admires the suppression of freedom by Chinese and Russian dictators; and shows little grasp of ethics, governance or constitutionalism, as evidenced by his insistence that the U.S. openly engage in war crimes (by killing the families of terrorists). Or that he often seems ignorant of history and the economic benefits of free trade, dismissing the U.S. alliance and trading system that won the Cold War as \u201cobsolete,\u201d calling regularly for punitive tariffs and insisting over and over again, \u201cWe never win anymore,\u201d as if trade were a zero-sum game (which it is not). Or that he relishes the idea that people at his rallies punch each other, suggesting that his supporters \u201cknock the crap out of\u201d any disrupters.
\nBut, as Trump’s biographer, I can tell you these views fundamentally define the man. And if you\u2019re looking\u2014or perhaps hoping\u2014for something more, you shouldn\u2019t expect to find it. If you are seeking reassurance that the man who could be the next president of the United States possesses a coherent political philosophy or ethical foundation other than this rather pre-Enlightenment code of behavior\u2014that he subscribes to the ideals of the Founders, or has studied and understood American democracy, human rights and our Constitutional system\u2014you won\u2019t get it.
\nRare if not unique in American politics, Trump\u2019s views and provocations are consistent with his biography. Trump first became a public figure in the 1970s when, in response to charges of housing discrimination, his lawyer compared federal officials to the Gestapo. From this point on, Trump consistently showed he was willing to use threats, insults, and deception not unlike the kinds of things he says about his political rivals today\u2014if it meant getting what he wanted. His view of life resembled the Hobbesian nightmare of a \u201cwar of all against all\u201d with little regard for the social contract that makes for peaceful communities and countries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Politico: Trump\u2019s basic philosophy of living, instilled by his fiercely ambitious, workaholic father, enforced by the tough-as-nails coach at his military high school and honed over a lifetime of ruthless deal-making, is fairly simple and severe: Life is mainly … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29752],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-donald-trump"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=91790"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91791,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91790\/revisions\/91791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=91790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=91790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=91790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}