Donald Trump: American Psycho

[TBF]

One thing is clear after last night’s debate: Donald Trump is the rotten fruit of the American ruling class. By Harrison Fluss ~ 9-17-15

As Ishay Landa and others have pointed out, there is an anti-democratic and elitist nature of both liberal and authoritarian modes of politics, rooted in their shared defense of private property. Liberalism can be amorphous as a term, but in a sense it means a commitment to abstract ideas like equality and freedom, while taking for granted the economic system of capitalism.

After yesterday’s debate, Trump is the story again. But for all its fascination with Donald Trump, the media rarely bothers to explain the social context of his rise to prominence.

After all, doing so would debunk all the posturing we see in Trump’s campaign blitz as a self-made billionaire (or as a kitsch kind of American Ubermensch) and reveal how much he is the rotten fruit of the American ruling class as a whole. However frightening or undesirable Trump may be to the establishment, he is in perfect harmony with its gross reality.

Superficially, Trump has evolved with the times. He leaned towards liberalism and the Democratic Party in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Indeed, some of his political positions in the past parallel those of the Democratic Party today, since Trump used to be pro-choice, advocated a single-payer health care system and legalizing drugs, a “massive one-time 14.25 percent tax on the wealthy,” and various forms of economic nationalism (which he still does to some degree) ...

But even more than policies, Trump’s wealth is itself the product of the gross inequalities and stratified society both Democrats and Republicans have helped to maintain and reinforce decade to decade, while Trump has returned the favor to both Democratic and Republican politicians with his donations.

Behind all the abstractions of multiculturalism and equal opportunity is the very real process of capital accumulation. This process of accumulation is not without its strategies of dispossession and exploitation. These strategies help to marginalize and oppress entire sets of people ...

A very good article - much more here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/09/trump-republican-primary-presidential-candidate-debate/