There are compelling reasons to dislike Donald Trump, yet many who had been put-off by him now welcome his realism.
Trump’s domestic approval rating has ratcheted upward since the US’s 5 November elections, as many Democrats are fed-up with their party’s indulging of its left-wing zealots. Of course “black lives matter” but accompanying that chant with “defund the police” discourages lower-income groups, among others, from supporting out-of-touch candidates. Electoral support for Trump rose among less advantaged voters as many of them favour practical solutions over political posturing.
Many of the wealthy Americans who have reliably supported Democratic candidates have also been obsessed with having their children educated at elite universities. The heartless anti-semitism displayed on many prestigious college campuses on 8 October 2023, the day after Hamas’ savage attack on an Israeli music festival and before Israel responded, provoked much scrutiny of how universities were being run and whose agendas they were serving.
As most media outlets lean left, Trump’s antics and utterances have prompted many of them to relax their journalistic standards to indulge their ideological biases. Many faithful Democratic voters have, in the aftermath of the election, come to accept that their objectivity was similarly undermined by their enmity for Trump. It was patently obvious long before his cringe-worthy July debate performance that Joe Biden would struggle to complete his current term, let alone serve for another four years.
While few European leaders are fond of Trump, many were quick to embrace greater pragmatism as soon as he was re-elected. This is something they very much needed to do and Trump returning to the White House has made this shift considerably easier for them politically.
As Trump routinely makes outlandish statements, it doesn’t seem that he is realistic or pragmatic. Yet such utterances are often intended to query public attitudes or to help set the stage for cutting a deal. In this important sense, even many of his seemingly ludicrous comments are pragmatic.
Real outliers
It is today’s left-leaning politicians and their supporters who are the real outliers. Solving problems doesn’t suit the politicians who exploit victimhood narratives. Rather than seeking to expand upliftment paths, they seek to exploit injustices by making the less fortunate reliant on their providing government grants. This only works politically if leftists can successfully frame prevailing narratives around social injustices. But this can never be sustainable as young adults need to develop their productive potential through being meaningfully employed.
Before Trump, the US’s prevailing political narratives were framed by then-president Barack Obama with much support from media and academia. Successful white men were gradually villainised while Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programmes were promoted. Very few DEI professionals in the US are white males whereas most of them have large student loans. Thus they overwhelmingly support Democrats for fear of losing their jobs.
They would then be at risk of being unable to find a well-paying job while being financially overwhelmed by their student loan indebtedness. The core impediment would not be race or gender but the fact that degrees in cultural studies and similar fields are rarely valued outside of DEI departments. Encouraging people to pursue fields reliant on regulatory requirements is a form of patronage. Upliftment is much more likely to be sustainable when workers focus on developing skills which enhance their productivity.
Among the reasons scapegoating white men is tricky is that it leads to other men also being disparaged. Pushback has been gaining momentum as indicated by Trump’s support among Latino men rising to 55% this year from 32% in 2016. Trump’s support among black men doubled from 15% in 2020 to 30% last month.
The key takeaway is that men and women who are highly skilled or aspirational should not support politicians and parties that promote victimhood narratives to justify redistribution-focused policy platforms which pummel growth. Trump supporters have posted countless short videos of black men saying that Democratic politicians have taken their votes for granted. It would seem that such people were easy to find.
Yet the global leader in this category is, of course, the ANC. No economic metric is as telling as the fact that a majority of South African blacks who have left school in the last twenty years are unskilled and unemployed. Our apartheid-to-Ramaphosa journey has produced the world’s most entrenched youth unemployment crisis. It cannot be meaningfully mitigated without rapidly growing value-added exports.
Pivot
Thus, while European leaders must swiftly shift various positions in response to Trump’s re-election, the ANC and its GNU partners must pivot away from redistribution- and localisation-focused economic policies and an anti-Western foreign policy stance. The ANC expresses more loyalty to China, Russia and Iran than the majority of South Africans who are poor, unemployed or both.
Russia and Iran are much weaker now than they were when Russia invaded Ukraine less than three years ago. Neither was able to support their recently ousted ally Assad of Syria. More dramatic still has been the decline in China’s economic prospects. None of these countries will be importing finished goods which have been produced with meaningful value being added by South African workers.
Nor can increasing commodity exports noticeably benefit our low-income households. Multiplier effects are severely constrained by the pervasive over-reliance on expensive consumer debt amid rampant patronage and a largely unskilled workforce. The only path toward achieving normal workforce participation is to mimic the dozens of high-growth countries which manage to carve out various niches through adding value within global supply chains.
Hosting the G20 next year is a tremendous opportunity to reposition South Africa geopolitically and economically. Yet such efforts can only produce adequate results if our leaders adopt policies consistent with global realities and the opportunities they offer.
[Image: Sambeet D from Pixabay]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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