Trump is Not New

Just read an interview with Steve Bannon, Trump’s appointed Chief of Staff.  He went on and on about how Trump gets it, he is a nationalist, that the globalists eliminated America’s middle class and created an Asian middle class.  He claims this is new thinking.  He wants to re-shape the Republican Party to align with Trump’s view.  Bannon believes this is revolutionary, new and in the best interest of the USA.

Poppycock.

There is absolutely nothing new in such beliefs or in the strategies triggered by such beliefs.  In fact, they are the oldest beliefs in the U.S.  Isolationism, protective economic practices, nationalism have been with us from the very beginning.  Add to such thinking a dash of prejudice and the belief that somehow white males should rule, and you have the exact arguments made in the following settings: 

Prior to the Civil War such arguments were made by southern legislators regarding the economic impact of freeing the slaves.  Their sense of globalism was the entire US.  Their sense of nationalism was the southern states.  Read George Fitzhugh’s position in 1854 and it sounds like Trump.  They rebelled and they lost.  Human rights prevailed over provincial thinking.

In 1918 the Republicans in Congress voted against the Treaty of Versailles effectively rendering the League of Nations without power.  They were isolationists and nationalists and did not want any part of an international organization dedicated to resolving international conflicts.  Read Henry Cabot Lodge’s speeches in 1918 and he sounds just like Donald Trump.

In 1939 the US was very reluctant to enter World War II.  94% of the American public opposed such entry into foreign entanglements on the heels of World War I.  The height of this isolationism was embodied in the Neutrality Act.  Hitler attacked Poland in 1939.  America did not join the war until 1941 with the attack on Pearl Harbor.  Though Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, Republican opposition to entering the war in Europe was very vocal.  The America First organization espoused tenets of isolationism and protectionism that read just like a Trump stump speech.  This organization had 600 chapters and hundreds of thousands of members. 

And on and on.  Trump’s ideas are not new.  They are old.  And they have shown failure at every step of the way.  Plans grounded in nationalism and isolationism and scientific denial and the persecution of minorities have historically failed.  If we must endure another round of such efforts here and now let’s at least admit this is not new, this is not making America Great Again.  The Trump platform is returning to failed policies of the past.