A Former Soviet Discusses Trump

Oleg Atbashian says Some of my best friends are Trump supporters. He describes the downfall of the Soviet Union this way:

Consider this story: there lived an apathetic silent majority, maligned and shamed by its leaders and the official media, and they thought it would never end. But one day a miracle happened: they suddenly heard a voice that articulated their own forbidden thoughts — something they had been afraid to articulate in public, even though it was common sense — words not dressed in flowery rhetoric and rounded sentences, but delivered roughly, in a regional accent of the common man — plain and truthful words coming from the highest pulpit in the nation. Millions of people recognized their own voices in his, lending him their support — silently at first, but more and more vocal as time went by — to a point that they went out into the streets to defend him in the face of violent and dangerous opposition from the far Left.

I am talking, of course, about Mikhail Gorbachev and the reaction he first received from the Soviets when he started his Perestroika and Glasnost in the USSR. I remember it clearly because I was one of them. Gorbachev wasn’t perfect by any measure, and yet he started a process that shook up the corrupt establishment, ended the rule of the powerful Communist Party, liberalized the economy, and opened the country to an honest debate about its problems. The parallels with Donald Trump, his message, and his appeal with America’s silent majority are unmistakable.

Well of course I’m making the big mistake of not being silent. And as you can tell from comments and posts here it has cost me some friends. My Mom, a Sanders supporter, hasn’t disowned me. But every time I talk to her it is, “How could you vote for HIM?” Love ya Mom.

So how about Oleg’s take on a Trump supporter. (bold added)

Jack gave me his take on the demonization of Trump and the stereotyping of his supporters as poorly educated, low-information rubes. According to Jack, both the Republican and the Democrat establishments are corrupt and dysfunctional, but the one thing they can do well is manufacture media narratives that infect people’s minds with notions that are beneficial to the respective branch of political aristocracy, while causing aversion to anything that endangers it.

Trump is a clear and present danger to this corrupt and elitist system. He is willing and fully able to blow to smithereens all their carefully established social hierarchies and to change the entire political culture, which will make the elites unnecessary and expose the uselessness of their cherished and very expensive apparatus. The GOP establishment’s fear and loathing of Trump is so intense that even losing the election to Hillary seems to many of them a lesser evil.

The same establishment remained ineffective throughout the Obama presidency. Obama didn’t threaten their careers and each one of his disastrous policies was to them a lucrative fundraising opportunity. In contrast, Trump threatens their very survival — and suddenly the establishment’s speed and effectiveness is phenomenal. Their quickly constructed #NeverTrump narrative is targeting conservative “purists” and die-hard Ted Cruz supporters, infecting them with hostility that reaches and surpasses the ill-famed Bush Derangement Syndrome.

The sad irony of the #NeverTrump movement is that these self-proclaimed “true conservatives” and “anti-establishment rebels” have swallowed the establishment’s narrative hook, line, and sinker. Worse yet, they now indiscriminately share social media links from previously despised leftist sources, as long as they attack Trump. So much for their stereotyping of Trump supporters as gullible, angry jerks.

I had a friend “prove” to me that a vote for Trump was a vote for Hitler. Because anyone who could rouse the “rabble” inevitably leads to Hitler.

Forgetting that Thomas Paine – that infamous American rabble rouser – led to something quite different. Bill Whittle has pointed out who the “Hitlers” are in American politics. And funny enough he does not point the finger at Trump or his supporters.

Well. Anyway. If you are of a mind to you might want to read the rest of what Oleg has to say. And you might want to watch the whole of the Bill Whittle video linked.

And while I’m at it. “These are the times that try men’s souls…”