December 17, 2015
Brusque
and loutish and unapologetic. Many of Donald Trump’s supporters adore their
candidate ‘cuz he’s bad to the bone.
But
aside from his reliably
fact-free blatherings regarding immigration, just how politically incorrect
is The Donald? On the major problems facing the nation, Trump’s legendary
insensitivity vanishes. Herewith, three ways that the GOP frontrunner can
commit real sins against PC orthodoxy
-- if he’s got the guts.
Illegitimacy
Forty-one
percent of U.S. babies are born to unwed mothers -- more than ten times the
rate in 1940. Conservatives have been willing to address the crisis for
decades. Many liberals have finally come around. Princeton’s
Sara McLanahan and the Brookings Institution’s Isabel Sawhill recently admitted
that “most scholars now agree that children raised by two biological parents in
a stable marriage do better than children in other family forms across a wide
range of outcomes.”
The consequences
of fatherlessness are baleful. Poverty, crime, abuse, drugs/drinking,
mental/behavioral problems, high-school dropouts, obesity, and teen pregnancy
are all enhanced
by illegitimacy.
Few pols
are brave enough to talk about the appalling realities of a nation cursed with
widespread single motherhood. Unwilling to condemn the towering selfishness of
the women who give birth and the men who abandon their responsibilities,
legislative careerists are content to let the problem metastasize. Might Trump
be different?
Suggested
Trumpism: “I’m not exactly Ward Cleaver, you know?
I’ve fathered five children with three different women. But four of my kids
were born within wedlock. Not one has to worry about money. And they’re all
doing great. Illegitimacy is a yuge
problem in this country, and as president I will attack all the ways that the
federal government promotes fatherlessness.”
“National
Defense”
Men and
materiél based abroad did not prevent the San Bernardino massacre. A vast intelligence
bureaucracy failed to detect the Boston Marathon bombers. And nuclear-tipped
ICBMs were of no use on 9/11. Washington’s efforts to defend the homeland are
pitifully inept. As former
Regan administration official Lawrence Korb wrote, at a time when “the
Pentagon is confronting threats from radical groups like Islamic State,” it is
“facing more than $400 billion in cost overruns on weapons now being developed
and produced.” A dysfunctional
anti-missile system, unnecessary
long-range bombers, and “attack”
submarines that have nothing to attack -- does the DOD exist for defense,
or defense contractors?
Former
Pentagon boss Robert Gates said it best: “If the Department of Defense
can’t figure out a way to defend the United States on a budget of more than
half a trillion dollars a year, then our problems are much bigger than anything
that can be cured by buying a few more ships and planes.” Does Trump agree?
Suggested
Trumpism: “In November, I called Dwight
Eisenhower a ‘great president.’ Well, 55 years ago, in his farewell address,
our finest soldier-statesman warned us about what he called the ‘military-industrial
complex.’ It’s still a yuge problem.
Our allies should defend themselves, and we should focus on the real threats to
Americans’ lives and property. As president, I’ll bring the troops home,
streamline our intelligence apparatus, and crack skulls at the Pentagon until
taxpayers purchase the weapons we truly need.”
Entitlements
Laurence
Kotlikoff, an economist who crunches the numbers on “generational accounting,”
puts “Uncle Sam’s overall … infinite horizon fiscal gap” at $210 trillion. That’s not a misprint. To
cover its unfunded liabilities, Washington would have to “immediately and
permanently raise all federal taxes by 58 percent.”
Social
Security and Medicare are astronomically unaffordable. Beneficiaries receive
far more in value than they contributed in payroll taxes. And more Baby Boomers
retire every day. But old people vote, so the reservoir of red ink continues to
swell. There is no shortage of reform proposals: raising eligibility ages,
means-testing, shifting younger workers to private accounts. Not one, at present,
has the slightest chance of winning support from both legislative chambers and
the chief executive. That offers Trump an opportunity.
Suggested
Trumpism: “Look, okay, I know about
bankruptcy. I’ve filed for Chapter 11 four times! So I recognize when the
numbers don’t look good. And Washington is going broke, fast. It’s a yuge problem. We have to have to fix our
entitlement programs. Millions and millions of people will be very, very angry
when we do. But some pain now will keep us from much more pain later. It’s just
math, people.”
Sitting
atop a mountainous lead in the polls, Trump’s got political capital to spend.
Why not use some of it to assault the PC conformities that stand in the way of
making American great again?
D. Dowd Muska (www.dowdmuska.com) writes about government, economics, and technology. Follow him on Twitter @dowdmuska.
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