David Brooks: Why past is prologue and protests help Trump

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

By David Brooks / The New York Times

These days, I think a lot about Donald Trump. When the monthly economic reports come out, I think: Will this help elect Donald Trump? And, I confess, I’ve started to ask myself the same question when I look at the current unrest on American college campuses over Israel and the Gaza Strip.

Now, I should say that I assume that most of the protesters are operating with the best of intentions; to ease the suffering being endured by the Palestinian people.

But protests have unexpected political consequences. In the 1960s, for example, millions of young people were moved to protest the war in Vietnam, and history has vindicated their position. But Republicans were quick to use the excesses of the student protest movement to their advantage. In 1966, Ronald Reagan vowed “to clean up the mess at Berkeley” and was elected governor of California. In 1968, Richard Nixon celebrated the “forgotten Americans — the non-shouters; the non-demonstrators” and was elected to the presidency. Far from leading to a new progressive era, the uprisings of the era were followed by what was arguably the most conservative period in American history.

This kind of popular backlash is not uncommon. For his latest book, “If We Burn,” progressive journalist Vincent Bevins investigated 10 protest movements that occurred between 2010 and 2020 in places including Egypt, Turkey, Brazil, Ukraine and Hong Kong. He concluded that in seven of those cases, the results were “worse than failure. Things went backward.”

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/david-brooks-why-past-is-prologue-and-protests-help-trump/

[Squaredeal]

1. That was then, this is now,

The voters already had a taste of Trump and they wont go back for more. Nixon gave us Jimmy Carter, the honest of all Presidents, who tried to tackle global warming with solar and wind power long before it became the crisis we now face. Instead, we got Reagan, the behemoth, crappy gas guzzlers of the 80s, social security being taxed and trickle-down “prosperity”, etc.
The reason behind the protests is not that they’re “pro-Palestine” but one of our country providing munitions to an ally carte blanche to indiscriminately kill tens of thousands of innocent civilians. Cutting off the supply of American weapons and providing humanitarian help to the starving survivors, I believe, most Americans support.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

2. Paragraphs are you friend

Learn how to use them.