Trump, The Rentier Class Hero

For the conservatives in my life who can’t understand my antipathy to Trump.

In my generation of my family, I am a bit of a loner as a liberal. I wasn’t always a liberal. I voted for Reagan on his re-election. I voted Republican even as a confused young union man. Without really fully understanding why, I was a fan of Paul Gann in California. At one point in my life, I became a hard anti-government conservative. I was “A Patriot”. And then I learned some hard lessons in life that made me softer.

I began to see the antipathy the wealthy have for the poor. I began to see that in conservative political discourse, public debts are bad, but hardly a word is said about private debts. I began to see how the wealthy made bank even during a recession. I began to read blogs, articles, and books that demonstrated that for all the virtues extolled by the conservatives in my life about the free market, it seemed to me that their heroes demonstrated little interest in keeping markets free.

When Trump declared his candidacy for president, I didn’t really know what to make of him. He’d never been in politics before. He was a billionaire made of the natural monopoly of land. And I really didn’t think he would win. At least, I didn’t think he would win until the progressive documentary producer and director, Michael Moore, predicted that Trump would win. And he was right. Trump won in 2016.