By James Wilson
The run-up to Obamacare passing Congress is the best con-artistry I have witnessed. Insurance companies projected ruin for themselves by preventing arbitrary fee hikes and denials of coverage. They cried crocodile tears over prohibitions of denying coverage for pre-existing conditions and requirements to cover adult children through age twenty-six. Many Americans long fed up with corporate machinations decided Obamacare could not be so bad if it made such corporate enemies. What the companies knew well – and citizens who did their homework could discover – was that nothing in the law prevented them from hiking rates to astronomical levels before and after enactment of the law. Nothing prevented the arbitrary cancellation of policies and realignment of doctor rosters. Pre-existing conditions are factored into actuarial tables including multitudes; this is how rates are set and they cost companies nothing extra. Obamacare was an unprecedented windfall for insurers; they banked on a public who would not resist (much) a plan that appeared to hurt hated corporate giants. They won big time.
2016 features a barfight over the Republican presidential nomination. Donald Trump is the frontrunner. He brags that he even pulls Democrats in to vote for him in those primaries where crossover voting is permitted; this is the alleged evidence he can beat Hilary Clinton in the general election. Voters cross party lines in open primaries for one reason – to undermine the other party for the general election. Trump depends on voter ignorance of this. But the biggest con is yet to unfold.
Trump offers himself as a conservative’s conservative. He panders to voter rage about rampant illegal immigration, unconstitutional court decisions, and executive branch attacks on constitutional freedoms and national security, from forced abortion coverage and trashing of states’ rights to treaties with Iran and apologies to enemies. Yet the man who advocates defunding Planned Parenthood praises the abortion giant for its so-called humanitarian work. (Pro-abortionists are crazy to find evidence women have been harmed in states that defund or restrict PP; there is none.) He decries a liberal Supreme Court that trashes traditional marriage in defiance of the Constitution while showing his own contempt for the Constitution when his interests are at stake. (The infamous Kehoe decision that justifies invocation of eminent domain to steal private land for private purpose was “useful” to his interests.) His immigration policy is limited to claiming he will build a border fence and make Mexico pay for it. (How he will make them pay remains as mysterious as it is impossible.) He flip-flops on issues like whether to send troops to fight ISIL – he was against it but is now for it and calls his changeover necessary flexibility. He says he will give no ground to dictators from Iran to Korea but calls Vladimir Putin a reasonable person with whom deals can be struck.
His mantra is that he can negotiate successfully – without exception – and make deals that will make America great again. He claims standing as a party and people unifier, able to get along with anyone. Yet he threatens House Speaker Paul Ryan should Ryan fail to cooperate with him and he is (in)famous for intimidating and abusing people from Manhattan to Scotland who do not cooperate with his plans. Numerous women journalists have come forward with the same tale of a Donald who fatuously courts them when he thinks they will report favorably on him and verbally abuses them when they don’t. (The same treatment is afforded male communicators like Glenn Beck, but without the sexual overtones.) His most famous line – “You’re fired!” – comes from his reality TV program, The Apprentice. This is hardly the authentication of a unifier, but then reality TV is hardly real.
The bottom line is Trump presents as his prime qualification his commitment to end con jobs in government because he is the pragmatic alternative to a Washington establishment loving only power and privilege. Yet his history is about loving his own power and privilege more than anything else. He built an empire making whatever deals benefit his interests. He is no enemy to party fatcats; he is their clone. They know how angry the American people are with their reign of protecting the status quo whichever party is in power. They cry wolf – like insurance companies cried over Obamacare and Brer Rabbit over the briarpatch. Their prayer is that Donald Trump will be their next president.
The old proverb is never look a gift horse in the mouth. In other words, when offered a present don’t examine it. But the Trojan Horse of mythology was a gift horse the Trojans failed to examine. Where are they now?
James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at
praynorthstate@charter.net
