Perot, Buchanan, Trump: Early Warning Shots

The mainstream media are having a great time with Donald Trump. He is the gift that keeps on giving. But while they "pile on" to reveal all his flaws, they have failed to place him in the proper political and economic context. The people who support Trump are angry and cynical, very much like those who supported other "outsider" presidential candidates in the past.

The first one that comes to mind is Ross Perot, who ran for president as an Independent against Bush and Clinton. He is remembered mainly for having pulled enough votes from Bush to give Clinton a victory. Perot received 18.9 percent of the popular vote, and no electoral votes. Among his most memorable lines as a candidate is the following: "This city is fueled with sound bites, shell games, handlers, media stuntmen who posture, create images, shoot off Roman candles, but don't accomplish anything. We need deeds, not words, in this city."

After the election, Perot continued his political activity by opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). He is remembered for his predictions about NAFTA by telling the American people to listen for the "giant sucking sound" of American jobs heading south.

The second memorable presidential candidate was Pat Buchanan, the political commentator who ran for president in 2000 as the Reform Party candidate. Among his more colorful lines was to tell his listeners that "the people with the pitchforks will soon be coming to take what was rightfully theirs."

And now we have Trump, who from the very first moment he spoke told us of the "rigged system" that confronted the American people. The press would spin the meaning of the rigged system to be the political system, but that was not Trump's original meaning. He was talking about how he used his money to support all the political candidates he needed "to grease the skids" for all his real estate ventures.

Perot, Buchanan, and Trump are the continued expressions of the anger and cynicism of the American people, and should be understood as "early warning shots" against a rigged system where wealth and concentrated corporate dominance shape the political system that produces "free trade"
agreements and tax policies that benefit mainly the privileged class elites.