How the Right Stole the Left's Clothes

It's a topsy turvy world when the Democrats are more economically liberal than the Republicans, when they are defending free trade and the Trumpists are for protectionism and economic nationalism. This illustrates the truth that the extreme left and right meet up as Trump's views on economics have more than a little in common with Bernie Sander's.

The Blairite Clintonite Left is more free trade than the far left and Trumpists which is why many republicans  are struggling to explain why some of their number confuse Republicanism with Trumpism and indeed why many Objectivists are equally puzzled as to why some of their number also think Trump is cool.  I confess to being confused myself in this regard and find the matter somewhat perplexing. Not a good position for a blogger I must say!

Still, the best policy in such circumstances is to be patient and leave it as an open question rather than rushing in with a forced answer which will probably be wide of the mark.

The only thing I can come up with now is that the right hate and loathe the left so much  they are prepared to put up with practically anything Trump does as long as it keeps the left out of office. This means overlooking pretty much all of his statist agendas, his attacks on the first amendment, his abusiveness, his vile behaviour towards women, his vulgarity, his narcissisism, his arbitrariness, his obvious mental instability, his petulance, his infantilism, his despotism, his threats of violence and intimidation, his corruption, his economic nationalism and protectionism, his lying, his racism - the list is endless.

To be able to deny all the above and not see it suggests that the Right have lost the plot and are in an even worse state than the Left and the only conclusion is that the Left and Right are now and should be officially recognized as the Herpes 1 and Herpes 2 of political ideologies.

The trap people on the right fall into is thinking they have to pick  one or the other and that if one opposes the right one must be of the left. Bizarre but that's how awry things have got. I am not so sure there is any solution to this dilemna other than to recognize that fundamentally the Left and Right have become one. Into this political vacuum will hopefully step the Objectivists and a Capitalist Party, a vast unoccupied political ground and territory, pristine and fertile, upon which to build the New Atlantis!