"Don't blame Trump. Blame America."

[quiller]

Think of Donald Trump not as the swamp, but as the creature which came from the swamp. If things aren't bad enough, Canadian writer Rex Murphy says, how did American politics get to a point where Trump is listened to at all?

I agree Trump is ridiculous — but he is an illustration of a problem and not its cause. Trump is not the swamp: he is the creature emerging from it. For however ridiculous and appalling his candidacy may be, it is no worse and no more ridiculous and appalling than the whole pattern of American politics at this time.

Is his candidacy more lunatic than the idea of a third President Bush or a second President Clinton? More despairing than the idea of an America so bereft of political talent that two families supply the major pool?

Is he more manipulative than President "you can keep you doctor, you can keep you plan" Obama? Is he less venal or arrogant than Hillary "it's my server and it's my State Department" Clinton?

Is his candidacy less perplexing than parts of the Democratic party's fixations? Is it less lunatic that the spectacle of a former governor, Martin O'Malley — one of the few Democrats wandering the no-man's land of opposition to the Hillary machine — apologizing, more than once, for asserting out loud that "all lives matter"? The Democrats have drilled so deep into the factionalism and demagoguery of identity politics — sexual and ethnic — that any appeal to universalism, any echo of the greatest phrase in the Declaration of Independence — "all men are created equal" — is now toxic? Donald Trump may be annoying, but he has said or done nothing that equals the fatuousness of a system in which the claim that all lives matter is seen as a troubling deviancy?

Is Trump less serious than trigger warnings? Is he less repellent than false and theatrical rape hoaxes that have beleaguered American campuses from Duke to Columbia? Less repellent than the supine American college administrations who bend with every breeze of the progressive mindset, and who supplant legal due process with their safe spaces and "victim"-buttressing hearings on campus misconduct?

Whatever Trump has said on immigration is not more dismaying than the fact that the U.S. has for decades paid no respect to its own borders. A nation that does not respect its own territorial integrity, and protect the idea and status of citizenship as its first value, cannot expect others to respect it. It is not Trump who is the outrage. Rather it is the political class of both U.S. parties, which have for decades temporized, dodged, euphemized and evaded the question of the country's sovereignty and the impact of illegal immigration on it.

Is anything Trump has said more staggering or depressing than the idea that in egalitarian America, a couple of small-time business owners can get fined $135,000 for not baking a cake? Where deviation from any of the "progressive dogmas" lights Internet fires and Twitter outrage flash mobs? More absurd than banning American soldiers the right to bear arms on their own bases and their home soil? More absurd than Fort Hood's slaughter of 13 by a self-professed jihadi being labelled "workplace violence"?

MORE:  http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/rex-murphy-dont-blame-trump-blame-america

[supsalemgr]

Think of Donald Trump not as the swamp, but as the creature which came from the swamp. If things aren't bad enough, Canadian writer Rex Murphy says, how did American politics get to a point where Trump is listened to at all?

MORE:  http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/rex-murphy-dont-blame-trump-blame-america

The writer is about eight years late figuring out Americans are not very astute. Wouldn't his question be more apprpriate asking this about Obama?

[walkstall]

Think of Donald Trump not as the swamp, but as the creature which came from the swamp. If things aren't bad enough, Canadian writer Rex Murphy says, how did American politics get to a point where Trump is listened to at all?

MORE:  http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/rex-murphy-dont-blame-trump-blame-america

I note you did not call him a journalist but a writer.   

[Dori]

Americans are consumers of media as much as anything else.  Trump has name recognition, as does Jeb and Hillary.  That's why they are ahead in the polls.

[kit saginaw]

Toronto Mayor; Bob crack-puff Ford.

[Billy's bayonet]

This from a Land of Frost head socialists.....

[redbeard]

I note you did not call him a journalist but a writer.   

Most of his opinion piece is right on the money!

[carlb]

Americans are consumers of media as much as anything else.  Trump has name recognition, as does Jeb and Hillary.  That's why they are ahead in the polls.

It's not name recognition , its what he says on the issues that concern the average American. We see both parties fighting US on ILLEGAL immigration. Everybody is fighting US on this issue except Trump.

No single issue is more important to the survival of this nation. Trump is with us. Most of those elected by the Tea Party have betrayed us (Paul, Rubio, Perry,  Ryan).

[quiller]

I note you did not call him a journalist but a writer.   

By definition, opinion columns are not considered journalism. I've done both, and the real trick is in separating the two. Rex Murphy is Canada's answer to H.L. Mencken, an irascible implacable curmudgeon with a unique way of telling Americans what we definitely don't want to hear.

The truth here is, we should have paid attention to this immigration problem a long, long time ago. Don't blame Trump for mentioning what we wanted forgotten all along.

[Billy's bayonet]

Where was This 'writer' when Pierre Trudeau was working his magic in Canada.....

[kroz]

Where was This 'writer' when Pierre Trudeau was working his magic in Canada.....

Probably in the cradle....     

[walkstall]

Most of his opinion piece is right on the money!

I just find that journalists almost always make the news.  They do not report it without an agenda of there own.

[walkstall]

By definition, opinion columns are not considered journalism. I've done both, and the real trick is in separating the two. Rex Murphy is Canada's answer to H.L. Mencken, an irascible implacable curmudgeon with a unique way of telling Americans what we definitely don't want to hear.

The truth here is, we should have paid attention to this immigration problem a long, long time ago. Don't blame Trump for mentioning what we wanted forgotten all along.

My understanding he was a journalist first in his younger days.  But then I could be wrong.  I like his style of writing.

[quiller]

The writer is about eight years late figuring out Americans are not very astute. Wouldn't his question be more apprpriate asking this about Obama?

Canada has relentless Political Correctness laws which appear to totally quash ANY talk about racial issues (particularly our Illegal Kenyan from whom all foreign trade agreements flow). If I were writing up there (like for example Mark Steyn, who's seen his own share of such PC harrassment), I too would avoid mentioning Obama.

After all, it wouldn't do to remind Americans that without knowing one damned thing about this candidate, aside from HALF his skin color, they voted for the girly-man lying trash anyway.

[quiller]

Probably in the cradle....     

Murphy was born in 1947 but didn't get into freelance reporting until 1987. Trudeau's second and final term in power ended 6/30/1984.

I thought this was interesting.

Murphy has never been afraid to court controversy. He is one of Canada's most visible climate change deniers, calling climate science partly "a sub-branch of climate politics" and arguing against the validity of climate change in various public forums. He attacked former US Vice-President Al Gore for his environmentalism and opposition to the Alberta oil sands, which in a 2013 National Post column Murphy called "a dazzling and profitable engineering endeavor of which all Canadians should be proud."

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/pierre-elliott-trudeau-feature/

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/rex-murphy/