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Trump has turned the enemy’s tactics against itself

Revisiting Rules for Radicals: A Trump Campaign Guide Book



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Can we say anything more about Donald Trump and his election campaign that has not already been said? Let’s look again at Saul Alinsky’s book RULES FOR RADICALS. Could it be that Trump used some of Alinsky’s ideas to win the election? RULES FOR RADICALS was first published in 1971. That’s almost 50 years ago.
Here is a book dedicated to Lucifer. Remember him? Not the light bearer, but he who goes by another name: SATAN. Here is a book that supposedly influenced Barack Obama when he was a community organizer in Chicago. Here is also a book that influenced a young Hillary Clinton when she was growing up in Park Ridge, a suburb of Chicago. Perhaps the most important point Alinsky makes in the preface to his book is that the new radicals (1960s-70s) have to work within the system. Change happens by corroding the system from the inside out. Did Trump realize that and worked to change the Republican Party from the inside out? Consider what has happened in higher education since the 60s. The old radicals are now in the system. In fact, the radicals of the 60s ARE the system. They are the ones who now ought to be exposed and displaced.

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If we were to follow Alinsky’s advice, today, we would have to oppose the system, we would have to support Donald Trump who ran for president as an outsider. When discussing the relationship between means and ends in politics, Alinsky manages to turn self-aggrandizement into a virtue. Alinsky claims, “He who sacrifices the mass good for his personal conscience…doesn’t care enough for the people to be “‘corrupted’ for them.” Isn’t this a most profound insight into what motivates the Clintons and other Democrats in politics today? The Clintons (Obama, too) have persuaded the “people” that they are working for the good of the masses and their alleged personal corruption is the sacrifice they make for that end. Some Democrat politicians will lie and fornicate because in the end they believe their personal vices are unimportant because their politics will abolish poverty, bring about an end to racial discrimination, and install world peace. All of this is done in the light, while in the shadows we see they care little about the masses. Their true end is power and self-aggrandizement. Remember the old union song, “The working class can kiss my #, I’ve got the foreman’s job at last.”

Be that as it may, is it possible to learn something from Alinsky, to out Alinsky, so that we may change our society for the better, instead of changing it for the better of politicians and elites? When it comes to tactics, Alinsky is at his practical best. Ironically, he offers advice for those who would today overthrow those who read and used his book, yesterday. Alinsky claims, “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.” Has this not been one of the underlying themes that moved the Trump campaign forward? Consider the attendance at a Trump rally compared to the attendance at a Clinton rally. Beyond that, consider how Trump’s campaign has applied Alinsky’s rule number three: “Whenever possible, go outside the experience of the enemy.” Among other things, the debates between Clinton and Trump offered a good example of going outside the experience of the enemy. When Trump makes the tweet that he will bring to sit in the audience one of the women of Bill Clinton had an extramarital affair with, he has gone outside the experience of the enemy. The Trump campaign is a classical example of going outside the experience of not only the Democrats, but the media and the chattering elites as well. The media calls Trump unpredictable and blustering. Instead, Trump is the new radical, using Alinksy against Alinsky. If Alinsky’s book has any relevance today, it is to establish the Trump campaign as the new radicals. By wining the election, Trump has undone the old undoers. Trump has turned the enemy’s tactics against itself.


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Robert Klein Engler -- Bio and Archives

Robert Klein Engler lives in Omaha, Nebraska and sometimes New Orleans. Mr. Engler holds degrees from the University of Illinois in Urbana and The University of Chicago Divinity School. Many of Robert’s poems, stories, and paintings are set in the Crescent City. His long poem, “The Accomplishment of Metaphor and the Necessity of Suffering,” set partially in New Orleans, is published by Headwaters Press, Medusa, New York, 2004. He has received an Illinois Arts Council award for his “Three Poems for Kabbalah.” Link with him at Facebook.com to see examples of his recent work. Some of Mr. Engler’s books are available at amazon.com..


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