Thread: Trump nails it again

Trump is outsmarting the Davos global elite
Roger Boyes

Sneering at the president while praising global co-operation won’t solve the world’s problems



Hundreds of chief executives and political leaders, the great and the good, pitched up in the Swiss Alps yesterday to sneer at the American president. And sneer they did. Since Donald Trump first addressed the schmooze-fest two years ago, Davos Men (and a very thin sprinkling of Davos Women) have needed him as a hate figure, the populist-in-chief challenging and therefore legitimising their creed of globalism.

Some left their private jets at home this time, some garaged their limos to establish their credentials as environmentally sensitive masters of the universe humble enough to walk on ice. The presidential performance was expected to be full of bluster and snide criticism, a Gaddafi-like rant, proof for this most self-satisfied of audiences that, in impeachment kick-off week, we have reached Peak Trump.

Instead, they were subjected to a disciplined and relentless roll call of statistics about the various successes of the US economy, a speech that sent social media fact-checkers into overdrive. Then came a nod to European culture and the strategic patience that could be learnt from the 140-year construction of the Duomo in Florence. And finally a call on Davos to abandon self-doubt and borrow some of the optimism emanating from America.

Davos Man was dumbfounded. How dare the president present America as a model for the world when everyone in the room knew that the country had been split asunder by his polarising rhetoric. That China was the coming economy! That fossil fuels were the work of the devil! How dare he champion optimism!

As the day wore on, it began to dawn on the Davosniks that Trump and his speechwriters had taken issue with the whole philosophy of Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum talkshop. When he set it up 50 years ago it was to promote the idea that entrepreneurs should be socially responsible and as such be in constant dialogue with the political class. Business had to be worried not only about satisfying shareholders but also multiple “stakeholders”, including employees, customers and the environment.

Schwab, now 81, found himself in opposition to the politicians of the 1970s like Margaret Thatcher who had bought in to the economist Milton Friedman’s message that “the social responsibility of business is to increase profits”. The post-Thatcher, post-Reagan era was good for Davos: Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Bill Clinton, these were the natural Schwab disciples.

Trump has run a coach and horses through the idea that global co-operation, based on a pliant bankrolling America, could embed the power of the establishment. The US leader says his political priority is to restore the worker communities smashed by globalisation but the engine of growth has to be lightly regulated business. Could it be that Trump has won great swathes of the argument? After all, it was resentment about global power-brokers that helped to get him and the Republicans voted in. And now he is setting the agenda on Iran by killing the nuclear deal and killing the architect of Iran’s regional terror network, Qasem Soleimani. He is, despite his rather feeble trade truce with Beijing, challenging the Davos assumption that China is somehow a better champion of free trade and global values than the US.

Trump is still ignoring the bulk of the science about the man-made impact on climate trends. But he is right to reject the idea that the changes under way can be contained by some elaborate form of global regulation or unaccountable world government. As the gifted historian and journalist Anatol Lieven argues in a new book, tackling the challenges of climate depends on new social compacts reached at the level of the nation state. The sacrifices, the big energy and conservation choices that are going to be demanded of voters, have to legitimised by parliaments and governments whose starting point will be the national interest.

Many big business hitters at Davos think it’s politically safer to side with Greta and the Extinction Rebels, even though they fear the climate cause masks a fundamental hostility to capitalism. If the zeitgeist turns against fossil fuels, institutional investors may shift funds out of oil into renewables; that is the quasi-revolutionary intent of Greta’s backers. They are trying to leverage the Alpine axis between business and political elites to their advantage.

If it wants to survive, Davos needs to slim down. The big-tent circus idea has run its course. There are issues such as mass immigration waves that bother ordinary people which can benefit from a global pooling of knowledge. Private-public schemes to improve digital literacy and other tools can persuade the young in sprawling new cities in Africa that there’s a way to prosper at home rather than sign up with a people smuggler. Adapting coastal societies to the threat of rising sea waters is plainly something that demands global co-ordination but which could directly benefit national prosperity and security.

These are useful tasks that need to be backed by expertise and thought about over months. The Davos business model, however, depends on grabbing world attention for a few days, drawing up proposals that are rarely implemented, telling the people at home they need to work and live better and building up a store of bragging points for future dinner parties. Oh, and of course trashing America. That’s no way to solve the problems of the world.


Comments(5)

TAX

You nailed it down Mr. Boyes. The leftist metropolitan elite lost the war for lack of pragmatism

Right on Andre

Caught Trumps speech at Davos on the midday news 7 million new jobs created in less than 1 term awesome.

Great article

Paragraph 9: The climate is completely oblivious to capitalism. It follows the laws of nature and does what it does.

Trump is outsmarting the Davos global elite | Comment | The Times

There's always going to be an inherent flaw in holding out Trump as the exemplar and spokesperson for the dinosaur-esque right like this: that being he's an idiot.

Trump cares for nothing but Trump. Lay down with dogs...

The reality of modern capitalism is that this creation of employment within the West is nothing more than a mirage of opportunity which disguises the reality that most of the jobs are lacking in substance and security, and will evaporate quicker than froth blown from a cup of cappuccino the moment disposable incomes shrink in the teeth of unfavourable economic winds. But there is a worse, inexorable trend and that is the steady increase of wealth held by a diminishing few at the expense of the majority who are squeezed evermore and are nothing other than debt creating machines consuming resources exploited by that tiny minority gathering riches beyond the dreams of Croesus.

The weather is of course a red herring but clearly quite modish but in time a new fad will usurp this and we shall move onto something else.

Davos nevertheless fulfils a function in that at least there is discussion and that cannot hurt.

The right's seizure of the media and its manipulation by demagogues deluding the ignorant , the credulous and the merely stupid is to my mind the greatest threat to democracy, as so vividly illustrated by Trumpism and Brexit, and should be challenged for the contagion that it brings. No one would have ever imagined ten years ago, never mind thirty years, that an illiterate, incoherent and unstable oaf could buy his way into the White House, nor would anyone have thought a lying, corrupt, sociopathic narcissistic sexual addict would be PM of Britain but both were achieved by unscrupulous power-hungry rabble rousers deceiving the public by the dissemination of lies and a perverted dogma of unalloyed self interest peddled by tame organs of a corrupted Fourth Estate.

There is already a Drumpf thread we don't need another.

This is not a Tump thread per se, it is a wider issue dealing with a burgeoning fascist movement advancing its cause at the expense of liberal democracy.

Originally Posted by Seekingasylum

No one would have ever imagined ten years ago, never mind thirty years, that an illiterate, incoherent and unstable oaf could buy his way into the White House, nor would anyone have thought a lying, corrupt, sociopathic narcissistic sexual addict would be PM of Britain but both were achieved by unscrupulous power-hungry rabble rousers deceiving the public by the dissemination of lies and a perverted dogma of unalloyed self interest peddled by tame organs of a corrupted Fourth Estate.

For those that hold Trump out as a savior of the interests of the working/middle classes or Johnson as an alpha male with the steely resolve to Brexit the idiom 'turkeys voting for Xmas' doesn't really apply because even turkeys wouldn't be that willfully dumb.

If the zeitgeist turns against fossil fuels, institutional investors may shift funds out of oil into renewables; that is the quasi-revolutionary intent of Greta’s backers. They are trying to leverage the Alpine axis between business and political elites to their advantage.

I'll get my hat.

trumps arrogance, swagger and flawed character make him an easy target for abuse and hatred from other politicians and pundits who claim, often erroneously, to be operating on a more cerebral level, but with the impeding arrival of peak wokeness and the relegation of utopian liberal idiocy to the waste bin, trumpism may just be the injection of common sense the world needs, perhaps trumps eventual successor will be able to continue the work but with a more conciliatory tone.

on a personal level i dislike the man intensely, but suspect he is a counterbalance the world needs right now.

Originally Posted by taxexile

trumps arrogance, swagger and flawed character make him an easy target for abuse and hatred from other politicians and pundits who claim, often erroneously, to be operating on a more cerebral level, but with the impeding arrival of peak wokeness and the relegation of utopian liberal idiocy to the waste bin, trumpism may just be the injection of common sense the world needs, perhaps trumps eventual successor will be able to continue the work but with a more conciliatory tone.

'Trump is a dumb man’s idea of a smart man, a poor man’s idea of a rich man, and a weak man’s idea of a strong man'.

Apt.

In fact he really is a representation and embodiment of the desperate last gasps of Dinosauria Boomer.

Those who can't quite accept that the meteor has already struck and spells an end to their patriarchal, archaic, Mighty Whitey ways, greed and avarice.

Originally Posted by AntRobertson

In fact he really is a representation and embodiment of the desperate last gasps of Dinosauria Boomer.

This. They are trying to do as much damage on the way out as possible.

Originally Posted by taxexile

on a personal level i dislike the man intensely, but suspect he is a counterbalance the world needs right now.

If by a counterbalance, you mean arrant foolishness, the proliferation of imbecility as a political doctrine and complete ignorance garbed in xenophobia and jingoistic nationalism, then yes Trump and BoJo are your natural heavyweights.

We've done fascism in the past, it doesn't work but it's part of the current political groundswell that the stupid and ignorant have ben easily manipulated into thinking they can acquire more wealth by supporting its resurgence.

Tax, are all dentists by nature reactionary stooges for cheap, tawdry nationalism?

Originally Posted by taxexile

but suspect he is a counterbalance the world needs right now.

he will throw anyone under the bus as cowardly need dictates

It's certainly not often that you see Trump and "common sense" used in the same sentence.

'Reactionary', 'knee jerk', 'impetuous', 'reckless' and 'impulsive' yes. "Common sense" no.

Those who can't quite accept that the meteor has already struck and spells an end to their patriarchal, archaic, ,Mighty Whitey ways greed and avarice.

aaah, the "mighty whitey" paradigm again.

white privilege is an american import, instantly embraced by woke wannabes such as yourself and first expressed by that stupid feminist academic peggy mcintosh who described it as being a knapsack of special provisions carried on the backs of all whiteys which are invisible and weightless.

In fact the theory is divisive and good only at encouraging nonsensical academic studies that see white power in everything. in fact it is downright racist in itself.

pound shop pundits, some even with university degrees!, have been the most most vociferous proponents of this white privilege thing, continuously reminding the poor put upon whitey how racist, privileged, and ignorant they are. it must be exhausting to be so resentful, and all it does is draw attention away from the real issues of racial inequality.

Originally Posted by taxexile

aaah, the "mighty whitey" paradigm again.

white privilege is an american import, instantly embraced by woke wannabes such as yourself and first expressed by that stupid feminist academic peggy mcintosh who described it as being a knapsack of special provisions carried on the backs of all whiteys which are invisible and weightless.

In fact the theory is divisive and good only at encouraging nonsensical academic studies that see white power in everything. in fact it is downright racist in itself.

pound shop pundits, some even with university degrees!, have been the most most vociferous proponents of this white privilege thing, continuously reminding the poor put upon whitey how racist, privileged, and ignorant they are. it must be exhausting to be so resentful, and all it does is draw attention away from the real issues of racial inequality.

OK boomer.

That cherry-picked rant smacks to me of someone fearful and insecure of acknowledging that not everything is a result of their 'sweat of the brow' 'by the bootstraps' magically inherent special skills and that they, in fact, had advantages via an accident of birth that others simply do not. Very Trumpian.

So, another baldy orange cunto thread then.

Mods, please merge.

He's been back to see Stormy Daniels again, then?

In the meantime, the corporate, vested-interest western bloc and its many, many billionaires that control over $140 trillion of the word's combined wealth, around 0.7% of the world's population, is gathering more wealth by the year and I rather think you will find that their boardrooms and hedge fund symposia are mostly attended by white folks.

Over 72% of the world's working poor, mostly coons, earn between them, some 3.5 billion, around 2.7% of global wealth.

I mean, Tax, just how fucking woke do you need to be.

Originally Posted by taxexile

white privilege

not acknowledging it does not make it any less real

That cherry-picked rant smacks to me of someone fearful and insecure of acknowledging that not everything is a result of their 'sweat of the brow' 'by the bootstraps' magically inherent special skills and that they, in fact, had advantages via an accident of birth that others simply do not. Very Trumpian.

wrong. more woke nonsense from you.

my accident of birth was being a second generation immigrant, and i suffered from racial abuse, a lot of it quite nasty, throughout my school years, mostly from the teachers, but very little on the street.

back then one couldnt declare victimhood, there was no such thing, one just had to see ones abusers for what they were, ignore the abuse and work harder to get the grades and exam passes necessary to better myself, which i did. neither i nor my family had any privilege, far from it. you have absolutely no idea of what you are talking about ant. your ridiculous stupidity, considering you made it to uni and graduated as a lawyer is quite astounding.

i have always maintained that those who hold racist views should show them openly, and give their reasons why they hold such views. that way they are easily identified and can be avoided by those who wish to avoid them. all this prohibition of expressing extreme views is pure nonsense.

Originally Posted by taxexile

i suffered from racial abuse

Yes OK you, a white male, are the real victim of racism.

And oh how you've doubtless suffered mightily under that yoke of oppression. The hardships you must've endured...

We do not know that.

We need confirmation from Tax as to his ethnicity.

Originally Posted by Seekingasylum

We do not know that.

We need confirmation from Tax as to his ethnicity.

You are correct however odds on he's white.

It takes a certain shade of paleness to claim oppression and the being the victim of the 'real racism' on the basis of being a white male.

Originally Posted by Seekingasylum

Are you a coon, Tax?

worse - he is belgian