What Do Donald Trump’s Poll Numbers Say About Our Nation?
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I’ve been nearly invisible here on CleanTechnica for the past few weeks because our 2nd daughter (Julia) was just born on September 9 and I’ve been playing mommy + daddy to our 2-year-old daughter Lily for a few weeks, while also trying to help mommy + the newborn as much as I can. But US political insanity and a sense of civic duty have pulled me to write a “quick” article about Donald Trump and American society.
Donald Trump’s decision to jump into the presidential race was initially seen as a joke by many people, probably most people aware of his entry into the contest. After all, he’s a “reality TV” star, a real estate developer, and a casino owner, not a politician. He’s not even someone who has been very involved in political matters through business or charitable work, and his main entry into political discussion prior to the election was claiming for years that President Obama wasn’t born in the United States (something I’ll come back to later in this article). Even Donald seemed shocked when he actually started winning the GOP nomination.
No doubt about it, this presidential election season has been an anomaly. Candidates, campaigns, fundraising, media coverage, and Twitter battles have been stranger than any election season any of us have lived through — perhaps stranger than any in US history, but I’m sure there are a number of odd elections back there that could compete for the title.
There are several reasons why Donald’s political rise has been a surprise to many of us, but I’ll start by more pointedly highlighting a few of the most obvious ones (which I think are basically beyond debate):
- Donald has no experience in a public, elected office — not as a Congressman, not as a Governor, not as a Mayor, not as a City Councilor, and not even as a Mosquito Control District Board Member or Mobile Home Park Recreation District Trustee. Can you think of any US president in history who had never held a public office before becoming president?
- Donald’s big business focus for decades was developing or buying expensive buildings for rich people and plastering his last name on them. He also got into the casino business, golf resorts, fake universities (regarding which there are pending lawsuits from former students claiming Trump University defrauded them), doomed airline and mortgage and magazine businesses, and other smaller endeavors along the way. (Note that Donald got his start via millions of dollars from his father and his father’s strong political connections — he went on to make less money with those millions than if he had simply invested it in index funds.)
The point in bringing all this up is to highlight that Donald’s work wasn’t focused on improving the lives of the common person or society as a whole. It was focused on serving rich people and making Trump richer and more famous along the way. This is really not the kind of career work you expect from a presidential candidate.
- Donald, long focused on his image (a narcissist as psychologists keep labeling him), is recently most famous (or infamous) for a “reality” show in which contestants must treat him like a king in an effort to get chosen as an actual high-level Trump employee. (Note: reality shows are often not at all candid affairs, and that’s certainly true about this one — I’ll get back to that matter in a minute.) Reality show stars don’t often go on to become presidents, so count me as one of the surprised bystanders observing this potential first. However, I think the reality show bit is actually a big part of the story, not just a sideshow coincidence, so I’ll be coming back to it for broader reflection further down in the article.
- Donald is widely known for being superficial. Money, image, image, image, sex, hot or not, Trump this, Trump that, etc. Read this article from the actual author of The Art of the Deal for more on that topic. Again, it’s a bit odd for a presidential candidate to be so focused on superficial matters for so much of his career and life before running for president.
- Did I mention that Donald has no background in political office?
Despite all of the above (and, in some cases, because of it), Donald won the GOP nomination and has a decent chance of winning the US presidential election. Even if he doesn’t, though, his support among a large portion of the public brings up many red flags (for me at least) about the US population. After all, Donald hasn’t simply hypnotized the voters who support him — and that tells us something about out country and the humans who currently populate it.
Since this is CleanTechnica, not CleanPOLITICO, I’ll start off by focusing on some energy and environment matters. However, I will jump into other matters further down in order to try to be a bit comprehensive, so feel free to stop reading once you hit “Are we really so duped by fake ‘reality’ shows?#8221; if you aren’t interested in the other matters.
Apologies if anyone here supports Donald Trump. However, if you do, read on and please consider these matters with an open mind.
Energy — oil & gas, stealing oil, & clean energy ignorance
It seems dubious to say Donald has any detailed policy plans — his campaign has basically just been soundbites, contradictory soundbites, and then a return to the original soundbites. However, going by who seems to be in line to run energy matters under a Trump presidency (as well as his own energy soundbites), Trump’s focus seems to be on providing more access to oil & gas companies and cutting regulations that protect US health and the climate.
As reported previously, fossil billionaire Harold Hamm is a top option to be offered the “Secretary of Energy” office. That would surely mean more oil drilling and natural gas fracking, and probably less support for renewables.
POLITICO also now reports that, “Forrest Lucas, co-founder of oil products company Lucas Oil and an outspoken opponent of animal rights, is a leading contender for Interior secretary should Donald Trump win the White House, say two sources familiar with the campaign’s deliberations.” Lucas reportedly gave $50,000 to VP candidate Mike Pence’s gubernatorial campaigns.
As Sierra Club political director Khalid Pitts nicely summarizes, “At this rate, Donald Trump’s cabinet meetings will be so oil-soaked that they’ll need fire retardant carpeting installed in the White House out of fear of setting the place on fire.”
Now, Trump has just unveiled that GOP energy lobbyist Mike McKenna and global warming denier Myron Ebell would lead his energy transition team. Here’s a short summary of these anti-cleantech, fossil-focused men:
McKenna, is a well-connected energy lobbyist with ties to the industry-backed American Energy Alliance and Institute for Energy Research. McKenna has lobbied for the Dow Chemical Company, Southern Company and Koch Companies Public Sector, which terminated his contract in May, according to public records. According to his website, McKenna previously served as an “external relations specialist” at the Energy Department.
Ebell is the director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He is a prominent skeptic of climate science and a regular critic of the Obama administration’s environmental policies. But he has never worked at the EPA.
If you’re concerned about energy and climate matters, that should be enough for you, but in case it’s not, please keep reading.
As noted in a previous article about Trump and GOP “leadership,” here are some other concerning points:
- Donald claimed that global warming is a hoax “created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
- Donald claimed that wind and solar are very expensive (as you know, they’re actually very cheap).
- (Note that Trump has demonstrated a history of dislike for wind energy, and has made crazy claims about it for years.)
- Donald insinuated that solar energy has something like an 18-year payback time(it often actually has a much faster payback time for rooftop solar and a much, much, much faster payback time for utility-scale solar power plants).
- (Note: In 2012, Trump claimed on Fox News that solar has a 32-year payback. Donald also said, “You look at the windmills that are destroying shorelines all over the world. Economically, they’re not good. It’s a very, very poor form of energy.”)
- Donald also simply said that solar energy is “not working so good.”
- Donald ridiculously claimed, “The wind kills all your birds. All your birds, killed. You know, the environmentalists never talk about that.”