How Trump and Netanyahu Reflect Each Other

The juvenile “Mod Squad” of four freshmen congresswomen deceptively accuse anyone critical of their clearly anti-American, anti-Semitic, and anti-Western rantings of being racists and fundamentally opposed to people of color.  Ehud Barak and Benny Gantz, both vocal opponents of the Likud party and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, dishonestly accuse the current leader of Israel of being a danger to Israel’s democratic system, demonizing the legitimacy of his re-election over the years.  What’s common to both the anti-Trump and anti-Netanyahu media-supported campaigns orchestrated by the leftist-progressive political parties in the United States and in Israel is the goal of making the coming elections in both countries a binary choice, an either us or them choice, an issue of black or white, vote for reality or vote for the illusion.

Netanyahu’s supporters credit him with keeping Israel relatively safe and prosperous, maintaining its Jewish character and Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, and boosting Israel’s standing internationally.  In contrast to many of his political predecessors, Netanyahu hasn’t left his mark by “winning” a war or signing a “peace accord” such as the Oslo Accords.  His major achievements have been a booming economy with prosperity trickling down, benefiting all sectors of the population; combatting Iran’s nuclear program, which is considered an existential threat on Israel and responding by covertly striking weapons shipments to Israel’s enemies; and building a massive border fence to stop the flow of illegal African migrants.  Netanyahu is perceived as a politician who speaks the language of the people and is on their side, and they watch his back.  His imperfections are the people’s imperfections.

Trump’s supporters credit him with singlehandedly bringing American pride back into the mainstream.  Trump’s political message of “Making America Great Again” has been wholly adopted by a majority of Americans as their message, too.  Since the Trump election, America has experienced an economic boom unseen for decades, and unemployment has reached low levels unseen for half a century, including the lowest level of unemployment among black Americans.  The opioid epidemic has seen, for the first time in 30 years, a 5% drop in overdose deaths.  Executive directives and demanding accountability by the pharmaceutical industry has resulted in lower drug prices.  Trump is perceived as a blunt leader who cuts through to the people, who speaks their language, and the public listens to him.  Trump is not associated with the liberal elite who tell the American public what to say and what to think and how to vote.

Both Trump and Netanyahu support sustainable equality.  Both promote economic policies that reinvigorate the key elements of a healthy public-private partnership, empowering the private sector to create more real jobs, supporting a more responsible capitalism necessary for growth.

Both Trump and Netanyahu build excitement and passion in their respective general publics, dominating the public arena and the public discourse.  The broadcast and print media in the United States and in Israel have hyped up their reporting of both Trump and Netanyahu to a hysterical frenzy, creating a loss of credibility and a general public that has tuned them out.  The public associate the hyped up media as an extension of the liberal-progressive Left that has always patronized and treated members of the general public as unable to decide for themselves, lacking any true intellectual depth.  Both use the nonstop ridicule of the media in collusion with opposing political opponents to expose the hypocrisy of the left-progressive agenda, who have nothing real to offer the voting public except a childish and unconvincing vision of what American or Israel should be in the future.  Both President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu focus on national unity and the betterment of their respective people.

The media and the liberal progressive Left will warn the public as we approach the election period of what philosopher Max Weber has claimed: that the West, meaning the “uninformed” general public, has always been vulnerable to demagoguery, that charisma and celebrity have often mattered more than ideas.  They will claim that the liberty-loving public intrinsically fearful of an unrestrained radical socialistic system has always been liable to exploitation by charismatic conservative leaders.  They will remind us all of Machiavelli’s The Prince, and the amoral charlatans desirous only for power, and why in politics oratory always mattered.  They will bring up Cicero’s warning, that eloquence divorced from wisdom can destroy a country.  They will warn us that we should be wary of George Orwell’s warning of totalitarianism.  They will quote Hanna Arendt, who has said that between anarchic arbitrariness and the “fantastically fictitious consistency of an ideology,” people will often choose the latter.  That’s “not because they are stupid or wicked,” she said, but because it gives the holder of an ideology intellectual security and sometimes escape, providing an illusion of meaning and a sense of self.

Both in the United States and in Israel, the silent majority, the middle class, and all those who reject the condescending attitude of the liberal-progressive elite will reject their warnings and their political message of why only they can prevent the destruction of “our country” as we know it.  They, the liberal-progressive left, will find themselves — whether in the coming Israeli elections or in the 2020 elections in the United States — overwhelmingly rejected by the public and sent back to their respective constituencies as false political prophets, having nothing to show for their efforts and losing any semblance of credibility in their eyes of those who believed their deceitful promises to bring about change and their illusion.

The writer, a 25-year veteran of the IDF Medical Corp., served as a field mental health officer.  Prior to retiring in 2005, he served as the commander of the Central Psychiatric Military Clinic for Reserve Soldiers at Tel-Hashomer.  Since retiring from active duty, he provides consultancy services to NGOs implementing psycho-trauma and community resilience programs to communities in the north and south of Israel.  He is a former strategic adviser on public diplomacy for the Office of the Chief Foreign Envoy of Judea and Samaria.  To contact: medconf@gmail.com.