The film maker and journalist addressed a full house at the Timmins Museum

Gwynne Dyer poses the question to a Timmins Museum capacity audience: What do you do when the President of the United States is a paranoid? Frank Giorno for TimminsToday.

1 / 1 Gwynne Dyer poses the question to a Timmins Museum capacity audience: What do you do when the President of the United States is a paranoid? Frank Giorno for TimminsToday.

Gwynne Dyer, speaking at a capacity crowd in the Timmins Museum last week, said U.S. President Donald Trump is lying when he claims immigrants and foreign trade are stealing jobs from Americans.

He challenged the audience to ponder how to deal with a most unusual President of the United States.

“What do you do when the most powerful man in the world is a paranoid, who thinks people who aren’t paranoid are crazy?” Gwynne Dyer asked the audience.

“Because that’s what we got — a paranoid as the most powerful man on earth.” Dwyer said. “And he wants you to focus on him all the time.”

“But if you do focus on him you will miss the bigger picture,” Dwyer said. “It is not just about his erratic tweets. Something larger is occurring in the world.”

Dyer, who has taught at Oxford in England before becoming a journalist and film maker, explained that the rise of the populist right is occurring not only in Europe and North America, but also in places like India and the Philippines.

In Britain, voters in a referendum voted in favour of leaving the European Union despite the EU having performed well for Britain.

“And yet they voted to leave by a 52 percent to 48 percent majority,” Dyer said.

“The people who voted for Mr. Trump and Brexit are from the same social class and educational levels,” Dyer said.

The US voters and the Brexit voters were angry, enraged and felt victimized and oppressed by a global elite.

The rise of embittered populism is also a factor in the upcoming elections in the Netherlands this April and France in May and June.

“Income differentials have been widening and a significant portion of the population feels it has fallen behind in prosperity, “ said Dyer.

Trump, falsely accuses China and Mexico, of stealing jobs by luring American companies to manufacture their products over seas, instead of in the United States.

Free trade pacts such as NAFTA and the proposed south east Asia trade pact cost jobs in the US Trump argues.

Trump then says that illegal immigrants are stealing the jobs that remain in the United States.

But Trump is wrong, believes Dyer.

“Those jobs that have been destroyed not by immigrants but by automation," explained Dyer.

“You used to work on the assembly line and earn a good living and now you work at the 7-11, McDonalds and Walmart for half the money you used to earn,” he said.

The tens of thousands of jobs in River Rouge, Michigan the populists say have gone to China and so have all the manufacturing jobs that were lost in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin the states that voted for Trump.

The remaining jobs were stolen by immigrants with the help of the elites, the American capitalists, the fact that he happens to be one seemingly not ever bothering his followers.

“The elites hired many, many immigrants and paid them the lowest wages and the least benefits and they are not white, they do not speak English and that is why they are not working,” Dyer said.

Dyer said this talk is right of Nazi Germany, and that Trump is using the same rhetoric as Adolf Hitler minus the extreme anti-Semitism.

But Dyer doubts the world is heading to a third world war, because the social safety nets that were established after the Great Depression and WW2; unemployment insurance, pensions, disability insurance help people survive when they are not gainfully employed.

“The world is actually more peaceful than it has been over the last 1,000 years. There are a few small wars, but nowhere near the size of WW2,” he added.

“There is only one major war and that would be between the US and China,” explained Dyer. “Russia is not really a threat, it is only half of the population of what it was as the old Soviet Union and it has virtually de-industrialized and it couldn’t hold up its end of the Cold War let alone a hot war.”

The solution to the rapid rise of the anger over economic dislocation, according to Dyer, is the universal guaranteed annual income to provide a further economic cushion to the embittered and aging working class Americans who supported Trump.

“There is never going to be full employment again,” Dyer said.

Though officially, US unemployment is 5 per cent and Canada is 6 per cent, those numbers only apply to those who are looking for work.

“The truth is 32 percent of male Americans between 24 and 55 are economically inactive,” said Dyer.

“They are not starving or protesting, they are more likely in front of the 'boob tube' with a six pack,” Dwyer said.

The solution is the Universal Guaranteed Annual Income where everyone gets 30,000 dollars a year, including billionaires so the working class won’t feel humiliated at receiving a handout.