This
is the title of an article by Economist which has bitched incessantly over
Trump as President every since his election.
As one who is a fairly pure conservative, I too was abraded by his early
popularity. Now I see an unusual
personality but still a conservative.
Economist sees the R’s as organizing around, not issues, but a personality
cult. But they strangely don’t see the
interplay of the bat guano psychotic Democrats who funded a propaganistic
dossier, used bureaucratic allies in the FBI to present it as realistic to a
judge, got a FISA spying warrant on the Trump campaign. Then when he unexpectedly won, instead of
honorably accepting the result, they demanded impeachment before he ever took
office, used the dossier to get Comey rightfully fired, then used the leverage
in public opinion to demand a special prosecutor. And the media seems to constantly harp on
innuendos from the investigation to promote some sort of removal of the
President.
When a bystander observes such
shenanigans, he wonders if the press has become a shill for these crazed
leftists. Has the left lost all moral
compass and resorted to sneak tricks? Surely politics is a dirty game but does
it have to turn into a war? Thus Trumps
inconsistent tweets seem more like that old guy you used to work for who ranted
and raved and said startling things, but at the end of the day was quite good
at the business he did. R’s have gotten
defensive of the President and his approval ratings have gone up since he was
inaugurated.
But of course this is exactly what drives the
media and the left crazy. For
politicians and media types make their living in smooth, seemingly knowledgeable
speak. I am reminded of my days as a
physics instructor grading papers that journalism students had written about a
simple experiment. One of my colleagues
said about them, “I wish I had an enormous BULLSHIT stamp that I could grade
their observations with.” Little study,
lots of unknowing prose. You doubt this analysis? Then ask, “WHO predicted Trump’s win of 30
states in 2016?”
Nonetheless, Economist brings up
familiar points. Trump won’t share his tax
returns, has ignored conflict-of-interest rules, has run a business for profit
as he was President, and nepotism. But a thoughtful parsing of these problems
is that Trump is rich. He has huge
businesses, not just stocks and bonds.
So is such a person outlawed from serving as President? According to all the Swamp rules he is. But Trump has basically said, hell no, you
won’t make hay out of my tax returns.
They are so complicated that some journalist would easily misrepresent
their true meaning. And no, I will not sell the ‘farm’ for a pitance just for
the pleasure of serving as President. Keeping
the biz under outside management, does not constitute conflict of
interest. And I continue to rely on sons
and daughters for guidance, just as Bill Clinton did his wife.
The critics see Trump as firing
anyone who disagrees with him. I see him
as a public personality who doesn’t like disagreements to become public. Critics say that anyone who stands in his way
are deemed enemies. Well, in fact numerous R’s in Congress have obstructed him
and he remains friends. Hence the
critics see him riding roughshod over rules, but upon close examination, these
are not constitutional rules but unwritten rules of the Swamp.
Yet all this wouldn’t explain the
growing popularity of the man. He gets
things done. That is anathema to the
Swamp who just want re-elected and to see the continual growth of their
bureaucratic empires. The bureaucrats of
Washington have a slang term for elected officers—the summer help. They are the
eternal mandarins. Elected people come
and go. The Democrats with their love of
big government have latched onto this Swamp or Deep State and see no danger
whatsoever. Yet the rest of us do. Read the 6 planks of Mussolini’s National
Socialist Platform and it reads like a checklist of Democrat programs. Compare his group (Italian: fasci) politics with that of the
Democrats and it will give you chills.
Still the R’s don’t judge simply by
getting things done or some personality cult.
Trump espouses conservative concepts in his own rough way. He’s not against free trade, just wants fair
trade deals, not Smoot Hawley tariffs.
He’s not against globalism, just wants USA to keep its powder dry for
those conflicts that really threaten us.
And his reliance on more generals and less state department proves that
he wants truly professional advice. His
acceptance of a badly unbalanced budget
was to secure Defense spending which was dangerously inadequate. The rest of his agenda, the tax reform, the
repeal of Obamacare mandates, conservative judges, revamping of wildly damaging
EPA and Labor Dept. edicts, shows a guy who is fundamentally conservative. He
stopped Obama’s program to kill coal and oil. His foreign policy trips to Saudi Arabia and
Poland promoted American democracy. His
hard lines with ISIS and NK was long, long overdue and perhaps effective. In other words, there is a lot to like in the
guy I once opposed, even worried about at the time of the Republican
Convention. And, he has shown a way to appeal to labor union members and others
who were dispossessed by Dems.
So what shall I make of
Economist? They are Europeans who have
had a gay time using USA as a duty free zone while loving their own protective
tariffs. Threats against their exporting
scheme scares them to death. They think
like Europeans who cannot see the danger in importing Muslim terrorists or
larding on the socialism in their own economies. Maybe they will awaken someday to the threats. For now they can’t see past Trump’s
personality. So while they accuse R’s of
being a personality cult, I see them as an anti-personality cult.
