The Strange Career of Donald Trump
It is reported that Donald Trump, while his supporters were having the “million man march” in Washington, rode in his armoured car to play golf. What would a man and a real leader have done? He would have gone out among the people who were making an effort and putting something on the line for him. And he would have made his sissy son-in-law go with him and meet some real Americans. And he would have made sure, with military police or whatever could be used, that his supporters were not beaten up by the thugs of antifa and BLM.
I am inclined to think that while he is letting his supporters struggle, Trump has decided to give up, despite all his bluster. When have his deeds ever matched his words? To protest the election would require more risk, innovation and determination than he has ever shown in office. Not to mention that the Republican leaders and spokesmen will without the least doubt show cowardice and desert him in any real fight. And the Democrats have the media, law enforcement, and the military under their complete control. Something that Trump might have changed if he had cared to try.
You have to understand that for Republican leaders, with a scant few exceptions, right and wrong, good and bad, true and false, are never in consideration. The only thing on their minds is keeping their comfortable places and being “respectable.” “Respectable” signifying what has been called “Midwestern nice”---never rock the boat or seem “extreme.” They will always surrender in a real showdown.
If Americans knew any history they would know that stealing elections is what Republicans did on a mass scale during Reconstruction. The only thing new is the possibilities of mail-in voting.
There are some good people who think that Trump is going to fight a crooked election and that his Presidency has somehow moved the country in a positive direction. How can anybody believe that when we face the coming years with a revolutionary regime that is likely permanent and that regards decent Americans as The Enemy? Like that second marriage, it is a triumph of hope over experience. The commissars rule the state and the mobs rule the streets.
What did we expect? A real estate speculator whose methods struck a lot of people as dubiously ethical? (Why did he not in the debates make the point that he made his money in the private sector while Biden got rich at the public trough?) A lifelong New Yorker. A TV star best known for “You’re fired!” A man with may leftwing ideas and associates in his earlier political gambits.
Think about all that he might have done to slow down our slide into degeneracy if he had used legitimate executive powers and the bully pulpit to rally the people against the revolution. The sum total is nothing except collaboration with the Establishment, just like every other Republican.
#
Dr. Wilson,
I certainly agree with you about the Republicans always being first to the tall grass, first to stack arms, first to turn on their friends and last to the front. The Lincoln Project types who worked overtime to stop Trump in the last election, raising money and designing attack adds supporting Joe Biden were mostly of the Neo-con variety who held high positions in the Bush/Cheney/Rove administration and helped start the endless wars in the Middle East based on lies promoted by their own media outlets.
I also think Trump accomplished little because he was under heavy suppressive fire from the day he took office. Former President Jimmy Carter said he had never seen in his long lifetime a President treated with such consistent hostility and as relentlessly as they pursued Donald Trump. My question is why did they hate him so much ? He was not as stupid as young Bush, not as provoking as Obama, as cunning as Clinton or as phony as Mitt Romney or John McCain but the passion with which they despised Trump as unique. They pulled out all the stops exposing their power, their means of exercising it and even their very persons in bringing him down. This was unprecedented in there normal mode of operations and so my question is “Why Trump?” What policy or what interest of theirs did he threaten or imperil that they found it so necessary to step out into the open and expose their methods and means of execution so openly when they had always before been so successful in the murky shadows under the cover of party, policy and democracy ?
How strange to be just like all the rest….
…conformity is strange.
Dr Wilson,
This article and I believe your previous column on Trump point out where Trump really did not go after the “swamp”, at least not if a substantial way. He verbally criticized and questioned them, but there was no real cleanup in Washington. I vaguely remember the details, but there is a Trump campaign rally where the crowd is shouting “lock her up”, as they did often of Hilary Clinton. This rally stuck in my mind because I believe it was an early post election rally and Trump’s response to the crowd was weird to me. Paraphrasing he sort of said something along the lines of let’s keep that down, the “lock her up” chant was good for the election but we don’t need it now. I want to find the video. It struck me as awkward because either it was just an election tactic/circus or you really believed she should be locked up. Which one?
https://www.cnn.com/2016/12/09/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-lock-her-up-chant/index.html
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2016/12/09/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-lock-her-up-chant/index.html
Dr. Wilson: Thank you for your post. I want to add a few words. It is no sin to be gullible (at least Socrates thought so), which is why those who voted for Trump are without blame. He, however, is a swindler – a hamfisted impersonation of the good American – who pretended to be the answer to their prayers of deliverance. He should be in jail for criminal fraud.
Yes, Trump did not, and will not “save” us. He found the Deep State too much to handle. We cannot expect to elect someone to office who will “fix” things. The system is rotten. And the only thing that matters regarding who pulls the levers of power is the degree of our decline.
The system itself must go.
@Mr. Navrozov – I believe you’re being too harsh with Mr. Trump. Yes, he’s a swindler and a con-man and a TV actor, but I think, to a large degree, he was always intentionally playing a role. I also believe to some small (perhaps imperceptible) degree, playing the role for 4 years has actually improved the man himself. Will it last? Who knows? But even if one were to rail against him as a fraud, he’s still infinitely more sincere and upright than scores of other professional scoundrels in the Senate, the House, and every level of the bureaucratic beast that should be rotting in jail for a long, long time before Mr. Trump ever comes up for trial.
Love him or hate him, I still think he was better than we Americans deserved.
Mr Cornell,
He is as you and Mr Navrozov and Clyde Wilson all describe. But at least he spared us of another Bush or another Clinton. Like the change of scenery on a long drive to nowhere or anywhere.
I agree, Mr. Cornell. Swindler, huckster, conman, liar: one should assume these traits in anybody who willingly seeks public office beyond the local level. I can only speak for myself: I became old enough to vote during the Clinton years and do not remember a time when refinement would be assumed in a president. Compared to every major candidate since then, the fact that Trump doesn’t seem to hate me should not only preclude his prosecution, but further a cause for sainthood.
The worst phony is Joe Biden the Democrat. This phony is a so-called Catholic who went to Mass on election day, Nov. 3, I assume to ask God to select him for president over that protestant, Donald Trump . Well, it seems that God answered his prayers because he in now president elect.
He is promised to give what the people want – forgive student debt, free community college, overhaul policing, purify the air. He promised anything to get the vote. Adults tend to be self centered. No wonder he garnered the most votes and the electoral college number.
I wonder if he went to Mass to thank God for answering his prayers.
Dear Dot,
If he is some sort of Catholic, and I am no judge, and if his past political history is any indicator of his future performance, we don’t need to worry that it will have any effect whatsoever.
I wish that being a Protestant or Catholic still meant something in the various threads of our contemporary culture —- or even in one strand that make up our ghettos but I am pretty sure it doesn’t. It might mean something to Trump now, or you, or even me but as noted, we lost and Sleepy Joe won.