Dear Hannah,
The Republican primaries are the last hope of American civilization and the exact opposite of American Idol. Every season of American Idol we started out with a lot of weirdos and we ended up with a winner. In the Republican primaries we start out with a lot of winners and we wind up with a weirdo.
As such I voted for Trump because my wife made me do it*. It isn't a flattering reason but it's true, and now that I've done it I'm glad that I did it. Both of us were against him and then when he wasn't Hillary we were for him. I'm still for him, except now I actually like him. This is the joy of having low expectations.
There are of course people who voted for him because they believed in him and to me most of these people are crazy. The man could barely string together a sentence and when he did it was short as the American attention span -- which in this case means it was effectively sized. He gave the impression that he'd never read a serious book about history or politics or economics or religion or ethics. The thought of him doing something genuinely heroic was as foreign and surprising to us as seeing dogs do the cha-cha or a black man in lederhosen. That anyone could believe so many contradictory promises from one man was itself incredible. He could say one thing in a debate and then walk out to a reporter and deny he said it at all and his fan base was still fawning. They swallowed it all and somehow believed that when he gave two contradictory promises it was the other promise that was sentenced to failure. These people are the ones complaining about Donald Trump being a failure. In reality it's because they are the failures.
There's reason to believe he's a failure, of course -- but only if you took him too seriously. Obamacare is still standing and the wall is still missing and the Mexicans aren't paying for it. The travel ban didn't happen like we wanted. Nobody really knew what the swamp was so Trump was unable to drain it. Taxes haven't been reformed yet and candy is still paid for. But at the bottom of this list of broken (or delayed) promises we have the fulfilled; the support of our police officers instead of our thugs; the deportation of criminals by ICE and the border patrol; the election of competent judges, probably the most important thing to come of the election, and the threat against all sanctuary cities.
He's threatened to ban men who think they are women from the military and secured our bathrooms better and has done everything he can to give control of education to the states. He's cut red tape wherever he finds it and he gave us Secretary of Defense Mattis. His wielding of federal power has led Democrats to discover states' rights; and he's given intelligent men one thing we greatly underrated -- a constant stream of deliveries so bungled and uncouth that no parody of them is even necessary. We know that laughter is good for the soul and Donald Trump delivers more steadily at least than SNL.
But there are people who voted for him who don't appreciate these victories. They can't understand the limits of executive power or checks and balances or that there's a difference between a president and an emperor. They don't understand that the downside to having a political outsider is that he doesn't know how to work politics. They believe that in an age of nuclear power coal is coming back and it's coming back for good; that gas prices are raised and lowered with a diktat from the Commander in Chief; and that millions of illiterate hillbillies can have all their wildest dreams come true by electing someone who is equally illiterate.
The fact of the matter is that these people are the reason for their own failure; and that some politician, ages ago, found out that the only way he could win is by letting all the low-brows vote and then spinning them webs of complete horseshit. This is how presidential elections are won today -- by appealing to people who have no idea how governments work, or that a democracy is inevitably a place where all your wildest dreams don't come true because you have to water them down with all the wildest dreams of everyone else. They have no appreciation for compromise or tactics or patience or eloquence, or even a regard for the thing known as the rule of law -- because they don't understand what the law is, or how laws are made, or why they were made. And these moonshine-guzzling banjo-duelists are the ones who are turning on President Trump -- the same reason we can't get a George Washington or a Benjamin Franklin or an Alexander Hamilton in office today; the people who didn't know many of the promises were already broken the second they were given because to fulfill them in totality is always technically impossible.
President Trump is going to deliver on more issues and he's going to fail on more issues and unless he does something too disastrously stupid I'm going to enjoy him anyway. At this point we know what he's trying to do and what he isn't, and that many of the things he's trying to do are the most right-wing, difficult, politically-incorrect and most principled things he had "promised" to deliver. If this isn't enough for these so-called last-hopes of uneducated white Americans then I say our last hopes are done for. They say in America you get the president you deserve. If this is the case we really deserve worse and we got better, and it was only a matter of luck that we got him.
The question at this point isn't whether Trump is honest or dishonest, delivering or not delivering. It's whether universal suffrage was ever a good idea, and whether you should be able to vote for a president if you don't know what exactly the president can't do.
Your father,
-J
PS: The English used to be really sensible people, and when they realized one day that the chief executive of the nation is going to make a lot of horrible mistakes but that you can't go changing a king every four years they decided to ruin his ministers. The king in English law was legally immune. He couldn't be held responsible for corruption or for constitutional violations or for perjury or for making a horrible blunder. His favorite advisers could be executed or imprisoned by Parliament. If he was really bad like King Charles I or King James II the English wouldn't need a law to fix him and so they didn't make one. They knew they would need a revolution. (for more information see Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, Vol. 1, chapter 7, "Of the King's Prerogative").
*At this point an uncomfortable question can be shot at me: how could I, a man who prides himself on his intellectual independence and sheer willpower, be told how to vote by his very own wife? I refer you to Genesis chapter three.
What you need to know is that she voted essentially for the Supreme Court pick and she was right. Had Hillary Clinton become the president she would have picked another social justice traitor or possibly two and turned our country into a third-world ghetto. Our perverts would have been given special protections and "hate" speech would have been outlawed. Our arms would have been taken away and Black Lives Matter would have ruined our police force. Your mother knew this and so she voted for Trump, despite the fact that she believed and believes and will probably continue to believe that he's a buffoon. I ought to listen to her more often. I think in light of this I will.
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But there are people who voted for him who don't appreciate these victories. They can't understand the limits of executive power or checks and balances or that there's a difference between a president and an emperor. They don't understand that the downside to having a political outsider is that he doesn't know how to work politics. They believe that in an age of nuclear power coal is coming back and it's coming back for good; that gas prices are raised and lowered with a diktat from the Commander in Chief; and that millions of illiterate hillbillies can have all their wildest dreams come true by electing someone who is equally illiterate.
The fact of the matter is that these people are the reason for their own failure; and that some politician, ages ago, found out that the only way he could win is by letting all the low-brows vote and then spinning them webs of complete horseshit. This is how presidential elections are won today -- by appealing to people who have no idea how governments work, or that a democracy is inevitably a place where all your wildest dreams don't come true because you have to water them down with all the wildest dreams of everyone else. They have no appreciation for compromise or tactics or patience or eloquence, or even a regard for the thing known as the rule of law -- because they don't understand what the law is, or how laws are made, or why they were made. And these moonshine-guzzling banjo-duelists are the ones who are turning on President Trump -- the same reason we can't get a George Washington or a Benjamin Franklin or an Alexander Hamilton in office today; the people who didn't know many of the promises were already broken the second they were given because to fulfill them in totality is always technically impossible.
President Trump is going to deliver on more issues and he's going to fail on more issues and unless he does something too disastrously stupid I'm going to enjoy him anyway. At this point we know what he's trying to do and what he isn't, and that many of the things he's trying to do are the most right-wing, difficult, politically-incorrect and most principled things he had "promised" to deliver. If this isn't enough for these so-called last-hopes of uneducated white Americans then I say our last hopes are done for. They say in America you get the president you deserve. If this is the case we really deserve worse and we got better, and it was only a matter of luck that we got him.
The question at this point isn't whether Trump is honest or dishonest, delivering or not delivering. It's whether universal suffrage was ever a good idea, and whether you should be able to vote for a president if you don't know what exactly the president can't do.
Your father,
-J
PS: The English used to be really sensible people, and when they realized one day that the chief executive of the nation is going to make a lot of horrible mistakes but that you can't go changing a king every four years they decided to ruin his ministers. The king in English law was legally immune. He couldn't be held responsible for corruption or for constitutional violations or for perjury or for making a horrible blunder. His favorite advisers could be executed or imprisoned by Parliament. If he was really bad like King Charles I or King James II the English wouldn't need a law to fix him and so they didn't make one. They knew they would need a revolution. (for more information see Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, Vol. 1, chapter 7, "Of the King's Prerogative").
*At this point an uncomfortable question can be shot at me: how could I, a man who prides himself on his intellectual independence and sheer willpower, be told how to vote by his very own wife? I refer you to Genesis chapter three.
What you need to know is that she voted essentially for the Supreme Court pick and she was right. Had Hillary Clinton become the president she would have picked another social justice traitor or possibly two and turned our country into a third-world ghetto. Our perverts would have been given special protections and "hate" speech would have been outlawed. Our arms would have been taken away and Black Lives Matter would have ruined our police force. Your mother knew this and so she voted for Trump, despite the fact that she believed and believes and will probably continue to believe that he's a buffoon. I ought to listen to her more often. I think in light of this I will.
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"What you need to know is that she voted essentially for the Supreme Court pick and she was right."
ReplyDeleteAmen, brother. Amen. The one and only reason that I voted for him too.
Your point is well taken, and I agree in large part. But I would add that, at least for me, it is his transparency that I am most supportive of, even though what we sometimes see is not so pretty. He may not deliver the most eloquent of speeches. But far to many of those eloquent speeches, told by idiots, full of sound and fury, have signified nothing. I have heard it said, and I agree, that those opposed to him take him literally, but not seriously. While those of us that support him take him seriously, but not literally. I embrace the change.
ReplyDeleteThe founders' rallying cry was, "No taxation without representation!" At this point, I think if we could get to, "No representation without taxation!" the sufrage problem would be fixed.
ReplyDeleteOh, and God bless your wife.
ReplyDelete