And given how painful and costly the admission will be for them, they probably never will.
What the bow tie–wearing myopics of the swamp can’t or refuse to see is that President Trump’s support comes, at its source, from growing animal spirits in America convinced that the federal government is a major problem. The country elected Mr. Trump, in part, because he promised to be a giant club willing to bash the D.C. hull repeatedly until it sinks into the Potomac River basin. You can’t fight a war if you don’t even understand the positions of the players or the stakes involved, and the D.C. denizens prove every day that they have no idea what’s going on in the minds of those living between the coasts.
We have watched the federal government grow and transform into something we hate and fear. There were no constitutional conventions or amendments for these changes; rather, the federal courts took it upon themselves to reinterpret the Constitution with the silent consent of Congress and successive presidents until they had effectively co-opted power originally guaranteed to the individual states or the American people themselves. Giant administrative agencies now tower over our lives, even if they reside in D.C. They conjure power for themselves out of thin air, but their application of power is very real. They choose whom to tax, what land to seize, whose gods must be respected, and whose faith must be destroyed. Administrative agencies force American citizens to bend to the wills of faceless swamp things, and nobody in D.C. sees this as the direct assault on Madisonian republicanism that it is. Vesting all the awesome powers of the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Branches in the unmitigated wisdom of twenty-seven-year-old cubicle kings is tyranny, and that is what we have.
Lies have always accompanied the struggle for human power, but the federal government today trades in the currency of deceit with such gusto that it should offend any free people. It is hysterically ironic to hear Deep State acolytes attempt to separate President Trump from his voters by accusing him of being untruthful. We’ve watched President Obama sabotage the peaceful transition of power, John Brennan and James Comey conspire with the FISA Court to frame President Trump as a Russian spy, news personalities routinely spread the lie that President Trump is racist, and Democratic moles and fake whistleblowers falsely accuse President Trump of crimes actually committed by President Obama and Vice President Biden. Hearsay and innuendo against President Trump are the only news of the day. For those living between the coasts, the federal government and the legacy media vomit forth such unrelenting and inscrutably mad deceptions upon the American people that any exaggeration from the president seems nostalgically folksy in a Huck Finn type of way by comparison. And like Finn, if the president occasionally fibs, at least we know he is a hero with a good heart who works on our behalf. The D.C. coup-plotters and power-grabbers, in contrast, sacrificed their souls long ago in service to the cretinous golem into which they’ve breathed life.
So when President Trump’s enemies seek to manipulate us into acquiescing and consenting to his removal from office, their strategy is all backwards. The Left long ago learned to use our virtue against us by appealing to our moral leanings and our sense of shame. They cry out at us: “Look at this man. He betrays all of the customs and traditions of the American government. He lies to us and threatens us and dares to question the absolute truth of the press. He is uncouth and ill mannered and actively seeks to find our pressure points and pour salt in our wounds. He is no true Republican. He is no true conservative. He countermands everything we’ve stood for, everything we’ve worked for, everything we’ve promised to the rest of the world. He finds nothing sacred in what we do.” Nothing could make us happier. The more they protest and accuse him of terrible things, the more we see him as a great and dangerous club with which to pound the Deep State and post-constitutional order into the ground.
Nailed it—clean, tight, and absolutely flat.
Brilliant column, and “post-constitutional” is an apt phrase. This guy gets it.
Absolutely spot on! We sent Trump to DC to be a destructive disrupter of the status quo. IDGAF if he is uncouth or impolite, or whether or not he grabs hot women by their pussy. As Lincoln said about General Grant, “I cannot spare this man – he fights!”. When told that Grant was a hard-drinking drunkard, Lincoln then inquired as to what brand of whiskey Grant drank, so that he (Lincoln) could have a case of it sent to each of his other generals.
This is how I feel about Trump. I suspect that most true-blue Red state Americans, even those who don’t curse and swear or condone pussy grabbing, feel the same way.
“Nothing could make us happier. ” Except more of the same!