[Editor’s note: while all Faith & Heritage writers are in basic agreement on fundamental principles, we are not monolithic on secondary issues or even always on how those fundamental principles should be applied. An example of this is these two articles examining the early Trump presidency from differing points of view. We present both of them to you for your consideration.]
On April 4th, 2017, the honeymoon allotted to Donald Trump, already strained, ended abruptly when a ‘surgical strike’ of American Tomahawk missiles haphazardly hit the Syrian airbase of Shayrat, killing fourteen and injuring scores of others. The president’s reputation as an anti-world policeman crusader, previously bolstered by his loud campaign promises and his embarrassingly preserved tweets of recent years, lay in ashes. Orange ashes.
The world was shaken to its foundations – not so much by the betrayal as by the fact that the Twitterverse went ballistic….not entirely, but in significant measure, empathetic to the turncoat.
‘Oh, but you don’t understand!!!’ trumped Trump’s strumpets. ‘This is a brilliant gambit! He’s playing 4-D chess! (Or 8-D, or 32-D, or 6,000,000-D – the number of dimensions depending largely on the poster’s emotional attachment to The Donald) This was all designed in tandem by him, Putin, and Assad to take the focus away from the allegations of Russian electoral tampering, so that he can get through his domestic agenda of lotsa good stuff for us!! Don’t worry!!! The Kek abides! You just gotta have faith!!’
That faith would prove to be sorely tested on April 13th when, taking full advantage of what he endearingly calls ‘his’ military might, Trump ordered the levelling of a series of cave complexes in Afghanistan through the use of a Massive Ordinance Air Blast/Mother Of All Bombs missile – the largest non-nuclear deployment of any bomb in U.S. history – for the sake of killing less than a hundred ISIS CIA spooks…um, Islamic terrorists, I mean. The murmurings among his base intensified. The first wave of desertions was underway, yet some diehards were still frantically casting about to make coherence out of betrayal – and, not unrelated, to salvage their hitherto impressively numeric list of Twitter followers. Paul Joseph Watson’s timid caveat regarding his disembarkation from the Trump Train in the wake of just such a mass exodus of followers is a case in point.
Well, bad things seem to come in sets of three, and recently we have been treated to the poorly-thought out provocation of North Korea via Trump’s stupid cawing about an armada on its way from Australia to Pyongyang to show those pajama-wearing dinks what fer. Only one minor PR setback, as it turned out: the armada was actually heading in the exact opposite direction, towards Australia, as confirmed by its commanding officer. And dear cuddly ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis didn’t exactly do anything to dispel this notion either. The response to this latest outrage seems to be a resigned bitter numbness – yes indeedy, folks, unlike Roger Daltrey, we most certainly did get fooled again! At this rate, we can expect MAGA ballcaps to be retailing even below the notoriously underperforming Pussy hat.
So buyer’s remorse regarding Trump is definitely settling in for the long haul. I’m just curious, though: what else did people really expect?
Trump is unique among the presidents for having the highest pre-political recognition factor of them all, by a long shot. He even eclipses Ronald Reagan, whose last theatrical film was released in 1957 and thus was hardly in the vanguard of voters’ minds when he was first elected in 1980. He also has never been shy about voicing his opinions on political and social issues. And to be quite frank, his right-populist rhetoric has always struck this author as going no deeper than campaign expediency requires. Just look at his record – and there’s a lot of record to look at. Why are we shocked at his supposedly newly discovered militarism when he backed an invasion of Iraq, albeit tepidly, in 2002? Why do we not hold him to the same standards of flip-floppery on abortion as we justifiably did Mitt Romney when he has voiced his pro-choice sentiments publicly before – and his expressed personal ‘hatred’ of abortion hardly carries with it anything even approaching moral revulsion? How could the National Rifle Association – a simpering cadre of sellouts when push comes to shove if ever any existed – endorse Trump when his longstanding support of an assault weapons ban can (and most certainly has) been defined so broadly as to prohibit anything with more stopping power than your daddy’s vintage .22 plinking rifle? His ongoing feud with Rosie O’Donnell notwithstanding, Trump has made a lifetime habit out of hobnobbing with the A-list of celebrity liberaldom. Did we really expect anything to come out of Trump’s much ballyhooed promise to lock Hillary Clinton up in Leavenworth and throw away the key when she and Bill were prominent guests at his 2005 wedding to Melania? (And when Trump was reportedly shameless in his attempts to procure a reciprocal invitation to Chelsea’s wedding the next year?) Can we look the same way at his now-classic ‘Oh yeah, you’re a real tough guy’ retort to Jeb Bush when, in his 2000 book The America We Deserve he lauded the then-governor of Florida as a ‘good man’ who was ‘exactly the kind of political leader this country needs now and will very much need in the future’? What are we to make of his long-running dream to share a presidential ticket with Oprah, first voiced during his 1999 run for the Reform Party and reiterated again only last year, thus casting a reasonable doubt on his subsequent claims that the new wish was merely in jest? And speaking of Oprah, it is genuinely creepy to recollect his hard-line talk regarding international trade, then to run across an appearance he made on her show way back in 1988 and to hear, almost word for word, the exact same speech – the only noticeable difference being the substitution of ‘Japan’ with ‘China’. Taken all together, these discrepancies suggest a thoroughly opportunistic and glib-mouthed character – unless Trump’s late-in-life conversion to conservative nationalism is of the same magnitude as Paul’s on the Damascene road. Even Constantine reserved his autocratic traits upon his conversion to Christianity.
No, Trump is not and never was a true believer in anything except in the splendour of his own aura, as is self-evident not only in his now-iconic demeanor during the run of his pet vanity project The Apprentice, but also in his innumerable cameos in several movies, TV shows, and hokey commercials. His future presidential library will likely consist of numerous editions of Art of the Deal, his Twitter account, and his YouTube channel. (Adobe FlashPlayer installation required.) Increasingly, Trump appears to be the latest and greatest example of leadership by mass-media figure, a trend ignominously started by Reagan and continued with the likes of Sonny Bono, Jesse Ventura, Al Franken, etc. About the only way he could be topped is if the rumors prove true and Angelina Jolie is one day named the first female secretary-general of the UN. Suffice it to say that late in life Trump found a new niche as a full-time performer, and his swagger to the White House is merely the logical end of that trajectory. Does that sound far-fetched? Consider that formerly respected edgelord Alex Jones has all but admitted his entire career has been a Stephen Colbert-like work of parodic art during his recent custody court battle. Can the same not happen at the pinnacle of the political level, where the stakes are far, far higher? Among the ‘generals and billionaires’ Trump has appointed to high office, let us not forget his propensity towards those who have had careers in the entertainment industry – former WWE head Linda McMahon, former film producer Steven Mnuchin, ex-filmmaker Steve Bannon, and the like. It seems more and more likely that Trump looks on his presidency as a thespic role to be safely disposed of once the day’s rushes are safely in the can, as I cannot recall a candidate who has so quickly backtracked on virtually everything he promised on the campaign trail before his first hundred days was completed. Even Obama, for all his great malfeasance, was far more honest and upfront as to his evil intentions.
Still, the excuses for his dissembling behavior keep trickling in, thus demonstrating the folly of one unequally yoking oneself to a candidate erroneously perceived as a white knight by youthful political maidens who have not experienced the forked-tongue nature of many previous campaigns firsthand. One of the more tiresome excuses involves the shifting of the blame entirely upon the delicate shoulders of Trump’s undeniably Machiavellian son-in-law Jared Kushner. “If only that Jew master manipulator wasn’t stabbing him in the back, Trump would have a free hand in implementing everything he wants to do!” Such naivete really isn’t worthy of a proper response, but allow me to offer one anyway. That argument won’t pass muster for two reasons. First, as Trump’s extended family is largely Jewish, thanks to the conversion of daughter Ivanka, and as his appointment of Kushner to be his advisor on everything reveals a streak of nepotistic tendencies even more pronounced than in the brothercentric Kennedy clan, we can only conclude Trump bears a fundamental affinity with Judaism, especially when also taking into consideration his numerous ties with Jews in the business world and his longstanding ardent Zionism. Second, even if Kushner was an unwanted accomplice foisted upon a zealous yet inexperienced president, what does that say about Trump’s actual strength of character? Is this supposed to be the rough-tough firer of the inept and drainer of swamps he presented himself as while on the stump? If he acts like the buck stops with him, then it does. Those who lean on this weak consolation like Tiny Tim on his crutch bring to mind a recent astute description of this mindset by Michael Hoffman, writing on the tendency of white nationalists to cast all their sins of indolence and idolatry on a Jewish golem:
Queen Victoria and her subjects would have had every legal right to bar the Rothschilds from conducting banking and commerce. It was in their power to anoint or suppress the Rothschilds, Montefiores and Disraelis. Instead, in all cases and many more not cited here, by way of their gentile co-conspirators Judaics were granted pathways to power and rulership over the Christian population…Disraeli’s Coningsby burdened the Right wing with more than a hundred years of faulty conspiracy history that rendered the gentile role in the evil, as either almost non-existent, or an anomaly on the part of a mere handful of renegades. This writer is a witness to the psychology in America in 1973 when the majority of the over-50 generation found it almost impossible to believe that gentile President Nixon could have committed crimes in the course of the Watergate scandal. They believed it about the Judaic Henry Kissinger, but not about Nixon.
Just as a person who cannot condemn his own shortcomings first and foremost has no business criticizing others, so too does a people who cannot acknowledge their own sins, whether of commission or omission. Kushner might be the actual president-elect, but those who fail to indict Trump in his own role in bringing that to pass are quite frankly an embarrassment to our cause and ought to be shunned.
And what of the newfound cheerleaders Trump seems to have picked up in the wake of his finding of his inner Curtis LeMay? It seems as though every ‘enemy’ who was hurling anathemas his way last year can’t sing his praises loudly enough now. No less of a booster than Lindsey Graham was vociferous in his praise of Trump in the wake of the Syrian strike, favorably comparing him to Reagan. Talk about a competition in the ‘Best Actor’ category. The mainstream Democratic caucus, most certainly including Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, were also quick to offer adulations, congratulating Trump on his moral fortitude and ‘proportional response’. Still not tired of winning? Prior to the Syrian strike, even Van Jones jumped aboard the bandwagon, admitting that Trump’s shout-out to the widow of a Navy SEAL during his State of the Union placed him firmly within the presidential saddle. What is going on here? Did the forces of unmitigated leftism see the error of their ways en masse? Or did they do their job of acting as a false opposition to get the latest in a long string of Soros/Rothschild puppets over the electoral finish line, and are now dropping the charade? I think you know what I think.
Fortunately, in the wake of the seething resentment beginning to fester among Trump supporters as the glow of disbelief at his betrayal is beginning to ebb, the (((Powers))) That Be have a ready-made solution at hand: street brawls between antifa activists and irate alt-righters. The former are the exact same types documented to be on the Soros payroll during the never-Trump protests of last year, so why should he have not retained their services? If they should get socked in the jaw, ’tis a small price to pay for the job security King George provides for his valued team! While such melees may be invigorating and enthralling and bring to mind giddy recollections of the collapse of Weimar Germany, they also provide a convenient distraction to channel righteous rage into actions that serve the purpose of brandishing rightist dissenters with criminal records to be used against them later on. Not to mention they allow many more nefarious machinations to be implemented underneath the radar, such as Trump’s appointment of yet another Goldman Sachs prole to be deputy Treasury secretary, which took place as the current round of pitched battles was getting underway. Watchman, thou hast not watched.
In all Christian conscience, then, I can say unreservedly: Trump has proven himself a chameleon and a slut. He’s a loser loudly bragging about being a winner. Dump this clown on the ash heap of history, and good riddance to him. Please don’t misunderstand me, though: this in no way undermines the desirability of much of the platform he supposedly stood for. Severe immigration curtailment, Muslim bans, good diplomatic relations with Russia, trade reform, etc. are all worthy endeavors. Yet even if he implemented his program in full with a 100% success rate, he would still have one crippling flaw that would render all these accomplishments void. That being: Trump is a pseudo-Christian operating within a government utterly inimical to our best interests. Why do we expect sweet waters to spring forth from this historically bitter spring? Have our local governments utterly ceased to exist? A theonomic uprising with Christ supreme over all will emanate from the grassroots upward, not from Brainwashedington DC downwards. That is what we ought to be focusing our energies upon. Until we recognize that fact, we can embrace fragmented ’causes’ all the live long day and we will only be trying to fend off symptoms, not focusing on the only Cure.
Back in 1979, one of the most eagerly anticipated new television shows of the fall season was Supertrain, a multimillion dollar dramatic anthology series about a state-of-the-art train and its passengers and crew, taking advantage of the then-popular Love Boat format. When the program turned out to be a decidedly below-average miasma of glittery trinketry and nothing else, viewers turned against it in droves, it was quickly cancelled, and today is remembered as one of the most notorious failures in broadcasting history. I can’t help but think there’s an analogy in here somewhere in regards to the Trump Express.
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