Trump and where we are

It’s too late for me. I’m always telling my kids to be extra careful what they post on line or what they send via text or email. Big Brother is watching. I don’t think anyone even questions that anymore. The data is all too important, for a multitude of reasons.

I’ve espoused my conservative/libertarian views on line and in person for years so whoever is looking about me already has a complete portfolio. I keep thinking of the movie “Enemy of the State” with Jon Voight, Will Smith and the great Gene Hackman. Right now, if someone in authority really wanted to…what kind of profile could be created about you in a matter of minutes? What does it reveal about you that you are on Ironspoke reading this post? Whether it is some nameless bureaucrat in a non-descript building or whether it is some executive at Google or Amazon, the analytics are there to be captured, viewed, interpreted and crafted into a summary. And I imagine these summaries would be equal to if not more complete than something an entire slew of FBI profilers working as a team could formulate. I say all of this because it has become fashionable among those on the Left to attempt to shout down and marginalize those on the Right who they disagree with. In fact, you could even say it’s become downright dangerous if you tell the wrong person the wrong thing about politics.

But now that Trump has been inaugurated and the riots have momentarily stopped, I feel that I’m finally able to offer some observations about the election and where we go from here.

First thing is, I was a Cruz guy. That being said, toward the end of his candidacy and at the GOP convention I thought he made some rather poor decisions. Even though I was hoping for Cruz to pull out the nomination, I always had it in the back of my mind that Trump was the only guy on the debate stage who could actually pull off a victory against Clinton. He dominated the debates from wire to wire. Around this time last year Jeb Bush was dropping out of the race. No one, no matter how much money they threw at the election could get any traction. As our Pennsylvania primary somehow became relevant for a change, I voted for the Trumpster as I was trying to do my part to help the party coalesce around the one guy who I felt could beat Clinton. Was he perfect? Not by a longshot. Was he better than the alternative of having Hillary Clinton sitting in the Oval Office? Absolutely.

I wonder if it’s possible to actually count, on a cumulative basis, how many total words were written by so called experts about how Trump couldn’t possibly win. And I wonder how many words were written about the inevitability of a Clinton presidency. The videos are of course all over Youtube. I just watched a rather entertaining one the other day of clips from Rachel Maddow charting the improbability of a Trump victory and then culminating in her near breakdown on election night. You juxtapose that with Ann Coulter being ridiculed on Bill Maher’s program in the summer of 2015 for stating that Trump has the best chance to beat Clinton. Conventional Wisdom. Uh-huh.

I pay attention to current events. As an amateur historian, today’s headlines are all pieces of the American fabric. What may seem huge today may of course end up being forgotten and what may just initially appear as a small throw away piece could end up being monumental. So all of the Wizards of Smart had declared early on that Trump had no chance. The conspiracy theories were also everywhere you looked. One of the driving themes was that the media was protecting Trump during the republican primary campaign with its collective eye on the November election. Only AFTER Trump had secured the nomination would the media unload on him and destroy his chances.

Only, that isn’t what happened. Instead, Trump seemed to grow stronger with every negative story. While the milk toast RINO’s abandoned him after the onslaught of negative coverage, the people stuck with him. They showed up at rallies in Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. And all the while this was happening, John Podesta’s intimate emails were floating around for the world to see. It was also at this time that the Bernie supporters got to see first-hand how their guy had been screwed out of the nomination by the DNC. Suddenly, there was such a thing as Fake News.

What is Fake News? How is a story categorized as Fake News? Are there certain places that seem to thrive off of Fake News? Do Fake News stories get peddled more on Drudge, the Huffington Post, Breitbart, Buzzfeed, the New York Times or Mother Jones? Do Fake News stories ever end up on CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, et al? If one of the aforementioned media outlets does a story about a Fake News story does that qualify as a Fake News story? What about when a media outlet ignores a story? I suppose that in itself wouldn’t necessarily qualify as a Fake News story, but the omission could be just as misleading if not more so. Bottom line? After everything that happened…the public distrusts the media just as much as our elected officials. Those good old days of turning on the TV to learn from Walter Cronkite seem like a distant memory and in fact for most of the younger members of the media they have no personal recollection of what things in the media used to be like. As in Pre-Internet and Pre-Fox News.

So what do you see every day? A cursory glance at the MSM launching pad will display multiple anti-Trump stories. One after the other. And in addition to stories about Russia hacking our election, Trump generally being incompetent, and his administration in serious disarray, you will also see multiple stories about Saturday Night Live. During the Bush years, we on the Right were treated to the daily opinions of Jon Stewart being treated as hard, objective journalism. Now, 8 years later we see a continuous barrage of stories about the relevancy of SNL and about which guest host will be playing which member of the Trump administration.

All of the negativity from the Left is of course because Obama was great, while Trump is Hitler, a disaster, a clown, a tax cheat, a misogynist, a racist (what race is Islam by the way?), in bed with the Russians, a liar, a fraud, a sexual predator, horribly insecure and thin skinned, un-presidential, etc. So on the Left you have one temper tantrum after another. You have riots and you have protests and you have celebrities melting down and you have college snowflakes imploding and you have all of this hostility and anger. All of which begs the question, when Obama was busy fundamentally changing this country, where were the riots?

In fact, from the moment Obama stood between the Greek pillars in August of 2008 and accepted his party’s nomination until election eve 2016, the American public saw on a daily basis how much we all loved him. As he campaigned for Hillary he mentioned continuously how much a vote for Clinton was a vote for HIS policies. The media covered all of this with a certain amount of ho hum. Of course Hillary was going to win. It was just a matter of how much of a massacre it would be. The polls showed night after night that Trump had no chance. Fake News.

Will Trump be a great president? Will he even make it through without being impeached? It’s impossible to tell. He seems to understand his place in history. He is talking about doing things with government that have never been entertained. Draining the swamp so to speak. I agree with some of his decisions and appointments so far, but not all of them. He has a lot of work to do. In addition the federal government is littered with Obama appointees who feel it is their duty to stir discontent and raise roadblocks.  I’m hopeful Trump avoids distractions and just keeps trying to live up to his campaign promises. Considering the democrats in congress are doing their best to stop him from doing anything and considering members of his own party seem to be offering little help, it would seem to be a Herculean task.

If he keeps talking directly to the American people and if he continues to take steps to remove burdens on American taxpayers, the economy will explode in a good way. Simply taking the steps to unburden the American public of Obamacare would be a good start. And while there will be pictures and stories on TV night after night of people who will seemingly be destroyed if Obamacare is dismantled (Obama DID succeed in fundamentally transforming our relationship with our government…and not in a good way), the thing Trump needs to remember is this was the reason he was voted into office in the first place. It wasn’t that long ago that Reagan trounced Mondale in a 49-1 state landslide. Remember, Reagan was just as vilified by the media and the Left.

So, stay positive. Keep working. And make America great again.