I am no fan of Donald Trump. I have made that more than clear. My favorite quip when accused of being some MAGA Trump fanatic is that I was actually ahead of the curve. I didn't like Trump for all those years that Democrats and Hollywood liberals loved the guy and couldn't wait to party with him and ask him for money. It didn't take him putting an 'R' in front of his name for him to become StatnHiterlTrump in my world.
Nonetheless, I admit the nation was better off going into the disaster of 2020 than it was in 2016. There came a time when I couldn't drive to the store for bread and not see a new car sticker on a vehicle. Wages went up. ISIS was no longer the new normal. Personal debt began to drop. And savings were beginning to rise.
And, to be honest, he nailed the opposition for what it is. In the great Charlottesville iconoclast protest, he said then that it has nothing to do with Robert E. Lee. It is the beginning of a Taliban style assault on our very heritage, history and heroes. It soon would be Lincoln and Washington and anyone linked to the past the Left would erase from the history books.
And so it is. NYC is pondering, beyond paying off African Americans for alone ever having had ancestors who suffered, going St. Stalin on a laundry list of statues dedicated to almost any white person from the past including, but not limited to, George Washington. Just as Trump said.
One reason I'm convinced people who otherwise couldn't abide Trump supported him, was because he stated the obvious when no other 'conservatives' would. The Left is an anti-American, anti-Western, and anti-Christian force dedicated to destroying almost everything we have taken for granted. And it does so by hook or by crook, through mendacity and lies, hypocrisy and utter corruption. Perhaps he wouldn't say it today. With Trump, you never know. But he got it right then, and every day proves Trump right in that matter if nothing else.
(Tom New Poster)
ReplyDeleteTrump is (was?) perspicacious within a narrow compass. He had no filters, and in the case of identifying the evil in our increasingly vicious Left, he was spot on. So why don't more on the Right agree with him openly?
1. Some don't see the Left's culture war as an enduring and incremental threat. They complain loudly against its perennial bad management and failed economic policies, and its foreign policy fumbles, which are bad enough and evident enough to get them tossed in many places, but the Left is not just stupid: it's evil, and only Trump calls that out.
2. Many so-called conservatives are in soft agreement with the Left on most culture issues: abortion, gay "marriage", etc. or else they don't see these as "the winning issue", which too often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
3. Some "federalist"-type conservatives (especially upper-class) don't see cultural issues as a government concern, and as long as their wealth or geography allows them to stay aloof or aloft don't care about working Christians losing their rights or working patriots losing their heritage.
4. For my part, we have been conditioned for too many years by a culture of "nice" and recoil from getting contentious in public settings. "Don't upset the neighbors, Ozzie" is a fine policy when the neighbors have crabgrass, not when they're marching for "trans" lies or DEI.
5. As a Catholic: my Pope is silent on these things, either from ignorance, incompetence or complicity, and too many American bishops, likely raised in Democratic families and fearing to be identified with Republican policies, want to play relevant.
Well, Trump didn't.
And he still doesn't. He may have caused a major stir with his comments calling DeSantis' stance on on banning abortion a "mistake" but he is still light years ahead of devout Catholic Biden on abortion, assisted suicide, euthanasia, transgenderism, the southern border etc. If both men win the primaries for their parties, and neither are pure and clean on abortion I would and will still vote for Trump. No one up to today has been a better champion for the unborn than Trump. I don't CARE what his motives are concerning the unborn but I do know he has done more to protecting the unborn than anyone before him.
DeletePer your Pt. 5: I think you're right about the bishops. If the Catholics, including the bishops, had held the moral line on abortion, it would not have found such a foothold in our laws or the Democratic party. I find it terribly ironic, all the recent squawking that Catholics shouldn't be "beholden" to one party, when too many Catholics over the years could not, or would not, distinguish between their faith and the "D" party. So much so that they would vote D no matter what positions the Ds took, and then the Ds ran with the crazy because they had no pushback on moral issues. Locally, lovely little old church ladies would be out campaigning for democrats up to the day they died, even though they probably disagreed with most of the platform if they ever stopped to think about it.
DeleteSome excellent points. Especially the whole 'be nice' message. I mean, given the radical intolerance and judgmentalism of leftwing activists today, you'd think we could put that in the trash bin along with 'it's wrong to impose your values on others', 'it's wrong to convert people', and 'it's always wrong to judge.' Yet many still seem to be living in the 1970s, not seeing that those who told us to live this way are the ones living as far away from these values as you can get. But I think you're close to the target with what has happened relative to Trump and those following him.
DeleteI understand completely why so many people can't stand Trump -- I could not bring myself to vote for him in 2016 -- but I also understand why so many people love him -- I enthusiastically voted for him in 2020. (Even though my POTUS vote is symbolic rather than substantive as I live in the deep blue state of Illinois.)
ReplyDeleteIt should not surprise us at all that Trump, who did more to end the Roe regime of nationwide abortion on demand than any previous president, is not a 100 percent, lifelong, committed pro-lifer. After all, the president who freed the slaves, Abraham Lincoln, was not a 100 percent committed abolitionist by the standards of his time. When he was running for president, he made a point of saying he was not going to intervene to end slavery in the existing slave states (as that would immediately provoke civil war), but he would prevent it from expanding into new territories, and then eventually slavery would die out on its own. However, even that position didn't satisfy the pro-slavery "Fire Eaters" of the South who wanted slavery allowed everywhere.
Elaine S.
That's true. But this seems to play to Trump's tendency of being a wild card. As I said below, I think of him with the vaccines. Claiming full credit for them, he was prepared to go after critics of the vaccines just like those on the Left tended to. Plus, as I've said elsewhere, I've never seen a leader with so little loyalty from those who have worked with him. That idea that he sees himself as some despot to be obeyed or else, mixed with a tendency of doing anything at any time for any reason, rather than from any strong set of convictions, is a concern.
DeleteAdditionally: just as Lincoln didn't push the slavery issue as hard as he might have wanted to before and during the Civil War because preserving the Union was a higher priority to him, Trump may be thinking that even abortion has to take a back seat to making sure that Democrats don't win total control of the government and turn the entire USA into an effectively communist country.
ReplyDeleteElaine S.
It could be. But I think also of his pushing the vaccines, and going after vaccine critics (or even those questioning) in a way similar to those on the Left. It seems he's just too much of a wild card where almost anything is concerned. I think that has hurt us as a nation, that it's been since Reagan that we've had a leader who had a strong set of convictions you could either support or oppose. Nobody since then seems to have had any solid foundation for their leadership - at least nothing they felt inclined to be honest about.
DeleteI appreciate that you will give credit where credit is due. Personally, I couldn't care less if someone doesn't like Trump - I can absolutely see why one wouldn't, but I do think he actually loves America and has proven willing to fight for her ideals and history. I cannot take anyone seriously who cannot understand, or refuses to even try to understand, why others liked him or appreciate what he did or was willing to say. So many Catholics on the blogosphere lost my respect in the last 7 years because they showed they had absolutely no capacity to think past their own sensibilities or self-image.
ReplyDeleteI try to give credit. For instance, I am no Bill Clinton fan, not by a long shot. But when he went after insurance companies for tossing new moms out on the street a day after giving birth, I was all for it. Same with Trump. I always saw him as exemplifying the worst of our post-Christian nation. Money first, morals last. But that's not to say he didn't do things I was happy to see done. Which is why, unlike 2016, I held my nose and voted for him in 2020.
Deletenot liking him personally but liking the fruits of his work… doesn’t make sense to me
ReplyDeleteKnowing by known fruits is the discernment tool the Lord gives us-
I don’t know him personally but the facts of the fruits attest to his good
plus since I have listened to some of his key speeches. Warsaw, UN, davos - I think maybe the “personal “ “don’t like him as a person” bleats are not really credible
I'm not sure I follow. It seems you're suggesting that I must either like everything about Trump and thus can like anything he does, or I must not like Trump and therefore cannot like anything he does. That's what I'm getting from your observation, which seems strange to me. I think one can say 'I don't like Trump, but it's good he rescued those kids from a burning building' and not have an issue. The same would, therefore, go with things like helping the economy or crippling ISIS or similar accomplishments.
DeleteTrump is about Trump, and loyalty only runs one way--to him. His PAC raised scads of cash and spent virtually none of it on the loyalists who botched what should have been winnable campaigns. Not that said loyalists would likely have won, given their weaknesses, but still.
ReplyDeleteIf I want to vote for a billionaire (maybe...?) with Twitter hot takes, I'll write in Musk. At least he wouldn't be a lame duck still ranting about the past.
Musk strikes me the same as Trump. I got tired of hearing the press heap endless adoration on Musk back in the day, before he became Enemy #2 for buying Twitter. But neither seem interested in any real, solid, foundational beliefs where governing the country is concerned.
DeleteAs for Trump, you are right. He sees everyone's job as bowing before him. In a dose of irony, I've never seen a modern leader with less loyalty from his followers than Trump has. It could almost become a new state in the union, people by former aids and staff who have turned on him. That disconnect alone is enough to make me question is credentials.