For me, it started with Russian collusion.
That’s when everything started feeling weird in some way it hadn’t felt weird before. And, apparently, the whole idea of Donald Trump colluding with Russia to fix an election, was based on an off-handed joke he made about maybe the Russians being able to find Hillary Clinton’s 30-thousand emails. So, we decided Donald Trump – life long American icon – was a Russian asset, instead of focussing on those emails we still can’t find?
Mmmmkay.
And then, there was this moment when the President made a public statement that the former President had spied on his campaign. That’s Watergate, folks.
Instead of a vigorous investigation and anyone in the press taking seriously the claims of a sitting United States president, it was dismissed, out of hand, as an out-and-out lie.
But, was it a lie?
Don’t presidents have security clearances and access to all that information? Wouldn’t a claim like that be easy to prove or disprove pretty easily?
As it turned out, it WASN’T a lie. The former president HAD been listening in on Donald Trump’s campaign. Only, they’d been doing it through “legal” means, by using a loophole – basically, you listen to the guy on the other end of all the conversations. Some kind of semantic gyration like that. But the upshot of it was pretty much the same.
Those two instances were the first time my “patriotic” shell started to crack a little.
See, I’m a dyed-in-the-wool American. At least I used to be. I have preached the gospel of the American experiment for much of my life. My first record was called American Dreams, for Pete’s sake. And I’ve always been the defender of what I had believed was the greatest social experiment in the history of human kind.
Maybe I was right about that. Maybe not. Maybe it’s something in the middle.
But one thing I know for sure I was right about (especially, now) is my other dyed-in-the-wool belief; that human organizations – in fact, all living organisms – protect themselves to the death.
If you’re a Libertarian, you have a kind of pie-in-the-sky belief system about liberty and the state of man, etc. But you also kind of know that none of your beliefs will ever actually be tried. You relegate yourself to always be voting for something you’re not completely comfortable with. Sometimes, you’re not comfortable with it at all.
So, you go along, just hoping that a fraction of what you believe at least gets represented. But deep down, you know your ideas would work. Really work.
As Donald Trump operated in the White House, I watched far-fetched idea after far-fetched idea actually get implemented…and work. Slashing the corporate tax, something nobody dared even talk about prior to Trump, happened. And it kicked off an economic rocket ship never before seen in this (or any) country.
We didn’t just live through the best economy in American history. We had about two years of the best economy in WORLD history.
Prison reform got signed. This has long been on the Libertarian wish list. Nobody should be doing time for buying weed.
The MMA (Music Modernization Act) got signed. This has been on music creators’ list for decades.
Suddenly, there was relative peace in the Middle East. Why? Well, one big reason was moving the American embassy to Jerusalem, and basically making a statement to the world, as to which side America was staunchly on. That last part seems to be the important part.
If you make a living talking about how bad things are in the world, someone making them better is a threat to your survival. This is something I realized pretty early on in the Trump administration.
See, it’s like this…
If you get a $300k-a-year job, working for a think tank that analyzes the problems in the middle east, and comes up with viable solutions to fixing them…if the Middle East ever actually gets fixed, you’re out of a job.
And I started to realize, about a year into the Trump presidency, that maybe the job of president, all these years, has been to manage the chaos – not fix the problems. Fixing the problems leaves people with nothing to do and too much time on their hands. It strips them of their purpose and leaves them wondering what to struggle against.
Meanwhile, we all had to sit and watch Robin Roberts interview Jusse Smollet with a straight face, acting like his claims were legit. Fine. A TV star lies. No big deal. But then, we watched George Stepanopoulos look across the table at a soon-to-be convicted felon, and actually entertain the notion that Brett Kavanah was the ring leader of “rape trains” (a phrase I’d never heard until then) in college. And nobody on the planet seemed to remember any of it.
It was this piece-by-piece exposing of the American bearacratic machine, in concert with the national press corps, that started to turn my entire way of looking that the world into something 180 degrees from what it had been prior.
By the time I was sitting in an Emergency Room, struggling to breathe from Covid, my life having been saved by a doctor who was willing to cross certain political lines, did I fully realize what was happening in the world.
Essentially, someone, somewhere, was playing for keeps.
Was I right about my concerns with Trump, back in 2015? As it turns out, none of it mattered. What was taking place was so much bigger than a presidential election. And it’s still the case.
Am I supporting Donald Trump on this second run for president?
I’m rooting for Trump the way we root for the small, scrappy underdog high-school football team playing the well-funded powerhouse top seed in the playoffs.
We’d love to see them shock the world. But every coach and every ref knows the powerhouse team has four college scholarships on the line, tonight. Scouts are in the stands. Millions of dollars are at stake. The fortunes of so many, hinge on this game going a certain way.
Unless the powerhouse team just lays down and doesn’t even try, this game is already decided. We all know it. And all it will take is about three key plays to make it so.
None of this is about Trump (the person) for me, anymore. But his presidency exposed a lot of things we cannot un-see or un-experience.
I guess I didn’t fully appreciate the power and ferocity of the American bureaucrat class. I didn’t realize who all would be willing to get their hands dirty to make sure this one guy never got close to the White House again.
As I learn about how our very food system is rigged – in concert with our government – to produce return customers (you can substitute everything from “healthcare” to “military action” to “light bulbs” to “senate seats” for “food system”) – I get an overwhelming sense of resignation.
I used to call it hopelessness. But not anymore.
I still have hope. Just not in the American government. Not in any president. Not in any contender for the office. And not even in the principles I have held so dearly to for so many years.
The last eight years have caused me to get smaller and more focussed on what’s directly in front of me – my own health, my own family, my own house.
Whether Trump wins or loses, in the fall, we still have to live with the knowledge of what everybody’s capable of, for the rest of our lives. That makes me sad but also not caring all that much about who happens to be running things at any given time.
I still love the idea of the American dream and the concept of freedom and liberty and the promise that every individual can have a shot at the life they envision.
But there are too many people on too many payrolls. Too much power is at stake. Too many secrets are in danger of being exposed.
You can’t fight City Hall. And the one guy who actually tried to do it, was taught a lesson: we’ll get you somewhere. If in the media, in congress. If not in congress, at the ballot box. If not at the ballot box, in the courts.
Pulling all that up by the roots may be an impossible task. And even if you do it, the people who make a million of dollars a year to prune trees, will be after you with pitchforks and lanterns.
R
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… and then the Trump-Biden debate happened…
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