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A Year Aboard the Trump Train: A View from the Caboose
A few days before the 2016 presidential election, I posted a piece here on Ricochet titled “The Dismal Choice,” in which I lamented having to choose between two candidates so manifestly deficient in traits I believed essential to the position. But faced with that choice, I voted for Mr. Trump, reasoning that in a Trump presidency there was at least a sliver of a chance that some conservative principles might be advanced, while the alternative offered no such hope. I compared the decision to that facing a driver heading down a mountain road when his brakes fail. He can steer into the mountainside or drive off the cliff, with the former offering certain death and the latter offering a chance, however slight, of surviving the fall.
Now, here we are, 13 months into a Trump administration. I confess to still having the occasional moment of panic when I see a headline or hear a report on the radio and say to myself, “Oh, dear Lord, Donald Trump is President of the United States.” But those moments pass quickly and I say to myself, “Thank you, God, that Hillary Clinton is not President of the United States.”
President Trump’s election has ignited something of a civil war among conservatives, even to the point of disagreement of what makes a person “conservative.” To me, a conservative is one who works to advance conservative principles. The precise definition of which may be somewhat elastic, but if in the fall of 2016 there had been a poll among people who identified as conservatives and they were asked if they would support a candidate who, in his first year in office, would cut taxes, improve military readiness, support law enforcement, appoint originalist judges to the federal courts, slash regulation of business, rout ISIS from its territory, announce the movement of our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and get rid of Obamacare’s individual mandate, my guess is that such a candidate would have found wide support.
All of these things and more have come to pass. We have James Mattis heading the Defense Department, Steven Mnuchin at Treasury, Betsy DeVos at Education, and a host of other capable men and women installed in the Cabinet, and while the media work themselves up into a frothing lather about the president’s latest juvenile tweet or ill-considered remark, these people quietly go about the business of making the government work. My favorite on the administration roster is UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, a Jeane Kirkpatrick for our time, who has taken the “kick me” sign off the United States and is unafraid to stand before the assembled kleptocrats and anti-Semites (many of whom would sooner slit their wrists than leave the posh life of Manhattan and return to the hell-holes whence they came) and tell them where they can shove it.
I don’t watch as much news or listen to as much talk radio as I once did, having adopted the policy of ignoring anyone who has nothing good to say about President Trump as well as anyone who has nothing bad to say about him. This policy excludes all of the cable news networks, all of which have shamed themselves to varying degrees. I don’t miss them in the least, and I now have more time to spend on other, more productive pursuits.
If you’ll indulge another transportation analogy, the last year reminds me of my first visit to New York in 1985. I was a young cop and my finances were lean, as were those of the friends whom I had come to visit. Our mode of transportation about town was the subway, which was loud, uncomfortable, and which brought us into close association with some people we sooner would have avoided. But it always delivered us to the place we wanted to go, more or less on schedule. As my friends came to enjoy financial success (more than that enjoyed by a cop), on later visits I was sometimes treated to a ride with a car service, which was quiet, smooth, and isolated from the hoi polloi packed into the trains down there on the subway.
I suspect that a Hillary Clinton presidency would have been like a ride with a car service. The media, today so keenly attuned to any perceived misstep from President Trump or anyone close to him, would have continued in the torpor they enjoyed for the previous eight years, and we would have been continually reassured that the ride was quiet and smooth as we sped along toward downtown – when what we wanted was to go uptown. As it is, we are down on the subway with all the noise, the stench, and the people whose company is sometimes difficult to enjoy.
But we’re going in the right direction, and isn’t that what matters?
Published in Politics
This says it all.
Bingo! Well said.
The electorate wants a cut of the Keynesian graft or they want it “fixed”. They are sick of Cultural Marxism.
#MAGA
“I don’t watch as much news or listen to as much talk radio as I once did, having adopted the policy of ignoring anyone who has nothing good to say about President Trump as well as anyone who has nothing bad to say about him.” Same. Also true for me of some of Ricochet’s contributors who are too giddy or too hostile when it comes to Trump.
It’s been my mantra for the last year+.
Ditto.
If we don’t look at the debt bomb we are going as well as could be imagined in a non-Hillary presidency.
This was the Flight 93 election for me and I was prepared to leave for greener pastures where docs are wanted.
Absolutely. “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” I’ll take the good, thank you very much.
Obviously not. Support for Trump means you are part of a personality cult. Saying he fights means you are just being Tribal.
At least according to an Editor at Large from National Review. Any they are the guardians of conservatism, right?
In the middle of 2016 I opined that the out of touch pundits would dry up and float away in to obscurity. In truth, their readership in the conservative community has dropped along with the respect they were once afforded.
Being so stubbornly blind because of a president’s character issues is an indication that they don’t give a damn about the plight of working Americans which makes them what they always were all along, snobs.
Since we’re talking transportation…
Jack.
As a retired English teacher, I have to ask: Where did you learn to write so well?
Kent
From reading a lot, I suppose. And of course from good English teachers. Thank you for the kind words.
You are always a pleasure to read.
Thank you very much.
In between Jack and @dougwatt on Ricochet, perhaps aspiring writers should choose the police academy over the English department.
If you liked this piece, I would recommend some of his earlier work. This piece, for example:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/218698/crazy-jack-dunphy
Reminds me of classic war reporting like Ernie Pyle.
Writing police reports helps because you are writing a narrative for the DA’s office, and your report is also available to a defense attorney. There is one thing that you don’t put in a police report, that is your personal opinion. The oral board examination is also part of the equation. They are looking for candidates that are articulate. Can you articulate your decision to act, will you be able to testify in front of a grand jury, and will you be able to testify in court.
Being well read is important as well.
So last night The NY Times reported that–inSept 2017!- 8 months into his Presidency! Our own “intelligence” agencies paid some Rusuan fakes $100K of our tax money in a scam where they were promised personal porn on Trump.
It’s like an auto-immune disease, where the cells of a body turn against it.
AND YET: today Rasmussen reports a 49% approval rating for Trump…
Is it really possible we are seeing the people comprehending the truth about what our government has become?
At our ages, where is that? I researched this in 2011. Australia and Belize would not take a then 54 year old Doc without substantial assets. Denmark and Argentina and Czechia, I can’t speak the language. Even Hawaii, where I have had a license for 9 years and where Docs are in short supply, is inhospitable.
Jack, you had me at “Hillary Clinton is not president.”
Thanks for stating so well how I think a lot of us, who voted reluctantly for Trump, have felt the past year.
Yes, it is like that, sort of. But I would still love to take a roll of duct tape and use it to immobilize those Trumpian fingers.
Stop worrying about the debt bomb. The FED has to and will keep interest rates at zero forever!
The threat to raise interest rates is a total bluff- It is impossible to raise interest rates significantly.
RufusRJones:
“Make interest an outdated concept of the past.”
They have already done that.
Let the FED stop collecting taxes and just print the money they need- That is what Obama did
We could just have the Fed pay for everything and let the IRS control inflation. Make interest an outdated concept of the past.
Ernie Pyle is a hero of mine. I’m humbled by the comparison, but thank you. And I still think of that family often.
I think there are lots and lots of us out there, and I don’t see us jumping to anyone the Democrats are touting for 2020.
Well, I really have nothing bad to say about him. He gets things done. The right things. He’s trying to hit the “undo” button on the Obama administration. He’s not afraid of being called politically incorrect, in fact he relishes the opportunity to challenge the conventional wisdom of the media/left on every occasion.
A lot of conservatives got hung up on things he said about Bush43 and the Iraq War. But when he took office Obama had put Iraq back into the “L” column, and now it’s turned pretty much as “W” as could be expected for that hellhole.
Yes, I said “hellhole.” Sometimes the President and I use different nouns. It’s not a major difference.
It particularly galls me when certain sanctimonious types on the right join the anti-Trump chorus on the subject of morality and personal conduct. Fact is, most people don’t want a choir boy or pencil-necked geek in that job. Instead, give me this tough, New York-hardened, tabloid-immunized, big picture-savvy giant, a colossus of capitalism, a guilt-free billionaire. Yeah, that comes with a big ego. You want to make something of it? Fact is, most Republicans are more than a little peeved with the Democrats’ 50-year flight to the far left, and President Trump channels our anger. Not to mention the millions of (often reluctantly Republican) blue collar workers who Donald Trump has always employed and identified with all his life.
Okay, I get it, no one in the conservative intelligentsia has ever shaved Vince McMahon’s head bald on national television. No one on the staff of City Journal (which during the campaign blasted The Donald for despoiling the Manhattan skyline with his eponymous Tower) watches as much television as our President. But that’s the point, he’s a man of the masses, and they’re off making a policy journal look like a work of fine art. (Great two-parter on Clarence Thomas in the last two issues but let’s remember who put himself in a position to say “you’re hired” to SCOTUS justices.)
So I won’t say anything bad about our President. Maybe for half a second, I wondered if his first proffer on DACA gave too much away, but he’s the one who knows all about negotiating, and it’s not like he’s been a squish on immigration.
Okay, I’ll say this. I think he listens too much to his daughter. She’s clearly a very liberal lady. But the fact is, she is certainly a lady, and it’s difficult to dislike her. I wish her well. Maybe, in around say, 22 years, she’ll become the next Democrat elected President.
I don’t see what Trump gains by having his kids involved in policy. Maybe they are okay as spokesmen sometimes. Kushner looks like a real mess in the due diligence department, too.
You very much sum up my feelings. During the 2016 campaign I used a firefighter’s analogy very similar to yours: I am on the third floor of a building with an uncontrolled fire; I know the fire (Hillary) will kill me and I choose to jump from a window (voting Trump) in the hope that I survive.
A funny unintended side effect is that I am now the guy from a joke falling from a building saying “so far, so good”.
But I am so much happier with the results than I ever imagined I could be.
I think of it as “liking the message, but still wanting to shoot the messenger.”
When November 8, 2016 dawned, I only had three things left to throw at the existential nightmare of a Hillary Clinton presidency: a vote for a reality TV show host and these two middle fingers.
I’m glad it worked out better than I had hoped.