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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
It’s all that matters to me.
Amen to that brother Dunphy. And at this point I am happy to add, thank God that Donald Trump is President of the United States.
My old friends in Raleigh texted me after midnight Election Day, 2016. Every one was something like, “Can you believe it?” or “Trump won!” or “Thank Gawd!” I woke my wife (normally an impossible task, as she expects me to want spousal services that time of night) and told her the election results. She freaked out in joy as much as I did.
But the best thing is, Trump went well beyond the “Not Hillary” label. He proved you don’t have to be a true believer in conservatism in order to get conservative results.
Take note, conservative Republicans in the House and Senate. If a swarthy, died-in-the-wool, Sharia-loving Muslim ever got elected and delivered the way Trump has, he’d get my vote. I want conservative results. Not conservative politicians, not conservative promises, but conservative results.
You got that, Lindsey? I live in South Carolina . . .
And — according to plenty of folks here (and even a few who write at NR) — any expression of dissatisfaction or frustration with the president makes one a member of the #Resistance, intent on bringing down the president at all costs.
But you know what, @bryangstephens? Maybe you and I should both care less about arguments like those.
As always, right on the mark. I shared you discomfort with Trump, although, I chose to not vote for him and did a write-in instead. Like you, I am feeling very comfortable with the direction we are going, and I also avoid those who can find no good and those who can find no evil in our current president. Everyday I thank whatever gods may be that Hillary isn’t our president.
I giggled when I saw Donald Trump about to give the State of the Union… it is really unbelievable still.
But he’s doing fine, he’s been treated horribly, and will deserve a second term because half his first has been taken up by silly accusations wherein the FBI framed him with treason.
This I have known from the beginning: Donald Trump is not a Russian Spy.
I’ve seen something similar to your icon:
http://www.crochetwordcharts.com/Lucille-Ball-Historic-Icon-Portrait-Word-Chart_p_220.html
Great choice, Padawan. My mother (age 89) loved Lucille Ball, and I grew up watching I Love Lucy on black-and-white TV.
Again, great choice!
Oh, and Trump is definitely not a Russian spy. Hillary is the one who made deals with the Russians (hope they don’t turn uranium Hillary sold into nuke bombs for Iran).
Besides, what spy is known by 99% percent of the population because of a reality TV show, and has been in the MSM and the tabloid press for over twenty years?
Not a very good spy if you ask me . . .