Sudden Death Overtime

 

I’ve never signed up for the ‘quote of the day’ because I’m averse to making commitments. I spent the last two months in Utah and just returned to Arizona. I used the above title because I got motivated to write a post today as we enter the last 100 days of suspense waiting to know who will lead America in the next four years. I wanted to write a post detailing how much living through this period of the Donald Trump presidency has meant to me personally. The title is from a quote from a speech I once heard by a former cabinet secretary, but I cannot remember who he was. But he was in his early eighties as I am and he viewed that as being in ‘sudden death overtime’ based on his view that an average life was composed of four twenty year quarters and anything more was a bonus period. He was comparing this to how the professional football league handled games when the score was tied after four quarters.

When I got back to Arizona I went to my bookshelf for some entertaining reading. I have many Agatha Christie paperbacks (46, I just counted them), most of which I haven’t read, so I decided I should and I picked out one. I picked one written in 1954, originally titled “So Many Steps to Death” and republished as “Destination Unknown” and began reading it last night.

I spent some of the early parts of the day watching parts of Attorney General Barr’s testimony before Nadler’s House Judiciary Committee and reading and commenting on today’s posts by @eherring and @susanquinn on that hearing. I went back to read my Christie novel for a while. Then I closed my eyes for a few minutes. When I opened them and thought for a few minutes for some unknown reason I related the two titles of the novel to my life today in the Trump era. Stay with me now and I will try to make sense of this.

Here I have made it to overtime, have no idea how many steps to death or whether that event will be sudden. The Trump-era has reached a stage where the destination is unknown, certainly to me. But I can tell you one thing for certain: Donald Trump as President has revealed information to me that I would never have known without him in that position; the disgusting behavior of the House Democrats in today’s hearing is just the latest example. I also never had an awareness of the level of deceitful behavior within the establishment Republicans that has been revealed by Trump as President. I left federal government employment in 1994 after 23 years, the last 17 at the Treasury Department, all related to the payment and collection of money. I was a manager of financial operations, but nothing political in my bureau, not even a political appointee. I had a sense that federal government bureaucracy was not something I admired and figured out it was high on the list of desirables for Democrats. I never did figure out that it was also high on the list of desirables for political Republicans, until Trump.

In the 2016 campaign, I was originally a supporter of Ted Cruz. I remember in the 2016 Utah Republican Caucus, when it was looking like a contest between Cruz and Trump, I, and others in the caucus asked Senator Mike Lee, who is in that precinct so was in the caucus with us about Trump. Mike didn’t know much either. But, of course, there was much negative going around. You may recall much of the media was enjoying this at the time and giving Donald Trump plenty of positive reviews and lots of attention. Once Trump was clearly set to get the nomination, we had lots of interaction on this topic here at Ricochet. I was reluctant to support Trump and was totally in a learning mode regarding who he was and what policies he advocated. It didn’t take long to realize most of the Washington establishment did not like Trump as the Republican nominee for POTUS. And there was some effort to figure out a way to deny him that role but to no avail. After observing Trump and Clinton through the campaign and their debates and knowing some of Clinton’s political history, I decided on Trump.

As the campaign unfolded, I learned a lot about Donald Trump but what was amazing was what I learned about others. There was a real sense of shared ownership of the federal government by the establishment Democrats and Republicans and to the exclusion of others. They were joined in this by most of the media, television, radio, and press. Following his election, there were several ineffective efforts to undo the election itself through state vote recounts and attempts to persuade electoral college electors to change their votes. We have now found out that there were efforts within the Obama Administration to deny Trump the presidency and then, as an insurance policy, to have a plan to disrupt a Trump Administration to make it ineffective and to impeach him, if possible. These are all things that should never happen and Donald Trump has revealed that such was very possible.

Throughout the Trump presidency then he has had to contend with an established bureaucracy and Congress and Judiciary operating as what we choose to call the ‘swamp’ to make the Executive Branch ineffective. The Mainstream Media has largely joined in this. Many influential ‘Republicans’ have joined as well. And the technological giants of social media have more recently shown how they can work against the sitting President and his supporters, as well.

So I decided to write this post today, while I still have a chance,  to thank President Trump for the enlightenment I have received because he is President and to wish him the very best outcome in the coming election. I also want to thank Ricochet and its members for this platform that has been a major piece of the process of learning all these things that I never knew before.

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  1. RushBabe49 Thatcher
    RushBabe49
    @RushBabe49

    Outsiders are not welcome in the Federal Swamp and that Swamp has made a concerted effort to ruin President Trump at every opportunity, continuously, for most of the past four years. But they have not been successful, have they?  I voted for him and will do so again, because he is a fighter, hitting back at the toxic media and democrat party as often as they hit him. 

    I have spent the past four years listening to Rush Limbaugh, and his commentary has been right 100% of the time. Even if you can’t stand him, I recommend you pay attention because he will reinforce your optimism about America when that has been in mighty short supply lately. 

    • #1
  2. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Bob Thompson: So I decided to write this post today, while I still have a chance, to thank President Trump for the enlightenment I have received because he is POTUS and to wish him the very best outcome in the coming election. I also want to thank Ricochet and its members for this platform that has been a major piece of the process of learning all these things that I never knew before. 

    Amen, brother!

    Bob Thompson: There was a real sense of shared ownership of the federal government by the establishment Democrats and Republicans and to the exclusion of others.

    In Illinois, they call it the Combine.

    • #2
  3. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    I think of life more like a boxing match. Can we go fifteen (Yes, I know the modern standard was reduced to twelve. Wimps!) rounds with life? Now, I’m not sure how long each round lasts? Six years? Ten years? At some point, there’s going to be a knock-out.

    • #3
  4. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    Now wouldn’t you know, in this day and times, I would pick an Agatha Christie novel different from any I have read in the past. The protagonist is not Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple but this one is a total novice impersonating the dead wife of a scientist suspected of defecting to the Communists. Her real character name is Hillary. I’m half way through. Communists and Hillary, everywhere. 

    • #4
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