Trump: Good, Bad, and Ugly or PMI--Plus, Minus, Interesting

 It's sad to see the immaturity that abounds in our country. People generalize too much, and vitriol is ever-present in so many statements. Let’s be real. Seldom is anything cut and dry. People succumb to the availability heuristic bias too often. What they have heard repeated time and again or is in the forefront of their minds often sabotages their own analytics.

Not all Democrats are socialists, but some are. Not all Republicans are MAGA Republicans, but some are. I don’t like what the Trump haters have done to the MAGA slogan. Really, how can you argue with making America great? Many do.

Too many people think that if you like what Trump is doing, you idolize the man. I don’t. He has his good, bad, and ugly traits as we all do.

I decided to break down my analysis of him into a PMI matrix. That’s Plus, Minus, and Interesting. I voted to elect Trump as President three times, but I don’t plan on nominating him for sainthood. Here’s the matrix. 

PLUS	MINUS	INTERESTING
PRO AMERICA	USES “I” TOO MUCH	EGO IS A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD. TOO MUCH ALL ABOUT ME EVEN THOUGH ACCOMPLISHMENTS BENEFIT ALL.
DEDICATED	DISTRACTED BY PERSONALITIES	BETTER THIS TERM
UNSELFISH	SUCCESS ATTRACTS ATTACKS	DEDICATION INSPIRES SUPERIOR PERFORMANCE AMONG CABINET.
HARDWORKING	INVITES THE AD HOMINEM WHEN WORK ETHIC CANNOT BE ATTACKED BY OPPONENTS.	AMERICA SEES WHAT AN ELECTED OFFICIAL’S PERFORMANCE SHOULD BE.
DEMANDING	SOME CAN’T KEEP UP.	WHAT IF THIS LEVEL OF INTENSITY BECAME THE STANDARD FOR SERVICE!
GETS RESULTS	AMERICANS WITH POLITICS AS USUAL MINDSET NOT READY FOR BOUNDARIES TO BE PUSHED	MUCH MORE SHOULD BE EXPECTED FROM FUTURE PRESIDENTS AND PUBLIC SERVANTS.
NOT A CAREER POLITICIAN	HAS EVOKED HATE FROM MANY BY NOT PLAYING BY THE RULES INSTITUTED BY THE RULING CLASS.	WHAT IF WE JUDGED THE EFFICACY OF OFFICIALS BY RESULTS, NOT INTENTION OR RHETORIC?
NOT IN THIS FOR THE MONEY	THE RULES OF THE GAME SAY IT’S ALL ABOUT THE MONEY.	WHAT IF EVERY ELECTED OFFICIAL STOPPED MAKING THEIR MILLIONS IN OFFICE AND SERVED THE ELECTORATE?
BRINGS ON FREE HELP	PEOPLE MAKING MONEY BY USING THEIR OFFICE DISCARD ALL ETHICS TO GET RID OF THIS GUY.	WHAT IF ALL U.S. ELECTED OFFICIALS PUT AMERICA AHEAD OF SELF-INTERESTS, SPECIAL INTERESTS, AND FOREIGN INTERESTS?
EXPOSED FRAUD ON A WIDE SCALE BASIS	INTENSIFIED THE TDS MANTRA TO PROTECT ONGOING SCAMS.	WE MIGHT HAVE NO DEBT IF THIS HAD BEEN DONE 50 YEARS AGO.
PERSEVERENCE	TOO MANY PEOPLE WANT COMFORT OVER TRUTH	I HAVE TO ASK HOW MUCH MORE CAN HE TAKE? THEN I SEE THAT HE HAS SOMETHING—A LOT—LEFT IN HIS TANK.
HAS OWN SYNDROME NAMED AFTER HIM	HAS OWN SYNDROME NAMED AFTER HIM	THOSE WITH TDS LOSE ABILITY TO REASON IN MANY THINGS, NOT JUST TRUMP ISSUES.
EFFICACY!!! NEVER HAS A PRESIDENT DELIVERED ON CAMPAIGN PROMISES LIKE THIS ONE. NEVER!	CREATES HATE AND RESISTANCE FROM MANY IN ELECTED OFFICE. THE GIG IS UP. NOW THE PEOPLE WILL EXPECT THE SAME FROM ALL.	WHAT IS WE CELEBRATED HIS VICTORIES AS A NATION THE WAY WE ONCE DID FOR OTHER PRESIDENTS. WHAT IF WE JUST ALL BECAME AMERICANS ONCE AGAIN.

 

For much of my adult life, Ronald Reagan was my favorite president. He was the great communicator. He also did some things I didn't like. Not allowing the Marines that he sent into Beirut to have ammunition was chief among them. He was the Commander in Chief, and the death of 241 Marines on 23 October 1983 rests on his shoulders. I am more disappointed that General P.X. Kelly didn’t call him on this, even if it would cost him his job. You hate to have to say a Marine officer needed to grow a set, but he did.  Still, Reagan was the ultimate commander, and this tragedy falls squarely on him.

In the final analysis, I liked Reagan because he sought to reduce government spending and government control over American citizens' lives. In the end, he had little efficacy.

I thought Jimmy Carter was a failure as president. His weakness emboldened the Iranians to seize our embassy in Iran. The Marines there were not allowed to defend the embassy. The Iranians attacked the Russian Embassy about the same time. The attackers were repelled with machine guns. I love the example that Carter set after office. It was good to see Christ in him.

As for presidential performance, he was not effective.

Two Bushes and a Clinton get lumped into a politics-as-usual category. None knew efficacy.

Obama was unique. He won on a platform of “Hope and Change.” He delivered on change—little that I saw as good —but hope was just a tagline. Efficacy was as impotent as most of his predecessors.

Biden was the puppet in a coup d'état. Twenty million votes didn’t come from increased voter registration. Conspiracy theory, you say? Consider the resistance to investigating (searching for the truth) anything related to the matter. What is the sine qua non for a coup? You must succeed. YOU MUST SUCCEED! There is no alternative. You do what you must to hold power.

If you can’t bring yourself to see this, consider how little consideration was given to an overwhelming popular-vote victory for a man who spent most of the campaign at home, afraid of a virus (or having to speak and think at the same time). Yes, the vocal blunders were common even in 2020.

Were we duped and the votes manufactured, or was Biden’s mundane campaign so impressive that 20 million voters never seen before emerged from the woodwork? Neither alternative is desirable.

If the goal of the Biden presidency was to weaken America, he maxed out the scoring system. As far as doing his job, he was pitifully ineffective, if he was even the man in charge.

And then we come to Trump, Donald J. Trump. I didn’t like him at first. He sometimes pushed the limits of civility. He had a checkered past. He just didn’t fit the presidential model that mediocrity had produced.

Then I saw that business as usual would just mean more self-serving elected officials and public servants. Once he took office, it was clear this man was different. This man did things differently. This man got results, not for himself, but for America. Love him or hate him, he pegged the efficacy meter.

Donald Trump didn’t need politics to get rich. He was already there. His second term began with a blitzkrieg. He hit the deck running and never slowed down. Fraud and wasteful government spending were identified like never before. The armed forces were properly equipped. One nation after another got in line with fair trade. The United States was no longer an easy mark for fast money in international commerce.

Love him or hate him, his efficacy was top shelf.

I could go into many different aspects of the aforementioned presidencies. Those listed are those that stayed with me. I’m sure that you have some good, bad, and ugly perspectives on those in your lifetime.

I liked Kennedy. I knew he was an American patriot, a Commissioned Officer, and a war hero. I was young and politically naïve then, and President Kennedy didn’t live long once in office. I was older for the Johnson Administration and had some political wherewithal for the Nixon years, but I can’t be as analytical with them as I can with those that followed.

But Donald Trump is the man in the arena right now. I thought some analysis might benefit what has become a melee of vitriol in the public discussion.

Adolescent America

 A pastor visited a church congregation where his friend played the piano. The piano was dead center in the front of the sanctuary. Yes, it was in front of the cross, the altar, and the baptismal, and the pianist didn’t like it. The church leadership refused his request to move the piano somewhere less central so it wouldn't supplant the visual cues many believers find helpful in worship.

It was a couple of years before the pastor was able to attend this church service again. Most pastors have their own Sunday morning commitments and attending a service in another congregation is a rare treat. This time the piano was off to the side. After the service, the pastor asked his friend how he got the piano off to the side.

His answer: “One inch a Sunday.”

One inch a Sunday.

Let’s turn to the midterm elections. This is an election cycle short on issues but significant—very significant—on the future of liberty. Some states have a real chance of electing socialists to a variety of offices.

America seems to be struggling through adolescence. A sizeable number of Americans, mostly younger Democrats, think socialism is the solution, even though they can’t articulate the problem.

Socialism sounds cool. Each according to his ability and each according to his needs sounds pseudo-biblical. Ronald Reagan said it best. The only place where socialism might work is in heaven where they don’t need it or hell where they already have it.

But it sounds so cool. Everybody gets what they need. No problem, right?

Right, except that the quest for power is much stronger than an unsuccessful philosophy. Power abhors a vacuum, and that is the only place that socialism might succeed.

But capitalism seems unfair. The rich seem to get richer, and the poor get poorer. The latter part seems contrived, since the poorest American is far richer than over half the world’s population. Being richer than 70 or 80 percent of the world's people wouldn’t be much of a stretch.

But socialism is about bettering people’s lives. Our Constitution does not do that. No matter how many times people repeat it, it’s just not true. I suggest rereading our most fundamental document. It’s right up front: Promote the general welfare. This republic has one of its founding principles as promoting better lives for its people.

It’s not perfect. Things move slowly. Some things just don’t seem fair, but in the end, we still make progress without surrendering our liberty. Ditching slow progress for the illusion of progress at the expense of liberty is immature.

It seems that America is struggling through adolescence. When a child goes through adolescence, they reach a point where it seems like their parents became geniuses overnight. The eighteen- or twenty-year-old kid asks their parent, "How did you get so smart?"

Illusions and delusions, fantasies without facts or substance, give way to reality and common sense. Life is no longer a video game. The values those old, unreasonable people known as parents espouse suddenly make sense.

When the nation is delusional, it risks losing liberty not only for this generation but for many that follow. It will not be reclaimed without paying a significant price in American blood.

But what could it hurt to see what happens in a few states? If it doesn’t work out there, they could always vote the other way next time.  Really?

Consider the piano that moved an inch a Sunday. It’s the How to Boil a Frog story. It’s an old one. I probably heard it for the first time fifty years ago.

Put a frog in boiling water, and it jumps out. No way that creature is staying in that water. Get another frog (you won't catch that first frog again) and put it in a pot of room-temperature water, then slowly turn up the heat about one degree every couple of minutes. In a couple of hours, you will have boiled frog.

It was just a degree here and there. It just felt a little warm. It’s still warm; it even seems a little warmer than before. Must be climate change, perhaps El Niño. Nothing to see here.

No more roleplaying the rationalization process of the frog in the pot of water. Small changes that go unnoticed or are otherwise dismissed become big, sometimes irreversible changes.

That is the case with adolescent America, except most voters should have left their juvenile phase long ago. The something-for-nothing lure has worked for so long, and is branching out with new venues.

But I hate Trump. How can I vote for anyone he endorsed? This might sting a little. Suck it up, buttercup!

You’re an adult now. You don’t get to vote for homecoming queen anymore. This isn’t the student council election where the main, perhaps only, issue is popularity. This is your nation's future. It is the future of your children and their children. That should be enough to move beyond hate to the real consequences of how you vote.

Today, you have actual liberty—more than most of the world. In twenty years, those in power will promise you a little liberty in return for not rioting. It won’t be delivered, and riots will be met with domestic violence from the unapproachable government on a scale not seen since Pol Pot.

Two decades from now, adolescent America will awaken and wonder how those dreaded, conservative, even MAGA people knew this would happen. How could they be right and I miss it?

They lived lives that loved liberty and did what was needed to preserve it for their children’s children. They lived with eyes wide open, studied history, and many put their lives on the line for a place like no other in history. They saw that power indeed corrupts, and the model ordained and established in our Constitution was the best the world has ever known at keeping government authority in the hands of the people.  

Individual liberty is not just doing what you want. It’s doing what is right and necessary without being subjugated to a person or council who decides what is right and worth doing without your input.

America is far from perfect, but before the baby goes out with the bathwater, we might want to note the incredible progress this nation has made, while remaining a nation of the people, by the people, and for the people, at least for a little while longer.

C’mon kids. Grow up a little, at least for November. You can resume your TDS rants in December and still have your liberty intact for Christmas and New Year's.

I know adulting isn’t always fun, but try it this November. The republic, your liberty, and the lives of your grandchildren’s children are at stake.

Be Careful What You Ask For...

 I remember sitting in a class in the—you guessed it—the Classroom Building at the Oklahoma State University in the late 1970s. Each school had its own buildings and classrooms, but the Classroom Building served as an overflow facility.  It was also across from the student union. Between them was an area suitable for public demonstrations, and the demonstrations at the time were by Iranian Students. Oklahoma State had many of them.

The chants were, “Down, down, down, down with the Shah.” The chants repeated without variation for hours. After a few days, the natives showed up. By natives, I mean mostly those with a little redneck in them. They encircled the protesters with twice their number, crossed their arms, and said nothing.

There was no violence. The Iranian students just decided that attending one class this month might be in their best interests. Protests became fewer for the rest of the year, but the protesters got what they asked for, and the liberty they knew briefly while in the United States would not await them at home.

Be careful what you ask for; you might just get it. The nation of Iran is pushing fifty years of subjugating its people in a self-serving theocracy.

For the past several years, the socialist movement in this country has grown much more than I thought was possible among liberty-loving Americans. At first, I thought it consisted of a small minority of undereducated, overly pampered crazies. Plenty of them are, but others with mainstream jobs, families, and two dogs are buying into the money-for-nothing offers. Few seem interested in doing an actual cost-benefit analysis, case study, or just talking to people who once lived in a socialist country.

No magic pill cures society's ills. Human governments are all flawed, but those rooted in liberty and individual rights have the best chance of improving lives, families, and nations because people want to improve their own lives and those of their posterity. Neither governmental authority nor its permission is required. 

Socialism takes authority from the people it claims to serve and dispenses privileges and resources as it sees fit. For a short time, it must appease the masses who surrendered their freedom, but sooner than most realize, the things once promised are no longer part of the conversation. To disagree runs contrary to the common good. There can be no public discussion as the government is always right.

And just who is the government? Those poised to seize power at any opportunity. The whole Marxist philosophy, which sounds good in some ethereal scenario, is eviscerated by the drive for power. It’s human nature, and without rights residing in the individual, nothing within the nation itself can resist it.

If you vote for socialism by whatever name it’s labeled this year, you are spending the inheritance of liberty of your children’s children. If they ever know liberty, they will pay in their own blood first.

I plan to leave my grandkids a nation that values liberty.

For those so convinced socialism is the way forward, be careful what you ask for; you might just get it. I pray you don't capriciously dismiss the blood that was shed for what you now enjoy

Be careful what you ask for--you might just get it.

How can the government of Iran still hold out?

 

How can the government of Iran still hold out? What keeps them going?  More on that shortly.

It’s time to get Donald Trump out of the way in this Iran business. Let’s eliminate the problem.

But I thought you approved of his attacks on Iran. I do, but we have to deal with the Trump issue to be effective.

OK, but how?

The Congress of the United States must declare war on Iran. Yes, I said declare war. It’s been over three-quarters of a century since this nation has done that. It’s time that Congress steps up and uses this power, which resides with other enumerated powers in Article I, Section 8 of our Constitution.

How can the government of Iran still hold out? What keeps them going? 

The Fifth Column operating in this country giving them hope is what keeps them going. I’m not talking sleeper cells. I am talking about the Democratic Party and TDS.

Just about all of the old timers in the party have taken a hard line against Iran repeatedly, at least verbally, until Donald Trump took action. That’s when the TDS kicks in, and we see that Iran’s greatest ally and its hope reside in this nation.

How do you resolve the fact that you hate Trump and want to stop Iran’s continued funding and sponsoring of worldwide terrorism?

Declare war on Iran. That makes it an American deal, not partisan politics. Once Congress declares war on this enemy of America and freedom around the world, the Trump haters can keep on hating him and criticizing him for not kicking Iran’s butt with everything we have.

They can still hate him without aiding the enemy. Up to this point, both the Iranian leadership and the Democratic Party have been in lockstep with this precept, often, and perhaps erroneously, attributed to Sun Tzu, but surely on the mark.

“An evil man will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes.”

That’s the course both of our nations are on, and that course only brings comfort to our Iranian enemy. It’s time to stop hating America. Keep your hate for Trump if you must, but stop hating your country and fellow countrymen because you have no viable plan that benefits America.

People are fed up with Democrats throwing our country under the bus in hopes of holding on to power, and if possible, supplanting our constitutional republic with whatever form of government keeps them in power.

Declaring war sends the message to the IRGC that you no longer have friends in America, at least none who will destroy their own country because they hate one man.

Declare war and pursue peace in the region not only by strength but by unity. Trump has produced unity in the region, but the Trump-Haters insist on division on the home front.

It’s not partisan. It’s patriotic.

We should not declare war lightly, but half a century of Death to America is enough. Enough!

What can I say to my fellow countrymen and lawmakers who are governed by this hate-Trump epidemic?

GROW A SET!

It’s finally time to serve those who elected you and stand with America and against our enemies.

GROW A SET!

Declare War on Iran!