Trump the Hero: triumphant or tragic or both? 182
What we find hardest to bear about this hugely frustrating, painfully devastating election result putting a senile corrupt crook into the presidency, is that so much good that President Trump did for America, both at home and abroad, will be undone. The bad men and women who did terrible harm in the Obama years will be back and doing more of it, even worse than before.
Under the regime looming up over us, as regulations are reinstated and taxes are raised, most Americans will be poorer. We will be less safe as a nation because our enemies, most notably China and Iran, will be strengthened. When, as seems probable, law and order is rubbished as a “white privilege” invention, and police, if allowed to exist at all, are stripped of effective powers, we will be less safe as individuals.
Worst of all, our freedom will be lost.
The glorious four years of the Trump presidency will have been a brief interlude in the decline of the West. However –
Donald Trump will always be one of the great heroes of American and World history.
Only – Eric Landrum asks at American Greatness – is he to be reckoned a triumphant or a tragic hero?
Landrum is not ready to give up hope that America (and so the World) might yet be saved from the Biden doom. But he regretfully concedes that even if saved, America will not be the same united Republic it was founded to be and has been since the end of the civil war.
Donald Trump is a hero. That’s an objective statement of fact that no fake news outlet or phony fact-check can change.
The only question remaining, then, is: Will Donald Trump be remembered as a triumphant hero, or a tragic hero?
Just as with 2016, the movie-like narrative of the 2020 election was building up to be yet another truly glorious comeback victory from the greatest political underdog in modern history, Donald J. Trump. He was actively fighting against Big Tech, the polls, Hollywood, academia, the media, Wall Street, the Democratic Party, establishment Republicans, the international community, violent anarchist mobs, a Chinese plague, and the deep state—virtually the same rogues gallery he was up against in 2016, with a few new additions and even higher stakes.
By midnight of November 3, he was speeding towards a stunning landslide reelection victory. He had effortlessly taken Florida by the biggest margin for any presidential candidate in 16 years. He had won Ohio by a slightly higher margin than in 2016, which itself was the biggest margin of victory in that state for any candidate since 1988. Turnout from the rural, working-class areas he needed to win was at historic levels, and he had insurmountable leads in the three crucial Rust Belt states. He was winning, and winning big.
The sudden, and nearly simultaneous, stopping of the counts in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia somewhere between midnight and 1 a.m., followed by the abrupt restart and announcement of new leads for Joe Biden in all of those states at around 4 a.m. the following day, are at the heart of the very legitimate and credible claims of voter fraud by President Trump and his supporters.
There is a path for victory for the president, both legal and political, despite the media’s best efforts to pull a “nothing to see here” routine as they rush to declare the race over in favor of Biden, insisting that there is no voter fraud despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
It has been said before, and needs to be said again: At this point, it is far too late for our Republic as once we knew it.
No matter what happens, no matter whose hand rests on the Bible on January 20, 2021, to take the oath of office, half of the country will deem that president’s term to be illegitimate. Half the country will claim that the election was stolen, either by voter fraud or by voter suppression. Half the country will spend the next four years demonstrating in the streets, whether it be militant communists and frothing black nationalists determined to destroy the country, or furious patriots trying to save it.
To that extent, a second Trump term may matter just as little as a Biden presidency, even if a Biden Administration is as short-lived as some predict it will be in favor of a Kamala Harris presidency. If President Trump does indeed serve a second term, a betting man would be wise to put his money on the likelihood of a second impeachment, for starters.
Should Trump prevail in this election, the media, globalist leaders, the Democrats, and Big Tech most likely will be reading the same four-letter word from the same script: coup. With this one word, often used by Trump supporters (accurately) to describe the deep state’s efforts to sink his presidency with the “Russian collusion” hoax, the Left will begin explicitly making the argument that President Trump is a usurper and a dictator who should not be in office.
At this point, the evidence seems to suggest overwhelmingly that whatever victory Trump may be able to pull off will be a bittersweet one, with the president and the nation robbed of the landslide triumph toward which he was heading, and any second term will be marred by even more obstructionism in the halls of Congress and targeted violence in the streets.
But there is still a victory to be achieved here, and it is not the possibility of earning a second term in the face of insurmountable odds, as satisfying as that would be. Indeed, it is true poetic justice that this election fiasco in and of itself, chaos and all, could be a victory for Donald Trump. …
President Trump’s greatest achievement was not the monumental tax cuts, the renegotiated trade deals, crushing ISIS, or building the wall; his greatest achievement was exposing the sheer corruption, unholy levels of power, and vicious contempt of the ruling class in our country. It was evident in every single thing they did to try to destroy him over the last five years, with their determination matched only by President Trump’s willpower, fueled by his love of country and determination to save it from the forces that were out to destroy him.
Adding to that, it must be said that nothing has exposed their corruption more than this debacle of an election. Now, at least 74 million Americans are well aware of the fact that the elite will even undermine our own electoral processes from within just to get their way, the will of the people be damned.
The true kicker, however, is not the revelation that they have done this—as cheating surely has been part of our electoral politics throughout our history. It’s that Donald Trump was the one who exposed it by finally fighting back, whereas all other Republicans instinctively would have recoiled in fear. That is why his efforts to fight back now, even if they are ultimately for naught, will still leave behind a legacy that will last far beyond the next four years.
Indeed, many of his most recent achievements surely will be swept under the rug, undermined, or retroactively stolen from him by being blindly credited to Biden. But there is no denying that he leaves behind a framework for a stronger country in every way possible.
He saved the economy, not once, but twice; he ultimately defeated the Chinese virus, giving us a vaccine in the final months of his first term; he restored American strength around the globe, through more calculated but restrained uses of our military as well as a tougher approach to trade. And he leaves behind a clear blueprint for how an unapologetically nationalist and populist message can, barring mass voter fraud, win electoral landslides and create previously unprecedented political coalitions, even against overwhelming opposition from the elite.
As such, it is clear that Donald Trump has already secured his place in history as a tragic hero. …
He exposed the media. He exposed the leadership of both political parties. He exposed Hollywood, academia, Big Tech, and the globalists who are in charge of nations that we previously thought to be our closest allies. He awakened millions to the realities of the culture war that was already raging against us, and the scourge of mass immigration. He drew back the curtain, pulled the wool from our eyes, and led us out of the cave so that we would no longer stare endlessly at the illusions of the shadows on the wall. …
The true tragedy of the story of Donald Trump is that he may not see the fulfillment of what he started. But he showed us the way to a better place, and nothing can take that away from him.
Is NATO worth saving? 181
It is 70 years since the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was established.
Theodore Roosevelt Malloch writes at American Greatness:
Only nine of its 29 member states pay their agreed dues—up from five last year, thanks to President Trump’s pestering. Not that he gets any credit for it.
Nevertheless, that is $130 billion more for NATO’s collective defense! Which is both more money than one can fathom, and simultaneously a pitiful fraction (around 20 percent) of America’s defense spending.
NATO’s membership is paying more thanks to constant hammering by President Trump. But many [more than two-thirds of the member states] have not yet reached the treaty’s required 2 percent threshold, including the richest countries, like Germany. So long as Angela Merkel remains in power with the votes of left-wing socialists (called the “Grand Coalition”) in the Bundestag, the chance is near zilch of this issue being dealt with. For her part, Merkel has promised Germany will hit the 2 percent target sometime in the “early 2030s”. …
By which time Germany will be a Muslim ruled country, a fate from which its only salvation might be Russian conquest.
That Russian domination could be considered by indigenous Germans preferable to Islamic subjugation is in itself a vivid indication of just how horrible the outlook is for Europe.
But Trump is turning [NATO] round. Give him credit.
The world has changed a great deal in the 70 years since the Washington Treaty was first signed and the North Atlantic Charter was put into force. American soldiers held the line on the free side of the Iron Curtain long enough for Moscow to trip on its own contradictions.
But 1989 was 30 years ago and the triumph that was the 50th anniversary celebrations (1999) is a distant memory. Today NATO is fully benefiting from nostalgia for the 1990s, despite the Balkan wars awkwardly underscoring the limitations of collective security in the new world order.
This week’s NATO summit is less of a celebration of the military achievements and the collapse of the Soviet empire than it is a day of reckoning.
Does NATO have a future or is it, as French President Emmanuel Macron recently called it, “brain dead”? Merkel herself famously criticized NATO in the months after President Trump’s inauguration in 2017 and backed Macron’s version of a European army, widely seen as a threat to the alliance.
Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the enfant terrible of the alliance (whose rough neighborhood includes long borders with Iran, Syria, Iraq, all unstable war zones) has also come out swinging, this time against Macron. It is Macron who’s brain dead, the Turkish president said. His ambassador in Paris was called in for a stern dressing down.
Turkey has been not just an uncooperative member of NATO; it has been positively obstructive, in the past and again now.
The question has arisen whether Turkey could be expelled from NATO.
At [the 70th] anniversary summit of its members, President Trump, who has long thought the collective security arrangement “obsolete” … reiterated his demand that Europe pay more (South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Japan, as well) for their defense.
He suggested NATO should refocus on terrorism, Syria, cybersecurity, and most critically, China, the number one adversary NATO countries face. …
Can NATO adapt fast enough?
Can NATO adapt?
The Russians are in no state [at present] to take over Ukraine, much less Germany. …
The organization has certainly proven to be resilient—but is it relevant any longer?
Is it an alliance any longer?
Witness the differences in implementing nuclear sanctions on Iran—Europe has set up INSTEX, a sanctions-dodging mechanism for blockade-running. Iran’s regime, currently wracked by the worst protests in 40 years, when the mullahs came to power, is being thrown a lifeline by Paris, Brussels, and Berlin.
Why?
As the strongest and most successful military alliance in history—at least it is according to its own secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg of Norway—the crux of the matter on this birthday is, does NATO have an ability to change significantly? He certainly thinks so.
In our new book Trump’s World, Felipe J. Cuello and I argue that the “dog fight” over NATO is in a critical stage and the disruptor-in-chief, Geo Deus Donald Trump, may give it a second breath—but only if the alliance pays and it shifts.
GEO DEUS DONALD TRUMP.
An earthly Deus even we can believe in. Thank you Theodore Roosevelt Malloch and Felipe J. Cuello for that!
In his America First paradigm, but not alone, there is a new taskmaster in town and he plays by new rules not old ways and ideologies of globalism. NATO survives and grows in strength thanks to one Donald J. Trump.
That is to say, if it survives and grows in strength it will be thanks to Geo Deus Donald J. Trump.
Perhaps a new type of “alliance” is needed. States that want to be protected by the mightiest military in the world pay America directly; put their own forces – those few who have them in working order – under the command of the president of the United States; their ordnance, warships and aircraft, technological facilities, satellites, and foreign offices (yes, those too!) at his disposal. At least for as long as Donald J. Trump or successors approved by him are in power.
Would the world not then be a safer, more peaceful, more prosperous place? Could be. It’s at least a possibility.