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Trump’s first week. A flurry of actions, many of which I applaud. Or, to put it more appropriately in the language of many of my friends: as long as the dictator – through executive orders – is doing stuff I like, everything is cool.
I won’t list everything Trump has done here – others have written very good summaries, much better than I could do. And, of course, you all know what I consider the not good stuff. Like I said regarding Trumps actions: many of which, not all of which, I applaud.
I have written before, a month before Trump’s election eight years ago:
For those who fear that some form of extreme fascism is coming to the United States, they need not fear Trump; the fear is in who (or what) comes next – win or lose for Trump.
So, Trump won in 2016. But he lost (yeah, I know) in 2020. What if 2024 is the “who (or what) comes next” part”? He is acting like he is just that – very efficiently and quickly cranking out dozens of executive orders, halting certain expenditures, etc. Again, much of which I applaud.
What’s not to like?
Angelo Codevilla wrote, in anticipation of the 2016 election:
We have stepped over the threshold of a revolution. It is difficult to imagine how we might step back, and futile to speculate where it will end. Our ruling class’s malfeasance, combined with insult, brought it about. Donald Trump did not cause it and is by no means its ultimate manifestation.
What if the 2024 Trump is something closer to, but not yet, its “ultimate manifestation”? He is acting like it, and many on the right are cheering: we are winning!
The next year or so will be critical: does Trump change the fundamental direction on at least a couple of the dozen issues that threaten us. For example, the budget deficit, or the pharma-industrial complex, or whatever. I say “great.”
But someone will come after Trump. On the one hand, the revolution won’t be complete. Will JD Vance, or someone along those lines, be as effective as Trump.
Or, alternatively, what happens when the left gets a Trump of their own – one who has a flurry of executive orders, one who has all his or her ducks lined up to hit the ground running on day one.
Conclusion
Are we winning? Or, to put it another way: have some things, at least, moved in a better direction? I say, yes. But it all comes down to the “how.”
We will get either an even more dictatorial president soon enough – whether on the right or on the left. I will not consider that we are winning, either way.
But, given that I have no say in the matter, I know which evil is lessor.
Epilogue
If you were Roman Catholic in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, you welcomed Franco. No, you weren’t thrilled, but he was the lessor of two evils…and you had a chance to live, unlike if the communists and anarchists won.
I have been asked by boomer family members if my job, my finances, my life is better now that Trump was elected, even before the inauguration. When I said, no, not really, they had a look of shock or disagreement on their face. I would try to talk about the actual things going on in my life that give me hope or that will help make life better, but they keep bringing up Trump. I'm like you, I like most of what Trump is doing. Some of it is really dumb though. But he isn't the savior of the world, and who knows what comes next.
ReplyDeletehttps://thecrosssectionrmb.blogspot.com/
" But he isn't the savior of the world..."
DeleteWe know the concern we should have regarding false saviors.
Bionic, you're right. Trump is doing some things I applaud but he and Biden before him long ago left the intent and probably the wording of the Constitution. Those guardrails have been weakened by Trump as well as his predecessors. When the left win one day--or when someone from the right wins the office who doesn't have Trump's excuse that insanity and evil have run rampant for four years--we're in much deeper trouble. Cheating because the other guy cheats doesn't mean you're playing fair.
ReplyDeleteWhen you are combating the Deep State and the majority of people in Congress and the Senate (whom the deep state has groomed and promoted), executive order is probably you're only effective tool. Not sure if DJT is really battling the Deep State just yet, but time will tell. So far so good.
DeleteAs Dave Smith said, if he can find a way to peaceably resolve the Israel-Gaza conflict and the Russo-Ukraine war, then put him on Mount Rushmore (in Lincoln's place)
If the left comes to power and finds that the GOP has established even more avenues of executive power expansion, and they exploit it to the hilt, then this will just be more fuel for the eventual fire that needs to happen anyway: secession. The Trump presidency is just a temporary measure that may give us time to further prepare ourselves for what is likely to come. Only an extreme decentralization of political power has the potential to restore good governance in America.
Winning? It's hard to say. Ross is home, and Trump called those who condemned him to his unjust fate in prison "scum." That's a huge win for me. Trump freed all the Jan 6th people. That's a win.
ReplyDeleteThe designation of the Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations is creating some arguments in the libertarian and liberty adjacent worlds on X. Dave Smith and Clint Russel (the emerging leaders of the libertarian political orbit) are both thinking it will be a bad thing, that we may get a terror war right on our Southern border and among our homes, at least in the South, and it will be used as an excuse to wage yet another unconstitutional war. Valid concerns.
I'm kind of with Rothbard in his essay from Jan 1992 entitled "Right Wing Populism: A Strategy for the Paleo Movement" (Rothbard Rockwell Report) wherein he states in point #4 and #5 that we need to take back the streets from violent criminals and vagrants. He actually says the "cops must be unleashed." I don't know if I'd go that far, but foreign gangs should not be allowed to take over whole apartment buildings in America. That's ridiculous.
It's hard to argue with the results Bukele has achieved in El Salvador against the cartels by doing exactly what Rothbard prescribed. As Bukele noted in his interview with Tucker Carlson, a lot of these gangs have become overtly Satanic. These are evil people.
I know what the libertarian course of action against these gangs should be in a free world, but I don't know exactly what the libertarian course of action should be while we live under the artificial state. I have the opinion that while the government aggressively assumes a monopoly over the provision of law and order in a given territory, we might as well join with others in demanding they give us a decent product.