Archive → January, 2025
Hurricane Trump spawns endless Zeitgeist
Back in the 1980s, which for you young people is when the world began, a confused and confusing publication called The New Republic entered a new-ish word into the American journalistic lexicon: Zeitgeist.
Meaning more or less “the spirit of the age,” this word Zeitgeist has been used among writers and journalists as a way to introduce certain specific government policies or political statements or ideologies for discussion. Or as The New Republic mostly Marxist writers used it, as a foil to hold up for examination certain political motifs they thought wrong. In their case back then, TNR writers were mostly reacting to Republican president Ronald Reagan, who was then aggressively rebutting many of the government policy failures he was elected to end.
Well, President Trump’s first week in office has unleashed so many policies and government actions that America is fully back into the time of Zeitgeist. Trump is waaaay ahead of where Reagan began. By 2024, clearly the American people had had their fill of destructive DEI/ CRT/ ESG nonsense, they voted for a huge and hard break with it all, and we are now witnessing a veritable Hurricane Trump descend upon both Beltway Bandit and Ivory Tower Academic alike, as well as murderous gang members whom the Mainstream Media naturally depict as pet Democrat sad puppies.
Where do we even begin to mark down the wonderful new things among the slowly but inexorably unfolding wreckage?
- California Man Childs: California voters could not adult, they elected man-children as officials, lived a life of unsustainable fantasy, and burned down their most valuable real estate as a result. The wildfires were inevitable. Empty fire hydrants, empty city reservoirs, DEI fire departments filled with overpaid fat slobs chosen because of their female anatomy or feminine appearance, instead of their actual abilities to fight fires and save people or keep fire engines running, the list of policy failures is as long as my arm. The man childs have been busy blaming “climate change ate my homework” and even Trump for their own policy failures, and thus far it appears the California voters are sticking with them. Some human beings are just not programmed to evolve or even to save themselves. Stay tuned for more self inflicted disasters and even more self inflicted voting patterns in California, as Trump demands adult policy changes before taxpayer funding the return to leftist self destruction. Relatedly, an entire federal agency, FEMA, is now under the gun, as a result of multiple failures in North Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, and now California. FEMA is kind of the canary in the coal mine for the rest of the alphabet agencies popularly hated by the American people (ATF, EPA, FBI etc).
- DEI (“didn’t earn it”): Supposedly, according to DEI ideology, the way to end discrimination against people because of their skin color or gender is by aggressively discriminating against people based on their skin color and gender. DEI does not make sense when you read it this way, which is the accurate way, and the American voters have had more than their fill of it. DEI is DOA in the Trump executive branch, and so the bloated administrative state blood is beginning to leak out wherever DEI stood. Cutesy cat-and-mouse games where DEI staff are re-named something innocuous sounding are being met with beautifully placed sledgehammer responses. The reality of DEI rot damage to our national fabric is becoming apparent, and the American people are vindicated.
- January 6th: Acccording to the Democrat Party’s Mainstream Media, January 6th was the first ever unarmed “insurrection” in human history, and was worse than the Japanese attack on pearl Harbor and worse than the American Civil War (!). This perspective justified the Biden DOJ’s subsequent Gestapo response against their political enemies. I was there in front of the US Capitol on January 6th, and I witnessed the reality: Uniformed police rained down a storm of illegal ultra-violence and abnormal sadistic abuse on peaceful protestors, eventually provoking a just and normal response by a free people. Antifa hoodlums (who I saw with my own eyes) and federal employees led the way in property destruction and violence against uniformed police. With the Biden DOJ Gestapo gone, personal J6 videos are now coming out of hiding. These videos show exactly what the MSM did not show you: A peaceful protest bombed, beaten, blasted into responding to the lawless police, and now a crumbling MSM political narrative just as fake and unsustainable as Los Angeles fire supression and prevention policies.
- Illegal Invaders: Yes, starting in 2021 the Democrat Party opened up the American borders and just let anyone who wanted come into America, and even paid them to do it. This was done to get enough new voters and enough US Census population count bodies to help the Democrat Party create a stranglehold on America. A one-party country, which everywhere else in the world is an autocratic non-free miserable place, was their goal. Meanwhile, across America public schools and hospitals and public parks are awash in these non-English speaking criminals, subjecting taxpayers to an incredible and unsustainable cost burden. Yes, the Democrat Party wants to burn down America to get control of America, but it appears that the Trump Administration will be deporting a thousand invaders a day, at least. Whether America has dodged this particular bullet or not remains to be seen. If strong election integrity laws can be implemented that protect American elections and voters from the illegal invaders, then all will be well in the end.
As some of these individual policy happenings show us, a true Zeitgeist is emerging: A Spirit of ’76, a recapturing of the federal bureaucracy by those American citizens who pay for it and underwrite it, a re-purposing of the federal government away from funding the world and instead funding our own American citizens in need.
Hurricane Trump has only just hit the coast, it has barely started to move inland, and so-so-so many much needed changes are already well under way. Things are looking beautiful.
Send in Delta Force to DC Govt offices?
President Trump was sworn in to office three days ago, on January 20th, and within 24 hours he had signed something like a hundred executive orders. Maybe more. I lost count. One Trump executive order covered 78 EOs signed by Joe Biden.
Two Trump policies in particular have garnered widespread discussion and deserve focus: The pardoning of roughly 1,500 January 6th political prisoners and hostages held by the Federal DC Swamp, and the immediate suspension of all DEI activities and staff in federal offices.
Every pardoned J6 hostage was required to be released from jail immediately, and every DEI staff person was required to leave office and stay out of federal offices. With all DEI activities ended, there was no reason for those staff to remain in office. The pardons are a legal directive, and when the rule of law prevails, the pardoned immediately walks out of jail to their relatives or friends.
In response to President Trump’s executive directives, open insubordination, really an open insurrection and mutiny against the government, by public taxpayer funded employees has unfolded. Many of the DEI staff were simply moved into new positions with new titles in their agencies, instead of going on administrative leave, as their boss directed them to do.
Many of the J6 political prisoners are still being held in jail, and some have been badly beaten by prison staff within just the last 24 hours. Other J6 hostages have been deliberately flown and released into remote places far away from their homes and families, with no money, hardly any clothes, some wearing only prison slippers in the dead of winter in cold parts of America.
We are witnessing a raw power contest between the entrenched and heretofore unaccountable federal bureaucrats (Deep State or Administrative State), and their chief executive, their boss, the president of the United States. The president has issued directives, and the bureaucrats are telling him “Go eff yourself, we are not going to listen to you.”
Emboldened by decades of weak executive leadership and zero accountability (I have my own crazy war stories I can tell from my years working for the Federal government in DC three decades ago) (for a federal worker to get fired, both Heaven and Hell must be moved simultaneously, which is impossible to happen), federal employees are thumbing their noses at the president. I don’t think they are consciously daring him to follow up on his authority. Rather, the bizarre and artificially insulated, cozy culture that surrounds most federal workers has shielded them from ever experiencing real accountability, and it seems they do not expect to experience it. They can’t even imagine it.
From where a lot of outsiders stand, it sure looks like a large portion of the federal workforce has declared its autonomy from the chief executive, and is in the beginning of a full out insurrection against the American people, the Constitution, the rule of law. Recall that the American people chose this chief executive, this chief commanding military officer, this president. So when federal bureaucrats and military officers tell this president to Eff Off, they are telling the American people, the democratic process, the Constitution, and the rule of law to eff off.
We have not even begun to see the full DOJ, FBI, CIA, or Pentagon insurrrection, or a real showdown between ICE and lawless jurisdictions aiding and abetting illegal invaders.
And so, one concludes that President Trump must do the updated version of what President Lincoln did under similar circumstances in 1861: Send in the troops and secure Washington, DC.
In 2025, however, the US military is not riven by North-South/ Pro-Slavery-Anti-Slavery divisions, as Lincoln faced, or like George Washington faced between Patriots and Loyalists in the Revolutionary War. Rather, President Trump now faces a federal bureaucracy and a great portion of the US military that sees itself as autonomous from and removed from the American people. So who can President Trump rely upon to enforce his lawful orders and directives?
Sad to say, there are only a few military units that have withstood the anti-America, anti-democracy DEI onslaught, and who remain purely loyal to the constitutional chain of command and to their oaths of office: The elite American warriors, including the Navy SEALs, the Green Berets, and Delta Force commandos. These are the people who President Trump can most reasonably rely upon to see that his orders are being fulfilled in a timely fashion.
These are the people who President Trump needs to send into the J6 prisons, the FBI headquarters, the CIA headquarters, the ATF headquarters, the Pentagon, with full arrest powers, to ensure that the constitutional chain of command is being honored. Or in the alternative, that the insurrectionists are arrested and processed through the proper courts.
And I would suggest that the proper courts to hold trials of the insurrectionists are all out in the hinterlands, like western Nebraska, northern Idaho, Wyoming, west Texas, where judges still know how to properly mete out justice.
Going to the inauguration? Not I
Despite being bombarded with tickets and neat opportunities to go to the inauguration of President Donald John Trump in Washington, DC, I was of no mind to go. Not because I am not hyped and excited about his presidency, which I am, because of the good he is already having on world peace and the American economy, even before he actually takes office.
Rather, I had no idea what to expect once I got down to DC. Was it going to be all rainbows and happy unicorns? Or was it going to be mass riots and violence against Trump supporters, with local police standing by and allowing it to happen? And what about my own home, possibly at risk in any mass hysteria…
I was thinking about the days before the 2020 election, when I received a phone call from an old family friend of my parents. Someone I had not seen in thirty years at least, nor spoken to. An old far-left Quaker, Sam was in his early seventies when he called me in late 2020, and he was happy to get me on the phone.
“If Trump wins, we are organzing a nationwide boycott, massive civil disobedience, shut down the streets, protest marches in every city. And we need good organizers, responsible adults to help us prepare. Can I count on you to come to an important meeting in Philly next week?”
To which I replied, “Sam, it is so nice to hear your voice. Been a real long time. I know you and Dad enjoyed your philanthropic bike ride together last year, which was cool to follow. But I have to tell you, I am not in college any longer. That was decades ago. I left the Quakers decades ago over their political ideology, and I left my policy job at the US EPA in DC over the ideology there, too. I left the Democrat Party in 1993, after Bill Clinton was elected and tried to take away everyone’s guns. And to your point, I have donated thousands of dollars to the Trump campaign because I am a huge Trump supporter. So I don’t think you want me coming, because I will definitely ruin your Black Panther party,” trying to borrow a phrase from the Forrest Gump movie that I thought humorous and appropriate at the moment.
But Sam didn’t have to pull his trigger. Right after my brief conversation with Sam, the 2020 election was blatantly stolen, and America endured an incredible amount of purposeful self-destructive abuse at the hands of the Biden Administration, enabled by the ever-corrupt and lazy Republican Party.
No, for me now, the logistics of being in or even getting to Washington, DC, and running a gantlet of violent leftists, just to reach the inauguration site, and then standing in the cold, and then doing it all in reverse, was just too daunting.
Fortunately for me, I no longer have to endure the torment of happy reports of smiling unicorns and rainbows from ecstatic revelers who did manage all of the significant logistics to participate in person. Now that the event has been moved indoors (supposedly for weather, but probably just as much for the safety of President Trump), I don’t imagine all that many people are going to go to DC.
Except for Sam’s rioters and street theater thugs. I am quite certain those people will show up to protest and hurt innocent Americans and break things, no matter what formalities are or are not held outside, or who else shows up to celebrate.
Considering it all, last week I was of no mind to go in person, and even more so now I would still rather be at home sitting by my cozy fireplace, watching the inauguration on TV. Or maybe I will go out hunting that very last day of flintlock season. We are supposed to get a wonderful dose of snow Sunday evening, perfect for deer tracking and hunting in on Monday…now THAT is a great way to celebrate America’s new birth of freedom!
Forgive Me for Asking, But I Must
Forgive me, it is not my intention to cast cold water on our collective rejoicing at having President Donald Trump re-elected, again, and thus at having dodged the Democrat Party’s communist anti-democracy bullet aimed at America’s heart. It is true that Trump’s election gives us hope that our constitutional republic is not over. However, I feel like I am watching a repeat of 2016-2017, where highly qualified conservatives and Republicans were mysteriously bypassed, overlooked, left untouched by the then-new Trump Administration.
Well do I recall someone of real stature writing publicly then (2017-2018) about how mystified he was that no one from Team Trump had contacted him about any of the unique policy strengths he had, and how the new Trump Administration seemed disinterested or lost on whatever that policy subject was. Well, here we go again, from where I sit.
Trump supporters have learned to forgive the 2016-2017 lapses, missteps, failures, and missed opportunities as due to Trump’s unfamiliarity with government, his natural reliance upon long established and unreliable DC Beltway insiders, his understandably misplaced trust in deep staters and other bad actors, his misplaced faith in the weight of federal employees’ oaths of office.
We watched as Trump’s first term slowly, painfully, peeled away the mask from the hostile administrative state, generously bankrolled by American taxpayers and yet also so openly at war with us. We grudgingly learned to accept the stolen 2020 election as the cost of doing business within the parameters set for us by the establishment media, the administrative state, and its constellation of hostile non-government organizations, who then worked furiously from outside to undermine the very rules they set.
And so we miraculously prevailed in 2024, and America as founded yet lives again. And now we have earned the right to say openly, can we please not make the same and very avoidable mistakes again, this time around?
While President Trump is indeed appointing strong leaders who are willing to assertively implement his bold vision for a better government that is closely attuned to America’s founding documents and principles, one question has not been addressed: Who exactly is going to carry out these deep reforms?
With few exceptions (the US Dept. of Commerce being one), nearly the entire federal workforce was already openly insubordinate to President Trump the last time around. And there is no reason to believe that these public employees are going to honor their oaths of office this time. And if Trump follows through on the DOGE promise to eliminate entire federal agencies, and greatly streamline those that remain, then which law-abiding civil servants will there be to carry forward in those same agencies the Trump Administration’s policies?
Put another way, if President Trump installs leaders who, for example, change the name of the radicalized US Environmental Protection Agency, then which of the old USEPA staff will there be to then follow through with the systemic change through every artery and vein inside the old institutional body? If the federal government is going to aggressively do compliance checks or reel back in billions of dollars in Biden grants to far-left NGOs, then who exactly is prepared to hit that ground running? The current federal workforce is almost entirely unreliable, and if left in place, each and every federal employee will become a road block of one. The DOGE people had better be collecting lots and lots of names of prospective civil servants who are prepared to take the place of existing staff, who should end up fired from federal service for any number of good reasons.
House cleaning is promised, but who then moves into the house to give it new life?
Ending where this essay began, it is my turn to publicly complain: No one from Team Trump contacted me, way back in 2016-2020, or now, about my unique area of expertise. I am one of a very small handful of truly conservative Republicans nationwide with extensive hands-on experience with public land issues and wildlife habitat/ land conservation policy. No Trump staffer has called to ask my experienced opinion on federal appraisal standards, especially related to eminent domain, or on rights-of-way issues surrounding federal properties. To my knowledge, none of my few colleagues have been contacted, either. I am not looking for a job. I already run a small business that I really enjoy. But I am willing to volunteer my precious time to help shape sound federal policy that is a significant deviation from the longstanding horrible status quo.
President Trump has the loyalty of so many talented and experienced conservatives, any and all of whom will jump at the opportunity to simply help this one man (and his administration) who can save America. This is the big chance to get America back on track.
So why then do I feel like America via President Trump is once again missing easy opportunities to make lasting, good policy? If the right people do not identify and help fix these longstanding horrible policies, the civil servants will keep them in place, and we will miss a once in a lifetime opportunity for good government.
California teaches America a lot of lessons
Southern California is on fire, and why it is still on fire one week, at least fifteen lives lost, endless misery, and $150 Billion in losses later reads like a graduate course in Bad Government 101.
California has been the drug addict child of the United States for a long time, but especially in recent years. Californians can’t ever get too much woke politically correct crazy, and so they keep voting for more of it and for the drunk sailor spending that enables it. No one there knows where the money is coming from, no one cares, they just keep throwing money around for empty virtue signaling.
And no money for saving water for a bad day and cleaning up old brush around residential areas. No, these two activities were generously funded, but not implemented. They both contributed to the annual Santa Ana Winds-fueled wildfires now leveling entire neighborhoods in the Los Angeless area, as reservoirs were dry, hydrants had no water, and years of unaddressed dry brush resulted in uncontrollable fires.
For many years already, California has suffered at the hands of criminal homeless and illegal aliens. Suffered unnecessarily in the name of some vague understanding of some sad people somewhere. But these fires may have taught the citizen voters there that there are limits, hard breaks, up against the best of intentions fail.
Lessons taught, maybe not necessarily learned:
a) Repeat voting for a single political party that continuously places homeless and illegal immigrants ahead of taxpaying citizens is unsustainable and will end up destroying your society.
b) Repeat voting for a single political party that makes DEI and ESG and other foolish woke virtue signaling a central point and purpose of government will end up destroying your society. The pathetic and avoidable failures of state and local government across the Los Angeles area are all attributable to race and gender ideology hiring choices, incompetent people, not hiring practices based on merit and individual capabilities, resulting in competent people who have fire hydrants with water in them in case of a fire happening in a fire-prone ecosystem.
c) Making silly, emotional, childish public policy choices, instead of responsible adult-level decisions is no way to run any level of government. These bad choices will always come back to haunt those who are subject to them. Eventually you must pay the piper. California is now paying for Gavin Newsom’s childish ideas and bad policies.
In sum, California voters now see that they have a real choice to make. They can move forward and select leaders who make responsible decisions that protect the citizenry, or they can continue to select leaders who blame human-caused wildfires on supposed “climate change,” and continue to fail.
My own takeaway from California’s fiery carnage is that no one is more racist than a white liberal Democrat. No one. The amount of destruction they wreak on people of color everywhere is unimaginable. Chicago, Philly, New York, you name an American city and you will almost always find failure and black people suffering there, for decades, and it all goes back to people like California governor Gavin Newsom and his fellow white liberals. They just can’t not hurt people, especially people of color. It has to be purposeful.
Here it is, right in front of you, urban Americans. You can learn from this lesson in California, or you can ignore it and continue to suffer. It is your vote. Just don’t continue to vote for the Gavin Newsoms of America and then put out your hand and demand American tax dollars to fix your bad policy decisions.
Nope we Americans have now learned that lesson.
Want to feel good? Go to the PA Farm Show!
The Pennsylvania Farm Show in Harrisburg, PA, has been an annual event for something like 160 years. Over that time the Farm Show building complex has grown and grown and grown. The large, beautiful, evocative Art Deco facade remains visible on most of the buildings seen from Maclay and Cameron Streets, while the buildings themselves have multiplied in size and number, especially over the past 25 years.
While the Farm Show itself is ever so slowly evolving with time, mostly from technology changes, its direct connection to agriculture and farm life remains. Agricultural organizations like 4H and FFA remain front and center in much of the activities, including the kids’ bull riding rodeo and horse barrel vaulting competitions we watched last Saturday night. Hands-on activities include all kinds of food, fiber, and animals like sheep, goats (the baby goat snuggling place returned this year and it was overwhelmed with people wanting to snuggle with adorable baby goats), cows, horses of all size, chickens and chicks, ducks, rabbits, pigs etc. are all available for close-up viewing and or holding and petting.
While there is always food available in abundance, I was pleased to see a revamped and larger PA maple syrup stand, with more products. Hate to admit it, but I am a big fan of real maple syrup. When I am not making it myself in my own maple stand, I buy between four and six gallons a year. While 99% of maple syrup is made through the reverse osmosis process now, with no cooking or maybe a very brief flash heat at its end, it is still a unique flavor that I crave all year long.
I make my own maple syrup the old-fashioned way: Collect sap from my own maple stands with old fashioned spiles and buckets, wood or propane fire under a large stainless steel evaporation pan with a spigot, constant stirring, regular addition of maple sap until the syrup reaches an almost-done consistency. Then I tap it off the evaporation pan and finish it off in pots and pans inside the house on the stove top. Takes me about 16-20 hours to boil down sixty gallons of sap. Fact: Nothing commercially available tastes anything like my own home-made, deep brown, super rich maple syrup. I think the heat really augments the maple flavor. Anyhow, I am digressing.
Old tractors, new tractors, out-buildings, clothing, boots, hats, you name it, all kinds of neat stuff is available. The only cost is parking, and that amount depends on where you park.
If you are looking to feel good, because Lord knows we all have burned out on politics and everyone is looking for opportunities to shake off the misery, go visit the PA Farm Show. It runs until this Saturday night. You will not regret it. If nothing else, you will be reminded that the food we all eat does not in fact grow in styrofoam containers in the grocery store. Rather, our food is grown on farms, and then through an elaborate and energy-intensive route it ends up on our dinner plate. Unless you grow your own food, this is how you eat. That lesson alone is a worthy reason to take kids to the PA Farm Show.