Posts Tagged → founding
Trump groupie or devoted admirer?
President Donald Trump inspires tens of millions of loyal Americans, no doubt about it. When he is able to publicly campaign and is not being artificially held in some kangaroo courtroom by some tyrannical petty judge or bureaucrat bent on illegally interfering with the ongoing election, Trump’s public events draw record numbers of fired up participants.
Americans sleep out overnight to get into a Trump rally.
People stand for hours in the rain to get into a Trump event.
People take off from work to stand along a road or highway for hours to cheer on Trump’s motorcade as it passes by for five seconds.
No two ways about it, President Donald Trump inspires a lot of devoted people, most of whom were never involved in politics before, including many who had never even voted, until the 2016 election.
And so this almost rock star quality surrounding Trump has of course inspired his political opponents to deride said followers and supporters as “groupies” and “zombies” etc, to the point where even some of Trump’s own supporters hesitate to show the full measure of their true devotion to the guy. No one wants to be thought of as a mindless devotee, or a “cultist.”
I understand a person’s resistance to becoming a political groupie or acting excited enough to be labeled as one. But the reason so many of us Americans and even people I know in foreign countries are so emotionally devoted to Trump is because he is not just some politician, or a candidate. Rather, Trump is a symbol. To both his supporters and his opponents, Trump is a powerful symbol, either powerful medicine or bad ju-ju, depending on one’s fealty to the American founding documents and our founding first principles.
So as this powerful symbol, Trump has taken on the shape and aura of a true martyr, a hero, willing to risk everything for his holy cause. The man has taken so much unwarranted, unjust personal damage, and has taken so much risk just to do what is right for America, that he rises far above just being a vessel or a tool for us voters.
Have you seen any other political candidate defy anywhere near the same level and length of abuse and serious threats as Trump has? I haven’t.
Trump has become in some ways on a par with America’s founders, who also pledged and staked their reputations, their wealth, their homes, their families, their futures on the outcome of their inspired rebellion against Britain in 1776. And many of them lost everything, or lost so much that they were never the same person. A handful of America’s founders lost their lives. At this point right now, in addition to all of the fake legal jeopardy being thrown at him, and on top of all of the personal cost and financial cost he has had to bear, Trump is certainly also in the crosshairs of an actual assassin or two, including the Biden FBI, which crazily charged into Mar-a-Lago with actual written shoot-to-kill orders from the corrupt DOJ.
So yeah, I am not a groupie so much as I am simply in awe of Trump, an impressed admirer of his resilience and his selfless devotion to us Americans and to our country, regardless of how many unjust and serious wounds he receives. And therefore I am devoted to him and to his cause. Trump is my cause. He is the cause of and a one-man movement for a constitutional and free America, which right now hangs by a fraying thread.
Yes, I will say it, President Donald Trump is America.
The Mayans Were Wrong; William Penn Was Right
Today is both the 12-12-12 date that, according to the dyslexic Mayan Calendar, marks the end of the world, and it is also the anniversary of Pennsylvania’s official entry as a State into the United States.
Delaware beat Pennsylvania as the first state in the Union by a day or two, but nevertheless, the Keystone State is as old as America gets.
That day in 1787, who could have imagined that hand-held gadgets and computer screens would today dominate our materially wealthy society, not just injecting but wrapping citizens in their individual cocoon of fantasy and imagination as real as the reality around them? If personal accountability is at the heart of America’s political and entrepreneurial system, these little gaming gadgets are on the periphery, acting more like huge celestial bodies teasing apart the fabric of the universe through tremendous gravitational force than as some sort of glue holding it all together. Subterfuge and pretend have replaced face-to-face and voice contact between humans. Reality is nearly impossible to define.
When William Penn founded Penn’s Woods, Pennsylvania, he envisioned and then successfully implemented a society where individual liberty was the standard, not the rare exception. Hard work, risk taking, and some personal sacrifice could yield tremendous material benefits to those immigrants willing to undertake them. We proud Pennsylvanians now, his spiritual and physical heirs, try to carry on that tradition amidst a strange array of colliding beliefs, allegiances, and competing values. One such competitor are these little gadgets we all use. Yes, they add efficiency. No, they don’t necessarily add value or depth of understanding. It’s one of the reasons that I do not “friend” people who live near me on FaceBook; if you want to be my “friend,” call me, and let’s schedule some time together with a cold beer and some hot food. There is no substitute for face-to-face time with another person who you value.
Another competitor is the fractured belief system that many new Americans bring with them and that many young Americans now embrace. Young people tattooing their bodies with Japanese and Haida Indian religious symbols, to which they have no connection either ethnically or ideologically, is a substantive example. Another example is the actual widespread fear caused by the Mayan prediction that this day ends the world as we know it. If you are paying attention to the Mayans today, maybe you might consider that their cruel society died out long ago, victim to human sacrifice and poor ecological planning.
This casual rootlessness is not good for America, and it does not reflect the greatness we inherited from those brave founders who stood fast and strong in 1787, against a mighty international British empire that indeed could have ended the world as our founders knew it then and there.
Today, the world will not end. Rather, Pennsylvanians and other Americans will go about their business, quietly drawing on a ever diminishing bank account of sorts to carry us through to the next day, the next transaction, the next political race. Our traditional culture is a metaphorical bank account, a repository of the guiding values and achievements of our progenitors, the people who created the roads, bridges, schools, political infrastructure, and businesses which we now use and take for granted every day. Failing to make deposits into this bank account, and yet withdrawing from it daily, will lead the account to become overdrawn, to become empty, to go bankrupt, and to fail.
That, and not the Mayans, is the great threat staring us in the face now.