On January 20, 2017, Donald J. Trump became the 45th President of the United States.
He delivered a defiant and uncompromising Inaugural Address. It is clear he intends to fully implement all of the promises that he made during the campaign. Accordingly, Trump can be counted on to restructure the US economy and its trade relations to promote American growth and prosperity, to restrict immigration to the requirements of law, and consistent with the economic and security interests of the American people, and to restructure foreign relations to minimize our involvements overseas, while at the same time, rebuild the US military so that no foreign power would dare to challenge or threaten the US. Since elements of Islamic terror represent an unrepentant foreign and domestic present threat to American security, they are slated for near-term annihilation. Finally, in Trump’s world, the people will come first. The elites in politics, as activists and office holders in business, the media, academia and in the entertainment industry are despised enemies (unless they recant) viewed by Trump as largely responsible for America’s diminution in power and prosperity.
What has transpired tells us two critical things.
First, in his Inaugural Address, Trump has essentially re-declared American independence, and commenced a campaign to reassert and restore the liberties and freedoms of the American people.
This campaign amounts to a Second War of American Independence, waged against the oppressive power of the American elites, who act as the analog to the oppressive power of the British Crown during the American Revolution. The American elites, like the colonial British, seek to rule through an innate sense of their own superiority, and consider themselves to be mandarins of quasi-divine status. Apparently, in the view of the elites, the people are fit only to follow their lead and are not to be so presumptuous as to have ambitions and aspirations of their own (while any person endowed with common sense could not imagine that a degree from Harvard Law School, or other equivalent progressive finishing school, should be taken as conferring the equivalent of the divine right of kings, the elites are, evidently, able to make such connection and harbor such belief without blushing).
The elites impose their will principally through the instrumentality of governmental excess in all of its forms, especially onerous levels of taxation and regulation. In addition, the media, academe and the entertainment industry auxiliaries of the elites collaborate in instructing the people what to think and what not to think, or act to provide a distracting narcotic so that they do not think at all. High levels of unemployment combined with welfare stipends of varying kinds complete the governmental bread and circus paradigm.
The end result of this elite assault on the American people is a loss of the peoples’ liberties and freedoms. This loss has taken place as a generally slow-motion invidious process that has been going on for decades. Like the frog in the pot that is slowly brought to a boil, the people had not noticed on a fully conscious level (apart from Tea Party precursors) until Trump came along in 2015 and 2016 and triggered a Great Awakening.
Trump intends to restore the people’s liberties and freedom by combating the various elements of the elites’ oppression of the people, while at the same time, providing the people with a strong economy to give them, in turn, the financial security, prosperity and wherewithal to support a life lived in freedom.
The second thing that has transpired is a clearer revelation as to who Trump really is while acting in the public sphere.
In part, in terms of past American Presidents, Trump, in my opinion, is most akin to the first President, George Washington.
Both men held personal wealth that ranked in the upper echelon of the respective societies in which they lived. Both were shrewd, practical, pragmatic and non-ideological. Both were fearless, strong men of action. Both were highly ambitious, held these ambitions from a young age, were largely self-made and were driven to succeed separately in both private life and in public life. Critically, both viewed public life as a call to service, rather than a vehicle for personal aggrandizement. They both valued reputation (Trump calls it “branding”) and each sought to earn the respect of his countrymen through the achievement of concrete actions that would further his countrymen’s best interests and welfare. In this sense, both men were extraordinarily unselfish when acting in the public sphere.
Most of all, both valued personal independence above all else and sought to exercise independence in their lives. To do so, both sought to develop the character and habits of mind necessary to permit independence of action. In addition, both sought to accumulate the financial assets, property and other resources to ensure that independence of action was always a practical option in both their respective private, and public lives.
As unselfish men in the public sphere, both wished to have their countrymen enjoy opportunities to achieve the personal independence that they had achieved. And both pursued public policies to this end. Each actively encouraged his countrymen to enjoy the liberty and freedom in their own lives that they themselves enjoyed. In public life, each had the capacity to live for others and this aspect of their character served to keep the exercise of their personal ambitions within a restricted safe zone.
In short, both men are possessed of an essential heroic dimension. In Washington’s day, heroism was recognized, admired and respected. In our present cynical and degraded time, heroism is practically an unknown quality and Trump, as hero, is an anomaly, and his actions unrecognized as heroism and routinely derided.
Trump, in acting in the public sphere, is the cryptic hero: unheralded and unrecognized as a hero in his time by his own countrymen.
In acting to restore to the American people their independence, liberties and freedoms from an overextended, oppressive and corrupt government, Trump is taking on a great trial of labor. I am confident that future generations will see his efforts and achievements as legendary. I see Trump as an American Hercules who will act unceasingly to restore American greatness for the benefit of its people…and will do so ahead of schedule and under budget.
Photo: WhatDoesItMean.com
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