President Trump is an Anomaly

For those of us who love freedom, who see government as the problem and not the solution, who have been eternally frustrated with the often moronic policies of our leaders at all levels, President Trump is a breath of fresh air. Here is a man who understands and loves traditional American ideals and culture, he is one who believes America is great and her best days could still be ahead. He connects with average people, he shares their dreams and frustrations, he is optimistic and energetic and it is infectious. These are the reasons he draws huge crowds and such loyal support. He makes us hopeful that things really can change for the better, that liberty will advance once more.

I hate to throw cold water on your dream but it is not going to happen, not because of President Trump. He is doing what he can, rolling back regulations, securing the border, brokering trade deals, all of which made for a robust economy before the coronavirus. But while his list of accomplishments is long, there have been few legislative victories. Which means, as President Obama found out, what is done with a pen and a phone by one president can easily be undone by another. In order for liberty to truly advance, permanent change, a dismantling of our socialist state, must happen; and it is not.

We have seen this before. Just like President Trump, President Reagan was an anomaly. An outsider who distrusted government, he understood and connected with the rest of us, he truly understood and believed in America and her ideals. He presided over a revitalized economy and tried to shrink government through deregulation. Just like President Trump, President Reagan wasn't perfect, but most of his actions reflected his small government philosophy.

Then what happened. We got two Bushes, Clinton and Obama. For almost three decades government grew and grew and grew; it became more pervasive, more expensive and more powerful. Sure, the economic benefits continued long after President Reagan was gone but the “Deep State”, the career politicians and bureaucrats, were there before he took office were still there when he left. Some of them are still here today. Presidents come and go and they can make some changes but the vast majority of the laws, regulations and all the agencies remain, growing like the blob, devouring the blood and treasure of us all.

Presidents Reagan and Trump set a tone of optimism and freedom and while that may make us feel better and influence some who want to ingratiate themselves to the new administration, it does not and will not percolate throughout the government. There is a culture in government that is not going to change regardless of what the president says because our government is an active government and an active government attracts and is run by a specific kind of person. If our government was limited to its moral and constitutional parameters, namely the protection of rights, none of this would be an issue. The people in it would be public servants who respect the rights of others above all and act accordingly. A rarity throughout history, I know.

Our government is unlimited, however, having broken the restraints imposed by the Constitution a long time ago. We must be honest here. Amidst all the talk of a socialist takeover, we have failed to recognize we are a socialist country and have been for a long time. The United States is today characterized by redistribution of wealth, governmental control or ownership of all economic activity and on top of that, add the authoritarian overtones of the surveillance state and pervasive social control and it is a fact that cannot be argued. Sad but true.

A state that rejects individual rights and seeks total control, i.e. totalitarianism, requires a vast bureaucracy and a police force to manage and enforce it. That requires an army of people, currently numbering around 22 million at all levels of government. Since just about all of these people are enlisted in jobs that don't protect rights but infringe upon them, it is a particular type of person that takes a job that by definition steals people's money, violates their rights and restricts their liberty. A criminal socialist government constantly engages in activities that would put any of us as individuals in jail and they do it under the protection of the law. An individual who chooses to engage in criminal activities as a matter of course is either a proud thug or is lying to themselves about being a thug.

We know there are a lot of thugs and bullies in government positions. They enjoy wielding power over others. They enjoy the perks, the bribes, the deference they receive. They don't see any of their transgressions as an abuse of power but as their right because they are wiser and better than the rest of us. They have no problem using the power of the state to destroy their perceived enemies because their enemies are wrong and evil by definition. They are mankind's savior and anyone who opposes them is deluded and dangerous. From the ranks of the thugs rise the Hitlers, Stalins, Castros, Maos, and their henchmen. Are there such people in our government who could become such figures? Of that I have no doubt.

In fact the henchmen are already in place, men and women who have no problem bullying or even killing their fellow citizens, men and women who will lie and cheat to pervert the law to destroy the lives of their fellows. There are too many examples to list. But I ask you, who is the justice department agent who thinks it reasonable to send a SWAT team to arrest an octogenarian and his disabled wife in the middle of the night? What agent shoots an unarmed woman holding a baby? Who makes up evidence to destroy innocent people? Who attacks a building full of children and condemns them to a fiery death? If you wonder what kind of people made up the SS, these are the ones. The state is always right, everything it does is right, the ones above them are infallible. Don't think it can't happen here, it already has. And it continues. Do you think that just because Donald Trump is president that the IRS has stopped abusing its power, that law enforcement isn't continuing to fill its coffers with immoral asset forfeiture, that prosecutors have ceased bribing snitches? No, the abuse of government power goes on unabated.

What makes government thugs so dangerous is that they know the likelihood of any negative consequences for their actions is practically nil. Unlike regular criminals who may actually go to jail when they are caught or regular people who may get demoted or lose their jobs if they do something shady, government employees and politicians very rarely suffer any consequences for their misdeeds. We all know that it takes real moral fortitude not to take advantage of an immoral situation when you know you won't get caught. For those in government who know no punishment awaits them if they do get caught, the temptation to dole out favors, take bribes, misuse information, and destroy perceived enemies is often irresistible. Add a thuggish mentality to that and you easily have the Stanford Prison Experiment on a massive scale. 

While there are plenty of thugs in government who enjoy being thugs, there are plenty of people who would never be able to actually pull the trigger. They are the drones who run the vast bureaucracy necessary in a socialist totalitarian state. All those rules and regulations, dictates and directives require an army of people who serve as intermediaries between the rulers and the ruled. Millions of people who sit at desks and create reams of mandates, orders and threats, people who spy, people whose job it is to figure out new ways to spend stolen money and reduce people's freedom. Many of these people are just happy to have a secure job with great benefits and a pension, some of them believe they are helping their fellows, and some think they are serving a government they believe in.

Motivation is irrelevant because each one of them is still doing a job that steals people's money and freedom. To do that job either they don't care, which puts them in the first category of thugs, or they convince themselves that either they or those above them in government know better than we do how to run our lives and spend our money. These people know what is best, they believe discipline must be imposed from the outside in order to improve society and save mankind. There are experts in government whose directives must be followed to achieve these goals. Once one accepts the premise that individual rights are secondary to the goals of the state, any order will be followed.  Since these bureaucrats aren't the people who actually pull the trigger, they are insulated from the effects of their “job.” They never see the lives they destroy or the faces of their victims, they are just names or numbers on a computer screen. It is much easier to deny the reality of their actions when they don't see the results.

A self supporting culture develops among these thieves and thugs by which they ignore their crimes and assuage their guilt. They pat each other on the back, give out rewards and awards, assure each other they are doing good work. For whom? Not for us. The hoops they create for us to jump through to make a living, the punitive measures they mete out to keep us in line, the rights they ignore or trample, none of its good for us. But if you are convinced your job is for the greater good, for society in the abstract, your self importance becomes ingrained and the crucial nature of your work for the state obvious. Any threat to that work is a threat to society.

Is it any wonder the established government apparatus and those who feed at its teat hurl such invective at President Trump, and President Reagan before him? Both outsiders who refused to play the game or bow before the wisdom of the bureaucratic herd. President Reagan had the audacity to say that “government is the problem” instead of the solution. President Trump ignores much of the conventional wisdom of the “experts” in government in favor of common sense solutions and is reducing government's reach. While President Reagan certainly felt the heat from the establishment, its efforts against President Trump are at a whole new level. That's because the “establishment”, particularly the intelligence and security apparatus President Trump has been critical of, is much larger and more powerful than it was during the 1980s. That community was still focused on the Soviet Union. Now it has become obsessed with internal threats to the state establishment.

The government community is not only bigger, its thug cultural mindset more entrenched, but it is bolder as well. The abuses in the justice department and the courts have made a mockery of our legal principles of fairness and equality before the law. The use of federal agencies like the IRS to harass and punish political opponents makes citizens hesitant to voice criticism. In the interests of security we have become conditioned to submit to the most ridiculous and invasive attacks on our persons and privacy. The punishment of real whistleblowers reinforces the corrupt governmental culture. Add the surveillance state to the mix and the apparatus for a truly brutal tyranny is all in place. It has been testing its effectiveness and our level of compliance, particularly in this present crisis. And the players are already in place ready to rise to the occasion.

People with the mentality of the SS or KGB and the political machine behind them are putting themselves on display for all to see. Our political leaders at the highest levels feel free to threaten supreme court justices who may choose to limit their decades long eugenics program. Congresswomen encourage supporters to attack members of the president's cabinet and his supporters. Local politicians want to spread viruses at the president's political rallies. Prominent entertainers and businessmen have called for the president's assassination. And people are listening. A rabid Bernie Sanders supporter shot several republican members of congress and the “Bernie Bros” frequently harassed and bullied his opponents and their supporters. People wearing MAGA hats are assaulted regularly. Cars have been driven into places housing republican voter registration drives. Antifa, like the brownshirts of old, riot in the streets. Given the green light, there is no doubt that there are many supporters of these statists and socialists who would engage in more systematic and widespread violence against political opponents. State sanctioned political violence like Kristallnacht.

Our present crisis has revealed the statist understanding of their role and powers for all to see. They assume they can lock down entire states, enforcing a twenty four hour curfew by fiat. Your right to assemble, work, worship and protect yourself have all simply disappeared in a matter of weeks for an indeterminate period of time. They are letting criminals out of prison and refusing to enforce the law. There is no question their abuse of power and disregard for constitutional and natural rights will get worse. Martial law may be just over the horizon, the national guard is already involved in some states. While President Trump has thus far refused to use the emergency the way many governors have, the breadth and scope of federal emergency powers is truly frightening. Even if President Trump continues to resist their implementation, they are just waiting for someone with less respect for individual rights to gleefully embrace their abuse and the accumulation of power that would result from their activation. And there are millions of government employees and career military personnel who will gladly follow the orders that will enslave or kill many of their countrymen. Some will do it because they trust the experts who say it is necessary and some will do it because they are thugs. But the vast majority will enforce martial law, compile lists of subversives, guard resisters in camps, and too many of our neighbors will be fine with it all. They may even inform on us, they are doing it already in this crisis when they hear someone cough.

You see, government is not going to get smaller and its entrenched culture is not going to change because of one politician or one election. It didn't change after President Reagan, it didn't change after the TEA party and it will not change after four or eight years of President Trump. It won't change because it can't change. Government is the way it is because of what it does, the “Deep State” exists because a certain type of people are attracted to activist government. The vast, vast majority of politicians and bureaucrats are thugs and they will never willingly relinquish power. There is only one way change will come, only one way our rights will be respected and that way is found only within us, we the people. We must come to value our unalienable rights above all else, we must stand up for those rights and we must refuse to comply with and support a government that violates them.

We find it difficult only because we refuse to see the equivalency. If the Chinese or the Russians invaded we'd all be living “Red Dawn”, but since it is our neighbors doing the dirty work, the people we voted for who screw us again and again, somehow we think we must take it. Our ability to vote is not a warrant for our subjugation! Our individual, natural rights are not subject to a vote, they do not depend on the grace of our rulers or the value our neighbors place upon them. They belong to us and they cannot be taken, only relinquished. We have a moral duty to protect them so they may be freely exercised. America's founders understood this and they made our natural rights legal rights as well, codifying them in the Constitution. The “Deep State” is a malevolent and wicked force occupying our constitutional republic, a malignant tumor destroying the ideals and vision of a free nation. The restoration of our freedom begins with our refusal to comply with those who are collaborating with our subjugation. It ends when the apparatus of tyranny has been destroyed. All it takes is for us to put our live, fortunes and sacred honor on the line.