More important than you think

If you don’t know who this dude is, here’s a link you might want to scan before you start reading what I have to say below. Significant Old White Guy.

Here’s a thumbnail version:

Now for some thoughts you probably haven’t seen despite multiple postings on my page.

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Here’s the post I posted before. As I’ve said elsewhere, it got no response at all in September when it first appeared. I know it might not be FB’s fault. Nobody cared when I wrote multiple posts about the logistical dangers of a nuclear confrontation handled not by the President but by the White House version of The View that runs the country these days, a dim-witted committee of self-obsessed radical mediocrities who have thus far been clumsy and stupid about everything they’ve touched. Nobody cared when I suggested it was time for Republican thought leaders of the female sex to stand up and talk sense to all the women out there who would trade the republic and the Constitution in on their right to an unqualified License to Kill the products of their coital activities before they became inconvenient to the liberated life of the superior sex. Men like me, obviously, can’t do that because our moral scorn might show for such myopically solipsistic peabrains in a nation that is truly in grave danger. Same might be true of this problem. I’m probably the only one who thinks ignoring this one might result in a Deep State excuse for world-ending assassination.

Time to rethink all those shrugs of indifference as far as I’m concerned.

I am not possessive of the ideas presented here. To the contrary. I want people to talk and write about building a preemptive defense against the cynical lefty paranoia that is certain to build in volume. No need to reference me at all. Just acknowledge and address the problem…

Just some things I felt needed saying. I’ve been watching the Trump campaign and I’m well aware that he is working in subtle ways to navigate the tightrope between acting like a shadow President and remaining too silent about vital political and fiscal controversies whose inept resolution could damage his ability to fix things. If elected. Which is a key thing to remember.

I know, for example, that his stump speech now includes a lengthening list of what he will do on the first day, in the first minutes and hours. He speaks of turning things around in 30 days. Of course he knows it will be much longer and harder a slog than issuing a slew of Presidential edicts. But he knows his supporters need hope and are well aware that they are in peril, even physical peril, by the mere act of expressing their belief in him.

Why he has been looking carefully for the right way to define his relationship with them and the nation. He does not crow about his courage or complain humorlessly about his isolation, his targeting by the runaway federal enforcers who have shown no sign of acknowledging that there are limits to how far they will go to stop him, including assassination. He repeatedly reminds his rally audiences that he is taking the heat because he is standing in the way of the same ruthless destructiveness being turned on them. “They have to take me out to get to you,” he says.

Lately he has added a new term to his description of who he is and what he is. “I am your Protector,” he says. And he is clearly right about that. The destroyers have already gone after the intimates in his circle by most of the foulest means available, including arrests in shackles, the piling on of empty indictments that will nevertheless bankrupt them with legal fees, and even dragooning their own attorneys into court to testify against them from constitutionally protected, confidential lawyer-client conversations.

Just today I saw a post at a site I’ve already been punished for reading in which the report is that Trump is hinting his consideration of an investigation of NBC and MSNBC for treason against the national security of the nation.

The Protector. Well, it’s its own slippery slope. England had a Protector once. Oliver Cromwell. He beheaded the King to save the people from a ravening elite and to restore their liberty and autonomy. The Protectorate, however, lasted for 10 years (correction via D. Jupp) and was indistinguishable from dictatorship. It ended only with the death of Cromwell.

Trump is too old to rule for 10 years (and constitutionally prohibited from same), and I do not believe he has any intention of governing as a dictator. But who will come after him? The measures that must be taken to right the foundering ship of state will be, of necessity, unprecedented. How long should they remain in force? Those who have been invulnerable and invincible for years must be brought down. But what are the acceptable limits of such measures? I believe good people must start thinking about what those limits must be, no matter how bad things get. And by the same token, we must be thinking about how to treason-proof the federal machine which has gotten so broken that we are right now compelled to watch helplessly what every reasonable person knows are prolonged travesties of justice without a whistle blown to stop the impending train wreck enroute.

Part of my thinking here is probably alien to most of you. I am not an optimist about a successful restoration of a republic which has already been effectively lost. Trump will try his hardest if given the opportunity, but he may ultimately fail to achieve the impossible. What then? And what kind of thinking can we offer now to provide him with sound guidelines for which tradeoffs are acceptable and which are not, even if the cost of our compunctions is a prolonged era of continued poverty and personal loss. What, for example, should be the precise rules of engagement for removing elected officials and appointees from office or from the bench?

Give it some thought. I am not so much afraid of ‘Donald Cromwell Trump’ as I am of the backlash that might very well follow an election victory which does not result in full restoration of what has already been lost. Furthermore, we may allay some small percentage of the irrational fears about Trump and his supporters by expressing our determination to do the fixing in a more moral fashion than the destroying has been done. 

Don’t doubt for a moment that the fop King Charles I would have had Cromwell killed if he’d had an opportunity and a complacent populace. 

Ask some questions of yourselves about this stuff. And take a long look at the lovely graphic I have prepared for you all…