You can’t drain the swamp without shutting off its wellsprings.
Disaffected veterans were the core of a group that would grow to millions, their “faith” in government and the people who ran it obliterated by its repeated failures and lies. Revolutions dawn when an appreciable number of the ruled realize their rulers are intellectual and moral inferiors. The mainstream media is filled with vituperative, patronizing, and insulting explanations of what’s “behind” the Trump phenomenon. It all boils down to revulsion with the self-anointed, incompetent, pretentious, hypocritical, corrupt, prevaricating elite that presumes to rule this country. It is, in a word, inferior to the populace on the other side of the yawning chasm, the ones they have patronized and insulted for decades, and the other side knows it.
“Much More Than Trump,” SLL, 3/12/16
The election represented a triumph, after decades of mockery and defeat, of a voting bloc Donald Trump identified, validated, and vindicated.
Repudiating the elite and its supporting institutions—government and all its rackets, the media, academia, Hollywood—is the necessary first step to reversing America’s full-speed-ahead plunge into a Grand Canyon-size ditch. It has ruled America badly and corruptly, lining its pockets while maintaining its phony pose of moral and intellectual superiority. Trump is the decent besieged’s desperate call for a U-turn before the reigning establishment leaves the country smashed on the canyon floor.
Understandably, Trump’s supporters have celebrated their victory, basked in the establishment’s discomfiture, and mocked their foes. That a less-than-zero like Hillary Clinton could gain her party’s nomination (although she might not have if she hadn’t cheated), gain the endorsement of virtually everyone that “mattered,” and even win the popular vote (if the count is to be believed) gave Trump’s side plenty of targets and material.
Clinton and friends also gave Trump plenty of targets and material for investigations and legal proceedings. As SLL concluded in “The Rout Is On,” Trump has turned the tables. Russiagate fizzles while Uranium One, Fusion GPS, FBI favoritism, and Clinton’s emails and foundation sizzle. Last week, a judge ordered Fusion GPS to turn over all it’s banking records. It was learned the FBI is investigating the Clinton Foundation. The Justice Department reopened its investigation into Clinton’s emails. The FBI’s Freedom of Information Act officer said that every memo former FBI director James Comey leaked to a Columbia law professor was classified.
SLL has suggested, there won’t be a general swamp draining because Trump’s primary motivation is the acquisition of power. He will prosecute establishment criminality in some cases while using the threat as leverage against those who are useful to him in their present positions. That may explain why the Clintons and Comey are in the most legal jeopardy: they no longer have positions or power. Their prosecutions and convictions would be enormous victories for Trump, electrifying his base and further demoralizing the absurdly named resistance.
However, it would be a pleasant surprise to see Trump and team go after the entire swamp, offering welcome evidence that SLL’s hypothesis concerning Trump’s motives may be off base.
There’s an old adage in the securities business: you’re only as good as your last trade. It’s laudable and essential that Trump has his enemies on the run, especially if it leads to a swamp draining. That said, the next steps involve identifying the intellectual wellsprings that feed the swamp and taking the steps necessary to halt the flow. If those steps aren’t taken, the swamp will be half refilled by the time Trump’s helicopter reaches Andrews Air Force Base on his last day in office.
As long as Washington is a $4 trillion honey pot, as long as it sticks its nose in every important activity and business, as long as intervenes anywhere it wants around the globe, for whatever reason, it will be a swamp. Money and power feed the swamp. To not address the sophistries justifying that flow means that regardless of how successful Trump is, new swamp vermin will quickly replace the old.
The word “conservative” implies conserving something. What conservatives conserve, as well as nourish and profit from, is the ever-expanding federal government. Conservatives think small: a little less or a little more. A little less taxes, regulation, and welfare, a little more defense spending and foreign intervention. Fewer liberals in power, more conservatives. Republican presidents and Republican-controlled congresses have come and gone as the swamp has relentlessly grown. The current Republican president and congress have even managed to conserve Obamacare.
Looking at the mess Washington has made of America and the rest of the world, what would any rational, honest person want to conserve? Wouldn’t it be better just to blow the whole thing up and start all over? Isn’t that what’s necessary if you want not just to drain the swamp, but keep it drained?
Even as an intellectual exercise, ‘blowing the whole thing” up means asking questions that few ask. Why should the US be the world’s policeman? Does regulation do anything other than protect entrenched interests? By what right does the government steal from the productive? By what right does it burden future generations with trillions in debt and “entitlement” promises? Are central banking and fiat debt anything more than fraud and theft? Why should government have any role in the issuance of “money,” when it has every incentive to debase it? Do people have a right to keep what they earn, and in stores of value of their own choosing? Do people have the right to control their own lives? Are they to be forever tyrannized by government?
Both teams declared these issues settled long ago. Yet, as long as these issues are “settled,” so is the swamp, regardless of the progress Trump might make temporarily draining it. And as long as these issues are “settled,” so too is America’s impending plunge into the ditch.
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