As fully expected by anyone with their eyes open, the world is watching the fall of a once great nation beneath the heel of a hateful egotist solely to assuage his lust for what he assumes to be power and his overarching need for vengeance — the 12-year-old boy pulling the wings off the grasshopper he caught for spitting in his hand grown old but not up.
He was elected by deception, an inveterate liar known to embrace any unfair advantage, illegal or barely legal, elected against an opponent still following a playbook of decorum and fair play. Proclaiming a landslide victory, Donald Trump, who never been accused of decency, dignity or honor, actually barely squeaked into office on his promise to “Make America Great Again,” a baseless ploy designed for that contingent of Americans fearful that their assumption of supremacy is threatened and of those so certain that their notion of God is true that they’d do for their preternatural omnipotent deity what he apparently chooses not to do for himself — to assert authority on beings who choose different paths, to deny them the free will that is the foundation of the concept of freedom and liberty to all creatures, especially to those denied.
Just over a week into his second term, the bait and switch is becoming obvious — Trump is the champion, not of the American people, but of the Heritage Foundation, pushing a constitution-defying agenda that proclaims freedom and prosperity but promotes their opposite. A true “Deep State” organization — unelected, unseen, unaccountable, their hands secretly on the levers of power. Their guide and bible, “Project 2025,” in development since the think tank’s founding in 1973, wasn’t made known to the general public until 2022.
When it sparked widespread concern, Trump denied being involved with or even knowing about the Heritage Foundation, a cabal pushing what they consider “conservative” principals, its stated mission “to formulate and promote public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.”
The two are incompatible, but, as with Trump, words can be usurped and definitions don’t matter.
They’re keeping track of how their pet president is doing, with a running tally on The Daily Signal, backed with Trumpesque exaggeration and misinformation.
Earning the president kudos:
- Granting pardons to 23 pro-life activists
- Strengthening U.S. leadership in digital financial technology
- Ensuring American leadership in artificial intelligence
- Releasing the files on JFK, RFK and MLK
- America First Policy Directive
- Halt to wind energy leasing and permitting
- Withdrawing from Paris Agreement
- Opening Alaska to resource extraction
- Keeping Tik Tok online
- Returning federal personnel to in-person work
- Federal hiring freeze
- Restoring the death penalty
- Ending federal employee protections from partisan politics
- Allowing private prisons
- Weaponizing the Department of Justice and others that “persecuted” Trump
- Establishing “race neutrality” by ending DEI
- “Ending government censorship by allowing lies, misinformation and propaganda to be promulgated without challenge or correction.
- Enabling the U.S. military to operate on its own soil
- “Securing our borders” by getting back to building that wall
- Ending Biden-era executive orders protecting gender identity and concerning DEI, the environment, global warming and other “woke” and leftist garbage
- Restricting access to voting to benefit his party
- Putting January 6 behind us with pardons and commutations
- Curbing Biden’s inflation wrecking ball by reducing the annual cost of federal regulations by $11,000 per household, including the onerous regulation on the cost of appliances and homebuilding
- Pulling the U.S. out of WHO
- Declaring a national emergency at the southern border
- Promoting beautiful federal civic architecture
- Ending universal birthright citizenship
- Declaring that only two sexes, male and female, exist, that gender identity is merely confusion and grounding federal law and policy on the bedrock of biology
This isn’t the complete list, but it clearly demonstrates that, by whatever magic, every Trump action to date meets with approval from the panel of experts keeping track for the Heritage Foundation … and not one does anything to address any of the true issues affecting the least affluent half the U.S. population, who combined own about 2.5-percent of America’s wealth.
There may be a number of United States citizens who know and understand the implications of Project 2025, and who prefer the 900-plus page tome over the United States Constitution, and who, having already invoked insurrection, stand ready to do far more to inflict their questionable morality on what has to be a vast majority beginning only now to see and question.
But I can’t help but trust that far more of my countrymen, some drawn in by the joyful words and fake camaraderie of belonging to something that seems bigger than they alone, will recognize the peril and free themselves of the cult.
Once they realize the scale of the vast and cancerous web of lies being spun from within by the most radical of their right, to include Donald Trump, the Heritage Foundation, the plethora of Freedom factions nationwide to include our very own Idaho Freedom Foundation, Idaho Freedom Caucus and all those who sing the lies and propaganda in their praise, Dorothy Moon, Heather Scott, Brent Regan, Scott Herndon and all too many more who are immune from the truth, those of MAGA not so blinded, not so bedazzled by his false show of force will begin peeling away from the clique in ever increasing numbers.
Trump nor his sycophants will be able to stop them.
The true believers’ lies will grow more shrill, their threats and invective louder and more dire. Their tactics won’t change, only increase in urgency as they become less effective — projecting their sins onto those they victimize with self righteous zeal, using misdirection as well as a magician uses sleight of hand to keep you looking in the wrong direction, attacking the person rather than the argument. They are unable to defend their positions with logic or rational discourse because there is nothing rational or logical in what they propose, no more of substance or value in what they offer than Trump’s childish non-fungible trading cards or his bit coins.
It’s not easy for people of reason to recognize or accept when the rules have changed suddenly and with little warning, as they did almost overnight with the advent of Trump in 2015.
Ten years on, there are a few more reasoned voices crying warning from the wilderness, but the side long on fake grievances and misplaced blame and sorely lacking anything else continues to hold sway, ever demanding, never conceding, never apologizing, never right.
It is time we — not we the left, not we the Democrats, not we the RINOS, but we the people of this great nation who appreciate the promise of this nation’s constitution and will stand to defend her — owe the radicals who call us their enemies nothing. Our fealty belongs to no man, no matter the number of sheep in his flock. Our fealty is to an idea, an ideal that all men are created equal, that our diversity is our strength, that by virtue of the equity inherent in the inalienable rights endowed each of us, so we owe our neighbors equity, that as neighbors we are each of us but parts of a greater whole, and that only by inclusion can all the diverse parts fit together into a unit stronger than the sum of its parts.
Let them show us what they will, let them ridicule and pester, belittle or delay. When they come against one of us, let them find that we are all one.