We are now being told that the election of Donald Trump represents a virulent strain of tyrannical fascism in American politics, which was before lying under the surface but is now unapologetically out in the open. Certain agitators and political commentators are claiming that they don’t feel safe in a world where Trump is president, implying that there may be physical threats against their life, property or lifestyle under his regime. The conclusion is that Trump is to blame for a politics of potentially open, physical violence across partisan lines.
But if this is what Trump represents, Trump is the necessary response to an earlier dynamic, not the initiator of it. You see, the Left has been successful in its quest to control politically-acceptable speech. The world of man can be controlled by arms, or by words and ideas. If certain words and ideas can not be uttered, then the people who believe in them have no choice but to take up arms in their support. What choice but violence does a person have to convince another of his views, if his views are considered unutterable in society?
We are also told that Trump is committing what amounts to treason in warring with political factions in his own country while buddying up to autocrats in other countries, such as Russia. If the right way, and the only way, to conduct a political strategy is to play by your opponent’s rules, then this criticism may have merit. But politics is war by other means, a game of domination and annihilation. If you are a globalist after global control, you might call a truce here and there with domestic factions to enhance your projection of power outside your borders.
But what if you are a “nationalist” or “patriot”, like Mr. Trump?
If your primary political concern is dominance within your own borders, it is clear who your enemies and your friends are. Your enemies are any domestic political factions which question, criticize or otherwise restrain your full use of power inside your borders. And your friends are any parties, inside or outside your borders, that can either help you defeat your domestic opponents in some way, or who can agree to some kind of truce that lets you focus on defeating your opponents at home.
Make no mistake about it– Mr. Trump is in a war for his political (and potentially even vital) life, such is the nature of politics which has no rules but that which each opponent might individually observe. And looking at the world as he claims to, it seems not only not treasonous, but completely rational, to find friends where they can be found in order to quell the domestic disturbance represented by the Democrats and the American Left. And we can sense the truth of this proposition in observing that while critics of Mr. Trump argue that he should make peace with his domestic opponents to fight external enemies, these critics are not suggesting these opponents make peace with Mr. Trump, nor are these opponents themselves voluntarily laying down arms against Mr. Trump for the time being to take them up against the Great Alien Menace. Actions speak louder than words here.
And what about the spat with the domestic spy agencies? Ignoring the fact that they were un-American and not to be trusted under the Bush regime, and were clearly un-American and autistically-focused on studying the communication patterns of those people they nominally serve under the Obama regime (and when did these people face election and change under any of the last three administrations?), they are supposed to be answerable to the Congress, which supervises them, and the President, who leads the nation they serve.
To raise the claim that Mr. Trump is playing a “dangerous game” in challenging their methods, claim and authority, is to belie the very corruption his opposition to these organizations so far engenders– this may be a hard metaphor for many to understand these days, but it would be as if the appointed chief executive of the owner of a company was playing a dangerous game in challenging the actions and attitudes of the company’s hired employees. This argument has the theoretical cause-effect relationship of American civics exactly reversed.
In case anyone needs reminding these days, why is it exactly that the American intelligence “community” (note: for their to be a community, there by definition must be some who are inside it and some who are outside, that is, citizens of the domain and barbarians at the gates…) is to be considered trustworthy?
Have they demonstrated gross competence at their appointed tasks? Anyone who has not forgotten the failures of September 11th, 2001, must puzzle at the question.
Have they any kind of record of their activities and thinking that is examinable by the public? No, only the Congress and the President have access to that information (if the intelligence agencies are honest in presenting it in the first place!) and there is a clear principal-agent problem in electoral politics presented by these defined secrets.
And what kind of people are they who join these secret cabals, whose jobs seem to consist of lying for a living, trafficking in arms and illicit substances and occasionally murdering people deemed to be strategic problems for themselves or the government they represent?
Well, just that– liars, murderers, professional criminals and reckless thrill-seekers.
A better question than “Why should they be trusted?” is “Why should they be tolerated in a society that claims to have an open government?” Speaking of tyranny and autocratic rule, is there any model more noble in form than the modern spook cartels?
A House Rises 