Strike Two

 

For six years now, the Democrats, the mainstream media, and the federal legal mechanisms (DOJ/FBI/others) have been hounding Donald Trump.  The obvious goal is to render Trump legally incapable of mounting another Presidential campaign.

Yet, we're assured that Trump was soundly defeated in 2020.  Literally every talking head, even those one might expect to be opposed to that cabal (DNC, media, and Deep State) use terms like "disgraced former President" or "debunked claims about the election".  We non-talking heads are faced with a most unhappy dichotomy:  either that last election was stolen or 81 million American voters thought it was a great idea to put an Alzheimer's sufferer in the White House.  One of those must be true, and I flinch from coming down on one side or the other.  They're both horrible options.  Whichever one chooses to believe, it's a losing move.

With each passing day, it becomes harder to deny that Trump is setting himself up for another run at the White House, and with each passing day, the Democrats' unbroken streak of unforced errors make it look more and more likely that Trump, if he runs, will win. The man still has enough juice to pack stadiums to overflowing.  As with the last election, the Dems are happy when the crowd amounts to 400.

Of course, the GOPe isn't too happy about that prospect, but they could find themselves holding a losing hand if a substantial number of Trump-backed newcomers win their elections this November.  Certainly, there aren't enough of those committed Trumpists to take over either the House or the Senate against the entrenched Never Trumpers, even combined with those already seated, but a big enough 'red wave' would send a very uncomfortable message to the rest:  get on board the train or be left at the station.

I've never been a Trump supporter.  I didn't vote for him in either 2016 0r 2020, and it's unlikely I will in 2024.  I absolutely reject the notion of voting for Republicans so that Democrats don't win.  In contests past, it has been hard to press the argument that the parties are sufficiently different that voting for one or the other is a sensible choice.  Last Thursday, Joe Biden put that notion to the torch.  True, both parties are corrupt as the natural end-game of such things must go, but the corruption of the Democrats is of a starkly different nature.  They seem to have gone full-totalitarian.  The only plausible counter-move is Sherman's March To The Sea.

The myriad federal agencies, nearly all of them Constitutionally insupportible, are the headquarters of what is commonly known as 'the deep state':  hordes of Civil Service hangers-on impossible to fire, yet most of them must be mothballed if the deep state is to be defanged.  The only way to do that is to defund them.  Luckily, this is not an impossible task as long as at least one house of Congress is held by a committed majority.

Deny the 'continuing resolution' that has been used for the last 15 years to avoid the (Constitutional) necessity for passing a budget.  No more Mr. Nice Guy.  Cut the budget.  Cut the budget so deep that Harry Browne would have gasped and reached for his nitroglycerine.  Pentagon -85%.  Any TLA not mentioned in Article 1 § 8 -100%. — I here mean FBI, CIA, and NSA.  Any TLA sanctioned by I§8 cut by enough that the top 4 management levels have to work for free in order to actually fulfill the agency's Constitutional mission — there are precious few of those.

Will this happen?  I sincerely doubt it.  Nobody either in office or contending for one has that much courage.

If it doesn't happen, of course, we're probably doomed to a very, very dirty hot civil war for which I'm certain I don't have enough ammunition.