It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over

The "system" will not be fixed. Trump is not our Savior. The hard work is just getting started.

from CNN as of 2024 Nov 10

What?

It is certainly true that God uses people, both individually and as nations, more often than not it seems to me, to execute His judgements upon another person or nation. The Bible is rife with examples. But how am I to know whether or not that is indeed happening? Some say that God saved Trump from assassination for a reason. Maybe. Maybe not. And if so, for what reason? I’m no prophet. The Bible says you shall know them by their fruits; in other words you will know them by what they do, which seems most often not to be what the say they will do.

16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? 17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. 19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. 20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

Matthew 7:16-20

And regardless of what he or she does, God promises to turn it to the good, eventually I’ll add, for His people.

19 And Joseph said unto them, Fear not: for am I in the place of God?

20 But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.

21 Now therefore fear ye not: I will nourish you, and your little ones. And he comforted them, and spake kindly unto them.

Genesis 50:19-21

So What?

Trump has 20 “core promises” on this website; I’m just going to look at the these from a separation of powers/constitutional republic perspective:

1 Seal the border and stop the migrant invasion
Of course this is the federal government’s job, which the Biden administration has simply decided not to do.

2 Carry out the largest deportation operation in american history
Again, it is the federal government’s job; get to it.

3 End inflation, and make america affordable again

The only way to end inflation is to end the Federal Reserve’s charter, which I am all for, but I don’t see it being done. Monetary policy creates inflation. Period. The Federal Reserve is an enemy of We the People, but a friend to Big Government, especially so the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex and the Welfare State. If you gave me one wish regarding government, just one, this would be it; End the Fed. The size of the nation-state bureaucracy would collapse almost instantly.

Inflation; Anything but Benign

4 Make america the dominant energy producer in the world, by far!

If it is federal regulation, federal taxation, or a combination of the two that drives down U.S. energy production, then the federal government can get out of the way, which would probably be enough. A better way to have stated this promise might have been “Allow U.S. energy producers to do what they do best, without being unnecessarily hamstrung by their own government!”

And, without being a dominant producer of oil in particular, we will not be able to sustain the petrodollar as the world reserve currency (#13 on Trump’s list). Unless we End the Fed, and return to a “hard” currency.

5 Stop outsourcing, and turn the United States into a manufacturing superpower

Companies outsource for reasons; sometimes but not always well thought out. There should be high tariffs on everything we need as a nation to remain independently strong; what do I mean by that? As individuals and families, I’d even stretch that to include tribes or local communities we need to provide ourselves with food, shelter, water, care for our sick and injured, energy, and security; the list goes on but I’ll stop there for now. As a nation we should be self-reliant in the provision of those necessities. We should not be dependent on China for medical supplies. We should not be dependent on Taiwan for microchips necessary in our military equipment. The U.S. should not be dependent on 10 other countries for 77% of the steel we consume. We should be dependent on no other nation, temporary ally or not, for staple foods, including meats. We should not be dependent on the Russians for rare earth elements necessary in the manufacture of solar panels, or other electronics, batteries, etc. We should not be dependent on another nation for energy; “another nation” includes Canada. And so on.

Beyond that, “free trade” is not free; I wrote two posts on the subject.

Free Trade: What Could Go Wrong?

Free Trade: What Could Go Wrong? Part 2

6 Large tax cuts for workers, and no tax on tips!
Reduce the size of the federal government by 90% and the tax problem will take care of itself. And I’m not exaggerating; that is the scale of the problem. End the welfare state. Destroy the perpetual war machine.

7 Defend our constitution, our bill of rights, and our fundamental freedoms, including freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to keep and bear arms
From the Declaration of Independence; ”We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men…” Literally, this is why we have government.

8 Prevent world war three, restore peace in europe and in the middle east, and build a great iron dome missile defense shield over our entire country -- all made in america
Our foreign policy can be summarized in few words; create instability, fund a war machine to “stabilize” the instability created, repeat. This has been our modus operandi since WW II.

9 End the weaponization of government against the american people

If your government is big enough to give you everything you want, it is big enough to take away from you everything you have.

Paul Harvey, Remember These Things, 1952

The very size of government, alone, is itself a weapon of government.

The total labor force, including the military, is 171,410,000; subtracting from that those in the military and federal, state and local governments (45,790,000) leaves 125,620,000 in the private sector labor force.

So, 26.7% of the total labor force, I repeat, 45,790,000 people, are military and government employees, more than 1 in 4; in other words, on average, every fourth person you see is paid by the first three. (And of the four, 60%, or 2.4 on average, pay no federal income tax; see below under number 20) There is nothing "limited" about our government. And this calculation doesn't include all of the people in businesses contracting with the governments for the provision of supplies, materiel and services; it doesn’t include public school teachers and administrators; add in those folks, and I’d guess were looking at more than 1 in 3 is paid for by taxes on the other 2.

Unemployment & Labor Force Participation

Those one in three people, one in four if we are being very generous with our assumptions, have zero interest in cutting the size or cost of government. Zero. Your money is their job security. And they have the heavy weapons, paid for by you of course.

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.

Margaret Thatcher

*10 Stop the migrant crime epidemic, demolish the foreign drug cartels, crush gang violence, and lock up violent offenders
See 1 and 2.

11 Rebuild our cities, including Washington DC, making them safe, clean, and beautiful again.

The federal government has no business rebuilding cities, except perhaps DC. It is the work of the cities themselves and the states to rebuild their cities. But first we would have to admit that there is a problem with our cities, that our culture is sickening and killing its own, and I don’t see us admitting to that. The solutions are too hard to contemplate, and therefore our “leaders” will not contemplate.

*12 Strengthen and modernize our military, making it, without question, the strongest and most powerful in the world
We don’t need to do this. What we need is to fall back to become, at best, one of three or four regional hegemons, and be powerful enough to make challenging us too costly to be contemplated.

*13 Keep the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency
This horse has already left the barn. Or if you prefer, the train wreck has already happened; we’re just waiting for the cars to pile up. The dollar is done as the world’s reserve currency. Get over it and plan accordingly.

*14 Fight for and protect social security and medicare with no cuts, including no changes to the retirement age
No. Give me my money back, including the money stolen via devaluation of the dollar (aka inflation), and I’ll take it from there.

*15 Cancel the electric vehicle mandate and cut costly and burdensome regulations
The first part of this will probably be easy; the second part not so much. Big business writes virtually all regulation, to prevent or limit competition, having captured the regulating agencies.

*16 Cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, radical gender ideology, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children
Get the federal government completely out of the “schooling” business at all levels; nothing less will do.

*17 Keep men out of women's sports
Somebody please explain to me why we need the federal government managing sports for us.

18 Deport pro-hamas radicals and make our college campuses safe and patriotic again

See 1, 2 and 16.

19 Secure our elections, including same day voting, voter identification, paper ballots, and proof of citizenship

Unless existing federal law is being broken, elections are the business of the individual states.

20 Unite our country by bringing it to new and record levels of success

Good luck. So long as the federal government sees its business as stealing from some, laundering the money, treating the stolen money as its own, counterfeiting yet more money, and then distributing the stolen wealth and created dollars to the individuals, groups, and industries it prefers, the country will remain divided. Those being stolen from want to be protected from theft, as they should, and those on the receiving end want more to be stolen. Division is the result.

TPC finds that in 2020, out of 176.2 million individuals and married couples who could file a tax return, about 144.5 million of them actually filed a tax return. Of the 144.5 million, 75.1 million filers paid no taxes after deductions and credits. Another 32 million households did not file a tax return. In total, about 107 million Americans (or 60.6 percent of households) paid no federal income taxes.

Tax Foundation

You will find nothing in the Constitution about the federal government being responsible for charity or benevolence; those are roles of the individual, family, community and the church. By the way, all of those, individual, family, community and the church, are weakened by the federal government assuming the role of sole benefactor. And that’s not a “side effect” of government assuming the role, it is rather a desired outcome. The higher powers, like Big Industry (you name the industry), want no or severely limited competition, and they do not recognize a highest power. It’s what we’ve come to as a nation.

Now What?

I’ve written a lot about the What? and the So What?, though not as much about the Now What? <By the way, I took this approach to addressing the problem, “What? So What?, Now What?” from my great friend and Naval Academy roommate Sean; I’m using it here without permission.> There will be two schools of thought, and action no doubt, in the wake of the 2024 election. As for me and my house, we won’t be doing anything differently than had Kamala won, although I think it’s likely that we will encounter less “friction” in going about our business; in the short term. And, we may more actively resist evil; we’ll get to that in a future post. But suffice it to say for now, We the People need to step back up to the plate. The “system” doesn’t work without We the People holding local, state and federal governments accountable. We the People, are the root cause of the problem.

We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us

If nothing else, the last four years should have taught us, again, what happens when we take our hands off the wheel. Only it’s not been just four years, it’s been at least a century. Long term, our nation has been in decline since WW II, and precipitous decline since the 60’s. Before that too much bad happened during Woodrow Wilson’s presidency to recite here; but trust me, it is a long list. He was followed by FDR and Johnson; both having done great long term damage to the nation. But I digress. In a relative sense, relative to other “great powers,” I expect the decline to continue, especially on the military and economic fronts, regardless of regime change.

Finally, let me just set up the next post with this teaser: We in the United States in particular, are wedded to the notion that people are inherently good, ourselves of course included. I regret having to inform you that it just ain’t so, and never has been.