From George Bush to Donald Trump: Race to the Bottom Ends with a Trojan Horse
The entire rationale for electing the obnoxious real estate developer was his repeated promise to keep us out of war.
On several occasions in recent years I tried to explain to my mother that, despite acting like Al Czervik—the garish real estate developer in Caddyshack—Donald Trump was better than any other presidential candidate because—in so many of his words and deeds—he made the case that he would keep us out of another Satanic war in the Middle East.
“I know, I know, mom, the guy is as tacky as they come, but at least he’s going to keep us out of another one of these infernal wars that waste trillions, get a ton of people killed and maimed, destabilize the Middle East, cause a refugee crisis in Europe. We all had such high hopes for George W. Bush, and look what he did.”
Underlying our discussions about Trump and his terrible manners was a cultural subtext. The Waspy worldview of her parents’ generation was giving way to the flamboyance of America’s nouveau-riche financial class that had made a killing in the ultra low interest rate environment that has prevailed since 2009.
When we were kids in the eighties and having a big laugh at the scene in Caddyshack in which Al Czervik—at the helm of the Seafood power boat—demolished Judge Smails’s fine little wooden sloop, the Flying Wasp (a Nordic Folkboat) we compared the judge to our grandfather, who adored the modest sloop that he sailed on Lake Dallas on the weekends.
Back in May of last year, when Trump made his grand tour of the Gulf States with great pomp and ceremony, I told my mother, “See, he just wants to do deals and have fun.”
Just one year later, Trump left all of his flamboyant Gulf potentate buddies out to dry. There is no way—unless he is himself being deeply deceived—that he didn’t understand that the Iranians would, in the event of being attacked, hit all US assets in the Gulf.
Now it’s crystal clear that the race to the bottom that began in 2001 has ended with Donald Trump—the ultimate Trojan Horse—getting into the battered but still standing walls of the Constitutional Republic.
Now that I think about it, the Trojan War lasted ten years—the same span of time between Trump’s announcement of his presidential candidacy in 2015 to 2025.
It will take a while for many of his true believers to realize they’ve been had, but they will eventually.
Please keep your comments addressed to health and address your political discussions to your mother. I did not subscribe to hear your political thoughts.
There is a time for war and a time for peace (Ecclesiastes. 3:8). The imperial/globalist wars in Iraq, Ukraine, etc. were the wrong time for war, serving the interests of those who want to oppress the world in the name of "democracy." But the proper response is not to cling to the simplistic position that any war is a bad war. Period. War is hell and always tragic, even when justified. This one may yet get very ugly. But the mission to eliminate the demonic, anti-human, apocalyptic cult that has sown mayhem for decades, and is determined to threaten not just regional but world peace in time, is arguably a just war. Reasonable people can differ on this. Your giving a dismissive back of the hand to your readers who take that position is not helpful, and it's not what we came to Focal Points for.