What's Really Happening, Trump Edition

Trump has been a source of division everywhere, including in the Bureau.  Many electrons have been spewed and much vitriol unleashed on this very subject, inside and out of the Bureau.  You've probably seen a lot of the stuff outside.

There is a saying that you should include someone who opposes you in your group of advisors to keep you honest.  The Bureau contains conservatives, liberals and libertarians, and yes, there's more than one of us.  Your author is an anarcho-capitalist who tends to caucus with minarchists and is generally more to the right than left.  However, the ranks include at least one progressive, and it is to this poor soul that many, many questions have been posed.  We will address some of them below.

Why did liberals protest the Trump presidency?

Actually, this is something your author does not at all understand.  No liberal has been able to explain it.  However, some interesting bits have come to light.

One, the author simply was not aware of how certain the Clintonistas were of victory.  Trump's victory did not surprise this author.  The polls seemed to be roughly 50/50 heading into the election if you looked at the electoral college.  So, the first issue is that the left was sure of victory, which made the loss that much more damaging to their souls.

Two, there is an astonishing amount of disinformation about Donald Trump that is taken as gospel by the left.  Trump, of course, is the source of some of that, as he does not think much before he says something.  Also, there's a lot of carefully disseminated disinformation about Hillary Clinton in that she worked hard to convince everyone who would listen that she would defend the downtrodden, fix race problems and raise up the income of the lower classes.  The facts of the case aren't part of this essay, so your author will let them slide for now, which requires a powerful act of will.

Three seems to be the assumption that the right that elected Trump will control Trump.  It seems that Democrats tend to stay bought by the constituency that elected them whereas Republicans tend rather to pursue ideological purity that suits them.  Donald Trump, of course, does neither, which we will get into below.

Exactly what the protesters hoped to accomplish is, of course, a mystery, as is why the left attempted to force recounts everywhere and tried to suborn electors.  Rather ironically, both attempts backfired and made Trump's margin of victory higher.  But, I digress.  It seems that the left felt so strongly that Trump would lead us all to ruin and Hillary, despite all evidence to the contrary, wouldn't, so did the things that liberal firebrands have done throughout history: they set out to 'raise awareness' as if anybody was unaware of this election, and to use whatever tricks they had to avoid the manifest disaster they saw coming.  What that disaster would be, exactly, none of them have been able to inform me, because there really isn't that much to hang Trump on that Hillary herself hasn't been doing.

Is Trump a conservative?

Not at all.  Trump used to be a Democrat.  Seriously.  There are a ton of pictures of him beaming and shaking hands with the Clinton family.  They came out during the Republican primary.  They didn't come out in the general election, of course, because that would have been Clinton saying 'hey, don't elect Trump because he used to be friends with me', which would be counter-productive at the least.

Is Trump evil?

No.  Trump is a blowhard.  Trump is brash.  Trump gets in snits and says and does things that are inadvisable.  However, there is plenty of actual evidence that Trump listens to calmer people, that Trump himself tries to be a nice guy and that Trump does what he can to be what he thinks a good person should be.  That may not be what you think a good person should be, but Trump is not, essentially, evil.

So, why the hate?

Well, there are a lot of reasons.  First, Hillary was a solid candidate for those who would be our masters.  She stands for the advancement of the globalists, the bankers, and federal government power.  While that sounds like a load of conspiracy claptrap, it's really not because you can actually go read the documents these people have written, some of which were in the DNC emails stolen by some hackers somewhere.  The fact that it wasn't a Russian government operation is also not part of the scope of this essay, but it really wasn't likely to have been.

So, along comes Trump.  Trump isn't a good candidate by any stretch of the imagination.  He infuriated whole demographics.  Were the Democrats to put up any candidate but Hillary, he would not have won.  However, his very inability to avoid stuffing his foot in his mouth was perceived as evidence that he was speaking truthfully from his heart, so he was perceived as genuine, and the American, and, indeed, the world, electorate is clearly tired of managed leaders who do nothing to help the people.

Also, everyone that seems to be a part of 'the system' hated Trump.  Each of these he took out, one by one.  When George Soros counseled against voting for Trump. your author started seriously considering voting for Trump.  That sort of thing won him a large number of votes simply because he had the right enemies and he did not back down from them.  Rather, he doubled down.

So, we have a candidate that has no record, has a history of making up his own mind on the fly and who hates the sorts of people who had been in power for decades.  Yeah, there's enough of a reason to whip up the populace against him.

Will he be a good president?

The bureau does not know.  Nobody does.  This is a source of a lot of concern for many analysts.  Confidence in Trump is rather more dependent on the opinion a given analyst has of Hillary than anything else, as, if you believe, as this author does, that she is the most corrupt politician to arrive to the scene in many decades, at least since Richard Nixon, then you believe that nearly anyone would be better than she.

Since nobody knows anything about Trump other than his public businessman persona, nobody knows whether he will be good or bad, but the chance remains he will be good.  There is evidence of this.

First, he's already made good on one of his promises and kept some jobs here.  He's working on keeping more.  His methods are cause for concern, but Trump is about the deal, not the mechanics of governance as Hillary.  For this reason, Trump surveys the information available and then makes the best decision he can see at the time.  This means he won't ever be predictable.  It also means he won't let political realities impinge on what he thinks is best.

We see this in his recent statements about the F-35 program.  The bureau has long been of the opinion that the F-35 is an utter waste of money, built for a war that will never happen and already obsolete.  The one thing it is is fabulously expensive, and provides a lot of money stuffed into the coffers of LockMart, which is often payback for favors during electioneering.

Trump wasn't paid for by LockMart.  That means he can look at the F-35 for what it is.  Survey the internet for a list of its failings; there are plenty.  Simply put, the Chinese airforce can see it, it is not particularly good at a gunfight and it is basically not field-repairable.  Also, its airframe is not durable so we will have to replace them much sooner than an equivalent aluminum-framed fighter.  Add it all up and you can understand why many analysts all over the internet have been calling for the cancellation of the F-35 program.  Trump sees this and, surprisingly, has made a rational choice.

Will he cancel the program?  Who knows.  Perhaps he will see the political expediency of retaining the program.  Perhaps he is simply trying to renegotiate the contract and bring down the cost of the program.  Perhaps he will do the thing that the Bureau has been calling for and create a new set of stop-gap fighters such as the F-18E/F and the F-15 SE, which would tide us over until such a time as supersonic drone warfare is a thing.

This author, for one, remains cautiously optimistic that the Donald will, indeed, make America great again.  We still wrap ourselves in our cynicism because we've felt this way before, in the early days of the Obama presidency, as well as the early days of the Bush presidency, but, perhaps, this time, it really is different.