THE NECESSITY OF TRUMP
by
DAVID SOLWAY
______________________________
David
Solway is a Canadian poet and essayist (Random Walks)
and author of The Big Lie: On Terror, Antisemitism, and
Identity and Hear,
O Israel! (Mantua Books). His editorials appear
regularly in frontpagemag.com and
PJ Media. His monograph, Global Warning: The Trials
of an Unsettled Science (Freedom Press Canada) was launched
at the National Archives in Ottawa in September, 2012. His debut
album, Blood
Guitar, is now available, as is his latest
video, Loving
You, Loving Me.
There
is no doubt that Trump is one of the more polarizing figures
on the American political scene today (apart from the disastrous
Obama). Some regard him as a bloviating ignoramus, others consider
him a gust of fresh air in the stale and canting fug of current
American politics. Some condemn him as a tyrant, others laud
him as a long-overdue savoir. Some dismiss him as a vulgar boor,
an affront to the nice sensibilities of a soigné educated
class, others regard him as a straight shooter, even if he often
fires from the hip, or lip. Some see him as beneath contempt,
others as above reproach. You love him or you hate him, but
you cannot be indifferent to his larger-than-life presence.
For
many conservatives, Trump is an uncomfortable representative
of the cause. GOP stalwarts like campaign manager Pat Brady
and “strategist” Rick Wilson, dispensing with mere
rhetoric, call for Trump’s assassination, one-upping cartel
boss Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman’s death threat
against Trump. Ed Straker at American Thinker makes no bones
of his dislike of Trump, whom he dismisses as essentially a
liberal democrat and a failed businessman prone to serial bankruptcies.
The implication is that Trump is too volatile to be trusted.
Similarly, Steve McCann, in a devastating article, points to
Trump’s political vacillations over the years and questions
his real identity. Andrew Klavan at PJ Media figures that Trump
is a “huckster” and a “demagogue” who
would “give us four more years of the same kind of lawless
and mean-spirited incompetence we’ve had for the last
eight.” Glenn Beck finds Trump “despicable.”
The beat goes on.
Notwithstanding,
Trump has his legions of supporters, some reluctant, others
animated, both among intellectuals and assuredly among the common
folk. “Trump is the only person in recent memory,”
affirms the astute James Lewis, “who can pierce the wall
of lies put up by the cartel media . . . The media class are
not on our side. The Donald Trumps and the truth-tellers are.”
Silvio Canto, Jr. writes, “Mr. Trump has once again put
a topic on the political table that no other GOP candidate would
dare do . . . from illegal immigrants to refugees to President
Clinton's women.” Selwyn Duke contends that Trump represents
an anti-establishment, unapologetic, “politically incorrect
nationalism in a time of prostrate, politically correct treason.”
Actress Kirstie Alley puts it succinctly: “Donald Trump,
whether you like him or don’t, he’s waking this
country up.” Even those teetering on the fence are coming
out for Trump. Satirist E.M Cadwaladr, author of Spiders
in the Sun, admits that he has “no particular love
for Donald Trump”; yet Trump, “for all of his flaws,
must do. He speaks his mind. He understands and acknowledges
at least the plainly obvious.”
Well,
nobody’s perfect. Thumbs up. Thumbs down. As many have
noted, Trump’s massive self-confidence can inflate into
sheer arrogance. To take just one example, Trump is on record
as saying he may be able to resolve the Middle East peace process
quagmire. This is pure hubris. He has not understood that no
American president will ever be able to fix the Middle East
mess, which will go on for generations and probably forever.
His belief that Israel will need to make concessions shows that,
like every president before him, he is out of his depth on this
insoluble “file.” In terms of foreign policy, the
Middle East is a presidential graveyard. In this respect, Trump
is as fallible as the next man or woman and his judgments on
certain issues might improve with a dose of shading and modesty.
In
fact, Trump has shown himself capable of reconsidering some
of his earlier held positions—whether out of principle
or calculation is another matter. His wrestle with the amnesty
question has “evolved” over the last year, from
offering a path to citizenship for some illegals to building
a border fence, a position apparently adopted earlier by Ted
Cruz, though Trump disputes that. Another case in point is his
early enthusiasm for Barack Obama, on display in his 2009 book
Think Like a Champion, where The Donald, like so many
others, was inspired by the election of a black man to the presidency.
Obama, Trump felt, “proved that determination combined
with opportunity and intelligence [could] make things happen.”
Trump was flexible, smart and attentive enough to revise his
precipitate ardour, to, let’s say, rethink like a champion.
It now remains for Trump to walk back his denunciation of Pamela
Geller and the Muhammad cartoon contest in Garland, Texas, that
provoked a jihadist assault on freedom of speech. And, indeed,
there is more work to be done if he is to inspire greater confidence
in his bona fides.
What
about Trump’s two chief contenders for the Republican
nomination?
I
like Marco Rubio, but can’t repress a degree of skepticism.
Why was he absent during congressional negotiations funding
Obama’s $1.1 trillion spending bill subsidizing the president’s
refugee resettlement program, sanctuary cities and the resettlement
of illegal aliens? This was a resounding defeat for the Republican
Party, as well as a sordid betrayal of principle. I appreciate
Rubio’s passionate support of Israel and many believe,
rightly or wrongly, that he has the best chance of success against
the Hillary juggernaut (should it materialize), but, at bottom,
I don’t quite trust him.
Ted
Cruz seems to me a worthy candidate. Likewise Roger Kimball
who, while praising Trump for having “raised some issues
that the high and mighty dispensers of conventional wisdom would
do well to ponder” and for being “an effective ice
breaker,” believes it will be Cruz who leads “the
troops ashore to plant the flag of America’s new aspiration.”
I have no prophetic afflatus, but if Tom Cruise can carry out
Mission Impossible, I suppose Ted Cruz might do so as well—thanks
in large measure to his swashbuckling rival who has made the
Mission more than possible.
Were
I an American, I would have no choice but to vote for one of
these three, but which one would receive my ballot is a decision
I’m glad I don’t need to make. Each of them is infinitely
better than the canailles the Democrats have to offer.
Nonetheless, Trump occupies a category of his own, a unique
political actor mistaken on some things, sound on others, but
unafraid to speak unambiguously, to take on a corrupt and debased
media establishment, and to flout the mind-stunting rules of
political correctness—an aspect of temperament that renders
him exceptional, as America was once exceptional, pre-Obama.
Overall, it can be said that, unlike the majority of his colleagues
and competitors, his brashness has been justly earned, is even
refreshing. He may or may not be suitable for the presidency;
it’s a Schrödinger’s Cat dilemma. But there’s
no question that he is the protagonist of the hour.
Moreover,
whatever one may think of him, he does not subscribe to the
craven assumption that the so-called “new normal”
is an admissible and dignified way to live. Trump would have
no sympathy with the attitude of France’s leading anti-terrorism
judge Marc Trévidic, who said that “the French
had to get used to the idea that terrorism was here to stay
and could not be eradicated”—a sentiment all too
common among the acquiescent left.
What
the emergence of Donald Trump has brought into sharp perspective
is the unprecedented plight into which the U.S. has fallen,
to the point at which it is now a moot question whether the
nation can bootstrap itself back to its former prosperity, dignity
and importance. A major shakeup is plainly called for. America
desperately needs people who know how to make things work, who
can bargain with the best or, for that matter, out-bargain them
(cf. Iran), who are not afraid of a show of strength, and who
can speak the unvarnished truth in a climate of pious and hypocritical
repression. If anyone can do it, there’s at least a decent
chance that the man who wrote Crippled America can—presuming
he has learned from some of his former gaffes and is true to
his written word. The jury is still out on this one.
As
The Hill explains, Trump has caused a paradigm shift
in the way the dreary electoral game is played. He has introduced
something new, or at least something not seen since the time
of Reagan: direct speech, articulating what he thinks and what
people think, not what the polls, the handlers, the party apparatchiks
and the media tell him to say. Whatever the sequel turns out
to be and whether or not he is electable, if Trump had not existed,
he would have had to be invented, if only for America’s
political benefit.
