One of the problems I have with religion is the basic premise of it, which is rooted in “faith.” The quandary of populism is to say that a person of “faith” is the same as assuming that the person is a “good” human being such as, “he’s a man of faith,” which automatically congers up thoughts of a value system rooted in religious belief so he would therefore be assumed to be a good person. Yet, statements like that are idiotic and are clearly false. Faith is a stupid word because it implies that there isn’t thought given to an action. Faith is lazy; it says that a person has surrendered thought to fate without doing the work of inputting intelligence to the conditions of our times. It is not enough to have “faith” in an afterlife when many decisions made every day must be considered with thoughtful input to maintain the values associated with goodness.
Religion therefore becomes tricky to the capitalist government reformer because government often grows most when it appeals to people’s faith. Once a government official or even a branch of government can appeal to the “faith” of the people in their ranks, trouble begins. This is particularly troublesome in the United States where the people are free to think and do as they please until they get to church and are supposed to live by rules established not by a deity whom speaks to them on Sunday mornings, but the interpretations of that deity translated over thousands of years to mold behavior in the present. You can’t really be a free-thinker and self driven person Monday through Saturday, except to pray to a deity whom we’ve never met, then give Sunday to that same deity—and expect to be considered a rational human being. Notions of “faith” and “sacrifice” to that faith are just stupid. Any rational mind would think so.
Yet religion has benefits. It does introduce social values rooted in kindness. And that’s where things get really tricky, because there is value in religion which opens the door to the stupidity of blind faith. When Manning R Johnson testified before the House of Un-American Activities on the subversive activities of the Kremlin within the Catholic Church in 1953 he did so as a former member of the Communist Party. He wasn’t some pundit speculating, he was actually from the Communist Party in the United States and provided oral testimony to the facts of strategy being introduced at the time. Here is a bit of that testimony.
“Once the tactic of infiltration of religious organizations was set by the Kremlin … the Communists discovered that the destruction of religion could proceed much faster through infiltration of the (Catholic) Church by Communists operating within the Church itself. The Communist leadership in the United States realized that the infiltration tactic in this country would have to adapt itself to American conditions (Europe also had its cells) and the religious make-up peculiar to this country. In the earliest stages it was determined that with only small forces available to them, it would be necessary to concentrate Communist agents in the seminaries. The practical conclusion drawn by the Red leaders was that these institutions would make it possible for a small Communist minority to influence the ideology of future clergymen in the paths conducive to Communist purposes. This policy of infiltrating seminaries was successful beyond even our Communist expectations.”
Anytime you have an organization that is collectivist in nature full of people who subject themselves to thoughtless “faith” you have an opportunity to mold those people into any shape a charismatic leader might desire. For the communists advancing their thoughts into the Christian church was easy as many thoughts of Jesus could easily be considered socialist in their nature. A religion reflecting the morality of capitalism has not yet been introduced effectively, and the communists knew that if they could infiltrate the Catholic Church, they could easily steer away people from capitalism to socialism as a military endeavor designed to change a nation without firing a single shot.
Fast forward to the present, an actual Pope from the Catholic Church is planning to address the American congress on September 24th to press them into saving planet earth with green policies. As anybody with intelligence knows, communism has changed its name from the harsh policies of the past to a New Age type of religion called the “green movement.” To accept global warming and other far left policies requires “faith” in “leaders” to do our thinking for us. This was always the plan for communists who changed their names to environmental conservationists. To spread communism they effectively sought to appeal to the weaknesses of the religious right and to push anti-capitalist thinking under the door of resistance by disguising itself as a religion based on faith. Once faith is used to make decisions; it becomes easy to apply it to everything. That Pope whom we’re supposed to accept that the Catholic Church put into power because of some divine smoke came from a chimney, is an actual socialist from Argentina who does not like or understand the capitalism of America. But millions of Americans will listen to the guy because they have faith in the Catholic Church and that the guy dressed in white is a “man of God.” See how the communist infiltration of the Catholic Church as described by Manning R. Johnson works.
Global warming is simply another name for communism. Environmentalists are thus indicated because they have faith in the deity Mother Earth and will make decisions against capitalism in favor of that New Age religion centered on the planet—just like some raw primitive out of a hunter and gatherer tribe. Yet the logic of a free thinking republic such as what America is supposed to be, would dictate that capitalism take mankind away from earth to the reaches of space to advance our culture away from Mother Earth, not deeper into its bosom. The old communists know that if they lose the appeal of sacrifice to invisible deities and thoughtless sentiment based on “faith” that their movement of collectivist infiltration will finally die—as it should have many years ago. So the Catholic Church put in place an activist Pope to hide socialist policies behind a white robe and expects to sell little “C” communism to a typically conservative country through their religion. For me, upon realizing this, I simply stepped away and said, “no thanks.” I stopped going to church because “faith” is not a governing principle in my life, and it shouldn’t be for anyone. It is good to believe in goodness, and to have trust in other people. But blind, lazy, faith is dangerous as it opens the mind to thoughtless action. And religion is filled with such thoughtless enterprise which is not conducive in any way to logic and observable decision-making. For freedom to work and capitalism to flourish, thought is needed—and that is not what the Catholic Church is selling to its congregations. And now dear reader, you know why.
I watched High Plains Drifter as one of the very first movies I saw when I was newly moved out of my parent’s house. I rented it because of the cover art on the VHS tape, Clint Eastwood holding a gun and a bullwhip. I had seen at that time most of Eastwood’s movies, so I wanted to see them all and this one was on the list. I didn’t expect much, but was very surprised to see that the film was a masterpiece—a sheer work of unapologetic authenticity. It may very well be my favorite western of all time and is the summation of a span of westerns by Clint Eastwood starting with A Fistful of Dollars and ending with Pale Rider that defined the genre forever. Eastwood’s westerns were Ayn Rand tales set on the frontier of America and were very much a part of my childhood. I loved westerns, all westerns, but Clint Eastwood westerns were uniquely special to me. I could identify with them immensely. At the time that I first saw High Plains Drifter I was living a very similar life and I didn’t feel a bit of guilt about it. The established order of things said that I should. Until I saw that director Clint Eastwood understood my vantage point in High Plains Drifter, I had nothing but gut instinct to tell me I was on the right path.
I will never forget the Friday before I saw High Plains Drifter. I drove my friends to Miami University for a bit of ruckus activity which ended up in a bar and a fight with the first stringers of the football team. The fight evolved into the back alley where I and one other friend literally took on the football team until the police came and arrested everyone—but me. The reason the police left me alone was strange. I was so mad at the time that I would have punched anybody who came near me, and they seemed to understand that. Instead of feeding their aggression, they backed off and arrested everyone else starting with the outside of the pile working inward. When it was just me and the rest of the police left with blood and pieces of clothing all over the place, I spoke calmly to them realizing and feeling quite satisfied that I had just done something that seemed impossible. My friends were arrested and carted off to jail and I had to find a way to get them out. But otherwise, I was the last one standing even though I was one of the first in the fray. It was a good feeling.
I managed to work things out with the police which ended up at the jail eventually and I had my friends released. I spoke to everyone in charge intelligently, which gained respect and leverage allowing me to get my friends out without a court appearance, which I didn’t think would be possible. My friends were baffled as to how I walked away from the incident without being arrested, and how I managed to get them out of jail. I didn’t know how to explain it myself. But on the next evening we decided to stay home and rent a movie, and that movie was High Plains Drifter. I had my answer at the start of the third act when a woman who Clint Eastwood had just slept with told him to be careful because he was a man who made other people afraid. From that Eastwood explained, “People are only afraid of what they know about themselves inside.” I knew somewhere in that exchange of dialogue was an answer that I would carry with me for the rest of my life. And the woman was right. Confident people—excessively confident people—scare the meager types like those who were in the fictional western town of Lago—from the film. And those meager types were easy to control once you looked them in the eye. That is what many of Eastwood’s westerns from that period were about—but specifically High Plains Drifter.
After watching that movie I felt like a much more focused person. I understood much more about myself—which might be troubling if not for the fact that Clint Eastwood was playing a ghost of some kind in the film—a vengeful spirit from Hell set to cast justice on the small mining town and all the guilty people within it. I thought Clint Eastwood was the greatest director on earth for capturing all the controversial topics he explored in that story with such effortless mastery. High Plains Drifter was a 1973 American supernatural western film produced by Robert Daley for Malpaso Company and Universal Studios, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, and written by Ernest Tidyman (who also wrote the novelization). Eastwood plays an enigmatic wraith, who metes out justice in a corrupt frontier mining town, where he arrives as a stranger.[3] The film was influenced by the work of Eastwood’s two major collaborators, film directors Sergio Leone and Don Siegel.[4]
The film was shot on location on the shores of Mono Lake, California. Dee Barton wrote the eerie film score. The film was critically acclaimed at the time of its initial release and remains popular today, holding a score of 96% at the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes.
As I have been thinking about the significance of American gunfighters of late, this film keeps returning to me in a revelatory way. It is important, and specific to the American experience. I didn’t know it when I first watched it, but it is clearly in hindsight a masterpiece. It has within it an element that Ayn Rand brought out in her novels—an overman quality that is so needed. There was an evolution of human thinking that was occurring in that movie that as inescapable. There was honesty to the type of independence specific to American culture that Eastwood had tapped in to.
John Wayne was not a fan of High Plains Drifter. His westerns were about honor, sacrifice, loyalty and courage. While those are appealing attributes, High Plains Drifter was about something else. And I decided that I would commit my life to that something else. I had a taste of it at that campus fight. I had touched on it many times, but Clint Eastwood had fleshed it out and put it on the screen for all to see. His gunfighter character in the film was more than just a man—literally. But that made it even that much more appealing to me. High Plains Drifter is an American movie classic that is in a category all by itself. It is a western—the best of its kind. But it’s more than that, its philosophy—a thinking which is fresh and unique to the individual experience with an unequivocal desire for justice. Justice at every level possible, one that started with the gun, but ultimately enacted with a superior mind and unshakable confidence changed philosophic perspective for the better. It is good to keep the mind on the high plains of life and to face those tribulations alone. For that is the path toward something new, and specific to America. And freedom rides in its wake.
I was visiting a whip maker friend of mine in Middletown, Ohio who is working on a special project for me. It was Sunday around lunch time and we were early. So my wife and I elected to stop by the local Cracker Barrel for a late breakfast. Many people find it humorous that I often refer to Cracker Barrel as fine dinning, because for me it is. Now I have dined in many great restaurants, but I prefer Cracker Barrel, especially on a long trip because of the country setting and general store. The food and service to my experience has always been great and I love the “old west” feel of them when I step inside.
My very first exposure to a Cracker Barrel was in Northern Kentucky. My grandfather who was the son of an active moonshiner from the sticks of coal country invited me as a very young boy to go shooting with the men in the family at his childhood home. His father at the time had long been dead, but as a boy he ran the hills from the law smuggling moonshine during prohibition. Their home was about the size of a modern bedroom and it was back in a valley about 30 miles northwest of Buckhorn Lake—a pretty remote location, especially when I was a kid. Back then there wasn’t much development between Lexington and Cincinnati, so if you didn’t gas up in Northern Kentucky, you might run out of fuel before Lexington. It was winter and I rode in the back of a pickup truck with some older cousins, some of whom were already men. I was by far the youngest. It was the day after Christmas and all the men were going shooting. It was my first time firing powerful weapons like a .38 special and a 30-30 rifle.
Cracker Barrel had one of their very first national stores in Northern Kentucky and it looked a lot like they do now. It was 6 AM, the sun wouldn’t be up for at least another hour and it was cold. We were all dressed in gun holsters, long hunting knives and day packs when we stepped inside to have some breakfast next to a roaring fireplace. It set in my mind for life a love for the place. It was the nearest thing I’d ever get to an authentic cowboy experience, wandering in off the open range, armed to the teeth to stop into a saloon/general store for some grub. It was a testosterone driven occurrence that shaped me for life. The waitress and manager could have turned us away at the door because we looked like we were there to rob a bank. I have worn a cowboy hat since I was in the fourth grade, so I had mine on feeling like a western drifter—and I loved the feeling as snow rushed in behind us as we stepped inside. They could have told us to leave the guns and packs in our car, but instead they asked if we wanted coffee next to a roaring fire. Years later when I saw the Clint Eastwood western The Unforgiven, the first saloon scene reminded me explicitly of that moment in my time—and it stayed with me forever. That was America. Cracker Barrel for me would always represent the best that America had to offer.
Most of the people on that shooting trip with me are dead now. Some died of old age, some from not meeting high expectations in life, some by personal destructive behavior. I could see much of it back then on that shooting trip. In the back of that truck where it was so cold ice formed on our noses, the older men passed around a whiskey flask. They offered it to me even though I was way too young to drink it. I turned it down. And if you traced their lives with mine and noticed how far apart they are now, you could trace it back to those types of decisions on a shooting trip on a cold December morning. They looked down at me a bit for not wanting to share the whisky, but my grandfather thought it took guts, which is all I really cared about. Once we started shooting, nobody thought anything about who drank what, or who said a curse word. Guns made all men equal and respect was derived by that realization. When I showed I could fire the 30-30 without being knocked down due to my small stature there was respect, and I would carry that lesson with me for life. The whole experience started with a Cracker Barrel.
My wife had never been to such a place as a Cracker Barrel before meeting me. But we went to one just north of Knoxville on our honeymoon as we traveled back from Gatlinburg. For her it summed up everything we had experienced on our first days together as a married couple and she fell in love with it for life. For years we would take our children there while vacationing and make a big deal about each visit, no matter where we were. One time we were on our way to a Star Wars convention in Indianapolis and my kids were dressed up as Jedi. We stopped at one about 45 minutes outside of Indianapolis. My kids had the experience I had as a young man, stepping in dressed as warriors. They had some unique looks, but everyone was friendly and it was a fun experience. They never forgot it. Then there was a time while traveling by motorcycle to a film festival in northern Ohio. My oldest daughter had never ridden a motorcycle before and this was her first experience—on a long road trip up north. Cracker Barrel just north of Columbus on an early summer morning in the middle of the week was an oasis of pleasure—a cozy place that always said “home” as you step into its doors.
One thing about Cracker Barrels is that they are almost always busy, especially in the noon time hours. People are often willing to wait for 30 minutes to get something they could get at McDonald’s in a fraction of the time. The reason is that most people have a special relationship to Cracker Barrel similar to mine. The restaurant chain has built their brand around American tradition for decades and people respect it enough to wait. That was the situation my wife and I found ourselves in on a Sunday afternoon in late August, 2015, before we met on business with our whip making friend David Crain for a “special project.”
I have been thinking about guns a lot these days. The Obama administration has caused great unrest and unsettled the most rational by unleashing the insane, corrupt, and perpetually dependent to collect what the president promised during his campaigns, redistributed wealth in trade for a vote. And the results have been menacing. Police are being executed all around the country. Border violence is disturbingly common. And religious fanatics are going on holy wars against infidels with the apparent support of the American media. Long gone are the days of the Saturday morning westerns, and heroes of tradition. Those wonderful attributes are missing during our nightly news, but they are quite alive and flourishing at Cracker Barrel’s across the country, and that is what my wife and I were seeking.
As I waited for my breakfast I looked around the room at all the unique paraphernalia that they customarily have lining the walls. Most of it looked like the kind of items you might find at garage sales, but typically they speak of traditional American items, old Coke signs, early gas station markers, looms, spindles, scrubbing boards. However on this particular visit, I noted how many guns were displayed on the wall. Above my head was a Winchester lever-action and around the dining room where several musket style weapons from what looked like the pre-Civil War period. Then my attention was pulled toward an advertisement from perhaps the 50s from a drink called NEHI. It said, “What’s getting into kids these days.” Around the picture of a girl drinking what looked to be a healthy beverage alternative were kids playing. Of note was one kid dressed as a frontiersman another as a cowboy complete with a six-gun. Then another picture was of an Indian. It reminded me of the days when kids actually played cowboys and Indians and it wasn’t considered an act of insanity requiring counseling at school for wanting to play with weapons. I realized looking at that picture that the magic of Cracker Barrel was essentially represented in that picture. The family restaurant was a timeless portrayal of the type of America that many in the core of the country still love, and desire desperately to behold. That’s why many of the customers on a Sunday afternoon after church were willing to wait up to an hour to have some eggs and bacon—something they could easily get at home. But what they couldn’t get was the essence of Americana that Cracker Barrel truly is—and will always remain.
The meeting with the whip maker David Crain went well. He is very crafty and during our business dealing he showed me a little side project he was working on. He had been using his wood lathe to make some really marvelous wooden ink pens, the kind of items you might find at Kenwood Mall for $55. He sells them for $20 dollars, which I think is too cheap, but it’s his business. So I picked one up, since that kind of thing is sometimes important to me. If anybody else wants some, let me know and I’ll put you in touch with him. It’s a really good deal. Meeting with David reminds me of the kind of Americans we used to be. Behind his house David has a wood shop, and in it he makes lots of really neat crafts—the kind of things that will probably someday be on the wall of a Cracker Barrel. But with David, we are living tradition in the present, and that made that particular Sunday one that I will not long forget. It was a reminder of what we fight for and why. Much of it can be summed up in the advertisement by NEHL from a time long forgotten–except on the wall of a Cracker Barrel in Middletown, Ohio looming over eggs, bacon, and good memories.
For those who think that Donald Trump is a policy swapping former Democrat, the below clip from 1988 is rather telling, and astonishing. Trump was critical of the Reagan administration because of its policy on exports—for not being conservative enough. This is Trump as a young man shortly after writing The Art of the Deal on the newly created Oprah Show extremely confident and riding on top of the world. What is even more astonishing is that Trump has stayed on top of the world really his whole life. Aside from a few marriages, he’s been remarkably successful for a long period of time without any kind of emotional meltdowns along the way and it’s due to his extraordinary confidence. This is the Donald Trump that I grew up with, and he is the reason I think he would be a great president. What’s really interesting is the very political answer he gave while talking about the field of candidates in the 1988 presidential election, from Bush to Jesse Jackson. I think many people hold his non-committal political positions against him because they don’t understand business. For successful people, one very key ingredient is that you have to know how to navigate around people who might get in your way. Trump showed that he was hedging his bets no matter who won the nomination because as a business man, he knew the consequences of a government aligned against him. And he wanted to continue to be successful. Watch for yourself.
Being in business is very dangerous. Politicians are always looking for a contribution and you have to be careful who you say no to. If you give to the wrong guy and the other person wins, that person might come after you legislatively. It happens all the time. Regulations are used to extort vast billions of dollars a year from business people. A lot of the reason that business people use the Chamber of Commerce and other community organizations to keep orthodox politicians in their seats of power is to protect their businesses from activist government regimes. Market fluctuations and political fall-out are two of the most troublesome elements for a business person’s career. Those who have not had to deal with a zoning board, they don’t understand how difficult political tides can work against you. In Donald Trump’s case, New York is notoriously progressive. It has been for years, so there has always been a lot of liberalism associated with those city government positions. If a rich businessman like Trump gives money to both parties, the zoning issues get resolved quickly. If he only gave to Democrats or Republicans then there would be trouble during subsequent administrations. That’s a ridiculous fact of life in the world of commerce.
Government should not have that kind of power over commerce. But it does and will for quite some time to come. It’s a game all business people have to play. If you don’t play it, you will lose your business. What’s remarkable with Trump is that he has survived for so long with so many parasitic politicians always looking to soak up every last dime that they could extract from him. People have to understand the nature of a politician, and for those who are not rich, or even wealthy and in business, they likely believe that politicians do good things on their behalf with each election. They don’t. All they want is to get elected. Their primary function is to raise money for more elections and they owe the people who give them money constant legislative favors. The vote occurs with donations, not the voting booth. Business people do not give money for any other reason but to protect themselves from intrusive government. Sometimes money is given for more government interference so to perhaps destroy a rival. But the money given is always about getting something. It’s not given for fun.
Donald Trump represents a different kind of politician. I would vote for him just because he managed to build the Trump Tower in Manhattan where it overshadows Macy’s. The politics involved in that deal would have been enormously difficult. For Trump to purchase the air rights next to his proposed tower design was extremely creative. Without question Trump made decisions on where to purchase concrete from, what anchor stores would be inside the tower and how it would fit into New York politics based on his strategic intentions. He really is a master strategist, which is showing in the presidential race.
As a president, you really can’t afford to paint out half the country the way Obama has. Republicans have been happy to limit themselves to those limits much to their own detriment. Trump is uniquely positioned to recruit voters who might otherwise vote for Democrats as he has knowledge of the entertainment industry that is very unique for a presidential candidate. He may have shown various sides of himself over the years, but at his core, he is the person who appeared on Oprah in 1988 and knows how to get things done. He telegraphed it way back then, he said he’d run for president if he felt the country was too screwed up for anyone else to solve the problems. Well, that’s where we are, and he’s positioned to do the job—best positioned. The world is a mess and internal politics is a disaster. Nobody else has what it takes to get the job done. So why not? If Jesus Christ were running for president, I wouldn’t vote for him. We don’t need someone who will sacrifice themselves to the cross and turn the other cheek declaring love for all. We need someone who knows how to win, any way possible. And that’s what Trump is an expert at doing. That might sound harsh to people who don’t think about life in competitive terms, but for people who are used to winning, they understand what it takes, and how important victors are—even when others don’t see the value as quickly as they can. Those people just enjoy the benefits of someone like Trump and his towers along with the wealth they build for the American economy.
Consider that I am from Ohio and that President Mckinley was from that state, I will always think of Mt. McKinley in Alaska as the name it was before Obama and his progressive activists sought to change it to Denali. I don’t really care that since 1975 radical tree hugging hippies and pot smoking losers wanted to rename the highest mountain peak in North America after some “Great One” known by “native” language. If Obama wants to get technical, the Indians of the pre-Columbian era were just as guilty of migration as the European settlers—as the original story of the “Native American” are still being pieced together. Likely it was primarily the Chinese who were the real “Native Americans.” That story does not match the premise of the modern progressive who wants to use Indians as a springboard against American colonialism—and indirectly—capitalism. Here’s how the story was reported by USA Today:
WASHINGTON — President Obama’s three-day trip to Alaska this week will literally change the map of the nation’s 49th state.
Mount McKinley — the 20,237-foot mountain and the tallest in North America — has been renamed Denali, as it was originally known by Alaska Natives before it was renamed to honor President William McKinley.
The mountain, which sits in the 6 million-acre Denali national park, has been known as Denali in Alaska since 1975. Under an order signed by Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, the Denali name will also take effect for all federal usage and, therefore, on all official maps.
The order was signed Friday, but the White House asked that it be announced Monday as part of Obama’s trip to Alaska to highlight the effects of climate change in the Arctic. The White House said the name change “recognizes the sacred status of Denali to generations of Alaska Natives.”
I have been to the top of peaks a third of that. I understand the cold and loss of oxygen at those altitudes, but as a statement of natural achievement, I’m not that impressed. I could climb to the top of McKinley right now, in my current health without any conditioning, so I’m not impressed with it. Sure it’s pretty to look at, but I wouldn’t be crying to reach the summit like some climbers do. McKinley has been conquered many times, and it’s no longer a big deal. And from space, it doesn’t look like much. However, to a bunch of primitives wearing animal skins in the hard winter months, climbing to the top of Mount McKinley was an ominous task, not really feasible to them. So from their perspective, it was a “great one.” But to a culture that routinely sends satellites into earth orbit and has settlers on the International Space Station all days of the year looking down from space—and has airplanes that travel at twice that altitude on routine flights across the country, McKinley is no longer a “Great One.”
The reason for the name change now is to incite among the American people a love for nature and a reversion back from the gains made through capitalism back to the primitive focus of indigenous people who function best from tribes always in need of a leader. That is why progressives are trying so hard to make a religion out of the “green movement” and why they think of the Indian as something of our national sacred history.
In 1896, a gold prospector named the mountain McKinley as political support for then-presidential candidate William McKinley, who became president the following year. The United States formally recognized the name Mount McKinley after President Wilson signed the Mount McKinley National Park Act of February 26, 1917.[22] The Alaska Board of Geographic Names changed the name of the mountain to Denali, which is how it is referred to locally. However, a 1975 request by the Alaska state legislature to the United States Board on Geographic Names to do the same was blocked by Ohio congressman Ralph Regula, whose district included McKinley’s hometown of Canton.[23]
To progressives like Obama, money and the creation of it is a bad thing. Money represents value and progressives hate value, or any identification of it. So of course Obama and his greenie weenies are against gold prospecting and everything that the Old West stood for regarding westward expansion. Alaska and the settling of it by the United States to him are all about oil and gold at the exploitation of Eskimos. But without the development of capitalism, Alaska today would be nearly as useless of a terrain as Siberia is right across the Bering Straight. Without gold prospecting or oil drilling Alaska would just be more earthly land not being applied to any productive task. To conservationists who are against human invention and development, that is a grand crusade worthy of sacrificing many to the gods of Mother Earth. But to capitalists who use free enterprise to improve the conditions of human existence, the gold from Alaska, and the wealth discovered through westward expansion set up the United States as an economic powerhouse throughout the world during the Twentieth Century. Of course Obama wants to erase that history—which he has been trying to undo through his economic policies, his EPA activism, and his desires to openly revert North America back to the times of the primitive.
Denali is the name of a primitive group of people who held the mountain in high regard due to their perspective victimization witnessed from their village huts. There’s nothing miraculous about pointing to a big rock on the horizon and declaring that it’s so large that man cannot climb it. But the wealth extracted from Alaska gold mining and oil drilling have created an economy that took mankind well off planet earth to look down on that small rock from space and point out Mount McKinley—a Republican that didn’t last long in office, but was reminiscent of a time when wealth was built and mankind stepped out of the shadows of their village huts. Mount McKinley isn’t a “great one.” It’s just a rock in the middle of Alaska, a state defined by its economic wealth and individualism. That extracted wealth is what sets Alaska apart from Siberia and makes all the difference between a great one and a mere rock on the horizon. And that’s what Obama and his gang of lost tribes are really desiring, a regression back to the time of the village living under the shadows of “Denali.” What they fail to understand is that mankind has overtaken the mountain and their limited perspective. And there is no going back now.
When I’m out in public I get two primary comments. People want to know where they can get a hat like mine, the Australian oil skin hat I wear so much. But even more than that hat they ask me about my sunglasses—my Classic style Gargoyles sunglasses, the type I have worn now for nearly thirty years. I have always been a Gargoyles sunglass wearer, exclusively for all three of those decades. I won’t wear anything else. I’ve tried $400 Oakley sunglasses and other variations of Ray Ban, but for my lifestyle only Gargoyles are up to my standards, which are high. I am the type of person who always wears sunglasses if the sun is shining. I wear sunglasses just to go outside and get the mail because I love my eyes—the Gargoyles sunglasses offer an ultraviolet light protection on their lenses that keep that damaging byproduct of the sun from burning out your retinas and I take it very seriously. I have maintained 20/10 vision for my whole life up to this point, and I take care of my eyes with added protection. However, I have a very rough lifestyle that is very dangerous to eyes. I ride motorcycles, spend a lot of time outside, I shoot guns, crack whips and have lots of activity around dangerous projectiles. I want sunglasses that protect my eyes from everything, but I don’t want my vision obstructed. So what other pair of sunglasses could I have that look just as good with a suit, or a cowboy hat? The only answer is Gargoyles Classics. The trouble is, they have been discontinued by the Gargoyles Company for several years only coming back occasionally as a kind of retro offering. Well, this happens to be one of those times. They are now being offered once again by the Gargoyles Company. The specific technical specs and link address can be seen below.
The iconic rimless style incorporates tradition and cutting edge innovation. Make no mistake, Classic’s are back. Light weight but robust, Classic offers outstanding ANSI Z87.1+ level protection with anti-reflective and oleo-phobic treatment to repel water and resist smudging to make cleaning easier. Additionally, Classic’s famous toric shield lenses provide the user with a fully unobstructed vertical viewing pane. All Gargoyles lenses are ballistic-rated – meeting or exceeding ANSI Z871.1+ impact standards. For more information on ANSI Z87.1+ or Protection+, click here. (Available in both tactical ratings)
Sunglasses have a job to do and blocking the sun is only the beginning. Gargoyles sunglasses don’t just shield your eyes. They provide sharp contrasts and accurate depth perception, so you can see what you’re supposed to see and your day can continue without interruption. Every detail of Gargoyles lens design and execution is geared toward improved optics and better vision.
A good lens isn’t just made – it’s crafted. At Gargoyles, the Z87.1+-rated lenses are made of ballistic-designed, high-index polycarbonate for incredible strength without added weight. From there, they’re optimized and treated to reduce glare while enhancing protection. The result is a lens of unparalleled quality and durability.
No matter how good they look, sunglasses aren’t worth much if they can’t protect your eyes. All Gargoyles lenses meet or exceed US and ANSI regulations and standards for UVA, UVB and UVC protection and the Z87.1+-rated products’ impact resistance is ballistic tested. They’re designed to provide optimal coverage and block ancillary light. With Gargoyles, your eyes aren’t just protected – they’re shielded.
Gargoyles provides protection from both the sun and unexpected projectiles. U.S. soldiers put themselves in harm’s way every day, and the equipment they wear must provide them as much protection as possible. When the U.S. Army needed a higher level of protection from their sunglasses, it sought out experts in the field of optics. ANSI created new high-mass and high-velocity impact standards based on this new market need and on the necessity of having regulation and consistent quality. The US sunglass industry uses the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) as the governing body and rating system for sunglasses.
All Gargoyles Z87.1+-rated sunglasses meet or exceed high mass and high velocity impact standards as specified by ANSI and described below:
Wearers must be able to see 20 lines of resolution clearly from 20 feet away, and pinpoint a vertical/horizontal prism from 35 feet away.
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The lens must be able to withstand a 1.1 pound mass dropped from 50 inches, as well as a quarter-inch projectile shot at 150 feet per second from ten yards away, without breaking, cracking, coming out of the frame, or in any way touching the eye or the surrounding tissue.
WHY THIS MATTERS From gravel to shrapnel, anything that reaches the eye could be catastrophic. By meeting this ANSI specification, Gargoyles sunglasses are guaranteed to keep the wearer’s eyes safe from any projectile that might otherwise cause significant damage.
I was riding a bicycle just this morning and I cut through a marshy lowland area that was full of mud. I managed to get through alright but on my way out of the pit was gravel. Once I got back out on the open road that gravel started flying off my knobby tires, some of which flew up and hit me in the face. Because of my Gargoyles sunglasses I did not have to worry about that gravel finding its way into my eyes—and I was able to press on. About six weeks ago I was in a major motorcycle accident. Certainly nothing I did, but things happen and my motorcycle sustained over $10,000 worth of damage. I was wearing a suit at the time that ended up covered in blood, I had torn cloths, broken bones in my wrist and ankle, but guess what didn’t get hurt as shattered glass pelted my face…….my eyes. No I wasn’t wearing a helmet—it was a nice day. Just my Gargoyles sunglasses. Occasionally when riding motorcycles down the highway behind large trucks from construction sites, rocks fly off their tires. I never worry about that debris hitting me in the face. I can take the pain if it hits me in the forehead or someplace else, but I have to be able to see through an impact—and my Gargoyles always provide more than adequate shielding.
When shooting guns, it happens often where projectiles from target impact sometimes fly back and hit the shooter. Just a few months ago while shooting my new .500 Magnum from Smith & Wesson the unthinkable happened. Given our position from a top down position, my family was shooting in a way to see if we could split a large river rock in half. Now that’s not a recommended shooting procedure, but I wanted to conduct a test to measure just how powerful a .400 grain bullet was traveling at such a high velocity backed by such extraordinary muzzle energy. You don’t get a good indication of what that is by shooting at paper targets. You need to see the bullet interact with something ominously stable. In this case it was a very large sedimentary rock pulled out of the river that was very thick. Because I was wearing my Gargoyles I stood about thirty yards from the target confident that there wasn’t any danger. The .500 Magnum punched the rock in two, which surprised me. A moment later debris rained back at us. I didn’t think much of it as I thought it was pieces of rock. But my daughter grabbed her forehead and blood was running down her face. Checking her out, a piece of the .500 Magnum bullet had bounced back and embedded itself about three inches above her eyes. She was not wearing Gargoyles—but sunglasses typical of the type you find in convenient stores. I sometimes assume that everyone is as protected as I am, and took a deep breath as we pulled the shrapnel out of her head. She was fine, but it was proof that anything can and does happen when dealing with dangerous things. Life is meant to be lived, but it’s important to take as much opportunity to give your body parts the tools to protect itself the best you can.
Some might argue that a helmet is the best way to ride a motorcycle, but they essentially encumber your senses entirely too much. Gargoyles offer protection without encumbering anything. They are so comfortable to wear that you forget they are on, but they also provide a complete line of sight in all directions. They are unique to say the least. After three decades my Gargoyles sunglasses are as much a part of me as my legs and arms. They are an inseparable part of my attire under all circumstances. So for those who have always wanted a pair, they are now available once again. They can be obtained for around a $100 so they aren’t outrageously expensive. But they feel like a million bucks, and will give you years of loyal use. Gargoyles are by far my favorite sunglasses, not just because they are reasonably priced for the quality they provide, but because they have proven to me over time to be a superior product. I never leave my home without them, and the sun rarely shines on my face without Gargoyles providing some level of protection. They are the ultimate sunglasses for an active person under any circumstance. And now they are available once again.
For some bizarre reason French President Hollende called President Obama to think him for the heroics of the three American passengers on a high-speed train in Belgium who stopped a knuckle-dragging Islamic radical from committing terrorism. At the first sign of trouble French employees on the train locked that particular car to isolate the terrorist essentially imprisoning all the people in that part of the train. Alek Skarlatos and Spencer Stone took immediate action to subdue the slug and their childhood friend Anthony Sadler helped beat the terrorist into unconsciousness. That type of bravado is common in people born free in a society that advocates that kind of behavior. Stone additionally had military training in the Air Force whereas Skarlatos was from the National Guard. But their heroics was home-grown in spite of President Obama’s attempts over the years to turn America more into France with collectivist endeavor and passive approaches to danger.
Obama if he had things his way would have done as the French employees did, and that would have been to sacrifice the members of that particular train car so to save the rest of the passengers—which is a collectivist mentality. Hollende is an open socialist who somehow believed that Obama had something to do with the heroics by some American policy, just as he spoke on behalf of all France for thanking the three American heroes from saving their progressive country from their own failed policies. Europe is breeding these terrorist idiots because of their lack of a philosophy that is centered on individuality. A collective based society, which France is, is not far off ideologically from the collectivism of radical Islam, so these young religious fanatics like this terrorist on the train can feed off society’s passivity. In this case it was 26 year-old Ayoub El-Khazzani from Morocco who had been on a French intelligence watch list since February of 2014. Somebody obviously missed the fact that the Islamic terrorist had bought a ticket for the high-speed train complete with bags of weapons. Not a very effective watch list. El-Khazzani had been radicalized in the southern Spanish city of Algecians at a mosque which had been under surveillance due to its extremist teachings.
Obviously there were a lot of fails, El-Khazzani slipped through security, the French employees on the train behaved like a bunch of wimps leaving a couple of American guys trying to have a good time in Europe to quell all the failures with their bravado. The heroic actions are something to feel good about for all Americans—but I would remind everyone that it’s also expected. That’s not to take anything away from what they did, it’s just that America shouldn’t be the only culture on earth with some testicular fortitude left in its up and coming heroes. This kind of thing should be a lot more common—specifically, somebody should have kicked the snot out of Ayoub El-Khazzani way back in Spain well before he ever got on a train in Amsterdam.
Collectivism in every aspect breeds the kind of cowardly behavior that made Ayoub El-Khazzani possible and put him on a train to inflict danger to innocent people. France, and essentially all of Europe functions under that same brand of collectivism as a culture believing that the needs of the few must be sacrificed for the benefit of the many. That’s why French employees isolated that train car—to protect the rest of the train. Such people make easy targets which empowers radicals seeking to impose their version of collectivism on the masses. Lucky for the French in this case, there were Americans nearby to stop the furtherance of such terror.
This brings us back around to why the socialist President Hollende would even call Obama. I can understand him thanking the guys who stopped the terrorist attack. But why would he even think to call Obama—as if the American president had done anything to contribute to the endeavor. That is an insult to the heroics of the young men. Rather, they behaved heroically in spite of Obama’s efforts in creating a socialist utopia hell-bent on extreme leftist political positions. Those young men went to American schools which teach socialism these days, but thankfully they had a love for American film and had in their minds a little heroics put there by an art that still relishes individualism. I saw a picture of one of the boys with their mom which featured Clint Eastwood from the Fist Full of Dollars films. Probably not a coincidence.
It is good to see the young men so happy after they discovered that they wouldn’t die from their heroics. I’m sure Spencer Stone would not trade his nearly severed thumb right now for a comfortable night in a Paris hotel, and without question Alek Skarlatos is proud of the blood on his shirt and may never wash it again just so he can remember it. This is something that President Hollende and Obama do not understand about this terrorist attack. Sure the young men saved lives, yes the terrorist son-of-a-bitch nearly shot Stone and luckily the gun was jammed. But those young men are happy to have proven themselves under duress and that is something they will live with for the rest of their lives—and it will carry them all to lofty highest for which no amount of money can ever provide. The injuries Stone endured he will tell this story proudly each time he gets the opportunity. Most young men would trade these three, even with the possibility of death, for a chance to feel what they are feeling right now—and that is a foreign concept to Hollende—obviously. Those guys didn’t attack that terrorist thug for any other reason than raw heroics—the need to do what was right. They didn’t do it to save France from the embarrassment of another terrorist attack by Islamic radicals. They did it because it felt good to act heroically rather than cower like a chicken in a seat trapped by French employees to seal their fate awaiting an afterlife—totally at the mercy of a 26-year-old Moroccan who wanted to kill innocents in the name of Allah. Being a hero is the best feeling in the world. It’s worth doing even if death is the result—because no young man wants to be condemned to a lifetime of suffering knowing they were too wimpy to face down danger when it presented itself.
I’m proud of those boys, but they didn’t do it for me, America, or France. They did the right thing because it felt good to do. All it took was for Alek Skarlatos to tell his friend to get the terrorist, and those guys in that moment got the monkey off their back which plagues all young men—the nagging question of whether or not under a dangerous situation they would have the courage to act heroically. And thanks to a radical Islamic terrorist, those American heroes can now carry with them a badge of honor that will last a lifetime. And they deserve to be proud of it. Because in American culture we still have as a standard that an individual life lived under the cloak of a coward is far worse than death. And young men, and old in America because of their focus on individuality—still know that when such an opportunity presents itself—you do what you have to in order to remove that cloak from personal identification forever.
I know the difference between a wolf in sheep’s clothing with malicious intentions and a wolf who has decided that the sheep need protection from other wolves and has sided with them to further their species. Many think that the Donald Trump run for president is something of a Trojan horse into the Republican Party intended to derail conservatism. I can understand their skepticism. But as I remind people often—we all have our little gifts innate to our individuality and mine has always been the ability to see way over the horizon toward trends and dangers well before anybody else. I have been able to do that all my life, and it was within weeks of the Donald Trump run for president that I saw something very special happening in politics. Donald Trump is in a position to do something that I have been doing with this blog site for over five years every day, and that is address difficult issues directly on a gigantic global stage, and if he is successful, where he actually steps into the White House, I am confident at that time that I’ll be able to step away from the daily contributions to this site and do something else—because Trump is largely going to be able to take the baton to the next level.
My family came over for dinner on Friday night to watch the wonderful Donald Trump speech from Mobile, Alabama. Trump was able to put about 30,000 people—according to USA Today—into a local football stadium for a very enthusiastic rally promoting his candidacy. Trump may not get into the details or have the same defined value systems that I do, but I see on his face and hear in his words a guy who has lived his life well—epically in fact—and now wants to give something back as a man at the top of his game—the way the process should work. I’ve always said that the best among us should manage the money and affairs of our nation—and Trump represents a trend changing element. So I wanted my family to see history happening. They came over, my wife picked up some Chick-fil-A, and we watched about four hours of Trump coverage including the live broadcasts on Fox and CNN. It really was an amazing event.
I have read a lot of books over the years and many have been Trump’s. Books like The Art of the Deal, Think Big and Kick Ass, Never Give Up, Think Like a Champion, Why We Want You to be Rich, and The America We Deserve are highly motivational and were written by a guy with a very long track record committed to the power of positive thinking. He has achieved so much in his life that really President of the United States is the only social thing left for him to conquer which is what I believe his true motivation is. He has the gifts and the mentality, and he’s testing himself on the largest stage possible, and the result is something that like everything else he has done will greatly benefit a large number of people.
My oldest daughter who thinks very highly of me immediately noticed what I wanted her to see by coming over to watch the Trump speech. “He reminds me of you,” she said with some level of intensity which she said when Trump signed a copy of The Art of the Deal for a fan while he was in the middle of his speech. Trump’s approach to problems is very similar to mine and I had been thinking the same thing. My wife has been saying that the reason she likes Trump so much is again because he reminders her of me, which she has been declaring for the last couple of months. Trump is running for president in precisely the way I would if I were in a similar position. He stays up each day working his campaign longer and harder than any other candidate and is able to dominate his rivals with sheer charisma. He’s at a different stage of life than I am, but the heart is what they are talking about—the intentions behind his actions. Because of all those elements, I feel very confident I understand Donald Trump and what he’s up to.
Slowly, as the back of this train, where the rest of society is, catches up to the front—where Trump has been all his life—the true impact of this soon to be global phenomena will make itself known. What we were watching in Mobile, Alabama was unique in the world of politics—a perfect blend of entertainment and political philosophy colliding within contemporary static patterns. Even though politicians have for years used celebrity as a way to prop up their numbers as second-handers, Trump is able to turn that whole system on its head. It used to drive me crazy to watch Bill Clinton fly Air Force One around speaking venues—completely paid for by the tax payers—to raise money for Democrats. Landing into Mobile Trump applied the same trick with his Boeing 757, his own plane built by years of personal success. That plane can fly at 609 miles an hour and can travel 4,400 miles without stopping. The plane is a symbol of Trump’s power. I was watching him on Twitter leading up to the big speech in Alabama. He was in New York just a few hours before his speech, but was able to jump in his plane and fly out to a remote site—perform his speech—and be back to sleep in his own bed. No other candidate can do that because they are second-handers—and Trump knows it. He was able to circle the stadium in his plane a few times just to rally the crowd on the ground that he already has a personal airplane better than Air Force One as a private citizen. It was a psychologically imposing reminder of just who he is, and what he has the potential to do in America.
For this blog site I have loaned my personal reputation and image to the plight of solving hard problems and I do it because I know that if someone doesn’t do something, there won’t be much of a country left in a few years. I know many important people read it every day that is at the top of political discourse and it helps them navigate through a very complicated time. It costs me far more to write this blog than many might think—but I do it because someone has to say these things as bluntly as possible. Just a few years ago, Glenn Beck and I were very closely on the same page, but over time, and personal circumstances he has essentially taken the money from his success and turned inward leaving the fate of his life to God. The guy who was able to pack the Mall in Washington for a Restoring America tour essentially got knocked off the national stage and is now broadcasting out of a cave in Dallas. He moved from New York to seek friendlier people who wouldn’t harass him on the social scene when he was out with his family. That’s where he and I differ tremendously.
Years ago Darryl Parks from WLW radio asked me how I dealt with the kind of harassment within my community from all the things I said on the radio and within this blog. He assumed that everywhere I went I would be harassed—and he’d be correct. Only people know that if they confront me that there will be a fight of some kind. There are two ways that people advance conflict, directly and indirectly. Direct conflicts are where people actually try to pick a fight with you and physical violence is the result. That has happened, and I deal with that kind of thing accordingly. Obviously, my behavior has not changed and it will not change, because I know how to handle those circumstances. Indirect conflicts are the passive aggressive types where people smile to your face, but try to stick a knife in your back at the first opportunity. These are the most common attempts, and were what Darryl Parks was asking me about. I have said it long before I’ve heard Donald Trump say it, that nobody out thinks me. Lots of people have tried, but nobody outthinks or out lasts me. I make a point to always be the last person standing in whatever conflict is presented, which ironically is the best deterrent. Once word gets out, people try much less frequently. Due to my relatively young age, I still get takers every now and then who try—especially older people who think by their age and social status that they have some inherit right to win a strategic match-up by default. I respond to them by not only beating them, but in embarrassing them to their very core. When they make a move against me I fully intend to send them to bed each night with doubt strewn across their faces and impotence that no Viagra pill can fix. I always plan to break them down from the inside out. Physical violence is fine as a last resort, beating someone from the outside in—but for a cunning mind, a truly dominate alpha male, the best way to beat a competitor is from the inside out. You can see a beaten person from the way they hold their eyes in a simple gaze. Trump, better than anybody running for President understands exactly what I’m talking about—he applies it each day—and that has won my trust.
Since Trump began his campaign he has had death threats lashed against him by drug lords, he has challenged entire countries and their governments to end their corruption, taken on the entire media establishment, both political parties, said and done anything and everything he has wanted, and he has still been able to fill a rally on a Friday night in Mobile, Alabama a year and a half from a presidential election with enthusiastic supporters while advocating his economic prowess using his private airplane with the reminder that he’s willing to spend a billion dollars of his own money to have a lobby free candidate sitting in the White House. Sign me up. I understand the kind of fighter that he is and am confident that his brand would destroy a political establishment that I want to see eradicated from the American scene. I am 100% confident that a Donald Trump as president would usher in a decade unique in not only America, but in all of human history. The Reagan presidency would become a footnote of inadequacy, and Trump would be successful because he knows how to win from the inside out, and not just the outside in.
So we are witnessing history in the making, something that is truly unique. I know what Donald Trump is doing and why he’s doing it. I don’t have to sit down with him to see it, because it is obvious to me that his motivations are very similar to my own. But he is positioned to take it to a new level, and for that I would gladly support. He is offering the kind of President that I have been asking for, so I’m going to advocate on his behalf. What people say about him from the past are interpretations of their social positions regarding the wake of defeats handed to them by Trump. People who have been conquered still have to live with themselves even after embarrassments, so they justify their existence with snaky comments and behind the back undermining. For instance, even with all that I’ve said and done, why is it that people from my past don’t come forward to say, “hey, remember when we met in that back alley, and you lost, or I got the better of you on such and such date.” You know why dear reader—because it’s never happened, and it never will. When you are a winner, you know how to hold the high ground and make others tear themselves to shreds trying to get to you. And that is what Trump is doing in a presidential election before the primaries. It makes me very excited to see what he could actually do once he won the election. I get the feeling that America by then will be a very different place. And that’s not a bad thing. At that point the words on these pages become much less relevant as a new day would spring forth in America, and I would emphatically assist by passing the baton to someone with a larger platform to finish the job.
To understand a Trump presidency is to understand the effort that actually built his 757 airplane. He could make America into something better, and I want to put it in his artistic hands to perform the task. The metaphor of that power made its impact in Alabama before he ever landed, and that left the global media short of words—because for many of them it was the first time they had seen such a thing outside of their personal static patterns where the rich and famous relegate themselves to the plush towers of Abu Dhabi. Trump wants to fight, he wants to conquer, and he wants to do it on behalf of America for one last triumph of a life well lived. And that in and of itself is wonderfully unique. A wolf is running for president not because he wants to eat the sheep that flock within American politics, but because he wants to fight the other wolves who reside in the cracks of global endeavor, and he wants to prove to himself that he can beat them all. And in the wake of that effort, America will become great once again. I know all that because I know myself, and I understand the drive that resides deep inside a person born to be a winner.
Now, watch the above videos and learn all about Donald Trump and understand why I’m right once again.
Before anyone says that the real life Oskar Schindler was a Nazi war profiteer and has no comparison to Trump, or that the situation in Schindler’s List is not even remotely the same as the current state of America—I would argue both points. Oskar Schindler was a businessman who worked the Nazi Party into making himself huge profits. But during his experiences he realized how evil the party under Hitler truly was and he had a change of heart, so he decided to save some lives and work the system from his position of strength to do it. Without talking to Trump personally about the situation I think a few really big things happened to him over the last couple of years where he has had his own Oskar Schindler moments. First and foremost I think the smart money of New York sees the writing on the wall. 19-20 trillion in national debt will crush America and likely Trump knows George Soros personally, and everyone on the financial end of the country’s business knows that the left leaning billionaire is trying to topple the American economy. Trump and his financial friends will lose a lot of money when that happens, so now is the time to fight to preserve America as a safe haven of financial independence. Second I think the birther issues involving Trump’s push to get the Obama administration to release the president’s birth certificate, which was done in April of 2011, was an extreme revelation to just how corrupt the political machine truly was—at all levels. Trump won that hard fight but immediately Sheriff Joe Arpaio went on CBS and proved that the birth certificate was a fake. There was something very fishy with the whole deal and since Trump was one of the only people not to back down on the birther issue, he felt vindicated from the shower of criticism and decided to do something about it. There was obviously a shadow party at work within the federal government and there wasn’t a single Republican in the field who was poised to fight it, so Trump out of self-interest, and a since of righting a wrong decided to step forward to fight it.
I can say those things with some level of certainty. If I were in Trump’s situation, I would spend a billion dollars of my own money to fight it. Heck, I write a blog every day for free to fight these things staying up late at night, getting up early in the morning with nothing in it for me at all, but the sense of righting wrongs. Speaking from personal experience, I would say that Trump’s wife Melina probably has something to do with his sudden rush of conservative value. A good woman does put lead in the pencil of A type personalities, and a new son gives a man something to fight for. I’m sure if you peel back Donald Trump that those are some of the core motivations. There are a lot of things that Donald Trump does and says that I completely understand. If he were president, I could convince him to stay off my guns. He’s a New York guy so his policies are largely shaped around the gun laws of that crowded city. But it’s my hope that a Trump presidency will take the fight to the enemies of America making it so that I won’t have to use the Second Amendment to defend my property from an out-of-control nation in debt to a world looking to collect. Once that debt gets over $20 trillion, the lights start to go out and a collapse is inevitable. But listening to Trump, he is conducting his campaign the way I would if I had the resources and time—so I trust him. I know a lot of people in business who put on a metaphorical mask when they do their work, but once the mask comes off they are normal people. I think Trump put on his mask to do his deals over the years, sometimes Republican, sometimes Democrat, but he discovered that some of the people behind the masks of people he was dealing with were really bad people, and he is in a unique position to do something about it, so he is. I would too.
After all the controversy I watched Trump closely, particularly after the Megan Kelly situation. Trump has been playing the situation of president in the classic deal maker fashion, just like playing a simple game of Poker. He has baited pundits to discover their positions, and then he takes control of the situation after they show their cards. He is a lot smarter than he has let on, and he’s in far more control than many believed. His ego maniac position is not part of his true character, but a device he uses to discover the kind of cards people are holding. By insulting people directly and indirectly, you provoke them into showing their hands. It’s a classic trick that has obviously made Trump a lot of money over the years, and he’s now performing it on a world stage. He’s not just playing this game to win the presidency; he’s setting the stage for global negotiations when he becomes president. I’d bet everything I have on the matter. He’s playing the game that far ahead.
Watching his speeches in Michigan, then New Hampshire, then flying out in his helicopter to Iowa—no teleprompters, no handlers, just straight talk speaking with extreme confidence knowing that every word he says will be analyzed and cut-up any way possible—he gave three of the best speeches I’ve ever heard from him. He is a master at the top of his game and there are hints that he has a lot more in the tank. And that is scaring the crap out of establishment types. Standing in front of his personal helicopter in Iowa he was asked if he’d be willing to spend a billion dollars of his own money to become president, and he said without pause—yes. It’s over for the other Republican candidates. This race is over. The 2016 election will be between Trump and whoever the Democrats can put up. And Trump will not run to lose, he’ll do anything and everything in his power to win and the money men know it.
I say that because soon there won’t be any donors to the other candidates. Now that word is out that Trump is serious, the funding for them will dry to a trickle. It won’t take but a few months from now. Trump has another advantage over them that nobody has yet picked up on. Donald Trump is a hard worker. He is willing to work harder than any person running for office. After listening to his recent speeches I am convinced that he read voluminous amounts of information and he was quite comfortable in reciting what he had been learning. He is a smart guy, and I doubt he sleeps much. I understand that because I’m the same way as is in evidence by the voluminous amount of work I produce. Trump will out work and out spend anybody running against him Republican or Democrat. That’s why he’s already shaping global opinions about him in a way that gives him negotiation power once he holds office as president. He is speaking a language that Putin understands, the Saudi’s are terrified of, and Mexico is silently stunned about. The “shadow parties” of world governments are really scared of Donald Trump and his unstoppable campaign during this mythical 2015 “Summer of Trump.”
There really isn’t a policy issue in the 2016 race that is bigger than the economy. Only someone like Trump can wrestle the economy back from this staggering debt. If he can’t than it’s over, and many people like me see it from the front-of-the-train. Those in the back will discover it soon enough. Glenn Beck is not a back of the train person, but he is when it comes to faith and religion. He has had to turn too much toward religion to hold his life together as a person and his opinions about Trump are largely shaped in the context of faith. I don’t have those handicaps when thinking about Trump, and Trump doesn’t live by those limits. I understand his religious position. Donald Trump is an Ayn Rand president. Many Objectivists that I know have taken issue with my assessment of Trump comparing him to Howard Roark from the great novel The Fountainhead. They countered to me that Trump was not like Roark, but more like Gail Wynand—the newspaper tycoon who married the hot wife and traveled the world in his boat once he realized the futility of the fight against him. I can see that, which plays into the whole Oskar Schindler comparison. But Roark loved building things, and so does Trump. I think Donald Trump is a lot deeper person than he shows most people and deep down inside, he is more a figure out of an Ayn Rand novel than out of The Bible, which is the heart of Glenn Beck’s issue, and one that Christian conservatives will have to come to terms with.
To say it’s unfair, or not an apples to apples comparison to say that Oskar Schindler saved Jewish lives and Donald Trump is just a selfish businessman who wants attention, is to miss the real tragedy of the present moment. If the economy fails, more people will die than they did in the German/Jewish holocaust—that is for sure. But think of the evils going on presently from the aborted fetuses at Planned Parenthood to the obvious shadow government conspiracies happening at every level of political endeavor. Trump is wonderfully free of any control mechanisms within that system, and I think his crusade is more out of moral obligation than self fulfillment. His life already is like that of a president. It would be a step down for him to reside in the White House. His ability to make decisions without the temptation of making money off the deal is an ability that I would put my money on over any potential candidate. With the current problems facing the nation, I don’t see any other way out of it, but through someone like Trump.
If Trump comes after our guns, I will happily fight him on it. I am happy to argue and throw mud at him over issues involving the Constitution. As I’ve said, I know for certain he’s not as conservative as I am—but few people are—if any are. But I see in him a man who will work harder than anybody, who can finance himself and owe nothing to anybody, and who can actually stop America from being a debtor nation. I’m even open to his health care options because Obamacare will further bankrupt America, and without that insurance still raises 7-15% each year. That is unsustainable as well. America doesn’t need a church pastor in the White House. It needs a cut-throat Ayn Ran type of money man who is self-sustaining and seeks his own advice 100% of the time. Watching how Trump handled the “birther” issue convinced me that he’s the only one who can be president in this current climate. Everyone backed off that issue except for him. Without Trump, Obama would have never produced the birth certificate, and what they did produce was obviously tampered with. The story died, because nobody in the media had the will to take the next step for fear of being called names by the administration. But somewhere in there Trump made his decision to become a modern Oskar Schindler. Critics might say Trump is running for president to satisfy his own ego, that he used to be a progressive—Democrat—a liberal who is working with Bill Clinton to sabotage the political system for the aims of the Clinton Foundation. But I think Trump’s 2005 marriage to Melania Knauss is the real secret to his behavior. I think deep down inside, behind all the bolster and theatrics is a man in love with his wife—and I think he wants to make the world better for his family—so there is something of it left for them. His new son Barron is likely the primary motivation. I say that because it would be for me, and I see a lot of myself in Donald Trump—particularly in his will, and ability to fight for what he thinks is right. That is why this is the Summer of Trump with an administration to follow.
I remember what it was like in the 80s. Actually I campaigned for Ronald Reagan as a 7th grade student. In my history class I was the leader of the debate team defending Reagan from supporters of Jimmy Carter, which was hosted by three of the most popular girls in the school at the time. The two people I had to help me with the debate were not comfortable speaking in public, so I ended up doing the whole presentation and I had the class on Reagan’s side by the end of the discussion. At the time I didn’t know that Reagan had been a labor union leader, a Democrat, and had tendencies toward bleeding heart liberalism. I just liked his confidence, and what he created during his presidency was enthusiasm for capitalism that America has been missing since. In many ways Donald Trump does remind me of the early days of Ronald Reagan. He’s not conservative enough for me, but I think he can sell what conservatism he does have better than anyone running—and could at a minimum create in America a resurgence of enthusiasm similar to the 1980s. Somehow Republicans will have to break loose the current split that the country finds itself in and create new demographics favorable to those who call themselves conservative. And the first hint of that potential enthusiasm I can see clearly in the two wonderful women rising in popularity of late who are unapologetic Donald Trump supporters, Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson. Check them out! I featured them in yesterday’s article, but they have continued to impress now making the television rounds.
I first heard that interview with Lynnette and Rochelle on Doc Thompson’s The Blaze Radio Show from 6 AM to 9 AM and it had me laughing out loud. Each morning I have been riding a bicycle 24 miles and during that time I catch Doc’s show, and it’s often that he says funny things. But it’s pretty rare where laughter cannot be held back, and I was in traffic, and I’m sure people were wondering what in the world I was laughing so hard at. The Viewer’s View girls were funny and passionate—their enthusiasm was intense–so I really couldn’t help but laugh out loud as people in the car next to me looked on in bewilderment. It instantly reminded me of the type of hope and enthusiasm I remembered from the 1980s where artists like Michael Jackson would do appearances at the White House with Ronald Reagan, and social and economic barriers weren’t as pronounced as they were in the 60s and 70s. Hope was alive and it was exciting.
Communists, socialists, progressives and Democrats—which are all the same thing in my book, didn’t like Reagan because he put a stop on the Soviet plans to spread communism to every corner of the globe. I never thought of Reagan as a bastion of conservative value. Much to my dislike, he was a little too socially liberal in regards to Nancy Reagan, and other aspects of this life. Reagan believed in astrology and strange superstitions, which is clearly not something I believe in. But, wow, did Reagan get Americans feeling good about themselves again, and the byproduct of that enthusiasm was undeniably present in our music, movies, products and global presence.
In the early stage of the Trump run for president I identified the power of his celebrity and fighting ability to pull people into the party who would otherwise reject Republicans. Lynnette and Rochelle are clearly the types of women who would not get excited about Jeb Bush or Scott Walker. Even though Walker, Cruz, or Rand Paul might be better candidates as far as people go—they do not have the power of celebrity and charisma to win people over who would otherwise stand against them. Trump in just a very short time has elicited a passion from demographic groups who would not otherwise call themselves Republican, and that is a very powerful thing. It is interesting that Lynnette and Rochelle have so directly connected Trump to job creation. That was the type of environment that Reagan was able to create. If a person wanted to make money in the 1980s, they could—there were jobs and barriers to entry that were being removed. There were hopes and dreams of wealth that Americans had which led to much critical appraisal of excess—particularly from the political left and generally lazy. But the option was there and it was a generally very positive time. I knew it would be that way as a 7th grade student and I felt passionately enough about it to actually work on behalf of the Reagan campaign as a young person.
But Reagan then and now was not conservative enough for me, even though just about every Republican refers to him as a way to tie themselves to former president. Reagan to me was not “Republican” enough. However I saw the strategic opportunities of his presidency early on, and turned out to be glaringly correct. Even older people who were skeptical about my enthusiasm for Reagan as such a young person doubted that my passion was anything less than youthful hope. It wasn’t. I saw in Reagan an ability to unleash opportunity that had been suppressed for a long time within the United States. I was able to pretty much dominate any social situation, overcome most legal hurdles, meet people of any demographic, and make all the money I wanted before Reagan was in his seventh year as president. I was making as much money as an 18-year-old as my dad was making after 25 years at a regular company. The only limits to my life were in the things I needed to learn—which I worked very hard at. The music was great, the money was excellent, and the direction of the country was very promising. Then came George H Bush. Within four years of his presidency, the establishment Republican had me leaning toward Ross Perot. Clinton won the election of 1992, and everything went downhill from there. Literally.
If a true conservative had been available to take the reigns of Ronald Reagan after he left office, things might have gone very different for America. We might in fact look like the film Back to the Future II and have flying cars, and hover boards. Instead we have iPhones and Facebook. If there had been a Ted Cruz in 1992, we might have to this day a shopping mall on the Moon complete with hotels and night clubs. Ronald Reagan was a paid spokesman for GE and learned to speak the benefits of capitalism from them before becoming a governor or president. His liberalism evolved the older he became into a more conservative personality. I was however born extremely conservative, so everyone falls short in my book. Reagan did a good job of making America feel good about itself, and I think Donald Trump has that same quality. It will be up to some good candidates in 2024 to be ready to take that enthusiasm so evident in women like Lynnette and Rochelle and apply it more toward a laissez-faire capitalist system instead of the socialism of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and of course Bernie Sanders.
There is a reason that Bernie is packing stadiums, socialism is very real and is the policy of Democrats. If you want to beat them in elections and pull spirited Democrats who are questioning that system back to the Republican side of the political spectrum, you need someone who can sell capitalism to people like Lynnette and Rochelle. If they are on board with Trump, it is only a matter of time before a whole lot of other people will be on board as well. And what they are boarding is unapologetic capitalism blasting against a world slipping into socialism. This is the most important election of our lives, and if I were still in the 7th grade, I’d be supporting Trump just as I did Reagan. And that youthful ambition would not be derived from naiveté. It would come from scientific plausibility and deductive reasoning. It’s a numbers game, and Republicans have been too weak in the past to appeal to people like Lynnette and Rochelle. And we’ve lost them to the Democrats and along with them, a hunger by them for the opportunities of capitalism.
The 1980s weren’t perfect. But they were a whole lot better than what has happened since and before. I should know, I experienced it first hand. I think that explosive enthusiasm could in fact be much greater than what we saw in the 80s. For me in the next election it’s not the border, the Iran deal, ISIS, or Planned Parenthood, it’s the $18 trillion dollars in debt that is facing the United States. I think only someone with the ego of Donald Trump has the fortitude to take that on with the gusto it will take to pull off the task. And solving that problem gives me hope that wasn’t there before he announced himself for President of the United States. In that hope I share in common a lot with Lynnette and Rochelle. It is in the purity of their passion that I found myself laughing as sweat poured off my face in the early morning sun and motorists looked at me wondering why I was laughing so hard. It wasn’t them that was funny, it was that they unlocked within me the enthusiasm I have been yearning for in America really since the 1980s to come again, and it has in the wake of Donald Trump.
