Substance Over Style

During my hiatus so many news stories of great importance
and riveting in nature that upon my return I find myself badly
behind! But your faithful Peasant shall give each of them the
attention that they require so that we, my fabulous readers,
can be up to speed on the who, what, why, when, where and
how of it all.

We'll start with this thought-provoking item from California:
The mayor of Livermore, California, recently wrote a piece
in which he gave a very frank, matter of fact explanation as
to why President Donald Trump is so successful --- and so
popular --- as president. Writing about Trump's "lack of
decorum, dignity, and statesmanship", Mayor Marshall
Kamena pointed out that our most successful presidents have
relied less on propriety, collegiality, and niceness and more
on a direct approach in getting legislation passed and
international pacts agreed upon and enacted; they would
fight tooth and nail for what they wanted, even with
legislators in their own parties. Mayor Kamena, a conservative
who ran for office as a Democrat (reasoning that one couldn't
get elected dogcatcher, let alone mayor or any other higher
office in the super liberal Bay Area of very left-leaning
California), gave examples of GOP presidents and presidential
candidates who tried the "nice guy" approach only to be savaged
by Democrats who followed Saul Alinsky's playbook "Rules for
Radicals" rather than the ways of mannerly comportment to
decorum. President George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt
Romney were named as prime examples of coming to the
fight insufficiently armed, and the consequential results.

Kamena is correct in stating that we are in the middle of a
long and protracted culture war, whose origins can be traced
to the 1960s and the radicalism on the college campuses
across the country. The radicals of their day took over
their campuses, occupied the offices of the presidents and
deans, and forced through rule changes that they demanded
to have adopted; no ifs, ands, buts, discussions, or
debates. They shut up and shut out everyone who stood in
their way. Their ideological children, the leftists of today,
take that same tack with the political system at all levels.
And it's not just with politicians and government officials,
be they elected or appointed; today's radical lefties also
bully everyday people if they are wearing MAGA (Make
America Great Again) caps or T-shirts, or even buttons
with the names of conservative candidates for public
office. Some MAGA cap wearers have even been assaulted
in restaurants. Presidential Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee
Sanders and some other members of the president's staff were
even told to leave a restaurant in Northern Virginia, near
Washington D.C. because they work for President Trump!

And in this culture war, which is truly a war for not only
our culture but our government, our economy, our rights
and liberties, our very way of life. We need a leader in the
White House who understands this, and realizes that the
enemy's people in Congress and in the opposition party,
like their comrades on the college and high school campuses,
in the urban areas and indeed, some suburbs, in the unions,
in the media, and in the realm of entertainment (Hollywood
comes to mind) and will be willing to get his hands dirty
and his face bloodied in order to get his programs and
'initiatives enacted, and we now have such a leader ---
Donald J. Trump. He fights! He doesn't back down!
He doesn't stick to the Marquis of Queensbury Rules while
his opponents employ street fighting tactics! And, most
importantly, he gets things done!

Mayor Kamena cites as examples of such leaders two great
American generals who won wars by these means: Ulysses
S. Grant and George S. Patton. They weren't very big on the
protocols of Amy Vanderbilt either but they, like Donald Trump,
got results. Trump has a record of accomplishments in his
first thousand days in office which rival those of Presidents
Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. 

Furthermore, President Trump has no illusions regarding the
media. He knows that most of the media hates him with a
passion that you wouldn't believe, and they have done all they
could to undermine him ever since his presidential campaign
took off like a rocket and made him a serious contender for
the Republican nomination, and now want to find a way to
drive him out of office. While it was true that President
Reagan dealt with the media and the rest of his enemies
with a cheerful if wary countenance, they didn't exhibit the
unhinged hatred for The Great Communicator that Trump's
enemies are toward Trump. And once in a while, the media
actually reported favorably on Reagan's successes, giving
him credit for getting legislation he favored passed and
signed into law. Your scrutinizing Peasant has yet to see
any instance of the media doing that with President Trump,
and I'm not holding my breath waiting for that to happen.
So President fires back at his media detractors, calling
them out for their biased and dishonest reporting of his
presidency and related topics. He has even called CNN,
an especially rabid attacker, "Fake News". He later applied
this epithet to other news organizations and some reporters
as well, and sometimes even told them he wouldn't respond
to their questions in press conferences, because he knows
that all they'll do is lie and distort.

Mayor Kamena knows that we are at war --- a cultural war
in which the soul of our nation is on the line, and he appreciates,
respects, and supports President Trump because he knows it too.
And even more importantly, he conducts himself accordingly.
A victory for substance over style.


MEM