I've been going to write something for over two weeks, but my heart just hasn't been in it. I could blame it on the rising heat of summer and too many weeds to pull and extra watering so my flowers and garden won't die. I could also blame my despondent mood on being incredibly busy with church assignments, family issues, therapy not going as rapidly as I had hoped or just plain getting older. But the truth is that my heart sank more than a little two weeks ago Thursday when I finished my shift of volunteer work and was greeted with the news that President Trump had been found guilty on all thirty-four counts in the ridiculous case brought against him in New York City.
The fact that it was basically one count multiplied every time someone looked at the original document didn't help. I had to force myself to remember what Dr. Charlie Ward--a conservative commentator whose information I thoroughly trust since he's been part of the ongoing fight to retain our freedom for decades--has reiterated on many occasions. What we are going through right now is simply a pantomime, or movie, to wake up those who are still asleep as to what was only going on in the shadows until Biden was installed in his present position. It's painful to watch as the innocent lives of babies, children and adults are destroyed, but we have to sit though it until the radical left and their globalist puppet masters have convicted themselves in their insatiable desire to rule the world and get rid of anyone who stands in their way.
The tears formed and my nose began to tickle as I pulled from the parking garage onto the street that late afternoon and tried to take in the sunshine and beautifully calm day. What would the Democrats next move be as they continue their vendetta to take away his fortune, defame his name and have him removed from the next presidential ballot? And how must his wife, children and grandchildren feel after numerous assassination attempts and the loss of much peace, safety and security in their home and lives? A less focused and committed man would have walked away ages ago knowing that if he withdrew from the election all his troubles would magically disappear. He would be able to live the rest of his life in peace and prosperity--as long as he never attempted to take on the globalists again.
I can't say that I was surprised when he was on the campaign trail the next day, despite an unconstitutional gag order that prohibits him from even mentioning all the important things the American people have a right to know. He has more fortitude, resiliency and patriotism than the rest of us for being willing to risk what he has. But then he also has a better idea of what's really at stake and what must happen to reverse the direction our nation has been heading in the past few decades. Despite some people not liking his personality or the way he presents himself, a person of lesser strength or magnetism would be unable to work with the leaders of nations worldwide in coming to peaceful resolutions.
But I don't want to focus on all the horrific things he's dealt with just to show us how totally corrupt the heads of our government and all the three-letter agencies have become. Or the fact that if this administration has the audacity to take on a former US president, they won't blink an eye when it comes to destroying any of us. I would much rather list some of his accomplishments as president and let you decide which candidate most deserves our support now. Do we really want a continuation of the regime we are under right now with all the freedoms we have lost, the high inflation, the constant attack on our religious, moral and political beliefs and a flooding of the border by land, sea and air that has crippled us financially and made our streets far less safe in rural areas and battle grounds in the cities? Or do we want peaceful resolutions in global conflicts, becoming self-sufficient as a nation once again and regaining pride as Americans who are the most generous people in the world when it comes to humanitarian aide? Do we want our own identity as a people who love God, country and family, and whose ancestors fought so diligently for the freedoms we seem much too willing to give away, to disappear completely?
It's always easy to look the other way when world and national affairs don't directly affect us, but if they suddenly did, how would we handle life then? That's why I'm a huge proponent of having something saved for a rainy day. Or in my case, a new furnace, roof, water heater, car repair, unexpected doctor bill . . . You know the story. I also believe in having enough food, water, medical supplies, alternate source of electricity and other essentials in case an emergency situation of more than a few days arises. But back to what the Trump presidency did for us. It's quite an impressive list.
* Trump made sure his tax cuts targeted the middle, or working, class by giving a tax credit of $2,000 per child and changing tax rates so the lower-income people did not have to file tax returns. This brought huge relief to working people and increased the income disparity between rich and poor dramatically.
* Trump demanded that we keep illegal immigrants out and started to build a much-needed wall because millions of people willing to work for very little--if they work at all--never pay taxes and send most of their money back to their home country since the working class is paying all their expenses here, means there is no way the middle class can ever get ahead.
* The environmentalists wanted to stop fossil fuels and convert completely to wind and solar. Trump said that we'd worked hard for forty years to become energy independent, so why would we give that power away? By supporting increased fracking which does little, if any, environmental harm, we extracted enough natural gas to cut our carbon emissions by over eight hundred million metric tons--more than Europe and Japan combined.
* Trump stood firm for colorblind government and ushered in policies that led to Black households income rising to historic heights
* He alienated the military establishment by demanding withdrawal from the Middle East, even as wiped out ISIS.
* He imposed crippling sanctions on Iranian ayatollahs, Russian oligarchs, and Venezuelan dictators.
* He pulled out of the Paris Accord when Europe refused to demand that China stop emitting massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere
* He scrapped NAFTA and negotiated a new deal that stopped China from sneaking products into the United States, and allowed duty-free hemispheric trade in autos only for those goods produced by Mexican, American, or Canadians workers who are paid at least $15 per hour--the first and only trade deal in history to incentivize higher wages.
* He alienated the legal establishment by appointing Supreme Court justices who actually uphold constitutional values.
* The intelligence "community" hated him for exposing their corrupt lying about his so-called collusion with Russia.
* He attempted to stop Silicone Valley from controlling and censoring the content of its amazing technology such as Twitter and Facebook. He said free speech was free speech regardless of who was delivering it.
* He awakened sleeping, and largely trusting, Americans to one important fact: "the media does not care what happens to them." In return they blocked any favorable news about him or his presidency and began to outwardly and viciously attack him after he caught them in a huge lie after the Russia meddling scandal.
* Trump understood white high-school-educated voters, Hispanic-American patriots and the conservatives of the heartland. whom the left had designated as "Fly over country" or "states that don't matter and votes that don't count." Those individuals Hilary called "deplorables" and Obama mocked by saying, "It's not surprising, then, that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
* Under Trump, hourly wages rose by $5.14. Under Obama the hourly wage growth was $1.48.
According to Dick Morris, in his book "The Return" , from which I took the above list as detailed in chapter 4, Trumps "temperament and accomplishments are cause and effect. If you modulate the temperament, you won't get the accomplishments . . . . To appreciate the magnitude of his policy success, just look at what happened the minute he left office: Russia put troops back on Ukraine border and beefed up its presence in the Arctic. China overflew Taiwan airspace and made threatening moves in the South China Sea. North Korea resumed missile overflights of Japan. ISIS resurfaced and the Taliban went berserk when Biden pulled out of Afghanistan. If Trump were kinder and gentler, America's enemies would never have been so brazen."
And on American soil, the political landscape would not be held captive by runaway inflation, unlawful immigration and skyrocketing crime. Stating your opinions or defending your beliefs would still be allowed and racism would not have taken center-stage again with the tables being turned against people not-of-color this time around. With all the social welfare programs only 48 percent of the population now work and the rest of the people are living lives of ease at our expense. Small businesses are being attacked ferociously and unions are having a huge comeback. China is taking over as the world's greatest power and we gave that title to them by all but stopping American production and buying most everything from them while they control all our massive, massive debt. And the latest news from Seattle is a new law that will allow illegals to become police officers with the right to carry a gun, arrest us and put us in jail.
The election of 2024 will be the most important in over 200 years because all the rights granted us by the Constitution and Bill of Rights are on the line. Get registered to vote if you haven't done so already and then exercise that right when the time comes. If we patriots, who love and honor our country, stand united together we cannot fail.
I'll conclude by quoting from the conclusion of Morris' book.
"Are the gains of generations of American families to be burned alive on the coals of woke envy? Is all that we have to achieve as a nation, and as families, to be held hostage in order to punish us for slaves we never owned (and our ancestors died to free), discrimination we never practiced, and racism we never felt in our hearts?
"Are our children to be taught to hate and envy one another? Is the post-racial era in our society to be forfeit in the new cancel culture? Are our heroes to be debased, and our great past presidents to be demeaned as slave-owning imperialists?
"Is brotherhood to be sacrificed for hatred? Is reconciliation to be wiped out in the name of meting out what the Left calls "equity --balancing the accounts of history by robbing the present to pay the supposed debts of the past?
"Are the shared sacrifices of the past--what Lincoln, in his first inaugural address, called the 'mystic chords of memory and the better angels of our nature'--to be swept aside with each swipe of the woke guillotine of cancel culture?
"Is our blessed democracy to be debased by altered ballots, phony signatures, and ghost voters, all because the burden of voter identification is too onerous?
"And consider whether the hard-won gains of women who have liberated themselves from the velvet slavery of enforced domesticity, are to be compromised once again by the avarice of men, now cross-dressed, and perhaps surgically altered, to masquerade as women?
"Are the rungs of the ladder we all need to use to climb above our current stations in life to be sawed away by what President Bush 43 called 'the soft bigotry of low expectations.'
"Are we to be yoked to a technocracy where our innermost thoughts can be read by Chinese and American Big Tech masters?
"Are we to be drowned in a sea of illegal immigration"
"Will crime again rule our streets at night?
"Will blind partisanship, motivated by class hatred and envy, so divide us that we become one another's enemies? Or will we again follow the advice of Abraham Lincoln, that 'we are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.'"
Morris' book was published in 2022 and a lot has happened since then. I would not presume to understand even a portion of the issues that surround us today. I get confused will all the squabbles and back-biting in our local elections, but the few political meetings I've attended have let me know how truly uninformed I am about policies that are being passed without us even knowing about it.
We do live in troubling times, but I don't feel great amounts of fear because I know who is truly in charge--our Heavenly Father who gave us this remarkable earth and loves each one of us unconditionally.
But it's time for me to move away from the computer. My son just asked if I would take his two pups for the next week while their family goes to Arizona. Since he's dropping them off in the morning while I'm at church, I need to do some dog-proofing today. Not that they're a whole lot of trouble. They're reasonably well-behaved and seem to understand that I'm not as young as my granddaughter and run out of steam when they want to play too much. But it's still a sacrifice on my part because I'm allergic to both dogs and cats and like my space. Besides, I just had them for 6 days.
Anyway, it's all good and we tend to adjust to most anything. That can be both good and bad. So take a few minutes to study the policies and ideas of those running for any political office and always vote your conscience. It's both a right and a duty, especially if we want to preserve a free country for the coming generations.