Sunday, June 17, 2018

Time to Get our Dictionaries Out


                                      Time to Get our Dictionaries Out

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 6/17/18

            Let’s avoid the word treasonous right now, but subversive is not at all too strong.  President Trump’s detractors are engaging in subversion.
            Let’s also keep things simple.  To learn what a word means, rush to its verb form.  To subvert means “to intentionally weaken, overthrow, or destroy as in government” (The New International Webster’s Standard Dictionary, 2006).
            Leftists of all stripes are openly saying we should bring down our current president.  Comedian Bill Maher, who illustrates that comedy is serious business, recently opined that if it takes economic disaster to bring down Donald Trump, then let it happen.  MSNBC anchor Nicole Wallace, a former G.W. Bush staffer, called the president a liar while he was abroad seeking the de-nuclearization of the Korean peninsula.  She equated him with Kim Jong-un.
            Obviously Maher has no problem paying monthly bills, and Wallace has no grip on world history or geo-politics.  They are not alone.  The heightened anti-Trump verbal outbursts of countless entertainment figures and media stars have reached the level of subversion as well.
            Words don’t just have meanings.  They also have nuances and shades of meaning.  At what point do words become subversive?  At what point is the 1st Amendment being stretched too far?  If treason is betrayal or a breach of faith involving one’s country, Wallace came close when she characterized the nation’s leader as a murderer.  Judases and Matthew Arnolds we will always have with us.
            All presidents have received their fair share of vilification, but some have received more than their share.  President Obama brought us the excessive Dodd-Frank banking reforms,  Obamacare, and a new and radically different definition of marriage, yet he was never so personally, so angrily, or so incessantly vilified by Republicans as President Trump is by Democrats and the liberal media.
             Democrats and moderate Republicans are disguising their anger against Trump.  They are justifying their invective with “a concern for the future of the nation,” “our democracy is at stake,” and “we can’t be governed by an unstable man.”  The 2016 losers are still so embarrassed they are coloring the Trump-Clinton contest as a battle between the lower half and upper half of the IQ scale.  Those 63 million Trump voters were “barbarians at the gate.”
            I’m going to grant the Trump haters that last sentence.  I love a good figure of speech, and don’t mind being called a barbarian since it puts me in the company of Joan of Arc, William Wallace, and Barry Goldwater.  I can hear Goldwater saying, “Barbarianism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and timidity in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
            A barbarian is an uncivilized, uncultured person, and that’s just how the progressives and their sycophant press still view those 63 million working folks.
            Justice is what the 63 million forsaken, hardworking barbarians sought.  Tired of happy talk and fuzzy, futile promises, they tried a new path and a new leader.  Seems like they’re mighty happy with him so far.  Ask South Carolina Congressman Mark Sanford.  He trashed Trump and lost his first election ever this past week to a lady state representative who declared, “We are the party of Trump.”  Ponder the effect Sanford’s loss will have, or had better have, on other Republican candidates.
            Trump’s victory was no indicator of anybody’s IQ.  It was a revolt of those with more common sense against those who have less.  It was classic class warfare: the elites vs. the regulars.
            Despite the unbridled subversion of Trump’s opponents, Trump won fair and square.  To use his own words, he “did a big number” on Dodd-Frank and Obamacare.  But his adversaries should do what is historic and very American: accept the results of an election and work hard to remove him from office the American way, not the way of chaotic, unstable states.
            Can anyone deny that Trump, a 70-year-old, outworked 18 younger candidates?  His billions apparently haven’t diminished his work ethic.
            If liberals depose Trump or if they don’t, their next goal will be to abolish the Electoral College.  Despite losing the popular vote, Trump won the electoral vote.  That’s how we elect presidents.  We help little people (in this case little states), a practice liberals claim they believe in.  Without the Electoral College, the populous eastern seaboard and California would pick our presidents.  Without it, we are a pure democracy, one of the most chaotic forms of government.  With it, we are a republic which is what our ingenious founders intended.
            In addition to a dictionary, maybe we also need a tenth grade civics book.

Roger Hines
6/13/18

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