My opinion. Take it as you will. No comments, please.
There is no doubt that Donald Trump’s presidency has, to date, delivered on most of his campaign promises. Of the many deliveries, the one I like the most is the relocation of our embassy to Jerusalem. Beyond that, we can say, confidently, that he has erased Barack Obama’s two-term legacy. This pleases me more than words can say.
When we consider the idea, which most on the Left had embraced, that the changes Obama made in his difficult but tenacious eight years in office were too great to reverse, it is even more remarkable that so much has been reversed: Trump and the Republican Congress have succeeded in undoing Obama’s work to an extent I barely anticipated.
It shouldn’t have surprised me.
Why? Because Obummer’s legacy was, at best, built upon an idiotic mixture of sugar candy and shifting sand.
Take, for example, the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”), which was anything but (affordable). Talk about shifting sands! The so-called “health exchanges” created by the ACA are folding left and right because they are financially unsustainable. My wife’s University-provided coverage is pathetic and reflects the changes wrought by the ACA – higher deductibles, narrowed coverage, and virtually nothing that can be called “affordable.” Insurance in this country is really nothing more than a collective buying plan approach and, at that, it sucks. If I were The Donald, I would blow the entire American health care system to smithereens and start over.
Next up is Obama’s war on coal, which devastated the Wyoming economy and could be seen as nothing short of punishment of a red state not beholden to the Barack narrative. On Day One, if you recall, President Trump undid many of Obama’s executive orders aimed at the coal industry and slowly but surely it is recovering (as are the oil and natural gas industries).
Barack’s support of legal cannabis, which ignored the fact that marijuana remains illegal at the Federal level, succeeded only in indulging the whims of millennials and creating a cloud of second hand-smoke. It is illegal (at the Federal level) because it is, well, bad for you. Even Colorado is re-thinking their recent moves in this area. It is beyond me, a member of the generation that sued itself into oblivion over the effects of cigarette smoking, how indulging marijuana smoke is any better for us.
Obama ignored North Korea while it beavered away on a deliverable nuclear warhead. He made a deal with the devils in Iran that succeeded only in giving them more cash with which to fund terror. He tolerated tepid economic growth at home while seemingly promoting it everywhere else. The latter, of course, was a reflection of his baseline thinking, that America was too rich, too powerful and needed a comeuppance. Reparations by other means.
His admirers (Barack’s that is) want you to know that he had a “studied sense of fiscal responsibility.” Here we have an object lesson in telling the big lie long enough. Fiscal “responsibility,” to them, is manifest when running a budget deficit that includes, inter alia, increased planned parenthood funding, a degradation of military strength through inaction, a re-funding of Iranian terror, and a war upon men and women digging for coal who are citizens and nonetheless deserving of the same treatment as all other citizens. “Fiscal responsibility” to those on the Left means that it’s okay to rain down destruction upon the middle class (via the ACA) while further enabling and indulging the poor, many of whom are poor in name only and still carry expensive cell phones and sport any number of expensive tattoos and piercings. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs now includes those things down at the basement level, and Obama was there to fund such nonsense. Where before a first world nation was wise to look after the less fortunate in terms of a place to sleep, food to eat, and freedom to pursue happiness, Obama saw fit to redefine mere existence as warranting a smartphone and button belly piercings. Studied fiscal responsibility my ass.
On the environment, Obama bought into the pseudo-science that surrounds global warming. Yes, pseudo-science. It is far from settled (nothing in science is ever, really “settled”). From his war on coal to his entering into an agreement in Paris that our Senate was never able to ratify (as is called for by something called the “US Constitution”), Barack decided on his own what we would do. And, of course, the effect, had it been left to unfold, would have been to devastate the American economy in favor of China’s – perhaps the world’s worst polluter. The Paris Accords managed only to out-source semi-messy processes to other countries where messiness was re-introduced, instead of trying to clean them up further at home. As evidence I offer the fact that American coal-based power plants have become something on the order of 98% efficient and are a far better solution to the production of power than the installation of solar panels on everyone’s roofs. The Left is beyond apoplectic and will now revert to Gore-style fanaticism. Just wait and you’ll see what I mean.
In foreign policy, Trump has been even more effective. In less than two years, he has stood up to the socialist countries whose economies are possible only because America provides the vast bulk of their defense. Sure, Germany can welcome millions of migrants, and pay for them, and puff their chest, but only because Uncle Sam is providing 100% of their defense budget. Sure, the European Union can wet-nurse self-indulgent countries like Greece, and pay for it, but only because they have America as a trading partner and defender. Remember this: Socialism is a wonderful idea until you run out of someone else’s money.
What amazes me thus far in my 61 years has been the Left’s near total abandonment of Israel. When I was a youngster it was America’s position that Israel’s right to exist was intractable, immutable, and therefore, a forever thing. Of course, 61 years ago the memory of the Holocaust was still relatively fresh. After all, something like 6,000,000 Jews were slaughtered and it was seemingly the human thing to do to give them a homeland of their own. It was also in our best interest to sustain a powerful Israel, a powerful ally in a region full of tyrants and unpredictable sheiks and mullahs who, because of a lack of strength and power, resorted to turning their own people into improvised explosive devices. Israel, say nothing else about them, is predictable and strong and a defender of human dignity. I have been there, and I have seen how a people, left to their own devices, can create a nation of freedom and energy. Meanwhile, Palestinians are more focused on anger and retribution than on creating a nation of doers. Again, reparations by other means.
Thus, we supported Israel’s repeated defensive acts and its growing power economically. But of late, the Left has seen Israel, much as they have seen their own country, as too big and too good. Time to whack them down to size, they said (ostensibly). Through Obama’s actions viz Iran and the near-recognition of Palestine as a state, they sought to cut Israel down. How that helps America is beyond me.
Sugar candy is on the mind of the Left when it opposes Gina Haspel (a woman!) as Director of the CIA. She has said that the defense of her homeland (America) is her first constitutional duty. That that might include waterboarding a terrorist or two, intent as they are and have been to fly airplanes into buildings, seems to me to be quite reasonable. Sugar candy goes out the window when watching a World Trade Center collapse to the ground. Unreasonableness is often best met by resolve and a dose of (wet) reasonableness.
Trump bothers me at so many levels. He is bombastic and at times trivial. The tweeting thing is silly. He is not the deal-maker I thought he would be. He is inconsistent, especially when comparing his isolationist rhetoric on the campaign trail with the decisions being made to intervene in foreign matters. But on the undoing of the Obama legacy, he has done everything he said he would do.
Rather refreshing when you stop and think about it.
