The Roark Rules

Like the protagonist of Rand's "The Fountainhead", Trump 2.0 has changed the game by ignoring Democrat rules - and the Democrats can't catch up.

I understand what it is about Trump that is driving the Democrats completely batcrap crazy.

It isn’t that hard to figure out.

It is that President Trump, VP Vance – the entire cabinet, actually - don’t give one flying fornication about their opinions or the opinions of the traditional self-anointed cultural gatekeepers, most of whom reside in DC and other bastions of progressivism. The Trump administration isn’t playing by the “rules” like any other GOP president has – or even Trump 1.0 did.

When they talk about there being no “guardrails,” broken “norms,” or lack of “decorum,” that is what they are talking about, the self-censoring, self-imposed limits the leftist arbiters of propriety expect from Republicans – and only Republicans.

Trump is following the very same advice my sainted Mississippi granddaddy, B.T. Goodwin, gave me. My granddaddy said that I shouldn’t worry about what people I don’t respect think of me, and I don’t, which is probably why I love Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead so much– I think it might be better than Atlas (in all honesty, Atlas was about a third too long for me to enjoy – it wore me out).

I find it extremely entertaining and rewarding to watch a scene from one of my favorite books and movies play out in real life.

In The Fountainhead there is a scene between Ellsworth Toohey, the antagonist, and Howard Roark, the protagonist. Toohey is a great scholar, humanitarian, renowned architectural expert, and the primary critic and narcissistic opponent of Howard Roark, an architect of some renown of his own right. A conflict ensues between the two, Toohey seemingly becoming the victor. The two meet one night in a secluded place and Toohey asks Roark:

“Mr. Roark, we’re alone here. Why don’t you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us.”

“But I don’t think of you,” Roark says sardonically.

That was a gut punch to Toohey.

The ultimate insult to a narcissist is to tell them you don’t think of them, that they are not significant – that is what the Democrats every day now as Trump steamrolls over issue after issue, proving with each mile that everything Democrats have done and said have been illusions rather than solutions.

Trump 2.0 is playing out this scene to perfection – I think 2.0 is far more like the Real DJT than the first time around. He knows the game now, and instead of playing their game, he is forcing them to play his.

I just mentioned earlier today how Trump’s actions of simply enforcing standing law at our southern border unequivocally proved that Biden could have done something about the invasion of illegal aliens and there was absolutely no need for the “bipartisan border bill” that was just another scam to make it look like government was doing something when it had no intention of doing anything – anything that is other than codifying the free flow of illegals that was already happening.

Democrats and their allies have had a noose around the neck of our speech, culture, and politics for decades now, and as they have for all those years, they are showing who they are and are inviting the American public to tell them what they think of them.

Instead of people accepting the status quo, President Trump has given the American people permission to tell the Democrats that they don’t think of them either.

And that is like a knife to the heart.

Everybody seems to be Howard Roark these days.