Today Is Not That Day

Maybe one day, I’ll be able to resist responding to midwit commentary in a left-wing newspaper from a left-wing town.

I replied to yet another letter to the editor in my former local home paper - the Park Record - in which a writer calls Trump authoritarian and his policies tyrannical.

The author writing about “President Trump’s narcissistic authoritarian agenda" and "the president’s tyrannical agenda" are all you need to know about this letter.

I should have let it go because it is just another in a long line of letters based on progressive buzz words from an ideology that just came off four years of actual authoritarian, tyrannical rule by some unknown, unelected entity that covered for a mentally compromised president - and after the lack of criticism of the Biden administration, the accusation of "Some supporters view Trump as infallible" seems a lot like projection.

I could take positions like this seriously if they were seriously offered. This letter is the equivalent of playground name calling with zero factual basis

It is, unfortunately, trite and all too common to use those words to describe all things Trump and every time they are used, it indicates a few things:

1. It indicates that there is zero appreciation for Trump's patience with Article III courts that are acting in extra-constitutional ways, assuming jurisdiction where they have none and issuing orders they have no power to issue. Authoritarians don't pay attention to courts.

2. It indicates that Democrats feel Trump's agenda is authoritarian because their agenda has been lawless for so long, when someone holds them to account and follows the actual law, it feels authoritarian to them. It simply proves that no criminal likes the law, one supposes.

3. Tyranny is defined as "unjust or oppressive government power" and Trump's agenda is literally the opposite - it is the removal of such power. It is my opinion that tyranny was far more prevalent under Obama and Biden than it ever has been under a Republican president. I assume they are whining about his use of Executive Orders to achieve policy goals quickly, but I have yet to read anything in the Constitution that says EOs are constitutional when a Democrat president does them and unconstitutional when a Republican president does them.

4. I have met many people like the author of this opinion piece, they have no conception of the Constitution or laws other than what they want them to be and when something challenges that want, they see that as unconstitutional or illegal.

Maybe one day, I’ll be able to resist responding to midwit commentary in a left-wing newspaper from a left-wing town, but as Aragorn said at the Black Gate:

“A day may come when the courage of Men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day! An hour of wolves and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down, but it is not this day! This day we fight!! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!!!”