Doctor Frankenstein created the monster that bears his name, and if Doctor Jekyll had not conducted these experiments in his laboratory, Mr. Hyde would never have appeared to terrorize London.
In literature, we know who to blame for monsters, but who to blame for Donald Trump’s rise? Is he the “monster” the elites believe him to be?
I am no fan of Trump and wish both parties would field better candidates for president, but much of the blame for his rise as the Republican Party’s “presumptive nominee” in 2016 can be placed on the same elites who so loudly condemn him.
They have presided over the terrible national debt, spending money like there is no tomorrow. They are not good stewards of the money we earn, and they take it. It is the elites who have started wars we should not have fought, and then failed to fight them to win, applying too many “rules of engagement” that guarantee only stalemate or victory for the other side.
They overregulate even miniature businesses, stifling their growth and preventing modern ones from starting. They so punish initiative that if today’s OSHA regulations were applied to Wilbur and Orville Wright, those two visionaries would never have left their Ohio bicycle shop, much less taken their first flight to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
Career politicians, lobbyists, lawyers, the self-serving institution that government has become (instead of the constitutionally restricted, service-to-the-people institution it was originally intended to be) fueled Donald Trump’s rise. It doesn’t support their position that these elites now seem at least as arrogant as Trump in their condemnations of him, while refusing to accept responsibility for what they failed to dismantle.
As Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan has noted, Trump is demonstrating his love for America, and a growing number of voters who also love America are charmed by his love song, even if it’s off-key.
Many of the voices that warned of dire consequences if Trump were president made huge government possible. Republican politicians, fearful of their own shadows, the media, and the Democrats, have done little to reverse it. When former House Speaker John Boehner refers to Senator Ted Cruz as “Lucifer,” it is a case of the pot calling the cauldron black. What did Boehner do as Speaker, beyond making deals with Senators Harry Reid and Ted Kennedy and kissing former Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the cheek as she handed him the gavel? She must have known instinctively that Boehner was not going to rock the boat and would do little to damage the Democratic agenda until the day the party returned to a majority and members returned to their senior ways.
Voters gave Republicans majorities in both houses of Congress and they did almost nothing with it. That’s why Boehner was forced out of office by conservative members of his own party.
Don’t you have a right to be enraged if you love America, if you served in the military or have relatives who did, like I did? Anger is bipartisan, as evidenced by the popularity of socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
These lyrics by British punk rock band Dead Swans may support explain the mood of the country: “You lie to yourself, like you always do, the words you said meant nothing, I saw it from the start, you just want attention, absent friends and enemies are all you have left in life, every day is like a knife cutting through your chest, constant frustration, you’ve been choking on the best years of your life, no love, no hate, no hope, all lies.”
