{"id":1721,"date":"2017-07-16T23:18:13","date_gmt":"2017-07-17T03:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=1721"},"modified":"2017-07-16T23:18:13","modified_gmt":"2017-07-17T03:18:13","slug":"revisiting-reasons-supporting-trump-trump-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/07\/revisiting-reasons-supporting-trump-trump-process.html","title":{"rendered":"Revisiting Reasons for Supporting Trump–or the “Trump Process”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have recently encountered folks, including friends, who, upon having vigorously supported Donald Trump\u2019s presidential candidacy, now claim to have become disenchanted with him.<\/p>\n

Whether it is because President Trump lobbed cruise missiles into Syria; continues to permit Third World refugees into the United States; advocates on behalf of Obamacare Lite; still hasn\u2019t so much as proceeded to \u201cbuild the wall,\u201d or any number of other things\u2014these one-time Trump supporters now purport to be off the Trump train, so to speak.<\/p>\n

For a few simple reasons, I find this attitude to be, at the very least, misplaced.\u00a0 It is appropriate only in the case of those who, in backing Trump, believed that they were voting for a messiah, \u201cour last chance\u201d to turn this ship of state around \u201cmake America great again.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is appropriate to be jaded or shattered by Trump\u2019s failure to meet one\u2019s expectations, and just six months into his presidency to boot, only under one or more of the following conditions:<\/p>\n

(1)One expected for Trump to keep every promise that he so much as hinted at while on the campaign stump;<\/p>\n

(2)One forgot Trump\u2019s personal history as a New York City billionaire\/celebrity who not only never lifted a finger to advance any conservative and\/or libertarian causes, but who frustrated the advancement of such causes by donating the lion\u2019s share of his tremendous resources to Democrats and, beginning just five years prior to running for the presidency, Big Government, neoconservative Republicans.<\/p>\n

(3) One forgot that Trump derided such honorable conservatives and libertarians as Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul.<\/p>\n

(4)One forgot that, to Trump\u2019s credit, he never pretended to be a \u201climited government\u201d Constitutionalist. Trump made campaign promises, like repealing and replacing <\/em>Obamacare, \u201cdestroying\u201d ISIS (which means more American military involvement in the Middle East and beyond), and growing the military even larger than it already is.\u00a0 These pledges underscored for all with eyes to see Trump\u2019s affection for a large, centralized, administrative state.<\/p>\n

(5) Perhaps more importantly than all else, one thinks of a society\u2019s politics narrowly, in terms of the policies <\/em>or legislation <\/em>enacted by politicians.<\/p>\n

For certain, President Trump must be held accountable for his mistakes.\u00a0 His supporters must be as vigilant in criticizing him as they are in defending him against his increasingly unhinged enemies.\u00a0 There is, however, all of the difference in the world between reasonable and unreasonable criticism.<\/p>\n

In point of fact, within a remarkably short span of time, President Trump has achieved an impressive array of feats:<\/p>\n

Whether it is fighting for and, for practical purposes, winning his \u201ctravel ban;\u201d presiding over a nearly 70 percent reduction in illegal border crossings; deterring illegal immigration from some sources; drastically reducing a massive amount of Obama-era regulation; or leaning on companies that would have otherwise relocated to other lands to remain within the United States\u2014these are just some of the achievements that Trump can claim credit for despite having served in office for such a short period of time.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, though, those of us who self-regard as classical conservatives and libertarians have always valued Trump\u2019s presidential candidacy for other reasons.<\/p>\n

In other words, as the paleo-libertarian Ilana Mercer argued in her book<\/a>, The Trump Revolution: The Donald\u2019s Creative Destruction Deconstructed, <\/em>it is not Trump the man <\/em>or even the candidate <\/em>that is of primary importance. It is, rather, the \u201cTrump Process,<\/em>\u201d as Mercer puts it.<\/p>\n

Mercer is not alone among those of us who support Trump because of what he represents. <\/em>The Trump Process transcends Trump.\u00a0 The Process transcends politics, conceived narrowly in terms of the machinery of the government.<\/p>\n

The Trump Process, we hope, will indelibly impact the culture, <\/em>for as conservatives in particular have always realized, a society\u2019s \u201cpolitics\u201d are \u201cdownstream\u201d from its culture.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s rise and the spread of the Trump Process signify two extremely powerful cultural shifts.\u00a0 They symbolize a resounding repudiation of the current Zeitgeist, \u201cPolitical Correctness,\u201d with all that this entails, and an equally resounding repudiation of the nation-denying and liberty-threatening \u201cglobalism\u201d that Trump\u2019s army of elitist enemies in the Regime have been relentlessly pushing for decades.<\/p>\n

That Trump is indeed perceived by his enemies to be perilous to their whole way of life is gotten easily enough from the mercilessness with which they pursue every opportunity to stall his agenda.<\/p>\n

This, however, brings us to the second virtue of the Trump Process.<\/p>\n

If not for Trump, tens of millions of Americans who would have otherwise remained oblivious to it all would not have awakened to the sinister, manipulative machinations of what I have elsewhere called \u201cthe Regime<\/em>.\u201d The latter is a sprawling Government-Media complex whose members consist as much of Republicans as it does of Democrats.<\/p>\n

Trump, whether or not he intended it, unveiled the moral rot of the GOP, the Party of the Jack Ass, the Fake News media (of both leftist and neoconservative varieties), and the Deep State\u2014all while revealing that, their protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, they constitute but different facets of a single unitary Regime.<\/p>\n

The Trump Process has also disclosed that this Regime relies upon, in addition to trillions of taxpayer dollars, an ideology, <\/em>a neo-liberal\/neoconservative internationalist or \u201cglobalist\u201d ideology that is and has always been antithetical to the interests of Americans for whom patriotism is loyalty to and love for their country<\/em>\u2014not the abstract \u201cproposition\u201d or concept <\/em>with which both Republican and Democrat Regimists have identified America.<\/p>\n

If Trump\u2019s nomination to the presidency didn\u2019t raze the GOP to the ground, it was the equivalent of a bomb that did its fair share of damage.\u00a0 Millions will never again see yesteryear\u2019s GOP superstars, its politicians and media propagandists, in the same light. The Trump Process was the light that sent the rats scattering.<\/p>\n

Now that he is POTUS, disgruntled leftist politicians at local, state, and federal levels in every branch are engaged in acts of defiance\u2014little acts of secession\u2014and, in some instances, as in California, threatening all-out secession. Trump\u2019s presidency, the Trump Process, is a disruptive force.\u00a0 It is starting to look like \u201ccreative destruction,\u201d as if it could be the first step toward a less centralized, more liberty-affirming, kind of social order\u2014precisely that state of affairs for which Mercer and many of us hope.<\/p>\n

Trump or, more specifically and in keeping with Ilana Mercer\u2019s term of choice, the Trump Process, has been a wrecking ball vis-\u00e0-vis the Regime, the Republican-Democrat\/Deep State\/Fake News media Axis.<\/p>\n

As the paleo-libertarian Mercer was at pains to clarify in her book against those libertarians who, incapable of seeing the forest for the trees, refused to so much as consider voting for him, it is for these reasons, <\/em>for the sake of the creative destruction of the Trump Process that liberty-lovers could and should support Trump.<\/p>\n

And it is for these reasons that lovers of liberty should continue to support him.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have recently encountered folks, including friends, who, upon having vigorously supported Donald Trump\u2019s presidential candidacy, now claim to have become disenchanted with him. 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