Everything is What It is

Roger Kimball begins an interesting essay with words uttered by Joseph, Bishop Butler in 1726. Bishop Butler said: "Everything is what it is, and not another thing." In essence this means—when someone tells you they're doing something for a noble reason (e.g., saving lives), but behind it all, they're doing it out of self-interest or to further some less noble  goal, recognize that it is what it is. Extrapolating this to the modern day, Kimball writes:

... almost everything happening in our society—all the craziness, all the posturing, all the distracting noise, exaggeration, and downright mendacity—all of it is not about itself but about something else, and that something else is Donald Trump. 

A new, flu-like virus is abroad in the land. The anti-Trump establishment goes to work: How can we blame it on Trump? He shuts down flights from China at the end of January: charge him with being racist and xenophobic. He consults experts. They tell him it is not a serious threat. He goes on television and says that: hysteria! Then he swings into action, mobilizes American manufacturing prowess and turns out more ventilators, protective gear, testing kits, and new therapies than anyone thought possible. The curve flattens. The political weapon that was COVID-19 falters. No problem. Declare a race war!  Smash up the storefronts. Get everybody talking about racism all the time. Ignore the fact that the people overwhelmingly harmed by Black Lives Matter are inner-city blacks. Blame everything on Donald Trump. 

The unremitting, monolithic wall of noise that has been crashing against Donald Trump since election day 2016 has gotten louder and louder, more cacophonous, more furious, more irrational. Everything is what it is, and not another thing. But the one thing that takes precedence over everything now is defeating Trump, which means defeating not only Trump himself but what he stands for—those 63 million voters who put him in office, for starters. 

But it’s more than that. The forces of anti-Trump hatred comprise not just Democratic aspirants to high office but also, and more significantly, the media (social and otherwise), the spoiled, pajama-boy Left, and—above all, perhaps—the entrenched administrative apparatus of government, the self-engorging bureaucracy of the state whose fundamental allegiance is to the principle of self-perpetuation.  

It is all of that which Donald Trump came to office to sweep clean, like Hercules confronting the Augean stables. The first time around the reaction was a compact of contempt and ridicule, but that was only because Trump could not win. The smartest people in the world—Bill Kristol, Nancy Pelosi, Rachel Maddow—they all knew he couldn’t win. So they didn’t come together in a single caterwauling primal scream to stop him.  

This time they have. And since they control almost all the major megaphones, it can sometimes seem that everyone is against Donald Trump and no one is for him.

It can seem that way, but of course it is not. And that is chiefly for two reasons. First, there are those 63 million voters—perhaps it will be 66 or 68 million this time. Voters whose voices you don’t hear in the pages of the New York Times and whose rigged Google searches and Facebook hot spots somehow leave out of account. They’re sitting at home watching their cities burn, watching monuments to Columbus, to Washington and Thomas Jefferson be defaced or toppled. They see that, and they hear a nonstop litany telling them how racist they are and how evil  America is. 

For now, they remain quiet, their fury just below the surface. 

The silent ones listen to Joe Biden, a swamp creature if there ever was one, complain about everything from the plight of African Americans to our crumbling infrastructure, to income inequality, to our failed social programs. They watch as Biden is co-opted by the very people who advocate defunding the police and applaud those who tear down statues (or burn down buildings) and shout down people who might disagree.

And the silent ones (Kurt Schlichter refers to them as "Normals") stop and think—this clown (Biden) has been in Washington for 40-plus years; he's was VP for 8 years, and he did NOTHING of substance to correct the problems he now tries desperately to lay at Trump's feet. 

He tells us he would have stopped COVID-19 in its tracks. Sure he would have. He tells us he's the best hope of people of color. That, after a lifetime of "gaffes" that cast doubt on just how pure his attitudes about people of color really are. He tells us he's a moderate. And then proceeds to adopt an agenda that is eerily similar to the one proposed by Bernie Sanders, a socialist demagogue that even the Dems rejected as their presidential candidate. He claims to be mentally clear, yet has trouble stringing three coherent sentences together when he answers an unscripted question.

Trump, who is cast as a "racist" along with his tens of millions of supporters among the silent ones, has done more for African Americans in 3.5 years (e.g., highest levels of employment, highest wages, prison reform) than Biden did in his four decades in power. Despite the hate, Trump has governed moderately, improved the economic health of the the middle class, tried to extract us from wars that have gone on far too long, demanded fair trade, fought the deep state and its bloat, and yes, become the sworn enemy of the Left and the deep state. Trump is coarse, combative, and a narcissist. He hasn't always succeeded, but he has tried. Unlike Joe Biden, he actually accomplishes things that matter to the country and the people in it.

And so the silent ones scratch their heads and ask, "Why should we vote for Joe Biden and allow the Democrats to lead?"

The answer they'll ultimately come up with is ... "We won't!"