I thought that when I became older it would be easier to put my thoughts into words and write them. I am wrong, it is even more difficult. I find myself to have become The Veteran in Dorothy Parker’s poem, and while the difference in battles won or lost is small, it is significant.

     Significant because with age and maturity comes the realization that nothing is as horribly one-sided as personal conviction, whether it stems in “science,” “religion” or the less judicious measures of feeling. Personal conviction has replaced critical thought in social discourses, the great either-or of science versus religion has become the de facto barometer of knowledge, and emotion (feelings) have replaced thinking in cultural and political trends.

     It is unsettling that many folks, especially folks of my age and time reference, are convinced that their particular and personal credence is the Alpha and Omega without exception. Evidence otherwise is to be ignored in the least, ridiculed at best and in favor of some nebulous form of mysticism extrapolated from the intelligible and accepted as fact by faith . Faith, to me, translates to “let others do the hard work of thinking, I can’t be bothered.”

      “But I am old, and good and bad are woven in a crazy plaid. . .”

     I think it understandable that many, whether of my age and general intellect or another generational difference, glom on to an idea that seemingly makes perfect sense and runs with it even unto the nth factor of irrational. Understandable but nonetheless dangerously wrong. I speak of indiscriminating acceptance of popular theory, which could be the equivalent of “our knowledge of the subject so far” (be this of scientific, religious or emotional nature) but isn’t stated so. The vital difference is contained in the “so far.” While science tends toward the “unsettled” realm and requires more and more information (and more after this), religion tends toward the more “settled” realm, requiring nothing except acceptance, and all that follows therefrom. In the “settled” realm reality and fantasy are equally corrupted. It appears the greater part of current human society is fueled by emotion over objectivity or critical thinking. This should be alarming, concerning at least and shouted from rooftops. To me, it is terrifying, and I would jump from this Ship of Fools, but to where? And since I should stay, I harbor the need to shout a bit.

     Making things less understandable is that all is not as it appears. The broadness of such ranting and raving needs certain focal points, for example the US presidential election of 2024.

     I can recall conversations of years ago where one or another opinion came out as “I think Donald Trump would make a great president.” This sentiment came, strangely enough, from the faction of society I would describe as being counterculture and rooted by such theoretical personages as John Lennon, who’d once said the “only way out of the messes we’ve created” is to elect a businessman. John was not American I should add. For years since the social revolutions of the 1960’s certain arm-chair pundits have squawked about political cronyism and the inability of the “average Joe” to get into any office that would make a political difference. I was quite shocked the squawking became louder, and in opposition, when what they’d hoped for finally happened. I have done a great deal of thinking as to the why.  

     Granted, Trump is hardly the “average Joe” envisioned, however, he is without question a political outsider. Trump had no political service before taking office. It is also said he has no military service history, unless we can count that at the age of thirteen his parents, citing “behavioral difficulties,” enrolled him in the New York Military Academy. He avoided the Viet Nam War draft that most who could, did, and for the same reasons offered by less affluent would-be draftees. He sought education over the adventures of military service and went into business for himself investing in real estate. The rest is well known.

     In 2008, Trump bespoke his rival Hillary Clinton as “would make a good president or vice president.” Hillary Clinton, the self-proclaimed heiress to the, arguably, ruling democratic-Marxist empire, did not make the same concession. Upon losing the election in 2016 she instead set out to do what she does best, exacting revenge on those who oppose her. Donald Trump not only opposed her, he crushed her in the 2016 election. I can only imagine the rage, and the resolve to crush him equally. All she had to do was call in favors from the State Department(s), stay out of the way and prepare to take back that which was taken by any means possible, even if she had to destroy all pretense of political integrity to do it. The evidence is, indeed, circumstantial, and no one can, or will ever be able to prove whether this is true or not, like all the iniquity surrounding the Clintons.  

    What is evidenced is the last eight political years is entrenched in a highly concerted effort to defame, denigrate, criminalize, ridicule, to assassinate the person of Donald Trump. Upon his election, the immediate popular media swerve into vehemence against a man who formerly was only recognized as a real estate businessman, discriminating philanthropist, former owner of the Miss Universe enterprise and whose friendships included both Bill and Hillary Clinton in a more halcyon time, appears to be orchestrated by a corrupt, and now seemingly frightened, status quo, a status quo that now sees the power of the cult of personality usurped.

    But why? Why the extremes (sad, I cannot think of a greater word than this) that have been levelled against Donald Trump? It is the question that whether anyone likes, supports, is fanatical about a Donald Trump presidency seriously must ask.

    There are fanatics on either side of the aisle, the more fervent (rabid?) on the side opposite Donald Trump and those who support him, and it is important to discover why. There is much to disagree with on the republican side of the coin, but these do not outweigh what there is to disagree with on the other side of that coin. It is not within the scope of this small composition to get into the positives and negatives of our current political statuses, and one may in effect gloss them as forever and always, but there is one I think is more important to the rest.  

     I do not think it coincidental the revealing of the human detritus represented by the Jeff Epsteins, the Harvey Weinsteins, the Diddy Combs, the Hugh Hefner/Playboy empire, all the rest and likely more to come to light in the current political climate change, namely a Trump administration. I do think the Trump administration (I have heard the argument that it was actually Obama that instigated these exposures which I do not believe) made these poorly kept, but still kept, “secrets” finally come to light. That certain feminist institutions, popular culture and the media world at large regard Trump a greater threat is mind boggling.

     Perhaps I am too old, like Parker’s Veteran, to view the world and society as something to be understood, just as the “friends” who have become enemies over the Trump phenomena and why this is I cannot begin to guess at. It is a sign of how frighteningly powerful “social capital” in the form of the cult of popularity over reason has become. I do hope that the re-election of Donald Trump means that the “frighteningly powerful” cult of popularity is also brought to light as the mewling, pitiful creature it is, that it is replaced by actualities of human productivity and problem solving over the devisiveness of inclusiveness.  

     But like Parker, “inertia rides and riddles me; The which is called philosophy.”