In one magic instant just over 24 hours from now, the American Republic once again will have a proud executive…as the blueprint requires. Of course, the greater system as it exists today abhors such a thing…especially after four years of maximum playtime under the polar opposite.  No doubt – as I have said many times over the last six or seven years – Second Term Trump is going to be a lot of fun.  But, just as certainly, it isn’t going to all be fun.

Experience has shown us that the Trump style of leadership fosters a fair amount of solidly reasoned push-back…as well as a whole lot of irrational hysteria and pure anti-intellectual twaddle. By design (on many levels), it will be a bumpy road. Trump will fire people. Those on the other side will have good days. The enablers of those on the other side who happen to be inside our perimeter will have good days. But, as of noon tomorrow, regardless of the frenzy (real and imagined) and wall-to-wall (carefully crafted and dutifully parroted) fake-news narrative nonsense we all know is coming, the sun is scheduled to rise each of the next 1,461 day over a United States of America with a Proud Executive over one-third of the Federal Government who actually wants and cares about it being a strong, successful country. So, I will start each of those days with a little head start over the opposing forces…and a little smile. 

I realize the path ahead may not be the best regarding my career/employment, my family, and other more minor aspects of the semi-comfortable little life I have enjoyed here in North Texas and behind this keyboard. But a major correction is required now…not kicked down the road yet again. Trump is disruptive by nature; Progressivism and Anti-Trump-ism are corrosive and destructive by necessity. Some of us well remember this game (at our level) from the last time…

On that level, I will wrap this up by offering the following slightly paraphrased comment snippet from a wise Ricochet Member under a post I made in April 2018 about the then very troubled RedState.com. (For the record, April 2018 was approximately five months after I had been banned from that bandwidth after banging heads for the previous eleven months with what was then a very virulent – and oh-so-very-irrational – strain of the early Never Trump virus. Can you even imagine such a thing?):

[It has been] observed that there are now probably more anti-Trump writers than there are platforms for anti-Trumpism.

Ain’t that the truth!

It’s that situation which has made Trump supporters so angry at the NeverTrump contingent. In spite of decades of failure to stem the tide of the cultural transformation of America and to defend successfully the average, hard-working, middle-class American conservative, this formerly dominant intellectual wing of the movement continues to hold top positions in the major conservative platforms. Worse, they have used those platforms to lecture, hector and shower opprobrium on Trump and those they considered so morally obtuse as to vote for him.

After watching […] boilerplate liberalism …become the soundtrack to daily American life, and after decades of dealing with the supercilious scorn of liberals, Trump voters have had to contend with non-stop vicious personal abuse from the quarters they had once assumed housed their defenders.

So now RedState finds that it is out-of-synch with its target audience and is jettisoning its dead weight. Golly! Years of impotent opposition to and comfort with progressive policies, modern cultural attitudes and “universal” values finally reached a limit. Who could ever have foreseen that?

[Emphasis added]

If you read RedState today, you may notice that while I lost a battle over there, Never Trump eventually lost the war. Business is business after all. (For the record, I was invited back a few days after the initial house cleaning over there…but I was happy here [at Ricochet]. Very unfortunate for some of you.) 

I also want to point you to another link that was referenced in the 2018 post: What does it mean to be a conservative in the Age of Trump? by then Ricochet (Part-time Editor) Bethany Mandel. There are six pages of (mostly) very interesting comments there…well worth the time to peruse on a lazy-day-before-Trump 2.0-takes-off Sunday. Do you recognize many of those people? How are they different and/or the same today? 

There may or may not be cautious warning signs in all of the above. Use as you wish.

But I, for one, do not believe that moving forward during the Trump 2.0 Era with a Never Trump agenda manned by the “feelings” and virtue-signaling “independence” of the Soft-Center Right (largely leftovers from the embarrassingly fickle big-tent-ism of the first decade or so of this century). There are a mere 1,461 days to set a better course…best to embrace (but not worship) the leader (and team) we have. 

Buckle up. The ride is about to begin…