If war is politics by other means, then politics is war by regular means. And in both, strategy is everything. For a couple of years I’ve been reading through Bernard Cornwell’s very well written Richard Sharpe series, historical fiction about the British war with Napoleon. War tactics were very formulaic in that era. For example, if the assaulting infantry was going up against artillery, the troops would be spread across a line, but against cavalry, the troops would form a square. Both responses were to survive counter-attacks to one’s offense, minimizing the inevitable casualties.
I also confess a fondness for the real-time-strategy computer game Starcraft, which I discovered was an excellent diversion from the intense intellectual rigors of law school, years ago. I was surprised to find that it improved my analytical skills, realizing in retrospect that behind the colorful graphics and entertaining sci-fi story line, Starcraft was all mathematics – specifically, the mathematics of strategy and logistics. The game literally improved my mind just by playing it (which is by no means an endorsement of all video games).
I raise these things to set the context for defending President Trump in the “game” of political warfare with the Deep State. I am defending him against fellow constitutionalists and conservatives whose ideological approach to the culture war is not balanced with sufficient respect for the realities of “realpolitik.” It’s the old contest of purity vs pragmatism that continually rages on both ends of the left/right political spectrum. It is the reason why secular immigration policy purists like Ann Coulter and Matt Drudge turned against the president when he couldn’t close the border to illegals as quickly as they hoped.
Having run for Governor of Massachusetts, I have personal experience with the challenge of juggling multiple issues in a way that satisfies multiple constituencies, each with varying degrees of tolerance for anything less than perfect purity in support of their own policy priorities. I lean to the side of purity of principles – but I also understand that politics is by definition the realm of compromise and you can’t be a purist on everything or you’ll never be able to assemble a voting majority in an election.
The issue that defined my ministry for a quarter century was the LGBT agenda, and in my view openly pandering to “conservative” homosexuals is President Trump’s greatest error – but I also know that if he were to take as firm a position against the LGBT agenda as I have, he would stir up the Millennial generation’s army of “Social Justice Warriors” who have been brainwashed and conditioned since pre-school to view “homophobia” as the greatest of all possible social evils. I think Trump’s strategy is play both sides and let the sleeping SJW dogs lie, expecting many will simply stay home to smoke weed on election day .
And from a “realpolitik” perspective, I think he believes that the evangelical half of his political base would not be able to effectively defend him on the “gay rights” issue because we lost the war over “gay marriage” (although I think that’s a wrong view because it was corrupt SCOTUS swing-vote Anthony Kennedy that defeated us, not a popular majority of the citizens!). In the Trump household there’s the added problem of Ivanka’s pro-LGBT zealotry, bizarre in a convert to orthodox Judaism, but a virtual statistical certainty for a child raised in a secular home in New York City in the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama era. So, I see Trump’s stand as a glass half full, and believe that as Biblical values go, he’s a work in progress trending slowly in the right direction. (I urge prayer for Ivanka become pro-family).
There are potentially new political defections coming over the $2 Trillion stimulus bill, and that’s where I want to bring another dimension of strategic analysis into focus: the globalist advantage in air-power – the leftist corporate media – and why it was necessary for President Trump to propose the bail-out himself.
The problem with media is not the lack of alternate voices. Rush Limbaugh alone counter-balances a big part of the left. The problem is that the “legacy” media, which influences the 60% mushy middle (between the 20% of ideologues at either end of political spectrum) is entirely owned by center-left elites, who have now extended their controlling ownership into the social media industry. They are, unfortunately, the heirs of “Walter Cronkite trustworthiness” in the minds of the non-ideological middle, and that’s often the key to close elections. In the same way that tradition alone dictates “voting Democrat” for many American families, unquestioned tradition allows the legacy media to largely define reality for the 60%.
Trump is the first president to declare the media “enemies of the people” because he knows their power MUST be broken to stop our leftward slide. Soft and civil Reaganesque chiding of the media for “liberal bias” is not enough – they need to be shamed publicly to awaken their consumers to the severity of the problem.
And that strategy was working … until the globalist counteroffensive called Covid 19, a world-wide scorched-earth defense to stop Trump’s army of patriotic populists in their tracks. In military terms it was a disease-bearing cavalry charge to push the infantry into a defensive square and then an immediate massive artillery bombardment of the square. And over-arching the battle-field, an all-in media air-campaign to terrify the entire population into panicked stampede to speed the collapse of the civilian infrastructure and destroy our supply-lines. That’s why the media is our worst enemy.
When fighting a war, a general must adapt to actual conditions, and that is what our Commander in Chief has done. If he were merely to argue for calm and patience to the panic-stricken 60% – envisioning breadlines and homelessness as the media intended — he would seem impotent and their anxiety would grow. But instead he offered immediate tangible reassurance to the 60% that he would take care of them. It worked and the elites’ were thwarted once again.
Was the cause of constitutionalism harmed by such a vast increase of debt? Sadly, yes. Is this proof that Trump is part of the globalist plan? Ridiculous!
Harm in war is inevitable, and any tactic that keeps an advancing army on the field, is, on balance, a good one.
