By Your Enemies We Know You

OK, maybe "By your enemies we know you" is not a real phrase, or hasn't been out there in literature or politics or foreign affairs, and I just made it up.  People don't say things like that anymore, so maybe it was just off the top of my head.

But after a couple years of incredible Trump-bashing in the media (in fairness, not all of it undeserved), President Trump is on the cusp of a huge victory in getting a massive tax cut passed through Congress and signed.  ISIS has been crushed on the battlefield; employment in the USA is way up.  People are saying "Merry Christmas" to each other (hint: that's a good thing).

So there are presumably two sides, and as a supporter of the president, I sat back for this piece and asked the question we all ought to ask ourselves every once in a while -- "Is it me, perhaps, and not them?"  I try to ask that periodically.

Well, when I thought about it this time, I considered the president's negatives -- he is a New Yorker, which grates on me personally but is irrelevant to his capacity for accomplishment.  His way with women, at least in the past, is not exactly the way I would have conducted myself, but that's personal, not political, and he appears not only to have had perfectly fine -- and unbiased -- dealings with women professionally, including both his own corporation and his Cabinet.

But then I looked at his enemies and adversaries, and all of a sudden the president's warts paled before those of his opposition.  We can start with the left, except that the left includes most all of the opposition, so we have to break that down.

ISIS and radical Islamists hate the president.  These are the people who think that if you're not only not Muslim but don't follow their version of the faith, you have to be murdered, and if a few of even your faith die in the process, well, that's just collateral damage.  And "murdered" is not just execution-style, but brutality we won't discuss.  If they hate Donald Trump, maybe the president is a pretty good guy.

There is the press.  Let's see, they have the armor of the First Amendment, behind which they can say and mostly do anything they want to.  They have disrespected that freedom by making up stories without the vaguest journalistic standards and promulgated them, with any subsequent apologies, if they think them worthy, on page 114-B.  They have published classified material without concern for the safety of our nation.  If they hate Donald Trump, then perhaps he has more good to offer than we would have thought.

There are establishment Republicans as well.  They don't much care for President Trump either, because -- with the apparent exception of Speaker Ryan, who appears to have regarded policy success far, far ahead of personal glory or even professional security -- the president has exposed them for the swamp creatures they are.

They are concerned only for their own reputations and their security in office.  We got rid of the comparable Democrat establishment in 1994 when the nation rebelled against the Clintons and the 40-year choke-hold the Democrats had on the House, and not only voted-in a Republican majority, but the encrusted Speaker, Tom Foley, didn't even win his own House seat.  If I were a swamp Republican senator, I'd be going to see the president now.  But I'm not a fan, and Trump's opposition to them is a good thing.

There are Democrats; oh, Lord, there are Democrats.  They have given us "tolerance", meaning "triggers" of fragile little snowflakes, identity politics, Antifa and Black Lives Matter, hatred of dedicated police, and the creation of 56 new classifications of "gender."  At the same time, they gave us most of what is now a $20 trillion debt (and hilariously are opposing the tax cuts because of a newfound concern for debt).  They gave us Obamacare and a forest of business-choking regulations.  They gave us "Happy Holidays", at least as long as we remove green and red, Santa, trees and Jesus's birth.

The Democrats have flooded the nation with illegal aliens, thrown the nation's doors wide open and before this year had backed the border guards 100 miles away from the border, lest they actually stop a potential voter from entering the country.  They cannot allow even one member of either house of Congress to vote for a Republican bill, even if it is perfectly logical, as we saw last night.  If the Democrats are his enemy, I swear to you that what President Trump is doing must be extremely good for the country.

I don't think I have to second-guess myself.  The worst elements of this country oppose the president.  He must be worth following.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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