Endorsing the Donald’s Creative Destruction
by Ilana Mercer
Big Media, the policy veterans and the chancelleries across Europe and Britain are constantly complaining: Donald Trump has had the temerity to defy their international order, summit—and seek peace—with their enemies, and mess with the multilateral maze they call agreements. He even declared, early in June, that the US would be far better off if it negotiated bilateral trade agreements.
Or, in Trump speak, “country-on-country agreements.”
But what do an entrenched punditocracy, a self-anointed, meritless intelligentsia (which is not very intelligent and draws its financial sustenance from the political spoils system), oleaginous politicians, slick media and big money care? They’ve all worked in tandem to advance a grand government—national and transnational—that aggrandizes its constituent elements, while diminishing those it’s supposed to serve.
These political players have built the den of iniquity Trump keeps trampling on. Against these forces—NAFTA, NATO, FBI, DOJ, CIA, an alphabet soup of acronyms that stands for the Permanent State, national and international—is Trump, still acting as a political Samson that threatens to bring the house crashing down on its patrons.
And his latest. Trump’s judicial appointments, in particular, might just prove to be “his most enduring legacy,” lamented the liberal Economist. These certainly threaten to cement the Supreme Court’s originalist bent:
“.. No president has confirmed more federal appellate judges (12) in his first year than Donald Trump. He has also seen six federal district-court judges confirmed, and one Supreme Court justice, Neil Gorsuch. Another 47 nominees await confirmation; 102 more federal judgeships remain open for Mr. Trump to fill. With two of the Supreme Court’s liberal justices, and its one unpredictable member (Anthony Kennedy) aged 79 or older, the president [will] get to name another justice [maybe two] …”
Published in June of 2016, “The Trump Revolution: The Donald’s Creative Destruction Deconstructed” made the case that Donald J. Trump is the quintessential post-constitutional candidate.
In the “Opening Statement”, titled “Welcome To The Post-Constitutional Jungle,” oldies will recognize a nod to the Guns N’ Roses classic, “Welcome to the Jungle,” as well as to broadcaster Mark Levin’s coinage. We inhabit what Levin has termed a post-constitutional America. The libertarian (and classical conservative) ideal—where the chains that tether us to an increasingly tyrannical national government are loosened and power is devolved once again to the smaller units of society—is a long way away.
Where the law of the jungle prevails, the options are limited: Do Americans get a benevolent authoritarian to undo the legacies of Barack Obama, George W. Bush and those who went before? Or, does the increasingly ill-defined entity called The People continue to submit to Demopublican diktats, past and present?
The quintessential, post-constitutional candidate, Trump’s candidacy was for the age when the Constitution itself is unconstitutional. Like it or not, the original Constitution is a dead letter, having suffered decades of legislative, executive and judicial usurpation.
The natural- and common law traditions, once lodestars for lawmakers, have been buried under the rubble of legislation and statute. However much one shovels the muck of lawmaking aside, natural justice and the Founders’ original intent remain buried too deep to exhume.
The Constitution has become just another thing on the list of items presidential candidates check when they con constituents.
The dissembling words of many a presidential candidate notwithstanding, the toss-up in the 2016 election was, therefore, between submitting to the Democrats’ war on whites, the wealthy and Wal-Mart, or being bedeviled by mainstream Republicans’ wars on the world: Russia, China, Assad and The Ayatollahs. Or, suffering all the depredations listed and more had Candidate Clinton been victorious.
Thus, the endorsement over the pages of “The Trump Revolution” was not necessarily for all the policies of Trump, but for The Process of Trump. Until such time when the individual is king again, and a decentralized Constitution that guarantees regional and individual autonomy has been restored—this process of creative destruction begun by Donald Trump is the best freedom-loving Americans can hope for.
Put differently, in this age of unconstitutional government—Democratic and Republican—the best liberty lovers can look to is action and counteraction, force and counterforce in the service of liberty.
And a force of nature Mr. Trump is most certainly proving to be. You name it; Trump has tossed and gored it. The well-oiled elements that sustain and make the American political spoils system cohere are suddenly in Brownian motion, oscillating like never before.
The hope expressed was that by weakening The Machine’s moving parts—Trump might just help loosen the chains that bind each one of us to government. Trump, the book argued, evinces the necessary moxie to blast away at an overweening political system. Who can deny that he has, so far, done a laudable job of fumigating some serious snake pits?
Undeterred, the Trump holy terror has even blasted the scold from Fort Vatican for living walled-off in Vatican City, while preaching to Americans that for their security needs, they must reject walls and “build bridges.”
More laudably, Trump doesn’t collapse the distinction between “America” and the U.S. government. To the political cast, “America” is the U.S. government. To them, making America great means making government great. Trump exhibits no such confusion of category. He doesn’t equate “America” with the U.S. government. To Trump, making America great still means making the people great, taking his message to the people as he continues to do.
Understandably, the president still has the political players rising on their hind legs in defense of their realm. And he has hitherto shattered the totems and taboos these players enforce. Debated as never before, thanks to The Donald, are vexations like immigration, especially from “shithole countries,” Islam (“what the hell is going on with it?” he thundered), and Maxine Waters as an “extraordinarily low IQ person,” (the Donald’s delicious quip).
While “The Trump Revolution” deconstructs the evolution of the Political Trump, at the same time, it applauds the Donald’s destructive creativity. A masculine force at full tilt, Mr. Trump continues to create new reality on the ground.
The modest hope expressed in chronicling the dynamics of creative destruction à la Trump ” was that an utterly different political animal, Donald Trump, might actually do some good for the countrymen he genuinely seems to love”.
Ilana Mercer has been writing a weekly, paleolibertarian column since 1999. She is the author of “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America From Post-Apartheid South Africa” (2011) & “The Trump Revolution: The Donald’s Creative Destruction Deconstructed” (June, 2016). She’s on Twitter, Facebook, Gab & YouTube
Very pleased to see The Donald partaking of traditional British identity and hospitality at Windsor Castle last week. (There was also a large pro-Trump demonstration in the town – but the anti-Brexit/anti-Trump media concentrated only on the foul-mouthed ranks of leftists screaming their way through Labour London.) I hope that the President has gone away understanding that in our country, as in America, the shouting-and-screaming swarm does not represent the true people of the land.