Let’s say you are stranded on a desert island with Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and a lawyer, and you have a gun with only two bullets. What do you do? Shoot the lawyer twice. Nothing like a good lawyer joke to start things off, right? Okay, I couldn’t find a good one, so…
I’m directing this column to the people who say they may not vote to re-elect President Trump in 2020, and may even vote Democrat this November, to somehow “punish” him for his boorish behavior (like tweeting). As a retired cop, I do not want to see the cop-hating Democrat Party take control of Congress.
I began this piece with a lawyer joke because a story I heard about a lawyer reminds me of people who can’t get past President Trump’s brash personality, even if it would benefit them—and their country. A business-owner friend once regaled me with how repulsed he is by his lawyer and how he’s chosen to handle it.
I realized the bitter-beer-face he acquires when he talks about his attorney is similar to those who are uncomfortable with the President’s regular sorties beyond the civility line. I mean, let’s face it, sometimes it seems our President is afflicted with a political form of Tourette syndrome. Some of us love it, some of us not so much, but we’ll still vote for him and give him a Congress that will help him achieve his conservative, libertarian agenda.
Standing by our motorcycles in the parking lot of my buddy’s restaurant, our conversation went something like this: “Stand by. I have to call my lawyer before we leave,” he said. “I don’t want to risk contaminating my home or business by speaking with him at my house or office.”
“Okay, standing by,” I said. (Yes, sometimes cops talk like that, even off duty.)
Apparently, my buddy didn’t appreciate my flippant response to his phoning his lawyer, as if it were of little consequence. No, he wanted me to know he was about to pay a high psychological price for having to interact with a man he apparently believes even Satan bows down to.
He shook his head and placed a hand on my shoulder. He paused and said, “I don’t think you fully appreciate my situation here. I’m calling my lawyer. I have to prepare myself for a descent into the netherworld. I can’t communicate to you just how much I loathe this guy.”
He raised his phone. “Look what happens when I try to dial his number—six-six-six.” He retracted his fingers, claw-like, as if some force were keeping him from dialing.
He continued, “I can barely tolerate being in the same room with him for even a few seconds. I conduct most of our business by email and text, a phone call if I have to, and in person only when I absolutely cannot avoid it. You know, like having to have a colonoscopy or root canal.”
After a pause, he continued. “I don’t want him anywhere near my kids. In fact, I won’t even go near my wife or kids for several hours after being with him. I won’t even mention his infernal name while my kids are in the room. I’m afraid saying his name might damage their hearing or make them go insane.”
He turned toward me and said, “Are you getting this, now?” I nodded and smirked.
He said, “Oh, you think this is funny, do you? This man is so perverse, so evil, I won’t even tell you his name because my tongue might come loose and fall out of my mouth. He’s like a solar eclipse. Look directly at him, and your eyes might fry in their sockets. You have to wear earplugs when talking to him because if you heard his unmuffled voice, your ears would slide off your head, dropping to the ground with two sickening splats!”
I think I was getting his subtle point. So, I asked, “If that’s how you feel, why do you keep him as your lawyer?”
My friend stared at me, incredulous. He seemed as bewildered at me as he was sickened by his attorney. “Duh!” he began. Then he finished with full-throated declaration. “Because that man is the best damned lawyer I’ve ever known.”
President Trump could benefit from how my friend views his lawyer. He may not like or admire him, but he recognizes his effectiveness. Does the lawyer do the job he promised he’d do? If so, why let other things that really don’t matter bother you?
Many Americans today, independents, libertarians, establishment Republicans, never-Trumpers, and even old-school Democrats, seem willing to risk all the gains America has made during the past year and a half over stuff that doesn’t matter. Rude tweets, negatively extrapolating or interpreting the President’s actions and policies just because you don’t like him, come on!
My buddy’s point has stuck with me. He looked beyond his lawyer’s offensive, though in reality innocuous, nature because the man could do positive—legal—things for him. He wasn’t looking for a new friend; he was looking for an effective lawyer. That’s what he got. Well, Americans weren’t looking for a new friend, either. We were looking for a President who could get the job done: returning America to the rule of law, equal justice, and limited government. And, that’s what we are getting. It must continue.
Throughout my law enforcement career, I’ve had to deal with the well-groomed lawyers of the prosecutor’s office and the pony-tailed, Chuck Taylor-shod attorneys in the public defender’s office. I won’t even get into lawyers I’ve stopped for traffic infractions. Seems, even patent attorneys think they know traffic law better than the cops. They’re soooo cute. Please, press hard, sir…four copies!
Still, I’ve met a lot of fine people who happen to be lawyers—or, is that lawyers who happen to be fine people? No, really. My oldest son’s godfather is one. But, I’ve met the other kind, too. You know, the smarmy, ambulance chasers responsible for the stereotype. But sometimes, because they are so smarmy, slimy, and any adjective for sleazy, they are also good at what they do.
Consider a liberal, defense attorney like the legendary Alan Dershowitz. Now, I don’t believe he is smarmy, slimy, or any quantity of sleazy. But I also don’t agree with him much politically. How can such an intellectually honest and consistent person remain so loyal to and defensive of someone like Hillary Clinton? Don’t get me started.
Oh, too late. I don’t understand how such a brilliant man can ignore all the evidence of Secretary Clinton’s culpability in the Benghazi debacle, alone. And then there’s her many shady shenanigans over the past three or four decades. I just don’t understand Dershowitz on this. But, if I needed legal representation, would I hire the Harvard Professor Emeritus? Not just yes, but hell, yes!
So, people oppose President Trump for frivolous issues that have no substance. They don’t like things the President does that are no more than ugly window dressing. Admittedly, perhaps the window is also dirty, but how much does that truly matter? The President’s hyperbolic responses to the ceaseless media attacks he endures matter little when compared with the substance of his policies and his extraordinary success.
Generally, other than Mr. Trump’s core supporters, many people don’t like the President’s prolific tweeting. They also bristle at some of his pre-presidential exploits and his vulgar, locker-room remarks said during a supposedly private conversation. (Wait…what was that about Ted Kennedy and a “waitress sandwich“?)
Well, sometimes, if we want someone to accomplish substantive stuff for us, we have to ignore other stuff that may niggle our sensibilities. Remember the aphorism, “perfect is the enemy of good.” When superfluous stuff has no bearing on a person’s accomplishments, it’s kind of dumb to focus on it, isn’t it? Aren’t we working against our own interests by allowing dumb stuff to be more consequential than it is?
I may not like some of President Trump’s tweets or past exploits, but so what? I’m sure the President wouldn’t like some things I’ve done or that you’ve done, either. Do our frivolous hostilities toward President Trump’s behavioral minutia help him achieve the success with our economy, defeating ISIS, reduce oppressive regulations, or his attempts to bolster law enforcement and rebuild the military? No.
Now, I understand that the far-left, which has absorbed into it the Democrat leadership, dislikes the President’s push toward a more conservative and libertarian—originalist—approach to government. I get that. But the Democrat Party is no longer the Republican’s political opponent. By design, the new Democrat Party has adopted the nefarious tactics of a political enemy: deceit, corruption, subversion, and even a tacit (sometimes overt) support for leftist violence. We’re in the midst of a cold-civil war, including a soft-coup attempt by the previous Democrat administration.
These new neo-socialist Democrats show no respect for what constitutional conservatives, libertarians, or Republicans think or have to say. This new left doesn’t believe the political right has any right to speak if they use their speech to disagree with them. These neo-socialist Democrats don’t believe in a loyal opposition; they believe in a disloyal resistance.
Disloyal? Yes. What else can you call a political group that refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of a presidential election? A group that conspired to keep a candidate from being elected. People who have worked surreptitiously to undo what American voters decided at the ballot box? They are people who consistently put their political party above their country. If this were not true, the left wouldn’t be trying so hard to change the country.
Now, there is ex-CIA chief, the former communist John Brennan, encouraging current federal law-enforcement and intelligence agency officials to “resist” President Trump’s declassification of un-redacted documents for public release. Oh, I have no doubt he doesn’t want those docs released.
The far-left, neo-socialist Democrats and their allies will never agree with anything President Trump does. Hell, at President Trump’s first State of the Union speech, I watched dumbstruck that the Democrats in Congress wouldn’t even stand and applaud the greatest employment numbers for African-Americans and Hispanics ever. Isn’t this behavior informative? How are those results for blacks and Hispanics not good for our country? But what can you expect from the left that even blames the President for hurricanes.
I’m not speaking to the disloyal resistance; they’re not interested in changing their minds even if logic and reason dictates they should. This new gang of far-left, neo-socialist Democrats has taken over one of the two major political parties.
They have deluded themselves into believing they are so good, so virtuous and, regardless of how other Americans think or vote, only their socialist, utopian vision is valid. They operate from a you’ll-thank-us-later premise. I guess, they know better than you do what is good for you.
So, I’m aiming this column at those independents, conservatives, and establishment Republican “never-Trumpers” who seem so bothered by things that really don’t matter. Sometimes, we have to tolerate the imperfect to achieve a good outcome.
The President is not your child or an embarrassing relative. Why do things that don’t matter (like stupid tweets), matter so much to you? Because President Trump wasn’t your choice, and you still want to be “right” that folks didn’t choose your guy or gal. Get over it!
The President wasn’t my first choice, either. But I’m not about to cut off my proverbial nose to spite my face. I now think he should have been. I recognize how much President Trump has done on issues that matter. So what if he’s a bull in a pewter shop on Twitter? Pewter? Unlike china, it doesn’t matter what he knocks over; it can’t break. In the grand scheme, most of what he tweets doesn’t matter. It’s what he does that matters.
You expect certain things from certain people. Do you have to be friends with every person who provides you a service? Now, it’s fine if you choose not to associate with certain types of people for specific reasons. But when we’re talking about a person most of us will never even meet, how much should we care about personality stuff that doesn’t directly affect us? How much should we care about stuff that only gives us an excuse to dislike, or even hate, someone?
Even if this man disgusts you, just focus on what his actual policies are accomplishing. Just think of how better your life, America, is getting because of him. Think of the real accomplishments he’s making.
Then think about what the new neo-socialist Democrats would do in power. They plan to re-impose Obamacare. Nancy Pelosi has promised to rescind the tax cuts. The Dems want to undo all the policies that are making us internationally competitive once again. They will infringe on our Second Amendment rights.
And, frankly, I’m not interested in seeing a Democrat Congress once again gut our military in favor of ever-increasing government handouts and vilify cops while elevating anti-police groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter.
Is this what you want America to return to? An America in decline, just because you can’t handle the Tweet?
