Surge Summary: Is Donald Trump risking the alienation of his supporters with his contemptuous treatment of underlings and reckless presidential pardons?
by Nathan Clark
A maverick is someone who plots their own course through life. Eschewing convention in most forms, they are usually competitive, cantankerous and vociferously critical of those who choose the more established (read ‘safe’ or ‘mundane’) paths of social, financial and philosophical advancement. They believe the world is what they make it, not the other way around.
True mavericks gather detractors and even enemies, but one mark of a true maverick is the grudging respect and even admiration of others for what they accomplish or even how they accomplish it. The sheer determination of one person to forge their own destiny in their own manner can be impressive, providing they don’t violate all the conventions of human coexistence.
Then there is the jackass. This stubborn quadruped is identified by a lot of the same characteristics as the maverick, except that they manage to alienate even those who want to admire them by biting and kicking their supporters, flouting all sensibility, violating trust and showing an astounding lack of respect for others. They ultimately wind up with only self-admiration, the kind that stinks and has flies on it.
Has Trump crossed over from one classification to the other? As President, he has run through staff, both inherited AND hand-selected, treating his people like disposable tubes of orange hair crème. They step up, serve the President’s highly demanding wishes to the best of their abilities, and then are not only discarded like old coffee grounds, but often vilified and backstabbed on their way out. The list is too exhaustive to document here.
There are fiercely loyal, very effective cabinet members like Attorney General William Barr, who has essentially pleaded with the President to stop interfering with ongoing judicial investigations and proceedings by his Tweet tantrums. Trump’s response? That of a NYC playground bully, saying ‘make me’ and Tweeting more stridently. When Barr also has had enough and quits, or Trump fires him for ‘disloyalty’, who will step up to replace him? The talent pool at that level isn’t all that deep, especially if other qualified candidates have enough self-respect to tell the President to take his job and shove it.
Then there are the inexplicable grants of clemency to the kind of corrupt white-collar creeps ALL of us want to see get their just desserts, because their behavior was so egregious. Nobody on either side of the aisle was calling for the release or pardon of Michael Milken the corrupt investment criminal, Bernard Kerik the corrupt NYC police commissioner, or Rod Blagojevich, the corrupt former governor of Illinois. These were people in places of high public trust, who intentionally, methodically and with malice aforethought, totally violated that trust. They were so risible in their actions that even their supporters could not countenance them not being submitted to full justice and held up to public scorn for their odious behavior.
Trump in his loving embrace of such filth has brought lasting shame and frustration to what is left of American justice. He has used scornful terms like ‘tremendously powerful, ridiculous sentence’, among other characterizations, to derogate the painstaking and expensive process of convicting these felons and putting them away. This is something which doesn’t happen often enough with such criminals.
Trump relies on his own exclusive and incomprehensible sense of justice. What little recommendation he does get on whom to pardon comes admittedly from such icons of high ethics as Rudy Giuliani and Geraldo Rivera. You and I wouldn’t accept a restaurant recommendation from these two, let alone anything substantive.
If Trump loses the next election to anyone in this Democratic field of circus clowns, it will testify to the Herculean effort on his part to frustrate, betray and offend the very people who wanted to vote for him. That will be the sad epitaph of a jackass, not a maverick.
The views here are those of the author and not necessarily Daily Surge.
Image: By U.S. Air National Guard Photo by Master Sgt. Culeen Shaffer/Released – Gallery at [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58631553
Nathan Clark is a conservative commentator who resides with his wife in New Hampshire. He is passionate about preserving the vision of our nation’s Founders and advancing those tried and true principles deep into America’s future. His interests range broadly from flyfishing, cooking and shooting to pro sports, gardening, live music and fine-scale modeling.
Surge Summary: Is Donald Trump risking the alienation of his supporters with his contemptuous treatment of underlings and reckless presidential pardons?
by Nathan ClarkA maverick is someone who plots their own course through life. Eschewing convention in most forms, they are usually competitive, cantankerous and vociferously critical of those who choose the more established (read ‘safe’ or ‘mundane’) paths of social, financial and philosophical advancement. They believe the world is what they make it, not the other way around.
True mavericks gather detractors and even enemies, but one mark of a true maverick is the grudging respect and even admiration of others for what they accomplish or even how they accomplish it. The sheer determination of one person to forge their own destiny in their own manner can be impressive, providing they don’t violate all the conventions of human coexistence.
Then there is the jackass. This stubborn quadruped is identified by a lot of the same characteristics as the maverick, except that they manage to alienate even those who want to admire them by biting and kicking their supporters, flouting all sensibility, violating trust and showing an astounding lack of respect for others. They ultimately wind up with only self-admiration, the kind that stinks and has flies on it.
Has Trump crossed over from one classification to the other? As President, he has run through staff, both inherited AND hand-selected, treating his people like disposable tubes of orange hair crème. They step up, serve the President’s highly demanding wishes to the best of their abilities, and then are not only discarded like old coffee grounds, but often vilified and backstabbed on their way out. The list is too exhaustive to document here.
There are fiercely loyal, very effective cabinet members like Attorney General William Barr, who has essentially pleaded with the President to stop interfering with ongoing judicial investigations and proceedings by his Tweet tantrums. Trump’s response? That of a NYC playground bully, saying ‘make me’ and Tweeting more stridently. When Barr also has had enough and quits, or Trump fires him for ‘disloyalty’, who will step up to replace him? The talent pool at that level isn’t all that deep, especially if other qualified candidates have enough self-respect to tell the President to take his job and shove it.Then there are the inexplicable grants of clemency to the kind of corrupt white-collar creeps ALL of us want to see get their just desserts, because their behavior was so egregious. Nobody on either side of the aisle was calling for the release or pardon of Michael Milken the corrupt investment criminal, Bernard Kerik the corrupt NYC police commissioner, or Rod Blagojevich, the corrupt former governor of Illinois. These were people in places of high public trust, who intentionally, methodically and with malice aforethought, totally violated that trust. They were so risible in their actions that even their supporters could not countenance them not being submitted to full justice and held up to public scorn for their odious behavior.
Trump in his loving embrace of such filth has brought lasting shame and frustration to what is left of American justice. He has used scornful terms like ‘tremendously powerful, ridiculous sentence’, among other characterizations, to derogate the painstaking and expensive process of convicting these felons and putting them away. This is something which doesn’t happen often enough with such criminals.
Trump relies on his own exclusive and incomprehensible sense of justice. What little recommendation he does get on whom to pardon comes admittedly from such icons of high ethics as Rudy Giuliani and Geraldo Rivera. You and I wouldn’t accept a restaurant recommendation from these two, let alone anything substantive.
If Trump loses the next election to anyone in this Democratic field of circus clowns, it will testify to the Herculean effort on his part to frustrate, betray and offend the very people who wanted to vote for him. That will be the sad epitaph of a jackass, not a maverick.
The views here are those of the author and not necessarily Daily Surge.Image: By U.S. Air National Guard Photo by Master Sgt. Culeen Shaffer/Released – Gallery at [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58631553
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