Month: August 2016

A Short Word: Sitting for Freedom

To compel others to violate their conscience simply because it is “nationalist” carries the poisonous stink of Mao’s Communist Party loyalty patrols.

Simply by refusing to stand for the National Anthem, Colin Kaepernick has started another political wildfire, with angry people lining up on both sides of the issue. While I agree that he should have stood out of respect for our national anthem, I also understand if he, personally, felt compelled by his conscience to stay seated. I initially didn’t have any sympathy for Mr. Kaepernick’s position, after all, I tend not to give much credibility to celebrities of any kind. I did eventually, however, come around to it.

As a firm advocate of the #NeverTrump movement, I am constantly badgered by Trump’s vocal supporters to vote for Donald Trump. I’ve been called everything in the book from “unAmerican“, to “unpatriotic“, to a “commie” and even a “traitor“. All of these accusations and slanders are not only patently untrue, but themselves represent something unwholesomely unAmerican. To compel others to violate their conscience simply because it is “nationalist” carries the poisonous stink of Mao’s Communist Party loyalty patrols.

“When there’s significant change and I feel like that flag
represents what it’s supposed to represent, this country is
representing people the way that it’s supposed to, I’ll stand.”
-Colin Kaepernick-

In America, people have not only the right to dissent, they have the moral obligation to dissent if they feel the need to do so. So even if I disagree fundamentally with the underlying nature of the “oppression” that Mr. Kaepernick is protesting when he refuses to stand for the National Anthem, I firmly support his fundamental right to do so and sympathize with the kernels of truth at the root of his political statement.

If you’ve read much at all of libertyisftw.org, then you already know that economic and political disadvantaged groups actually exist. Look at practically any large city with a large black population, and you can’t help but see the stark economic and political disparities throughout. Where I disagree with Mr. Kaepernick and many of his political allies is that government is at the source of practically every economic problem in America today, and the solution to practically all of these serious economic issues is less government, not more.

For example, we’ve been raising the minimum wage for decades now, and the economic situation in the black community has simply continued to worsen, not improve. Tying the hands of police forces that are already stretched to the limit trying and failing to keep the peace in these largely black neighborhoods will only tighten the screws of economic inequality that have ravaged the black community for almost a century. We need to stop trying things that have already failed.

LaborForceParticipation1980-2016

How about we look at what has worked instead? When did we see the single largest peace time expansion of the labor force in the history of the United States? It happened under Ronald Reagan. His plan of cutting taxes, cutting regulation, fighting government spending, and spreading economic and political opportunity created the economic conditions that increased the labor force from 63.7% in 1983 to a peak of 66.8% in 1989, an increase of over 3.0% points.

And where did that 3.0% come from? They were black, Asian, and Latino minority groups as well as women entering the work force from the first time. And Reagan wasn’t even able to push through anywhere near all of the legislation he’d hoped for. Ideological conservatives want to crank the dial of economic freedom all the way to eleven.

Spinal_Tap_-_Up_to_Eleven-This Is Spinal Tap-

Then Colin Kaepernick would see what real growth and opportunity can do for the black community and everyone else. Once the cage doors are all open, and the chains are all unbound, the true benefits of a free and prosperous society can be enjoyed by all. That is true conservatism.

Liberty is For The Win!

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Halls Echoing with the Tears of Children

When fundamental cultural questions become intractable, violence is the fundamental language spoken by all people, at all times, everywhere.

Let’s take a walk through the halls of history, from the very dawn of civilization as the earliest men spoke the first rudimentary language into being, on through the gory halls of war and conquest, until the turbulent now in which we live and breathe. We can most easily start with the Biblical tale of two brothers, set to differences over envy, and it is this envy that sets in motion the events that result in Cain standing over Able’s still corpse. With this singular act, Cain becomes the archetype for killers standing over the still form of another in an endless parade of death and mayhem that is repeated over and over again throughout time.

Everything humanity has touched is drenched in man’s apparently unquenchable thirst for violence, from the dirt paths of Canaan, running red with the blood of man, woman, and child, to the body shrewn battlefield of Bull Run, to the ash choked streets of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and to the building to building, street to street, block to block fighting of the concrete jungle of the streets of Baghdad. When fundamental cultural questions become intractable, violence is the fundamental language spoken by all people, at all times, everywhere.

Then the LORD said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
Genesis 4:9

Seventy-Nine days ago, a 29 year old Muslim named Omar Mir Seddique Mateen entered the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida and began firing upon unarmed civilians. He murdered forty-nine people in all, stopping to check Facebook to see if people were talking about him or what he was doing. When the police entered the nightclub hours later, he fired upon them, and the police officers shot and killed him.

Fifty-four days ago, during what had started as a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas Texas, an Afghanistan War veteran named Micah Xavier Johnson, age 25, began firing on Dallas police officers who were protecting the protesters along the route of their march. He murdered 5 police officers: Brent Thompson, Lorne Ahrens, Patrick Zamarripa, Michael J. Smith, and Michael Krol. Refusing to surrender himself once cornered, the police officers shot and kill him.

Twenty-Eight days ago, a young woman named Korryn Gaines, with her five year old son in her arms, was gunned down in her apartment, because she chose to threaten police officers with a shotgun. The police officers were there to arrest her, because she had failed to appear in traffic court, because she had been ticketed for driving a vehicle without tags or insurance. Her death left her son and daughter without a mother.

I am not going to waste time arguing whether or not one death was justified and another was not. I am simply going to say nothing was gained by any of these deaths. The forty-nine lives cut short by Omar Mateen’s rampage has done nothing but prove Islamists are cowards no different than psychotic criminals like James Holmes and Dylann Roof, attacking defenseless people. And whatever political statement Korryn Gaines or Mica Johnson hoped to make with their actions died with them.

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child,
I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.
When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”
1 Corinthians 13:11

These deaths are but pebbles disturbing the illusion of a serene pond of civilization. They are just the largest ripples among hundreds that last five minutes on the local news report, and pass forever from our memories. In the fullness of time, they will be no more than asterisks beside larger events, but in the here and now, they are echoes of two major civilizational conflicts, one external and the other internal.

Externally, Islam has been at war with the rest of the world for 1,500 years. There has never been a period of peace within Islam. Its prophet was born a warrior into a warrior culture. He established his faith through the fundamental language of blood and conquest. Whatever hope there may be that it becomes a peaceful religion, it is not now, and we can no longer treat it as though it is. As a civilization, they give us only two choices: fight them here or fight them there. The only question really is whose civilians will die. Our government has an obligation to ensure that it not be ours. It is as simple as that.

Internally, Kodi Gaines, the 5 year old son of Korryn Gaines, was injured in the shooting that claimed his mother’s life, but the injury was not life threatening, and he has since recovered. Who can fathom what his young mind processes about his mother’s death? Children that young often do not have a complete grasp of the finality of death. Will this push him toward bitterness and violence, fed by the same paranoia and mistrust of society his mother had? Can he be spared such a dark fate? I dearly hope so.

Even now his childhood is waning, his innocence blowing away upon the winds of time. One night far too soon, Kodi the young boy will go to sleep and never to return, and Kodi the young man will awaken the next day. Something tells me that if we could bridge that gulf that lay between Korryn and the society she grew to hate and fear so much, that somehow we could find the cure to so many of the things that have divided us as a nation. I pray for that day, and I hope you do too.

Be Brave. Be Free.

Liberty is For The Win!

We just checked, and it turns out that fighting for Liberty isn’t free, because it requires time and energy to research, prepare, and propagate this message for you. Please drop just a dollar a month into the proverbial tip jar and become a Patriot Patron. Of course, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share. Keep this fight for Liberty going! – @LibertyIsFTW

A Short Word: Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat

I could spend days going through the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of tweets these lunatics spewed forth, but it only takes one to sum the movement up nicely.

So on Thursday August 25th, 2016, the alt-right burst onto social media in an all out counter offensive against Hillary Clinton’s speech in which she accused Donald Trump of campaigning on “prejudice and paranoia“, “taking hate groups mainstream“, and spreading lies based on tabloids and the “dark reaches of the internet“. She specifically described the alt-right as a “racist“, “fringe“, and “paranoid” ideology. And what was the alt-right’s counter to her claims?

Verifying everything she said by broadcasting the most paranoid xenophobic, racist, white nationalist barbarism they could manage. I could spend days going through the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of tweets these lunatics spewed forth, but it only takes one to sum the movement up nicely. Not only is it indicative of the most vile elements of the alt-right movement, but none of the other members of the movement lift even a finger to repudiate them. This one tweet encapsulates the vile evil that we face in our time:

TrumpAltRight

  • Because of the obvious repercussions of his disgusting belief, the tweeter, as do all of these vile trolls, hide in the safety of anonymity.
  • The image is an anime romanticized portrayal of the vilest Nationalist regime humanity has ever seen.
  • This image perfectly reveals both the tweeter’s gross immaturity and his spoiled, angry child’s understanding of history.
  • There is no rehabilitation of this individual, and, at least on this earth, there is no redemption.

Because they have embraced this ideology, absolutely everything gets put on hold. Just as during World War II, we must put aside our political differences with even the likes of the socialist Democratic Party and join forces against the one thing possibly worse than they, at least for the moment. Please realize that I do not suggest for a moment, that Liberty loving patriots should vote for Hillary Clinton, but I am stating very clearly that a vote for Donald J. Trump only serves to legitimize this vile ideology.

For even while the socialists are egregiously ignorant of even basic principles of economics or Natural Law, this alt-right National Socialism represents exactly the same existential threat to humanity as did Hitler and Tojo in the early part of the 20th Century. Don’t bore me with the pointless Godwin’s Law, they evoke the ideology themselves, betraying the honor of the boys of Utah Beach, Omaha Beach, Anzio, Bastogne, Iwo Jima, Pearl Harbor, and hundreds of other battlefields around the globe that American soldiers fought and died because of this barbaric and psychotic ideology.

“This is not #Conservatism as we’ve known it.
This is not #Republicanism as we’ve known it.”
-Hillary Clinton-

We will face them down with the same “blood, toil, tears and, sweat” the generation of our grandfathers faced this evil before us. We must crush them utterly, at all costs. The cause of Liberty and our sacred honor demands it. Ladies and gentlemen, we are at war.

Be Brave. Be Free.

Liberty is For The Win!

We just checked, and it turns out that fighting for Liberty isn’t free, because it requires time and energy to research, prepare, and propagate this message for you. Please drop just a dollar a month into the proverbial tip jar and become a Patriot Patron. Of course, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share. Keep this fight for Liberty going! – @LibertyIsFTW

A Short Word: Dragging It Out

At this point, there can’t be anyone rational that still believes anything that comes out of Donald’s mouth. Seriously, can there be?

Remember when Ann Coulter said that Donald Trump could perform abortions in the White House so long as he delivered on his immigration plan, which, at that time, was full deportation of all aliens in the country illegally? Well, that’s changed pretty drastically in the last 24 to 48 hours, as Donald has completely retreated on his “Get ’em outta here!” plan, replacing it with a much more flaccid “well, maybe just the bad ones have to leave, before they come back” plan identical to the “low energy” plan of Jeb Bush.

Ann Coulter had just flown out of her cave on her broomstick brandishing her brand new book “In Trump We Trust“, just in time to run smack into Donald’s flip flop. Despite this most recent incoherent campaign pivot, Ann’s trying to salvage at least a few pages of her book by pointing out that the wall will still likely be built, but she seems to forget that we’ve already learned that “shovel ready” doesn’t actually mean anything, and the construction of any wall wouldn’t even start for years. And, no, Ann, the Mexican government is still not going to pay for it. Sorry.

It’s obvious that the Trump campaign for the White House is unraveling before our eyes, though I don’t know if the inevitability of defeat has fully registered with either Ann or Don yet. I’m not even really certain who, exactly, this shift in immigration policy was supposed to appeal to. The Hispanic voters who have at least a dozen other reasons not to vote for Donald? The moderate GOPers that were already holding their noses and voting for him anyway? Bernie voters? At this point, there can’t be anyone rational that still believes anything that comes out of Donald’s mouth. Seriously, can there be?

Regardless, Donald Trump held a rally in Mississippi featuring Nigel Farage of Brexit fame, and people showed up, whether they are rational or not is yet to be seen. In a clearly desperate attempt to hitch his flaming dumpster fire of a campaign to the momentum of a political victory from two months ago in England (of all places), I am rather nonplussed as to how exactly the British exit from the European Union ties into Donald Trump’s rather incoherent economic and foreign policy.

I’m fairly certain that Farage wouldn’t back Trump’s adolescent mewling about pulling the United States out of NATO. I’m also pretty sure that this was not brought up when the campaign was booking him to speak. But, really, what exactly does Brexit or Farage have to do with Donald Trump’s campaign for the White House? Even after watching Mr. Farage try to draw parallels between voting for the quintessential crony corporatist Donald Trump to the Brexit campaign, the only legitimate take away seems to have been “don’t worry about the polls!“

As of August 24th, Donald Trump has a lead in exactly zero of the battleground states he needs to win in order to get to 270 electoral college votes and win the White House. In Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Virginia, the invincible Donald Trump is behind by effectively double digits. Those three states alone insure Hillary an easy victory in November. Ohio and Florida are both presently comfortably in Clinton’s favor, at the very edge of the margin of error of 3.0%-4.0%. In Michigan, Clinton has a 7.3% lead in polling. North Carolina is closer, with Clinton at only 1.7%, but the last time Donald won a poll there was the end of July.

So Farage came all the way over from England to demean a nation unshackling its economy from the continental hegemony by comparing it to a serial philandering slanderous rodeo clown who has managed to offend the sensibilities of half of his own party and practically everyone else at the same time? And what does Nigel suggest they do to overcome the polling deficit? Put on their walking boots and making party loyalty patrols, intimidating dissenting voters into line? In Mississippi of all places, a state safely for Trump? Why wasn’t this speech given in a battleground state where it would have been far more effective? Yet another Trump misfire.

This can only end in tears.

Be Brave. Be Free.

Liberty is For The Win!

We just checked, and it turns out that fighting for Liberty isn’t free, because it requires time and energy to research, prepare, and propagate this message for you. Please drop just a dollar a month into the proverbial tip jar and become a Patriot Patron. Of course, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share. Keep this fight for Liberty going! – @LibertyIsFTW

A Short Word: America’s Grievance Culture

At the heart of both of these ridiculous victim ideologies is the same bizarre question: Is one man harmed by another man if he is poorer than the other?

At the heart of the decay of the American culture is the poisonous core principle of the left: “You are a victim!” What are you a victim of? Well that depends on the issue de jour. Today, you will be the victim of climate change, flash heated, with a side of steamed crony corporate campaign contributions. Tomorrow, you will be the victim of the broiled unnecessary wars that are Bush’s fault, with a dash of the military industrial complex, accompanied by the rampant sexism of the patriarchy. After that, you will be the victim of international banking cartels mixed with greedy off shore corporate manufacturing sweat shops, finished off with anti-LGBTQIA bigotry.

If you find yourself hungering to whine about something but you’re not a leftist, fear not, because this diseased victim ideology has infected the Republican Party too! There is an entire “alt-right” brand of grievance peddling to sate your need to blame someone else for things that make you anxious. Everything from exotic Islamic Terrorism a la mode served with unfair trade deals bisque to the more traditional Americana dish of greedy corporations expatriating rust belt manufacturing jobs flambes with a side of your choice of ethnic urban rioting or perhaps a more international “white genocide” creme tart. Everyone has something to cry about now.

Well, I just checked, and I am not a victim. I live in a nice and relatively prosperous country. I’ve a comfortable, air conditioned home. I don’t have to fear for the health or security of my family on a minute to minute basis. Because the sheer number of hunting rifles, shotguns, handguns per capita around me approaches military stockpile levels (God bless the Second Amendment!), any terrorist would get gunned down faster than a 20 point buck the first day of deer season. My life is pretty good, relative to 90% of the rest of the world. Really, my own government is far more a threat to me than practically any other foreign or domestic threat on the planet.

At the heart of both of these ridiculous victim ideologies is the same bizarre question: Is one man harmed by another man if he is poorer than the other? The leftist socialists believe that, yes, the poorer man is actually somehow harmed by the “richer” man, so they demand restitution be imposed on half of everyone so that government can subsidize their poor decisions. Because of my rather grievance free outlook, democratic socialists believe I am somehow unfairly “privileged” and thus obligated to pay for their double major in medieval tapestry and late 20th Century gender studies, as well as cover their living expenses while they sip coffee in trendy bistros whining about how unfair it is that they can’t get paid what they are worth, not realizing that they are.

Just as bad, however, the alt-right socialists believe that the poorer (American and/or white) man is harmed by a combination of foreign competition and minority ethnic groups that have “driven him out of” overpaid low skill unionized manufacturing jobs, so they demand tariffs imposed on half of everyone so that government can subsidize their poor decisions. The nationalist socialists believe that I have some sort of “patriotic duty” to pay tariffs so that otherwise unemployable low skilled manufacturing workers like them don’t have to actually compete with the rest of the industrialized world, because, you know, “‘Murica!” and stuff.

You know what? No, to both groups.

Ideological conservatives, unlike leftist and alt-right socialists, define harm as limited to actual physical or economic injury resulting from someone’s direct actions. That’s whey we approach the question of economic harm with a double helping of skepticism. Why? Because nine-hundred ninety-nine times out of a thousand, the disadvantaged situation any given individual is experiencing is the individual’s own fault. Yes, that includes everyone on the alt-right, too.

Reality check. Economic disparities are usually the result of a combination of complex political and economic factors well outside of the control of any single group either the left or alt-right want to blame their problems on. Systemic problems are the result of the system, not any group within the system, and the system has a name: “government“. What did Reagan say about government? Oh yeah. “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.“

Wake up, America. The pity party is over. You don’t get to trade in my or anyone else’s Liberty for your self-entitled priorities.

Be Brave. Be Free.

Liberty is For The Win!

We just checked, and it turns out that fighting for Liberty isn’t free, because it requires time and energy to research, prepare, and propagate this message for you. Please drop just a dollar a month into the proverbial tip jar and become a Patriot Patron. Of course, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share. Keep this fight for Liberty going! – @LibertyIsFTW

A Short Word: Americanism

To the first generations of American citizens, personal virtue, especially in the leaders of the day, was often more important than their political beliefs.

Let’s take a look at the state of the American culture today, not in any gritty detail, but just a quick glance is all that’s necessary. Does our culture still reflection the core values of our Founding Fathers, and their deeply held principles, upon which our national character was assumed and thus founded? Let’s explore this by retelling one of the oldest and dearest apocryphal American tales.

It is February 22nd of 1738, and a doting father had a special birthday gift for his especially adventurous six year old son. The boy had been tagging along with his father and the house slaves whenever they gathered firewood almost since he could walk. When he was a toddler, he would shake with glee in his father’s arms when the men cut down a limb or a tree. As he grew into a young boy, he was always eager for even just a chance to take a lick or two himself, grinning up at his father with joy whenever he fell a limb or branch (with help of course).

If joy were a fire, the young boy would have burned the whole manor down as he unwrapped a very real hatchet, with a real steel blade, with a keen edge, and a polished wooden handle, no more or less than the hatchets that the men used in their work. As young boys are wont to do, the six year old ached terribly to use the hatchet, so his father had to stop his son before he could break down all of the firewood about the estate into tinder.

They washed up and joined the family for lunch. They prayed and ate together, and talked of family matters, then the father left to survey his estate, leaving the young boy to his own whiles. Tucking his hatchet into his belt, he allowed his mother to wrap him into a warm coat and gloves, before scurrying out the door. Soon he found himself walking along the main path from the manor leading to the main road, and there he spied it. A branch barely longer than his arm stuck out from the trunk of one of a row cherry trees along the path.

The men might have grabbed it and cut it off with a knife, but, at least to this young boy, clearly a hatchet would be just as good. He fumbled for a while to free the hatchet from his belt, as the coat his mother put on him hung to his knees. He finally managed to hike the back of his coat up enough to free the hatchet. Finally he took careful and deliberate aim at the branch, thinking about everything his father had taught him over the years, how to aim, how to hold the hatchet, how to breath. And he swung.

And he missed.

Rather than neatly taking the limb with a single swipe as the men did, the hatchet bit deep into the truck an inch above the branch. He felt the blood run right out of his face, as all of his boyish confidence evaporated. He took hold of the handle and tried to carefully pull the blade free. The wood creaked loudly against the blade like a stricken animal as the hatchet came free. The gash was as wide as the blade, clear through the bark and nearly an inch deep into live wood of the tree. Not knowing what else to do, the young boy ran home, quietly going to his room to await what he knew would come.

Later the same afternoon, his father returned home in a stew. One of the servants had discovered the state of the tree, thinking one of the slaves had damaged it. He told the father, who, immediately upon hearing the nature of the damage, quickly realized the culprit’s identity. Sending a servant to fetch his son, the father waited by the door. The young boy came downstairs and slowly pulled on his coat. Together, father and son walked in grim silence outside and along the path toward the wounded tree.

Standing beside the tree, Augustine Washington faced his son and sternly demanded, “Do you know how this tree came to be in this state, George?” Ashamed and fighting tears, a young George Washington looked up at his father and replied, “I cannot tell a lie…I did cut it with my hatchet.” Moved by George’s honesty, his father knelt before his young son and too him into his arms tightly, replying, “My boy, the honesty of a son is worth a thousand trees.“

The tale of George Washington and his cherry tree was once accepted as settled fact, though it appears now to be clearly the contrivance of a well meaning biographer. This tells us much more about the culture of the the time. To the first generations of American citizens, personal virtue, especially in the leaders of the day, was often more important than their political beliefs. The reasoning for this was as obvious then as it should be now.

It doesn’t matter what a virtuous man believes politically. Should a virtuous man find himself to be proven wrong, his own virtue will compel him to admit he’s wrong, even if it brings shame upon him, then he will seek to make amends to the best of his ability. He will do this on his own accord guided by his own conscience. A virtuous man will never abuse the power of his office to gain political advantage over his political opponents. A virtuous man will never resort to ridiculous arguments over the definition of “is” to save his political career. A virtuous man will not destroy the reputation of other virtuous men in pursuit of political office.

So are we living in a culture worthy of our Founding Fathers? I leave the ultimate judgment to each of you to decide. I only ask, if not, should we not hunger for a better state of affairs, if not for ourselves, but for those that come after us?

“In times of universal deceit,
telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
-George Orwell-

Be brave. Be free.

Liberty is For The Win!

We just checked, and it turns out that fighting for Liberty isn’t free, because it requires time and energy to research, prepare, and propagate this message for you. Please drop just a dollar a month into the proverbial tip jar and become a Patriot Patron. Of course, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share. Keep this fight for Liberty going! – @LibertyIsFTW

49 Seconds That Changed Nothing

Ask yourselves, friends and foes alike, who earnestly unloads a truck while wearing a $5,000.00 suit jacket in the middle of August in a Louisiana bayou country?

The push is on, and the false narrative is set for Donald Trump and his supporters. The picture of Donald Trump helping to unload a truck is making its rounds around the internet, even though the evidence of thinly veiled propaganda is right in everyone’s faces. Ask yourselves, friends and foes alike, who earnestly unloads a truck while wearing a $5,000.00 suit jacket in the middle of August in a Louisiana bayou country? Think very hard. The answer is: “no one“. At least, no one that doesn’t want to die of heat stroke, anyway.

I grew up in north Texas, where a hot day can tip into three digits, but the humidity stayed fairly manageable. Even then, Texans don’t run around wearing suits when working in their yards in August. Baton Rouge, Louisiana is another animal altogether. Not only is it hot as sin, but the humidity can be crippling. No one in that swamp land is fool enough to work outside while wearing three layers of clothing. Mike Pence (on the right) at least has the good sense to roll up his sleeves, like any self respecting man does when there’s work to do. Donald doesn’t even take out his cuff links.

TrumpPhotoOp

What does that tell me? It tells me that he was never intending to work very long or very hard. The shameful photo-op ends after only forty-nine seconds. He barely knows what to do with the boxes as he hands them off. Please get this point through some Trump supporter’s head: less than a minute of unloading a materials from one truck didn’t change a single life in Louisiana. Not one. If he didn’t come anywhere near that truck, it still would have been unloaded.

Unloading the truck wasn’t why he stepped pointlessly into a line so close to other people that they could barely move. He stepped up to touch boxes so the cameras that he was asked not to bring could capture an image of him touching boxes long enough that an image of him doing so could become the political narrative. That’s just what’s happened, and I’m not going to let him do it.

In 2005, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama were hit by hurricane Katrina, a historically powerful hurricane that claimed the lives of over 1,800 men, women, and children. Did Donald Trump show up to unload trucks then? No. Did he send any trucks of relief supplies down to aid the survivors? No. Did he donate any money to relief funds to aid the people trying to piece their lives back together after the storm? No. Where was he? He wasn’t running for president in 2005.

In 2012, New Jersey bore the brunt of hurricane Sandy, a powerful hurricane that claimed the lives of 157 Jerseyans. Did Trump show up to unload a trucks then? No. Did he send any trucks of relief supplies to aid the survivors? No. Did he donate any money to relief funds to aid the people trying to piece their lives back together after the storm? No. Where was he? He wasn’t running for president in 2012.

Donald Trump didn’t spend those forty-nine seconds unloading a few boxes of relief goods from a truck in a disaster area for the people of Louisiana. He spent those forty-nine seconds unloading those few boxes of relief goods from a truck in a disaster area for Donald Trump. He came down to Louisiana to talk to people in front of cameras to find out information he could have gotten over the phone, without interrupting crucial recovery efforts and diverting emergency services, such as the state and city police that had to secure him during his tour of a city cleaning up after a disaster.

In 2005, George W. Bush was heavily criticized for not touring around in the heavily damaged areas in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. So what? He did the right thing. He did not land, because he knew that the emergency services of the three states could not accommodate a presidential tour that would accomplish exactly nothing while they were desperately trying to save lives and restore basic services. Diverting emergency services from their primary duty of serving and protecting their communities was not only pointless, it was immoral, especially with entire communities cut off and wiped out by storm damage.

In 2012, Barrack Obama lands in New Jersey days after hurricane Sandy has torn through the community. He walks around hugging people surveying the wreckage, and giving speeches about how he will help the victims of the storm. After the election, most of those promises were not fulfilled. The recovery effort remained just as disorganized as it was before he showed up, and exactly zero people were actually helped by him walking around New Jersey.

It was classic Photo Op propaganda. It is immoral. It is unethical. It is a lie. It was wrong when Obama did it in 2012. It was wrong when Trump does it in 2016.

Liberty is For The Win!

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