Sickening Cynicism

Trump's greatest gift to America...

ASPIRING presidential nominee Harris has gurgled about price controls on food, writes Brian Maher in The Daily Reckoning.

Recently we shouted harshly against them.

We argued that price controls brought with them economic maladies far worse than their supposed cures.

Specifically, that shortages are their inevitable fruit – their sour fruit.

Yet reader J.B. seized his ruler...and rapped us sharply upon the knuckles.

He believes your correspondent is a misinformation merchant.

He says:

"Democratic candidate Harris is proposing to promote competition and to apply antitrust laws against gouging...

"Sometimes I feel you think you're talking to the uninformed or even worse, trying to spread misinformation, as long as it serves to put in power the party you like...

"FYI, grocery stores' normal margin is 4%. They make their profits by the quantity they sell."

Just so. And J.B.'s comments contain not merely heat – but a certain degree of light.

Grocers do profit by volume. It is true. They may also profit from appreciation of the real estate upon which their store squats.

Other factors may goose grocers' profitability.

Let us assume then that industry profits run not to 1 or 2% – but to 4%, as J.B. claims.

Is a 4% profit margin a gouging?

Profit margins in other industries far outhaul them.

Under what profit margin would J.B. prefer grocers go along?

J.B. claims Ms.Harris is out for competition.

She is, in this instance at least, the child of Milton Friedman.

Yet rating model DW-NOMINATE observes that her senatorial record indicates a general antagonism to markets.

The lady was second only to the fantastically and feverishly progressive Elizabeth Warren.

And progressives – in our findings – harbor deep suspicion of markets.

We are inclined to say "hostility to markets" over "suspicion of markets."

Yet we are in generous spirits today...thus we select the conciliatory option.

We nonetheless cannot take aboard Ms.Harris' hatred of monopolies.

After all: She aspires to king the greatest monopoly on Earth – the United States government.

Here J.B. trains his cannons against us...and rains down fire upon our unshielded head:

A Democratic president brought the pandemic to an end while your favorite "Republican" president was recommending to inject people with bleach. He left the economy in shambles.

The Democratic president ended the supply crisis.

Unfortunately, you use your knowledge to misguide people and spread propaganda.

Our favorite "Republican" president?

How did J.B. know the late Calvin Coolidge enjoys that high distinction?

If J.B. refers to Republican president Trump he is not likely a longtime reader.

We have dealt with Mr.Trump rather sharply in past issues.

Yet the record reflects that Mr.Trump never advised the intake of bleach.

And we would counsel J.B. about the hazards of disseminating misinformation.

Do we misguide people and spread lies?

To the extent of our knowledge we do not.

We may err, it is true. We may be incorrect on this topic or that topic.

Perhaps even another.

We very likely are. Are we thus dishonest – or merely off course?

In the above passages, J.B. radiates intense heat against Republicans.

Yet he claims to be one himself! He is merely out for the middle class and the capitalist system:

"I am a Republican and don't approve of the way the talking heads try to win votes for their cause by lying instead of providing honest analysis.

"There is a huge income gap in this country. This is what will attract socialism. We need a prosperous middle class. The Democrats are doing a better job at that.

"Why don't we admit it and work together for the good of the country?

"BTW, your cynicism is sickening. Say the truth or say nothing!"

We thank J.B. for his sage advice. But why should we start now?

We will simply accept J.B.'s claim that he is Republican. Yet many Republicans fall within our range of acquaintance. Not one – not one – has ever claimed Democrats are superior stewards of the middle class.

They invariably moan about Democrats' extortionate taxation and choking regulation of small business that besets the middle class.

Again, we must accept J.B. at his word – that he is a Republican. Yet we harbor the suspicion he is going under false colors. He is not likely a Republican in our estimation

It makes no nevermind of course.

It is no concern of ours if the fellow is a Republican, Democrat, independent, communist, libertarian, anarchist, monarchist. It is all one to us.

A man can say what he pleases...even your misleading, dissembling and propagandistic correspondent.

So here we republish our musings on our "favorite" president, Trump – and why he should actually adorn Mt. Rushmore.

Despite all odds...and all hell's angels...Donald Trump was crowned 45th president of the United States in 2016. With incomparable swagger and swashbuckle, he barreled into Washington; a berserker, a barbarian crashing the gates of Rome.

Has a previous United States president ever babbled with a Queens accent? Had a previous United States president ever battled in a professional ring? Had a previous United States president ever bathed his steak in ketchup?

Rumors swirled – meantime – that he mistook the salad fork for the dinner fork. But these were not demerits to his voters. They were in fact merits. He was the outside man, the scourge of the "establishment," Democrat and Republican alike. He dug his thumbs into the eyes of each.

The fellow was simply...sui generis.

Was his intellect deeper than the skin that encased him? Perhaps it was not. But intellectual depth is vastly overrated in a president. It is often a downright menace. It is the "deep thinkers" who think the republic into its deepest fixes.

The "Sage of Baltimore," H.L.Mencken, certainly hooked onto something when he wrote:

"We suffer most when the White House bursts with ideas." Woodrow Wilson – for example – was the only doctor of philosophy to ever seize the White House.

He presided over Princeton University before he presided over the United States. And the nation is still afflicted with his lovely ideas. Who signed the Federal Reserve Act into law? The answer is Mr.Wilson. Who signed the federal income tax into law? The answer again is Mr.Wilson.

The same Mr.Wilson ordered the doughboys "over there." 116,000 of them will remain forever over there. And the Versailles Treaty that closed the "war to end all wars" spawned the "peace to end all peace."

WWI was "the Great War" until a greater war imposed a numerical arrangement upon it.

In contrast to the intellectual president, we find Wilson's successor once removed – Calvin Coolidge. In Mencken's telling, Coolidge...Slept more than any other president, whether by day or by night...He had no ideas, and he was not a nuisance.

Note the phrasing – it was not "He had no ideas, but he was not a nuisance." It was rather:

"He had no ideas, and he was not a nuisance." Loftier praise for any president is scarcely imaginable: He had no ideas, and he was not a nuisance.

But not all nuisances are equal. Some even serve high purposes. Our central criticism of Mr.Trump is not that he was a nuisance...but that he was not nuisance enough.

He was elected, in fact, to be a nuisance – less a statesman than a demolition man – a sapper planting dynamite beneath ruling class trenchworks, beneath the "deep state" fortifications that ring the nation.

Yet President Trump never struck the match. He was in many fashions a man out of his depth...a political naif surrounded by jackals, turncoats, sharpers and cutthroats. Thus he failed to "drain the swamp."

And yet – and yet – the fellow nonetheless performed a high, high service to the nation. It is so worthy of praise that we recommend Mr.Trump's etching onto Mt. Rushmore in the austere Black Hills of South Dakota.

Like crooks smoked out by the lawman, the swamp monsters came flushing out of the murk...and exposed themselves to the public gaze. Their disdain for the man was so vast, their aching to undo him so acute, they could not resist the pull.

Trump drew them out. They could no longer slink along in the shadows. Here is the fellow's cardinal presidential attainment, an accidental attainment at that:

He renewed America's distrust of its gatekeeping elites, its patrolmen of permissible thought.

How many Americans were familiar with the term "deep state" before President Trump?

A corporal's guard perhaps. Yet it has now entered the popular vernacular.

Most Americans likely held the Federal Bureau of Investigation in high regard prior to 2016.

But after the massively discredited Steele dossier and "Russiagate?" Today, many Americans would trust a dog with their dinner before they would trust the FBI with the truth.

How many Americans booed the Centers for Disease Control before...or the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases? Today many millions of Americans boo them.

And does the mainstream media retain one tattered rag of credibility? The Trump presidency revealed the media's monomaniacal hatred for the man, a hatred that burned with the heat of 5,000 suns. All standards of objective journalism went emptying into the hellbox.

Meantime, social media excommunicated Trump and legions of his enthusiasts – often for harmless and inoffensive blabberings. Examples run and run. Add them one with the other...and the American people are now on our guard as never before.

We sniff a rodent.

The late Dr.Angelo Codevilla professed international relations at Boston University. He was the indomitable and implacable foe of America's "ruling class," its fierce nemesis.

The ruling class, above referenced: The unelected rogues, rascals, cadges, chiselers, grifters, ne'er-do-wells and swindlers that loot, hagride and menace us. And to recapture their nation, argued Codevilla, Americans must disrespect the institutions that disrespect them:

These government elites and government-certified experts have been disastrously wrong and corrupt...

Discrediting and negating [them] is essential to freeing republican Americans from the oligarchy's grip. This most important post-Trump task begins with disrespecting the oligarchy's every part. That means denying their claim to be exercising legitimate republican functions.

Truth is, the FBI, CIA, and Justice Department act as agents of an oligarchic regime at war with our Republic and with republican Americans. To respect them is to disrespect ourselves...To disrespect them all is to respect the truth...

Even if their expertise in everything from education to the military had turned out to be genuine, it would not negate the inalienable interest that the rest of us have in living our lives as we see fit – in our own freedom, in pursuing our own interests according to our own lights.

That is why the next generation of leaders must transcend Trump by debunking, defunding, and disempowering the establishment in education, medicine and public health, law enforcement, national security, on down the line.

And so we lift our qualified hymn in praise of Mr.Donald John Trump. He pulled back the curtain on the "deep state"...and forced them to expose their mischiefs in full public view. In the process...he may ultimately enable Americans to reclaim the authority that is justly theirs.

Trump for Rushmore!