Of all the problems the American people face today, the biggest might be that a great many of the Washington, D.C., Swamp dwellers who govern them are among the least educated and least intelligent people in the Western Hemisphere. Unfortunately, these elitist know-nothings are also people to whom the concept of patriotism is entirely foreign. What they don't understand is that they owe their continued comfortable and privileged lifestyles to the one section of the American population they despise the most: pro-Trump conservatives.
To explore why the ruling class should be grateful to the kind of people who spent four years cheering on the 45th president and voted for him in 2020, it is worth starting with remarks made by two of the dimmest men to grace the national stage in recent decades: former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden and current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley. Interestingly enough, both men were appointed by Republican presidents – one of them by Trump himself – which just goes to prove that animosity toward American patriots is not an emotion exclusive to Democrats.
Just last week, Hayden thought it clever to retweet a meme that compared Trump supporters to the Taliban. A few days later he reposted another tweet that asked the question: “can we send the MAGA wearing unvaxxed to Afghanistan … ?” In his retweet, Hayden responded: “good idea.”
The general deftly demonstrated why the word “intelligence” in Central Intelligence Agency refers to the gathering of information and has nothing to do with cerebral prowess. A large number of the “MAGA wearing unvaxxed” have already fought the Taliban, and it is barely open to debate that the majority of active-duty servicemen and women who have recently returned from Afghanistan, or are still there, also voted for Trump. In fact, it is entirely reasonable to point out that conservatives, the overwhelming majority of whom no doubt wish Trump was still in the White House, have spilled a lot more blood on foreign battlefields than the section of the population that so hates them.
Milley, who is now famous for losing a war in humiliating fashion, likened Trump to Adolf Hitler and the former president's supporters to the Nazi “brownshirts.” If Milley had read even one credible book about Hitler's rise to power and the warped ideology he espoused, the military leader would realize that Trump and those who support him stand for the very values the German dictator hated and feared: individual liberty, self-determination, and, above all, the belief that government exists to serve the people and not the other way around.
So, why do Milley, Hayden, and the rest of the Swamp creatures owe a debt of gratitude to pro-Trump conservatives, apart from the fact they are the people who fight America's wars?
The former president's supporters have been demonized, insulted, and excoriated since 2016. They have been called extremists, terrorists, deplorables, and Nazis – and now they have been likened to the Taliban. According to the official results, more than 74 million Americans voted for Trump in 2020. Assume for a moment that, say, fully half of those voters were not hard-core, MAGA hat-wearing Trump supporters but simply went for him in preference to Joe Biden. Of the remaining 36 million, imagine, for argument's sake, that half are not men of military age.
That leaves 18 million men who may well be in possession of at least four or five million firearms. This is the largest body of armed and politically like-minded human beings on the face of the earth. The above-mentioned generals and the rest of the elites who think as they do should thank their lucky stars that the overwhelming majority of these 18 million men love their country too much to tear it apart. Clearly, if that's what they wanted to do, they could do it, and nobody could stop them.
The lesson for the fanatical Trump-haters is that the very people they despise and so often disparage are ensuring the continued survival of this great country by choosing to be peaceful, law-abiding patriots instead of acting like the terrorists and extremists to whom they are so often compared.
~
Read more from Graham J. Noble.
