Collusion With Reality

Did President Trump “collude” with the Russians to steal the election from its rightful winner, Hillary Clinton? Is a megalomaniac egotist one tweet away from igniting World War III? Is the president a diplomatic klutz with sophomoric language skills and a spellcheck away from covfefe? (Does spellcheck even help in such cases?)

Being as it is that the mainstream media has already devoted bounteous coverage to these topics, let’s talk about something else this week.

When discussing President Trump, even with members of the community, there’s a certain sense of elitism which runs through the undercurrent. Even a word of praise is accompanied by a whiff and a snort — “But Trump is unpredictable.”

Let’s put this in context.

The man who tops every single list of greatest presidents, Abraham Lincoln, had a voice that, in the words of a contemporary, was “shrill, squeaking, piping, unpleasant.” The wisest and most prolific president, Thomas Jefferson, had a speech impediment. The president first in the hearts of his countrymen, George Washington, who could tell a lie, had false teeth made out of ivory which shook when he spoke.

My point is, these people had impediments that did not affect their policies. And the media had the good sense to keep off it. The shenanigans that went on in the White House stayed in the White House.

Suddenly, the media found its voice. They’re ready to speak truth to power. Why? Because their preferred policies are threatened.

Our community’s priorities do not align with that of Mr. Trump’s opposition. We have a vested interest in the president’s success and victories. Say what you want about the person, it’s the policies that have always counted among Gedolim through the millennia. It is clear that our community must actively support him.

Let’s take a look:

1. President Trump’s economic policies just make plain sense. Everyone has stories about “Law IX Regulation VII restricting you from selling lemonade within 500 yards of a supermarket,” or something similar. Tens of millions of dollars are spent every year preparing for Y2K, something that came and went harmlessly 17 years ago. There are thousands of actions on the books that were criminalized at one point but nobody knows why. Eliminating two regulations for every new one is a good judgment call on Trump’s side.

Under Trump, ridiculous regulations are melting like global warming. Business is booming, hiring is up, stocks and bonds are being traded like tickets to Trump’s inauguration.

2. Here’s something to think about: Former President Obama’s eight years were punctuated with race riots and protests, cop killings and racial tensions. The election of the first black president did not shine a light on race relations, as he promised, it destroyed it for a generation. Under Trump, the entire phenomenon has disappeared. There were two acquittals last month of police officers who fatally shot blacks — including one caught on video — yet, the streets were quiet. No miracles at work here, just the fact that the would-be protesters know that a new sheriff is in charge. Under Trump, police are a protected species. We no longer need suffer from unsafe streets while government liberals give rioters “space to destroy,” as Baltimore’s mayor said during the Obama era.
3. Under Trump, religion is no longer under threat. He abolished the Johnson Act barring religious groups from at once getting taxpayer funds and endorsing political positions. Admittedly a minor, rarely-enforced rule, but the very fact it was on the books discriminated against religion. His education secretary is openly considering ways to amp up funding for private schools.
4. The kids of the world are afraid of the U.S. for the first time. Russia, China and Iran are holding back from belligerency as they wonder what this unpredictable president will do next. John Kerry, on the other hand, had the look of an American tourist at a Moroccan souk plastered across his chiseled features.
5. Israel has space to build housing for its citizens and the U.S. is not breathing down its back. To the contrary, the Palestinians are under pressure from the U.S. for the first time in eight years that they must shape up or be shipped out of the world’s consciousness.

Here’s my theory about the Qatar crisis. Trump wants a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, but knows the way to get there is by carefully studying Obama’s methods, and then doing the exact opposite. Obama pressured Israel since, to that global citizen, Israel is the bad guy, and bad guys are allowed to bleed a little. Trump looks at the world from an American perspective, and realizes that hey, the U.S. and Israel are really good friends and agree on a whole lot more things than they disagree. So he is looking at the region with an eye on a deal, not on rectifying “injustice,” as Obama wanted.

And getting a peace treaty signed right away confronts the greatest roadblock — Hamas. Aside from the fact that their terrorism makes it hard for Israel to want to talk at all, there’s also the niggling fact that they run Gaza. If Abbas signs on the dotted line, will Gaza be included? Probably — obviously — not.

The solution, in Trump’s eyes, is to cut off the pipeline feeding Hamas. That’s why a group of Arab governments cut off ties with Qatar, Hamas’s biggest financial backer, days after Trump swept through the region. A wink and a nod was all it took.

Ironic, coming from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, the countries which spawned and fed Hamas until two or three years ago. But they realized that you can’t play the game of having a good terrorist organization and a bad terrorist organization. You can’t support Hamas but not the Muslim Brotherhood. You can’t vilify Iran but not Hezbollah.

All this gives Trump the opportunity to play the good cop, urging the Gulf states to play bad cop, issuing a list of demands and attempting to broker a truce.

Will it all lead to peace in the Holy Land? Impossible to know. But Trump has the right keys in his hand. And most importantly, he’s in collusion with reality.