Trump has attracted some good allies

I try to avoid writing about politics and government here, because I believe the world could use a lot less of each. I try to focus on the plain fact that our lives are better when we stop looking for the right ruler and work on running our own lives. The dirty little secret is that when we cry “Freedom,” we usually are talking about freedom from government or something that government is trying to impose on us.

Since 1992, it has been my firm belief that the U.S. government has been run by the worst president of my lifetime — each occupant of the White House progressively worse than the previous one — but the last four years have been so bad, I have had to re-assess my opinion because I realized things got marginally better under Donald Trump.

I think Trump is an unpleasant man who too often turns needlessly to insulting his political adversaries, and I’m not sure he fully understands how some of his initiatives can backfire and hurt us, like tariffs. The Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration has been a catastrophe and a threat not just to democracy but to the world with its saber-rattling and incitements to war.

Trump has recently earned the respect of three of the rarest humans in the world — people whom I deeply respect even though they travel in political circles. So I have to take note.

• Long before she was a member of Congress or presidential candidate, Tulsi Gabbard was deployed to Iraq in 2004 as a National Guard specialist with a medical company attached to the 29th Infantry Brigade Combat Team.

“Every day we were confronted with that high human cost of war and that sadness, as we boarded the plane when we left, that we were leaving some of our brothers and sisters behind — only to lose others when we got home to suicide,” Gabbard said recently to a hushed room full of National Guard Association members as she endorsed Trump for president.

She said Trump takes seriously the commander-in-chief’s responsibility for every soul in the military — “We saw this through his first term in the presidency, when he not only didn’t start any new wars, he took action to de-escalate and prevent wars.”

She praised Trump for “having the courage to meet with adversaries, dictators, allies and partners alike in the pursuit of peace, seeing war as a last resort.”

That commitment to peace resonates with me. You’ve probably noticed by now that I consider the wholesale slaughter of adversaries as the most insane of all human institutions and have written a book called “War IS the Crime.” Gabbard is one of my few heroes in contemporary politics, and so I have to take note.

• Then there’s Robert Kennedy Jr., who wrote a horrifying and meticulously researched book called “The Real Anthony Fauci” that exposes much of the darkness that has happened since 2020.

When Kennedy suspended his own presidential campaign and endorsed Trump, he eloquently outlined his disenchantment with the political party of his father and uncles, which he said has become “the party of war, censorship, corruption, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Ag and big money.”

As a liberal Democrat, Kennedy admitted he was a “ferocious critic” of Trump on many policy issues and approaches, but “we are aligned with each other on other key issues, like ending the forever wars, ending the childhood disease epidemics, securing the border, protecting freedom of speech, unraveling the corporate capture of our regulatory agencies, getting the U.S. intelligence agencies out of the business of propagandizing and censoring and surveilling Americans and interfering with our elections.”

Did you notice what was the very first “other key issue” that Kennedy mentioned? I sure did. Kennedy is one of my few heroes in contemporary politics, and so I have to take note.

• Finally, Trump picked Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance to serve as his vice president. I was completely unfamiliar with Vance but intrigued enough by his obvious sharp intellect and calm demeanor that I borrowed his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” from the library. It’s an amazing story about a man who survived a childhood of poverty and deprivation — aided by a crazy grandmother and a stint with the U.S. Marines — to reach and graduate from Yale Law School.

The book, published in 2016, is so honest and real that it’s clear he did not intend a life in politics. He went to Iraq with the Marines, and it also seem clear that he also sees war as a last resort. I found myself thinking it would be good to have this man, who knows what it’s like to rise from an unimaginably hard life, in that position of being “a heartbeat away from the presidency.”

It’s hard not to notice when people of the stature of Gabbard, Kennedy and Vance are willing to align themselves with Trump. I still have little use for politics and government in general, but it’s also clear that Trump has gathered a diverse group of very capable supporters.

Don’t get me wrong, if you held a gun to my head and forced me to vote for one of these people, I would pick Gabbard, Vance and Kennedy long before I would choose Trump. On the other hand, if you told me the only choices were Harris, Biden or Walz, I’d take one last deep breath and tell you to shoot.

Let my last word on the subject be one I’ve repeated before: Freedom is not about choosing the right ruler. Freedom is recognizing that I am the boss of me. Of the two main choices on the ballot, it feels like peace and freedom have a better chance under Trump.

Warren Bluhm is the news editor for NEW Media. Readers can contact him at wbluhm@newmedia-wi.com.