a master plan for
DRAINING THE SWAMP
by
DAVID SOLWAY
______________________________
David
Solway is a Canadian poet and essayist (Random Walks)
and author of The Big Lie: On Terror, Antisemitism, and
Identity and Hear,
O Israel! (Mantua Books). His editorials appear
regularly in PJ
Media. His monograph, Global Warning: The Trials of
an Unsettled Science (Freedom Press Canada) was launched
at the National Archives in Ottawa in September, 2012. His debut
album, Blood
Guitar, is now available, as is his latest
book, Reflections
on Music, Poetry and Politics.
Donald
Trump has said that he intends to “drain the swamp,”
a laudable if formidable challenge given the resistance he is
bound to meet. The DNC is preparing a “war room”
to fight Trump on a variety of political and domestic fronts
and the left is mobilizing all its divisions to prevent the
new president from governing and, if possible, to force him
from office. This could amount to a kind of civil war entailing
massive protests and demonstrations punctuated by instances
of violence, as has occurred in the past.
The
left will throw everything it can at him: marches, fake news,
uncorroborated allegations, hoaxes galore, borking tantrums,
Twitter storms, unceasing volumes of calumny, character assassination,
riots, “classic Soviet-style disinformation” --
every weapon in its copious arsenal of smear and malice. For
the left is truly maniacal in its hatreds. Trump will have to
be Trump to withstand the onslaught.
There
is also the factor of complexity and coordination: the swamp
consists of many bights and pockets of sludge-like detritus,
each of which will require a designated “task force”
to clean up and decontaminate. Indeed, there is a swollen political
tribe of bog men and bog women peopling that swamp who need
to be exhumed and displayed in public museums as emblems of
the defunct -- that is, fired and in some cases prosecuted.
(Lois Lerner, anyone?) Poet Seamus Heaney would have had a field
day with the denizens of our contemporary Bogland.
And
the bog, as noted, is vast, a series of interlocking polders,
sloughs and fens that will require years of dedicated effort
to pump and empty. The effort at cadastral detoxification must
begin on Day One of his presidency, as Trump has promised, if
it is to have any chance of success, for delay is often the
prelude to amnesia. Trump has his work cut out for him fighting
jobbery, timidity, self-interest and betrayal. What follows
is a selective list of the sectors of infestation that need
to be expunged. They are pretty well known but an agenda booklet
is always helpful.
*
* * * *
Foggy
Bottom or what we might aptly call “boggy bottom.”
The State Department has long had leftist inclinations and a
soft-on-jihad attitude, and will work tirelessly to undermine
the new president’s authority. Its current Assistant Secretary
and spokesperson John Kirby, a practiced liar, is its appropriate
face. For the first time in living memory, it needs to be dealt
with ruthlessly, downsized, rationalized and systematically
purged. In other words, it must become a government agency and
not a de facto government pursuing its own policy initiatives,
which differ little or not at all from the Democratic Party
line. Similarly, the Federal Civil Service needs to be shrunk
and its budget drastically slashed, a move that appears to be
on the books.
National
Intelligence and the IRS. Both services have become increasingly
politicized under the Obama administration, the IRS targeting
conservative sites and magazines, and the CIA under rank incompetents
and partisan actors like John Brennan and Director of National
Intelligence James Clapper, indulging in unsupported allegations
regarding Russian hacking and plainly favoring the Democratic
Party. These agencies must be thoroughly depoliticized, its
top officials unceremoniously fired as Democratic Party toadies,
ineptitude rooted out and bloat eliminated.
The
UN. Violating its irenic origins, it has become a body
of anti-American thugs, freeloaders and kleptocrats -- “jackals,”
as Daniel Moynihan called its members -- occupying prime New
York real estate and depending largely on American financial
contributions to continue its operations. In a well-reasoned
and historically-based argument, Bruce Thornton shows why the
criminal and peculating UN is beyond reform. It should be immediately
defunded if not abolished. It can maintain its Geneva headquarters,
but it does not belong on American soil and does not deserve
American cash. International resolutions can be passed through
diplomatic channels on a nation-to-nation basis, in the same
way as trade agreements can be negotiated.
The
Two-State Solution. To undo the damage that Obama has wrought
in harming and alienating Israel, a vital and dependable ally,
a Trump administration should consider signing a mutual defense
pact with the Jewish state, casting the failed two-state hallucination
into the trash can, eliminating all aid to the Palestinians
-- a regime of terror-enabling extortionists -- whether in the
“West Bank” or Gaza, and moving the U.S. embassy
to Jerusalem -- perhaps even to East Jerusalem. A revamped State
Department should frankly acknowledge, as Zahir Muhsein of the
Palestinian National Council told the Dutch newspaper Trouw
as far back as 1977, that “The Palestinian people does
not exist…Only for political and tactical reasons do we
speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people . .
. to oppose Zionism.” The Jewish people have a 3000-year
history in the Holy Land. The PLO, however, was founded in 1964
in Egypt and a Palestinian entity was recognized by the Arab
countries only at the 1974 Rabat Summit Conference. (See my
essay “A
Mid-East Fiction” for additional information.)
Entitlements.
Legislation might begin by focusing on the Food Stamp program
(SNAP), a necessary stand-by, but one that has been grossly
abused since its introduction by LBJ, expanded at great cost
to the Treasury and mired in food stamp trafficking. Its overhaul
should determine: (a) those regions where it has been subject
to unjustifiable exploitation and those where it is a legitimate
fallback; and (b) act to reduce Federal largesse where appropriate.
This would be a good place to start before considering other
measures to curb an entitlement system designed to create a
dependent population under the guise of battling poverty.
Foreign
aid. Untold billions in foreign aid are simply wasted,
supporting countries whose policies are clearly anti-American
and whose ruling classes sequester these funds for their own
benefit. The entire program needs to be re-thought.
Global
warming. AGW is the greatest scam of our times. There has
been no global warming for 21 years and the models used to predict
climate change are demonstrably unreliable, if not actually
fraudulent. Governments that levy carbon taxes are filling their
coffers illegitimately. (See my Global
Warning
for a succinct analysis of the climate scandal.) Skepticism
also applies to the renewable energy industry, which suffers
from the “Solyndra effect,” and serves the interests
not of the public but of an unaccountable cadre of cronies who
profit from government grants and loans, agency funding and
carbon trading schemes. The entire shakedown enterprise is due
for a major debunking.
The
“fake news” media. “Modern journalism,”
says Daily Caller blogger Jim Treacher, “is all
about deciding which facts the public shouldn’t know because
they might reflect badly on Democrats.” Lying to the public,
whether by commission or omission, in an attempt to influence
the outcome of elections or prevent their consequences is a
violation of the SPJ Code of Ethics and should not be tolerated
in a democratic society. News outlets with a record of purveying
fake news should be put on notice that their presence at White
House press conferences is no longer a given and that their
participation will be carefully vetted.
Education.
From K-12 to postgraduate university, the academy, generally
speaking, no longer teaches but indoctrinates from the left.
Students are treated like mental hosts for the implantation
of Alien pods, which leave behind intellectual cadavers when
the monsters emerge. A particularly harrowing example, as the
National Association of Scholars reports, involves the study
of Civics, which “has been stolen by left-wing activists
who smuggle their agenda into colleges.” Instead of teaching
students about how government works, the “New Civics is
all about ‘diversity,’ environmentalism, the LGBT
movement, ‘global’ citizenship, and other liberal
causes.” The academy is engaged in circulating the shibboleths
of the day, not in providing real education. “Achievement
is lower, even as grades are higher; jargon is more pretentious;
and promises become ever more grandiose,” writes Bruce
Deitrick Price, who runs the education site Improve-Education.org.
“Professors of education who labor mightily to undercut
education should be a national joke.”
But nobody is laughing.
The
education paradigm is infected by the practices of professional
ideologues who, as David French writes in National Review,
have installed “a ferocious new faith -- a social justice
progressivism unrestrained by humility and consumed with religious
zeal.” The social justice meme has no business in the
curriculum. Similarly, affirmative action and preferential hiring,
still very much in place, must become a thing of the disreputable
past. The Core Curriculum, which has pedagogically impoverished
American students, must be scrapped. Title IX has to be quashed.
And a scrupulous review of professional personnel at all levels
should be undertaken to distinguish genuine teachers from propagandists,
with a view to rewarding merit and deprivileging mediocrity
and partisanship. The viability of tenure may also come under
consideration. Tuition fees will need to come down, perhaps
by decoupling Pell grants from tuition hikes, and the funding
stick will have to be brandished mercilessly.
As
Richard F. Miniter points out, the education boondoggle costs
$620,000,000,000 annually, to regularly graduate functionally
illiterate students. Despite the vicious attack by liberal/Left
advocacy organizations -- the ACLU, the Interfaith Alliance,
The New Yorker, The New York Times, and others
-- on Trump’s pick for secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos,
she seems the right person to drain this part of the malarial
swamp afflicting the country. DeVos is all for school choice,
the voucher system and open enrollment, which clearly foster
educational achievement. May she prosper in this difficult job.
Obamacare.
Some say this disaster, which has grown largely unaffordable
and chaotic, should be revised; others believe it should be
repealed. Obamacare cannot be saved and needs to be replaced
by a free market system with selective and unobtrusive government
oversight. As Jon Hall points out in an impeccably reasoned
article, it is simply unaffordable, “a drag on the economy”
and an “unlimited claim on future revenue.” The
requirement to insure pre-existing conditions raises the cost
of premiums astronomically, which thus entails the mandates,
i.e., the use of force. Moreover, it is a giant step toward
a “single payer” medical system, which has failed
miserably wherever it has been implemented, including my own
country, Canada. Obamacare was never about “fixing the
health insurance business [or] lowering premium prices,”
says Hall. “It was about creating dependency, expanding
the welfare state, and consolidating the power of central government.”
It’s got to go.
Immigration.
So much has already been written about the travesty known as
immigration that suffice it to say Trump is right and his critics
in the left-wing media and social justice sites are calamitously
wrong. Two kinds of barriers need to be built: a physical wall/fence
to keep out crime and disease imported by illegal aliens breaching
the southern border (forget “undocumented workers”)
and stringent vetting protocols to dramatically reduce Muslim
immigration, from which cultural unrest inexorably ensues and
from whose ranks the jihadists spring. Enough Americans have
died from the violence associated with the creatures from the
black lagoon sector of the swamp.
The
Military. “Obama has left America’s armed forces
in worse shape than at any time since the Great Depression,”
observes Bruce Walker. Military capabilities have been severely
degraded. Indeed, the armed forces have been scaled down, “pussified,”
and transformed under Obama, as Rick Moran writes, into “a
gigantic social sciences lab.” “The government will
even pay for some gender reassignment surgeries for trans soldiers….
It seems that President Obama has cared more about imposing
his cultural agenda on the military rather than winning wars.”
The uniform no longer commands respect or serves to reinforce
esprit de corps. Muslim and Sikh soldiers can now wear the hijab
or the turban. Adhering to the dictates of multiculturalism
is more important than fielding a fighting force. The military
has been routinely humiliated by the Russians buzzing an American
ship, Chinese expansion into the Pacific or the Iranian taking
of prisoners in the Gulf. There can be no doubt that the armed
forces need to be honored, rebuilt and restored to their former
position of world dominance if American prestige and security
in an increasingly dangerous world are to be prioritized.
The
Supreme Court. As everyone recognizes, the composition
of the Supreme Court is critical to the sociopolitical direction
the country will follow. As currently constituted, justices
like Sonia Sotomayer (of “wise Latina” fame) and
the ethically compromised Elena Kagan do not belong on so exalted
an institution. Despite the opposition of Senate minority leader
Chuck Schumer, it is clear that Trump will have to fill the
vacancy left by the death of Antonin Scalia with a worthy and
reputable nominee and gradually steer the court toward a dispensation
more in touch with traditional American values of procedural
justice, individualism and freedom of speech and conscience.
A recent poll suggests a large majority of American agree, preferring
an “originalist” Constitution to the oxymoron of
a “living constitution” -- which is anything a activist
judiciary can make up or powerful interests regard as politically
advantageous.
Iran.
A powerful mix of muscular diplomacy and military threat will
have to supplant the toxic alliance that Obama has cemented
with the Iranian mullocracy. The lifting of sanctions, the facilitation
of Iran’s nuclear program in more ways than one, and the
paying of ransom for hostages have empowered the world’s
largest state sponsor of terrorism and America’s number
one enemy. This arrangement is very close to treason. Iran must
be stopped in its tracks before the situation becomes irreversible.
The
Republican Party. One of the major tasks that confronts
Trump now is the renovation of his own party, which is also
part of the swamp. True, Trump was not acting “presidential”
in the earlier days of the nomination cycle, unable to restrain
his sense of indignation over the lies, slanders and animadversions
hurled his way by his own party competitors and conservative
authors and editors. He was clearly provoked; his error was
in prolonging the fracas via retaliations. But the fault rested
primarily with the Party itself -- Mitt Romney, Marco Rubio,
John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, etc. -- who gave him
little to no support, to put it mildly, and with his conservative
assailants -- Jonah Goldberg, George Will, Bill Kristol, Mark
Levin, Glenn Beck, etc. -- who maligned him at every turn. In
effect, all these celebrated figures were busy shilling for
Hillary.
Writing
in American Thinker, Christopher West suggests that
“while we must unite and even forgive our wayward rank-and-file
GOP brethren who chose not to support our efforts, we must never
forget those who engaged in outright acts of treachery that
jeopardized our cause and our nation's future.” West is
referring “to those Republicans who had such a vested
interest (emotional, financial, or otherwise) in maintaining…
the same stale policies that had long served their personal
and business interests at the expense of the Republican electorate
and their country.” He is willing to forgive, “to
welcome rank-and-file Republicans back into the fold.”
Nevertheless, he concludes, “We should never forget the
transgressions perpetrated by the leadership of the ‘NeverTrump’
movement.”
But
what does forgiving but not forgetting really mean? Are party
loyalists, grass roots members and the Trump administration
to reconcile with those who will not, as West writes, “have
our back when we face fire from the left and who will have our
back only as long as it is professionally and personally expedient
to do so”? This doesn’t make much sense. The Republican
Party must undergo a comprehensive scouring and vetting to bring
it back into contact with its voters. Similarly, fair-weather
conservative commentators who acted in such a way as to promote
a Clinton electoral victory should no longer be taken seriously.
They are the intellectual pariahs of the right, whom Thomas
Carlyle would have described as “full of unwise intellect.”
*
* * * *
Critics
and detractors, like Canadian historian James Laxer, who thinks
he understands the U.S. but has still to change his (red) diaper,
plainly interprets the resurgence of a proud and vital America
as a rearguard action by an atavistic and desperate “old
America.” Adapting Lincoln’s phrase as the title
of one of his books, "A House Divided," Laxer
associates the American right with the antebellum South. Is
old America out of touch with the progressivist social and cultural
transformation of the country? Or are Laxerian intellectuals
merely swamp dwellers, bogmen of the left, divorced from the
new American reality? The incoming administration will answer
that question.
There
is, obviously, a lot of swamp to tackle, both the individual
zones of which it consists and the destructive ideology that
filled it in the first place. It will take time, but each of
the relevant departments and respondents assigned the mission
should be given the green light to aggressively pursue a long
overdue recovery program. After the creation of so brackish
and festering a marsh, an act of radical cleansing across the
board is the only way forward.
Mr.
Trump, drain this swamp.
