OPINION:
For as long as anyone can remember, politics in America has been a game of charades.
Generally speaking, there are two parties. Adversaries from those two parties get elected by voters based on promises they make to solve problems that matter to those voters. The elected adversaries gather in Washington to make laws that govern voters and spend money they take from voters.
The issues these adversaries fight about in Washington today — spending, wars, welfare, crime, Social Security, illegal immigration, abortion — are pretty much the same issues they have been fighting about for decades. To keep voters distracted, they occasionally make up new issues like the weather, or they change the name of an issue, such as when they talk about “gun control” instead of “crime.”
The only thing you can rely on these elected adversaries for — year after year — is never to solve any of the problems they have been promising to fix for the past 50 years. And yet — year after year — they make new laws governing your life and take more of your money to not solve any of these problems.
Next year, they hope to take your $2,056,804,000,000 and divide it up as they see fit and call it another year in the books of progress. Some people will get very rich, the government-industrial complex will prosper, politicians will bank huge favors, and a host of new unintended consequences will spread like venereal disease.
The one thing that is certain: None of the problems they promised to solve will be solved. After all, if they did, how would they get elected next time?
Washington is where the hopes and dreams of voters go to die. It is where the will of the people is strangled to death. It is where democracy dies in all the bureaucratic cobwebs and clutter.
This is why adversaries in both parties despise Donald Trump so much.
From the moment of his inaugural address, the henchmen of Permanent Washington announced that they would impeach him. Why was that date so important?
Because that was the date they realized for certain that Mr. Trump was not playing their game of charades.
He had run a swashbuckling pirate’s campaign for president. He made bold statements and issued clear promises.
Sure, they hated him — but, you know, whatever! He didn’t really mean any of it, they told themselves.
Then came his inaugural, when he made perfectly clear that he intended to keep every promise he had on the campaign trail. For him, it was no joke.
Flanked by all of official Washington — where most newly elected presidents come to heel and bend the knee — Mr. Trump excoriated and humiliated them.
“Their victories have not been your victories,” he told the American people as Washington seethed in the grandstands behind him. “Their triumphs have not been your triumphs, and while they celebrated in our nation’s capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across the land.”
And then the lines that cut too deep.
“That all changes starting right here and right now because this moment is your moment. It belongs to you,” he said gravely.
“This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.”
Mr. Trump may have become famous as a reality television star, but he wasn’t going to step out of character just because he arrived in the comfortable confines of Washington’s most powerful residence.
And from that moment, they vowed to destroy him.
Some inside Washington now scoff at Mr. Trump for not accomplishing enough of his agenda — which is hilarious if you think about it. None of these people has ever accomplished anything except giving your money to their friends, and then they attack Mr. Trump for not accomplishing more.
For the record, Mr. Trump cleared the path for a robust economy, bolstered domestic energy production, started no new wars, delivered peace in the Middle East and proved to both parties once and for all that it really is possible to seal the southern border.
Which is why they will stop at nothing to destroy him.
Two impeachments, a disputed election and four indictments later, Mr. Trump is still swinging away. And so far, voters are not distracted.
• Charles Hurt is the opinion editor at The Washington Times.
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