Reflections on Inauguration Day

A hope for the return of American greatness

Confession time, for anyone who follows or who reads my content, much less cares to read my perspective:

I remain a staunch libertarian, who voted for the Libertarian candidate in all of most recent Presidential elections. I have had a LOT to say about Trump in his first term in office, finding a LOT to be dissatisfied with, and giving voice to it here. I believed then, as I believe now, that he was the superior candidate to Clinton by a HUGE stretch.

Leading up to and THROUGH the regime change, I was even more contemptuous of Trump, seeing him as a narcissistic megalomaniac who fought desperately to cling to power. Nothing about that has changed; but for what came next.

Over the past four years, I have watched the further degradation of this country, the incredibly inept, poor, disgusting progressive agenda play out. The erosion of long standing principles for the sake of feelings over facts. The deployment of lawfare by the current administration to keep Trump from ever running again. The persecution of Trump supporters and the extreme ends to which the government went after and over-punished those who committed MINOR crimes. The disintegration of our southern border, the indoctrination of children in our public school system, and the further erosion of our economy.

Mid term of Biden's administration, we started to see more and more details about the deep state and its role in undermining and suppressing the opposition. This ranged from lawfare, as I stated above, to further suppression of freedom of speech, and the further efforts to erode our fundamental and basic rights as enshrined in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Up until last year, I saw Trump as a completely nonviable, tarnished, and, criminal candidate that should never return to power. However, through the course of the past year, as I started to examine and challenge the prevailing mindset, I began to question the legitimacy of many of the claims that have been made, and, although I fight daily to not fall into conspiracy rabbit holes, I see patterns emerge across multiple surfaces and data points that indicate that there IS a level of conspiracy and suppression of our rights that has evolved. I witnessed the mainstream media caught in lie after lie after lie; I watched the Department of Justice persecute people for their political stands; I watched trivial misdemeanors conflated to felonies, all with the goal of keeping one side of the political electorate under the thumb of another.

With the Libertarian party continuing to nominate complete unqualified, idiotic candidates, I had a hard choice to make: do I go against my libertarian principles and choose the true lesser of two evils, or do I vote my conscience and support the political PARTY whom I support at a foundational level. But Chase Oliver was simply too much of a non-starter, that, given the current state of our nation, I felt compelled to fall back to a choice between one party or the other. Seeing what happened in my country over the past four years made it clear that I would not, could not, ever, support the Democratic party in the form of Joe Biden.

Then the Democratic Party leadership pulled off a silent coup, replacing Biden with an even more troublesome candidate: Kamala Harris. A screeching, blank canvas that stood for everything I oppose. This "forced" me to reexamine many things in who I should vote for. Then there were two attempts to assassinate Donald Trump and I felt compelled to ask "who and why would try to take out the opposition". The dearth of information about the first shooter (and for whom we still have no real information), the complete and utter failure of his protective details, and the manner in which the story was quickly dropped by the media leads me to conclude that there is much, much more that was afoot here.

Candidly, the string of events over the past four years led me to conclude that the "deep state" is so hell-bent on keeping Trump out of office that I had to question WHY. And those questions lead to conclusions that should make EVERY American deeply disturbed and uncomfortable. Combined with a platform that took shape as Trump gathered momentum, and promised to address MANY of the concerns that I had with respect to where we as a nation are headed, my choice solidified around Trump.

I remain highly skeptical of Trump's psychology, behavior, demeanor, buffoonery, but I fully support him in the hopes that he, and those he brings with him, will START the path of righting this nation. In his first term, he was surrounded by professional bureaucrats, many of whom believe that they know better than you about how you should live your life and how this nation should be run. Countless times, we have heard, "trust the experts", only to find out that those "experts" lied to us. Time and time and time again.

With all that in mind, as we swear in President Donald Trump, I enter this phase with actual hope that he, and his administration can start the work of fixing our course for the future that embraces liberty and individual freedom. I welcome the reduction in the size and scope of the Federal government, MASSIVELY, and I desire a return to a time when the government was not involved in our day to day lives. This is not something that Trump can do on his own, nor can his administration do it all for us, we have to start looking at the facts, approach every piece of information with skepticism, and do the work that should rest on each of our shoulders in fact-checking for ourselves.

As Donald Trump takes office today, I challenge EVERY American citizen to seek the facts, pursue enlightenment and awareness, and challenge the "common narrative". Recognize that we are allowing our country to be destroyed from within, placing feelings over facts, and placing social issues as the pre-eminent measuring stick of our status in the world. Donald Trump is OUR President, not mine, and we should all reflect on how and why that came to pass and put our energy not into efforts to discredit, demean, and denigrate him, but support his efforts to right this country, irrespective of how you feel about him as a person. I reserve the right, as each citizen does, to disagree with him or his administration, to call out policies, rules, and laws that I don't support when they violate our founding principles, and I respect and fight for anyone's right to do so. But that MUST start with being INFORMED, not just OPINIONATED. Whilst everyone is fully entitled to have an opinion, the only opinions that matter come from those who have taken the time to form an INFORMED OPINION. Please, think before you post, examine and research, don't react without doing so, and present your views as clearly, articulately, and non-biased as you possibly can. You will gather far more support for your views absent rhetoric, misdirection, lies and deceit.

And let's truly "Make America Great Again".