In the final stretch of a heated presidential election there are often significant political transformations and paradigm shifts that take place, but are overlooked. One such major shift has occurred, the steady removal of tares from the conservative movement.
I was reminded of this recently when a good friend from Switzerland emailed me the question: “Is Donald Trump cleansing the Augean Stables in preparation for his presidency?” Of course my answer was “yes,” adding, “the Augean Stables, what perfect symbolism for the Trump phenomenon!”
On cue, within a few days of the email, a perfect illustration presented itself: an organized group of 50 former Republican national security and foreign policy top-level bureaucrats who had worked in administrations from Nixon to George W. Bush, in a joint signed statement, expressed their strong opposition to the candidacy of Donald J. Trump.
THE STORY
If you haven’t heard of this timely story from Greek mythology of Hercules cleansing the Augean Stables, here is my short version of it:
In Greek mythology, King Augeas kept 3,000 divine oxen in the massive Augean (o-jean) Stables. They had not been cleaned for thirty years. Hercules cut a deal with the king. His offer was if he could clean out the stables in one day, the king would give him a tenth of the cattle. Considering the impossibility of the task, the king agreed. So Hercules took the king’s son as a witness then proceeded to open the two opposite walls of the stable. Next, he dug wide trenches to two rivers which flowed nearby. Then, he redirected the rivers in the trenches and the ensuing flood of water soon flushed out 30 years of manure. The king refused to pay Hercules, so he took the king to court using his son as a witness and prevailed.
“GANG OF 50”
The “Gang of 50” or, as Limbaugh calls them the “50 clowns,” can be found in various positions of privilege within the ruling establishment. They are men who serve the power elites who run with the global oligarchy. Simply, they are men whose allegiance is not to America but to their international masters and their New World Order agenda. They have no real interest in American sovereignty or prosperity. For the most part they operate in stealth and have extensive influence in US domestic and foreign affairs.
GANG OF 50 (KEY NAMES):
• Michael Hayden: former CIA and NSA Director
• Robert Blackwill: Former Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Planning
• Michael Chertoff: Former Secretary of Homeland Security
• James Jeffrey: Former Deputy National Security Advisor
• John Negroponte: Former Director of National Intelligence
• Tom Ridge: Former Secretary of Homeland Security
• Nicholas Rostow: Former Legal Adviser to the National Security Council
• Kristen Silverberg: Former Assistant Secretary of State for
International Organizations
• William H. Taft IV: Former Deputy Secretary of Defense
• Dov Zakheim: Former Under Secretary of Defense
• Roger Zakheim: Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense
• Robert Zoellick: Former US Trade Representative; President of World Bank (2007–2012)
• Eric S. Edelman: Vice President Dick Cheney’s National Security Adviser
They attacked Trump’s character and ability to lead as president in international affairs. You have to love this statement:
“Indeed, we are convinced that he would be a dangerous president and would put at risk our country’s national security and well-being.”
The very thing they accuse Trump of becoming a threat to national security and well-being is what they have promoted and caused their entire careers.
Here is my interpretation of the letter from the “Gang of 50”: We neo-cons love endless wars, international destabilization and are committed in our service to the global financial oligarchy. Trump scares us because he would bring sanity to American foreign policy, promoting peace among the nations. So we would like you all to join us in voting for Hillary Clinton because she will continue our work of international conflicts and bring America under global governance.
TRUMP’S RESPONSE:
“The names on this letter are the ones the American people should look to for answers on why the world is a mess, and we thank them for coming forward so everyone in the country knows who deserves the blame for making the world such a dangerous place. They are nothing more than the failed Washington elite looking to hold onto their power, and it’s time they are held accountable for their actions.
“These insiders – along with Hillary Clinton – are the owners of the disastrous decisions to invade Iraq, allow Americans to die at Benghazi, and they are the ones who allowed the rise of ISIS. Yet, despite these failures, they think they are entitled to use their favor trading to land taxpayer-funded government contracts and speaking fees. It’s time we put our foot down and declare that their gravy train is over: no longer will Crooked Hillary Clinton and the other disasters in Washington get rich at our expense.
“Instead, I offer a better vision for our country and our foreign policy – one that is not run by a ruling family dynasty. It’s an America first vision that stands up to foreign dictators instead of taking money from them, seeks peace over war, rebuilds our military, and makes other countries pay their fair share for their protection. Together, we will break up the rigged system in Washington, make America safe again, and we will make America great again.”
In Herculean fashion, our American hero, in a tweet of three short paragraphs, dismisses the “Gang of 50” into political oblivion with the revelation of their huge policy failures.
Trump’s brilliance is always in his aggressive leadership style. When attacked, he attacks back. Instead of the usual Republican candidate’s defensive response and efforts to win back support, Trump instead exposes and dismisses. He not only won this political battle, but went much deeper and exposed their whole political careers. Dismissed in public view were their years of education, mentoring, global ladder-climbing, government service and influence. Their whole careers were swept away out of the Republican stable into a dung pile somewhere down the backside of the Trump flood of “Americanism.”
In their own misjudgment and arrogance, the “Gang of 50” revealed themselves to the world as American policy failures. They mistakenly thought the gathering of 50 signatures of prominent policy men protesting Trump would actually have had an effect on the race. In their effort to destroy Trump they in turn have destroyed themselves by their own devices.
HERCULES’ RIVER IS TRUMP’S “AMERICANISM”
Trump’s fast-moving river is his steady stream of America first rhetoric. “Americanism” is the language that infuriates the globalist imposters. For their whole concern and view of the world is centered around America being brought under the banner of a one-world government.
When the upstart Donald Trump came along and pounded out his message of “America First,” “Americanism not globalism,” and “no more nation building,” these globalist imposters could not bear it any longer, and went public with their objections, thus exposing their Establishment allegiances.
Their difficulty is not only in Trump’s rhetoric but in the fact that he has immense electoral support. It is more than they can bear. Their frustration is also in the realization that their lifetimes’ work and political accomplishments have been exposed and upended by Trump. They fear a great policy reversal if Trump becomes president.
TRUMP’S ESTABLISHMENT DUNGHILL
What has occurred in the past year’s election cycle is a sorting out of the conservative movement and Republican Party that has been nothing short of phenomenal; something we have not witnessed in the last 50 years in national politics.
The exposure and sorting out of the fakes, opposition agents, imposters, and infiltrators is never an easy process because imposters are trained to hide under the power elites’ political cover.
The worst of the bunch are the Republican neo-conservatives (neo-cons) who are falsely given the “conservative” label. These men are just as much an enemy to America, human life, and liberty as the Democratic Party hierarchy.
Their lust for war and death makes them the cruelest of political men. Every generation seems to have ruthless men of blood and this generation’s are the American neo-cons.
Chief among the neo-cons is their poster boy, Paul Wolfowitz, former President of the World Bank and chief architect of George W. Bush’s 2003 Iraqi War. This was an illegal and unconstitutional war which makes Bush and Wolfowitz directly responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent human beings, let alone the massive destabilization of the Middle East. Today’s immigration problem in the West is a direct result of this corrupt warmongering.
Recently Wolfowitz has gone public against Trump, calling him a “national security risk” and “unacceptable.” Then he adds that he will probably support Hillary Clinton which leads to the rumors of him as a possible Secretary of Defense or State in a Clinton administration.
No matter the presidential outcome, one of the benefits of this political awakening is the total discrediting of warmongering neo-cons like Wolfowitz. They must never again be allowed in any discussion of policy within conservatism.
DUNGHILL DIRECTORY (SHORT LIST)
POLITICIANS
• Bush Family
• Neo-cons: Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Kagan, Wurmser, Abrams, etc.
• Ted Cruz
• Karl Rove
• Paul Ryan
• Mitt Romney
• John Kasich: 2016 Presidential Candidate
• Lindsey Graham: US Senator South Carolina
• Ben Sasse: US Senator, Nebraska
• Christine Todd Whitman: former Governor, New Jersey
• Susan Collins: US Senator, Maine
• Mark Kirk: US Senator, Illinois
• L. Brent Bozell III: activist
• Meg Whitman: finance co-chair for Governor Christie’s presidential campaign
MEDIA/COMMENTATORS
• Glenn Beck: radio host
• George Will: columnist
• Bill Kristol: editor, Weekly Standard
• Charles Krauthammer: commentator
• National Review
• Weekly Standard
• National media
• David Brooks: columnist
• Mona Charen: columnist
• Jonah Goldberg: columnist
• Stephen F. Hayes: columnist, National Review
• Mark Levin: radio host
RELIGIOUS LEADERS
• Michael Farris: Home School Legal Defense Association
• Russell D. Moore: Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission
• Erick Erickson: political commentator
TRUMP FACTOR
One of the fascinating developments in this election cycle is Trump’s direct tie to American nationalism: to attack Trump is to attack America. Attacking Trump now identifies the attacker’s allegiance to the Establishment in the eyes of American conservatives.
Trump’s “Americanism” identity message is so clear and so resonates that when any politician, commentator, or religious leader attacks Trump, it is perceived as an attack on America.
The other Trump element in play is the resolve of the middle-class awakening and pushback against all things Establishment. Trump has been the voice of this historic American political movement. The “E”-word (Establishment) has become, and will continue to be, politically deadly to the electorate of any leader in politics, media, or religion.
“THE FEELING’S GONE”
Gordon Lightfoot’s first Top 10 hit reaching #5 on the pop charts in 1970 was “If You Could Read My Mind.” His ending lyric was, “I don’t know where we went wrong. But the feeling’s gone and I just can’t get it back.”
To all of the fake conservatives who have been hiding in the Conservative/Republican stable who now have been exposed, we say “the feeling’s gone.” It’s over. We will never listen again to your broadcasts, nor read your articles or follow your political advice. You have abused our trust, and when trust is lost it’s lost for a lifetime, and we just can’t get it back. To Beck, Kristol, Will, and the others – good luck on finding your new political home and constituency.
CONCLUSION: THE PROCESS
The Trump phenomenon did appear overnight, but not in a political vacuum. It was built on the foundation of previous movements over 52 years. First, it was Goldwater in 1964, then Reagan. Then came Perot and Buchanan, which later gave way to the Tea Party and its rebellion against the Republican Establishment. Historically, peaceful political revolutions are always established in a process over time.
Senator Sessions described the modern political awakening best in a recent campaign speech. “Something big was happening — the people are taking their country back.”
The forces are lining up and picking sides. One side is a massive middle-class rebellion against the ruling Establishment looking to reestablish a true functioning democracy in a restored American republic; the other is the powerful forces of the dark side pushing for global government and the end of American sovereignty.
Establishment Republicans and the controlled corporate media have created a narrative that Trump is destroying the unity of the Republican Party. It’s often heard that the Party is being torn apart. This is false.
The true narrative is Trump’s cleansing of the political manure that has been piling up for decades in the conservative stables. Do not lament their departure. Let all the conservative imposters leave, washed away in Trump’s “Americanism.”
For a year we have witnessed the Trump cleansing operation doing its thorough work. Finally, the air in the stable is becoming tolerable while room is being made for new elements to come into the renewed conservative house.
All effective renewals of political movements must go through the stage of shedding its compromisers and traitors. This can be a difficult and messy process, but a necessary one, before new people — and truth — are brought in with vitality.
All of this is extremely healthy in the rebirth and the maturing of the Conservative movement. Let the cleansing continue.
© 2016 Thomas Ertl – All Rights Reserved
