My college roommate was blind from birth.  Despite that profound handicap, he was a brilliant student of physics.  As a physics major myself, I understood what his blindness meant.  For physics is a visual subject.  The best physicists have a great ability to visualize objects in motion, fields weaving through space and time, the subtle, complex correlations of quantum mechanics.  Most of all, one must deal with the intricate notations of mathematics, the language of physics.  My roommate could do none of that in the normal way.  Somehow, he was able to build non-visual models in his imagination.  Somehow, he could hear from his reader long strings of mathematical symbols, ponder them, then dictate back new strings of symbols.  How he did this is a mystery.

Sometimes severe handicaps can differ from physical.

In the aftermath of the fall of Saigon, I knew a refugee family from Vietnam.  They spoke no English.  Sponsored by a colleague of mine, herself a refugee from communist Yugoslavia, they were temporarily sheltered in her home.  Despite their profound handicaps of language and sudden immersion in an alien culture, within a year, they had learned English and earned enough money for the down payment on a house of their own.  Their handicaps were perhaps even more disabling than physical.

What is important is not the handicap.  What is important is the human spirit that propels someone above his handicap.

There is a man who suffers from a major handicap.  His name is Donald Trump.  Perhaps Trump is handicapped because he became conservative.  And he is eccentric.  He breaks long established rules.  He appalls professional politicians and journalists – he tweets what he is really thinking!

Trump is not a professional politician.  He is something very different.  Consider his accomplishments: he turned a modest loan from his father into a multi-billion-dollar fortune.  He took great business risks, starting in his twenties.  He built skyscrapers around the world.

He started hundreds of successful businesses and has had only a handful of business failures – a remarkable record, as any entrepreneur will tell you. 

He created, produced, and starred in one of the most popular shows in television's history.  Trump is indeed a showman.  He romances massive crowds with wit and laughter. 

Without previous experience, he is now the most successful politician in living memory.  And he seems to be doing remarkably well as president despite every possible impediment.  

Even with his great success, Donald Trump suffers from a crippling handicap.  Like the Vietnamese family, Trump's handicap is not physical.  It is cultural.  Donald Trump suffers from the Handicap of Hate!

The language of his adversaries is savage, venomous, and wrong.  He has been called many things: narcissist.  Paranoid.  Stupid.  Crazy.  Dictator.  Fascist.  Racist.  Bigot.  Bully.  Coward.  Liar.  Duplicitous.  Despot.  Tyrant.  Treacherous.  Treasonous.  Vain.  And, worst of all, humorless. 

With obvious malice, the Media Merchants of Hate have, through nonstop repetition and lies, turned these epithets into a kind of mendacious "truth." 

This avalanche of hatred started at the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner.  Despite opposition from its staff, Donald Trump was the guest of the Washington Post.  Was this a setup?  President Obama came on stage to give the expected self-deprecating roasting of himself.  Except he didn't.  Instead, he launched into a vicious personal attack on Donald Trump, seated at his feet. 

It seems there was this matter of a birth certificate.  One was needed to assure the legitimacy of Obama's presidency – except that there was no birth certificate.  For years, there was no birth certificate.  Suddenly, just before this gala evening, there was, as if by magic, a birth certificate. 

Hillary Clinton had first raised the issue of Obama's birth certificate, and Donald Trump, then a darling of the liberal community, talked openly about the issue.  It is obvious that Obama was exceedingly insecure about the subject.  Did he know something that his childhood guardians had told him?  Whatever the reason, President Obama violated all protocols of the evening, and of political discourse, when he launched that humiliating personal attack on Donald Trump regarding the birth certificate.  His attack was obviously coordinated with a subsequent and even more vicious attack that evening by comedian Seth Meyers. 

The message had now been delivered – not just to Trump, but to the media.  Trump was persona non grata in the liberal community.  Right on cue, the next day, the liberal news media were full of scornful op-ed pieces lambasting the former liberal darling, Donald Trump.  This continued until, years later, Trump announced that he was running to become president. 

Then, quite suddenly, something odd happened.  The liberal media became unexpectedly friendly.  The media wanted Trump to win the nomination.  The liberal political establishment thought Donald Trump would be the easiest candidate to beat. 

Showing unexpected political skill, Trump won the nomination.  In a flash, the liberal media turned against Trump with greater viciousness than before.  They were joined by old-guard Republicans intent on politically assassinating this upstart usurper.

The newly revealed Comey memos tell us what apparently happened shortly after Trump's nomination.  The simplest interpretation of the Comey memos suggests a deliberate, and quite illegal, high-level spoiling attack on Trump's campaign and early presidency.  It seems evident that, starting during the campaign, CIA director John Brennan, DNI James Clapper, and the FBI's Jim Comey were key figures in this spoiling operation.  In coordination with the Clinton campaign, this illegal political weaponization of our intelligence apparatus apparently had the blessing of the Department of Justice and, likely, Obama's White House.  The only hold-out from this cabal, the only man of integrity, was Admiral Rogers, heading up the NSA.

After Trump's election, this clandestine campaign against the president continued as long as the principals held their office – well into the Trump administration.  As long as Mueller's investigation continues, so will the mischief.  As long as Trump is president, the liberal media will continue their campaign of hate and lies.

Despite his enormous handicap, Donald Trump is succeeding far beyond the expectations of most people.  How did he overcome his handicap?  He tapped into something powerful.

Barack Obama promised to fundamentally change America.  You do not fundamentally change something you love.  You fundamentally change what you hate.  With malice, Barack Obama injected potent poisons into our culture.  But America is a resilient organism.  As such, it has a strong self-preserving immune system – ourselves, our Constitution, and our history.  Donald Trump, whether consciously or not, became an agent of that immune system.  He has tapped into the Spirit of America.  He has done this through his great love of this great nation.

Did Donald Trump anticipate the venomous, nonstop, ferocious opposition that he would face in announcing his candidacy?  Probably not.  If he could have foreseen what was going to happen, would he have made a different decision?  Probably not.  It is likely he would have relished the combat.  Donald Trump is a man of iron will.  There is steel in that man.