Should it be Trump or DeSantis in 2024?  The answer lies in these four words: Form Always Follows Function.  For example, if you’re shopping for a new vehicle, you must consider where the vehicle will typically be driven and for what purpose.  If you would buy a new rifle, you must consider what you plan to shoot with it.  The form must be matched to serve the function.

A classy Corvette wouldn’t be a good choice in the northern mountains.  Given the likelihood of blizzards and rocky back roads, a four-wheel-drive pickup will suit you better. Sure, they aren’t as classy looking and don’t get good mileage, but they are many times over more likely to get you where you need to go.

In a story about elephant hunting, the hunter reported that the tracks he followed were two feet wide.  Think of a large tree, two feet in diameter, thumping down every elephant step! That trusty deer rifle wouldn’t do if you’re planning to hunt elephants.  Elephant-hunting merits the biggest caliber you can find.  Sure, that ammunition is very expensive, and your shoulder will remember the kick.  But an elephant at 30 feet dictates a powerful gun.  Form always follows function.

Apply those two examples to managing a functional society.  What do we mean by a functioning society?  Instinctively, we know what that implies for us.  It works smoothly and allows every individual citizen to pursue his happiness.  These values are expressed in our Declaration of Independence (the sacredness of individual lives and the liberty that allows everyone to fulfill their potential), and the Bill of Rights in the Constitution (matching the laws of nature and of nature’s creator).  A functional society rests on the individual family unit, which is the cornerstone and model of society.  Individuals contribute responsibly what they are able.  We have the “feel” for a functional society because it works.

“America” today is bifurcated and seemingly, evenly divided.  There are the historical Americans we call patriots, who are convinced that America had it right in theory all along.  There are the “woke” progressive citizens, who sign on to the belief that America has it all wrong and needs to be trashed.  Their ideas of “function” don’t meet our definition and thus their form is contradictory.  

When Donald Trump and the patriots say they want to make America great again, they are envisaging the historical America, affirming the unalienable natural rights of the citizens.  When the progressives sign on to their own definition of function, they envisage creating a reset, called the Great Reset, with docile citizens as a collective, without individual rights but marching, lockstep, to the totalitarian agenda.  Contradictory functions are served by antagonistic game plans.  

Suppose we compromise and buy a front-wheel-drive sedan instead of that cumbersome pickup?  Suppose we take our trusty deer rifle elephant hunting after all?  It might work, but it's not the best choice.  If we subscribe to making the former America great again, we are facing far greater threats than blizzards: the antagonistic agenda of the woke progressives.  We have a more hazardous route, by far, than rocky roads to get where we need to go.  And the Swamp that they promote has proven to be far more intimidating that a bull elephant at 30 feet.  So, we need to engage the very best program in existence to confront this daunting Swamp and support our function.  And we don’t have “all day” to figure it all out and get where we need to go -- alive.  

Let’s say the apartment building is on fire.  Well, Sally just lay down for her afternoon nap and Alice is right in the middle of finding out who wins the most money on “The Price is Right.”  George and Bill are in the middle of their chess game.  But none of that is important now.  The apartment building is on fire!  Deal with it now, before the flames start licking at the door frame and you decide that well, maybe, this fire thing is serious after all!

What I’m getting at is which form or game plan -- which vehicle or rifle, if you will -- do we need at this juncture?  Our societal apartment is burning down.  Do we pick the front-wheel-drive sedan or the deer rifle?  Or do we go all-out?  I say we go all-out -- now.

This Great Reset of human society is a far greater obstacle to keep us from getting where we need to go than blizzards and rocky mountain roads.  Our lives are on the line.  So, for my money -- and my life -- I go with Donald Trump.  I don’t think Donald Trump in 2024 can be the Donald Trump in 2016-2020.  That was the “Last Hurrah,” and that “Championship Season” is in the record books.  But Donald is still healthy, talented, and devoted.  Trump still galvanizes the patriots.  He is still the icon for taking on that Swamp, which is expanding by the day and threatens to flood the world instead of global warming.

While he has many critics, I’m on the same page with The Donald.  He speaks the language of blue-collar construction workers, who build America, because their cause is his cause.  But it is also the cause of grandma and the ladies of the guild.  We’re all in the same apartment building.  He isn’t always right -- maybe, in this blizzard, he gets off-road sometimes.  But he’s the one driving on rocky roads, in the blizzard, to get us where we need to go.

I think Ron DeSantis is great.  Considering Trump’s successor, I can’t come up with a better man.  And, to belabor our analogy, in four more years Trump may have smoothed out those roads enough so that a front-wheel-drive sedan will do.  For now, we need all Trump’s four-wheel-drive muscle.

It was Florida that got the national ball rolling on self-defense and the “Castle Doctrine” -- the right to use whatever force is necessary to protect our “castle,” our home.  DeSantis is doing a great job defending the Floridians’ castle.  He has proven that he is “a deadeye with his deer rifle.”  In the next few years, he may gain the skill and the courage to also take aim at large targets: national/international challenges; the Great Reset/the Swamp.  But Trump has already proven that he has the knowledge, the will, and the courage to confront them all, “at 30 feet.”

Form makes or breaks function -- our functional society. We can’t remain asleep at the switch, hide behind entertainment, or play chess.  This is the real world, folks.  The apartment where we all live is burning down.  We need the form that matches our functional society now.

Edward Mike is a clinical psychologist with a background in theology.  His website is www.restoringourvalues.com.

Image: Gage Skidmore