As retrospection becomes ever more clear, knowledge of the impact of the Trump presidency has been taking form — especially when compared to the bunglers who came next.  Perhaps most importantly, and without obvious intent, he managed to bring out the worst in his enemies.  The U.S. will never be the same again.

For starters, let's look at Adam Schiff and Gerald Nadler.  Once just off-the-rack hack politicians, now they're cartoons...of sleaze-ball villains.  Trump, somehow, made them go w-a-a-a-y too far in making ridiculous accusations — climaxed by Schiff's "improvised" mischaracterization of Trump's phone call to Ukraine.

Much of America had already grown weary of the establishment clones that have populated our government, hence the underpinning of Trump's victory in 2016 (also the same year the Cubs won the World Series — first time in 109 years).  We were ready for Trump and burned out on Hillary.  As a well-known business and media personality, with no Ivy League pedigree or political past, Trump stepped right into the winner's circle.  This was much to the chagrin of the usual suspects — hence the concerted effort to depose him.  Meanwhile, the terms "Deep State" and "swamp" have assumed permanent positions in our language relating to politics.

Obviously, Mr. Trump is not a perfect being.  But, compared to the quasi-humans of the Deep State, he's a refreshing breath of fresh air.  But now he's gone, at least from the reins of power.

One great thing he did that has not been much talked about, has to do with the Iranian seizure of a British tanker ship in the Persian Gulf.  Back in July of 2019, our military tacticians were working overtime to plan the U.S. reprisal for this provocation.  After a mild pause, Mr. Trump announced that the U.S. was not going to retaliate.  Why?  Because, as Mr. Trump said, the damage the Persians caused did not warrant the human cost such retaliation would inflict on them.  In all my life, I've never witnessed a president make such a wise statement...until then.

The camouflage has been stripped away.  False pretenses of benevolence and pandering to counterfeit victims are now more easily seen for what they are.  Weariness of government malfeasance is the real pandemic.  A clearer concept of the proper role of government has finally emerged: protect the freedoms we already have — not dole out "freedom" to those who "qualify" because they belong to a particular group.  Adherence to stereotypes is supposed to be protected as necessary mental laziness among the (ahem) caring Progressives.  Really?

To further compare the before with the after, our esteemed Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, just announced her interest in taxing unrealized capital gains.  The audible "groan" was heard from coast to coast.  Property-owners would have to appraise their holdings and re-mortgage them in order to satisfy the demand.  Stock investors would be inclined to liquidate their holdings, thus driving down the indexes, for the same purpose.  While he was president, Mr. Trump expressed his interest in indexing the tax on capital gains to inflation.  Sober logic!  After all, over time, a significant amount of the gain that is taxed is really not an actual increase in the value of the asset...but, rather, the decrease in the value of the money used to buy it.

And, now that we've all gotten a basic education in immunology, we can better understand the true success of the Trump presidency.  By provoking his opponents on the left into recklessly exposing themselves as the true villains they are, he has vaccinated the nation from becoming ever more infected with their nonsense.  We are now witnessing the body politic's reaction to the constant attempts to usurp our freedom.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.