...even strict, raw conservatism won't work now, because at least half of the population doesn't understand the situation that we are in and will blame conservatism. We will have to experience the consequences of actions before those people even begin to understand what has been wrought.
I would personally define conservatism as nothing more than advocacy for Constitutionally
limited government. (This limited approach to governance, had it been followed for the past century or so, would have prevented a lot of the problems that "economic conservatives" and even "social conservatives" have complained about for years, now getting louder and louder, it seems.)
***
One of the peculiar features of the
limited government reality of conservatism is the fact that it does not rule out occasionally heavy-handed actions by the government. For example, martial law, under circumstances of national emergency, is Constitutional (see Article I). And since American conservatism is rooted in the Constitution itself, we must not be intimidated by the idiotic claims by the Socialists that all serious conservatives are Nazis. (The Socialists are the ones who have yearned for Marxist death camps to pursue their awful objectives against America. A PhD college professor recently told me that he and his ilk were going to take away my guns and execute me.)
Anyway, if President Trump takes pretty drastic actions aimed at restoring the Constitutional governance of our Republic, he
will get tarred as a Hitler, as a Nazi, as a fascist. But it is arguably his duty as POTUS to act as
aggressively as necessary against the Radical Socialists to pull us well away from the disastrous national precipice to which we are unknowably close.
As you seem to insinuate in your post,
@Sanguine, a frightfully large percentage of U.S. citizens, although pretty disgruntled about politics, are Boiling Frogs. Very few people seem to have any idea bad, how dangerous the Deep State has gradually become over the past 70 years (some would say longer than that). After FDR died, Truman was reportedly worried about the OSS/CIA. Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial-Congressional complex. (Yes, he included Congress in his warning.) JFK was so appalled by the CIA that he declared that he would tear the CIA into a thousand pieces. (Look what he very soon got for saying that in public.)
LBJ was well-known as a politically brutal crook (facing the prospect of two felony indictments until JFK was murdered). Nixon was no choir boy, but many thoughtful conservatives found it especially worrisome when Nixon admitted that he had become a Fabian in his economics. Gerald Ford was at best a Rockefeller guy. Carter strengthened the Deep State's stranglehold on the Executive Branch's Bureaucracy through the "Senior Executive Service." Reagan did a lot of good things, but he could not roll the whole mess back as far as conservatives would have wished.
GHWB did some evidently positive things
but kept promoting the NWO. (That was double-plus-un-good! As far as I am concerned, it completely cancels out his famously genteel nature.) GHWB was also responsible for the FBI's cold-blooded murderer(s) escaping prosecution for the debacle at Ruby Ridge. The Clintons were subtle, but they ramped-up jack-booted thuggery and likely even body laundering at Waco. (When the NRA complained about the feds' utterly atrocious actions under Bill Clinton at Waco, GHWB delivered a scathing denunciation of the NRA and canceled his lifetime NRA membership. [How's that for a lovely Republican ex-POTUS?]) Bill Clinton actually laughed about Waco and went on to establish a sickening cult of Clinton worshipers and likely enlarged (with HRC's help) the extortion ring that dated at least as far back as the 1980s. (As a seemingly minor travesty, Clinton also falsely claimed all the credit for a good economy in the '90s--thereby hopelessly confusing our
hoi polloi concerning good economics.)
Gore tried to steal the 2000 election by clearly premeditated voting fraud in Florida (at least!)--and almost succeeded through a Chicago-style scam. Instead of Gore, we got GWB as POTUS, who was generally a pretty good guy, in my opinion, but too closely tied to his father's ideals and network (and also too "soft" to deal with domestic political crooks). The Dems then ran a veritable Viet Nam era phony and traitor in the person of John Kerry, but Bush squeaked by him in 2004--only to wind up inadvertently setting the stage for Obama to emerge as the Radical Marxist Deep State's penultimate destroyer of the Republic. Obama's "changes' made almost everything in America much, much worse. (Alas, the GOP ran McCain and Romney [good grief] unsuccessfully against Obama--apparently because it was "their turn" within the GOPe.)
Even in 2016, the GOPe was hoping to avoid a Trump Presidency (it was supposed to be Jeb Bush's turn, I'm told), and HRC was hoping for
her final turn to run for POTUS--but against
Trump in particular. After all, Trump was widely regarded as an untrustworthy jerk and (largely for that reason)
the fellow who polled most poorly against HRC. But the American people nominated Trump evidently because they preferred a confrontational, crude, morally challenged jerk over all of the GOP's electoral failures of the past (and also preferred Trump over a record of recent Republican Presidents who, at best, had not stopped the slow-but-sure juggernaut of America's destruction, the juggernaut now labeled the Deep State).
At the very top of this mess of the Deep State, we have also developed a frightful web of Crony Capitalists and ideologically insane academics and
the most corrupt news service since Stalin's Pravda. (Think "Operation Mockingbird"--a nasty CIA project that evidently still exists and has gotten much, much nastier than when it was first exposed by Congress.)
If Trump survives, he definitely will engage in a head-on and politically very disconcerting counter-offensive against the Deep State (a fully Constitutional strategy involving the domestic use of the US military in some respects ["Oh no! He's a Hitler!]). Disgraceful though Trump was before occupying the White House--and to some extent still is--he might be the man of the hour for America. I think Trump will scare the daylights out of a lot of previously only naïve Americans.
Strangely enough, I think that's ultimately a good thing. America needs to be startled. America needs to become wide awake for the first time in modern history. We are at
war on American
soil, not just in the heavens. If you don't think so, wait until Obama and his ilk try to mobilize their purported 400,000 foot soldiers.
There is no easy way out of our current mess. Trump, at least, knows that. Most Americans probably don't know it--yet. In today's vernacular, they need to be "red-pilled." It's a tough pill to swallow, but a necessary one for saving America over the near term. Maybe we can buy time for the real spiritual revival that we need--not the "Church Lady" crap. Maybe then we can get a more conspicuously honorable man as POTUS--like Ted Cruz, perhaps.
(Heck, I'm glad our Creator God overruled my nominational preference and gave us Trump instead of Cruz
at this awful time. Let's wait and see what our current Scoundrel-in-Chief pulls off. In the meantime, let's pray for him.)
