Giving the finger to the establishment …

Yep. I’m that guy. The one Tucker Carlson described.

The one who is fed up with the political games in Washington. The one who doesn’t trust the media to tell the truth. The one who believes our government operates to protect its own first, the rich and the powerful next, and treats the rest of us as cattle to be milked. 

I’m tired of special interests deciding who gets what. I’m sick of the out-of-control spending on useless projects and programs to appease one group or another. 

And I’m disheartened to realize that our nation founded on such lofty principles has devolved into a selfish, self-centered society where celebrity trumps competence and gaming the system gives you greater status than working hard to earn an honest living.

Even more disturbing is how we’ve allowed our country to go from nation of laws, not man, to one where who you are and who you know changes how the law is applied. 

It’s been said the wheels of justice grind exceedingly slow, but exceedingly fine. Now, it appears, that depends entirely on who is doing the grinding. If it’s the Justice Department, or even the FBI, and you’re a high-ranking government appointee, or perhaps just a lower-level bureaucrat, you could commit any number of crimes and skate while retaining your full pension.  At worst you might have to resign – but again you’ll retain your full pension.  But if you’re a regular citizen – or perhaps a soldier or a general in our military – you face fines and imprisonment for doing far less. 

How does that comport with “equal justice under the law” you might ask. 

It’s also been said that justice delayed is justice denied; however, more and more it seems that justice delayed means justice may never be rendered. 

How else can you explain why illegal immigrants – and yes, they have crossed our borders illegally which by any definition makes them criminals – are treated so differently from other criminals.

If a bank robber held up a sign bragging about a crime they just committed they’d be arrested. But if an illegal immigrant holds up a sign bragging about their illegal status they are treated as heroes.  If those same immigrants brought their children here illegally those children are not considered “fruit of the poisonous tree” – derivative of an illegal act – but “dreamers” entitled to special treatment and consideration according to many politicians.   

This is just nuts. Even more nuts is the idea that if you evade ICE long enough you might just get amnesty, bypassing all those other wannabe citizens trying to immigrate here legally. When did that become acceptable? 

I’d like to blame Congress.  But Congress is just a reflection of the people who elect them.  Enough self-centered, selfish people have elected people just like them.      

Our Congress doesn’t represent the rest of us as much as themselves. Most spend the majority of their time in office trying to raise money for their re-election by doing favors – at our expanse – for deep-pocketed campaign contributors. When they aren’t doing that, they busy themselves fighting with each other over ridiculous stuff for political advantage, or getting the government – and our money – involved in things they have absolutely no business being a part of. 

Federal money shouldn’t be funding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, get-out-the-vote programs, Planned Parenthood, after-school basketball programs, school lunches, the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, or any of the other thousands of sacred cows now ensconced in our Federal budget.

The worst of these – government-funded get-out-the-vote programs – shouldn’t even exist. Why should we pay people to convince other people to register and vote?  If they don’t care enough to get off their asses and register and vote on their own then they shouldn’t.

And if you don’t know these are programs largely designed to get more Democrats elected you shouldn’t be allowed to vote, either. You’re too stupid.  

Planned Parenthood should be funded entirely by private contributions. However meritorious their services may or may not be, the idea of government outsourcing healthcare and contraception to a quasi-private organization with armies of lobbyists is just wrong. When an organization needs hired lobbyists to keep the Federal funding flowing, something’s amiss.

The school lunch programs should be handled entirely by the states. The after-school basketball programs wouldn’t be needed if parents did their jobs. 

The Department of Energy and the Department of Education are entirely unnecessary.  The former is a garbage pit of half-assed ideas run by zealots continually trying to defy the immutable laws of supply and demand; the latter is a shill for the teachers’ unions.  Both are self-serving entities that spend our money on promoting hare-brained theories that sound great in a college classroom but fail miserably in the real world.        

Billions are wasted every day on these and too many commissions, bureaus and boards for this, that and the other – such as the Export Import Bank, the African Development Foundation, Agricultural Marketing Service, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, and countless hundreds of other mini and major bureaucracies. 

Honestly, we don’t need all this crap.

Let’s be candid here: most government programs and bureaucracies are a waste of money. The only thing they accomplish is padding the government payroll and kissing the butts of one special interest group or another.

Worse yet, there’s almost no way to get rid of them. Elected politicians can be voted out of office – and, sadly, too rarely are – but bureaucrats are virtually bulletproof. 

Remember Lois Lerner.  John Koskinen.  The heads of the Veterans Administration. The list goes on and on, and there’s nothing anyone seems to be able to do about these weasels.    

The Department of Justice has become a bad joke.  When the Attorney General – an appointee of a Obama – meets privately with Bill Clinton while his wife Hillary is under FBI investigation you don’t need to be a genius to realize what’s happening. When Lynch claims they were only talking about golf and grandkids for 30 minutes on a private plane parked on an airport tarmac without any other witnesses present, it’s insulting to anyone with half a brain.

So when a madman like Trump – and at times he seems one – says he wants to drain the swamp Washington has become, stop illegal immigration and deport illegal immigrants, push for term limits, and yes, put investigating corruption at all levels of our political system on the front burner, well, guess what: I’m willing to put up with all his other baggage to get those things.

The fact that the media hate him, the Republican establishment hates him, liberals hate him, Hollywood types hate him, and government bureaucrats hate him just makes him more attractive to people like me. And I believe there are a lot more of us than most imagine.

I fervently hope he wins if for no other reason than to just to send a message.   

As Michael Moore said recently: electing Trump would be the biggest “fuck you” to the political establishment in American history.

I’m okay with that. It’s long overdue.