Picture courtesy of Matt J.

Thank you Donald Trump!

How the Chaos of the Election Cycle has Made Me a Better Man

For those of you who already know my predilections towards Mr. Trump and the Republican race in general, please do not interpret the title’s exclamation mark as raw excitement, veiled sarcasm, or indifferent disgust. It is none of these. No, I am not endorsing the Republican front runner turned GOP nominee; no, I have not changed my mind about the election and decided to just go with the flow; no, I am not being facetious nor I do not have a hidden agenda or a surprise attack up my sleeves. I have simply decided to be thankful for Donald Trump. To be clear, my thankfulness is not exactly the wake-up-on-your-birthday-to-strawberry-waffles-with-gobs-of-whipped-cream-a-million-dollar-gift-card-on-your-napkin-and-a-Porsche-911-Turbo- parked-in-your-driveway kind of thankfulness. My thankfulness is more along the variety of thank-the-Lord-for-jolting-me-awake-2 Nephi-2-opposition-in-all-things-Helaman-12-it’s-time-to-get-prepared-because-this-might-be-it-and-there’s-things-to-do.

But whether or not this is really IT, I still believe Donald Trump is an alarm clock. If you’re not awake already, I suggest you get there soon.

Sidenote: I am not trying to cast stones or persuade anyone politically. I am for the most part done having political debates as to which candidate has the best policies. I know what I believe and you know what you believe. Moreover, at this point the majority of such arguments seem to fall on deaf ears as people become even more entrenched in their own perspectives. My goal in writing is not to change your opinion, rather to persuade you that regardless of who becomes our next president the future we have all been worried about is at our doorstep and the time to prepare is now.

Those of you who follow pro basketball may recall how angry Cleveland Cavalier fans were in the summer of 2010 when Lebron James left Cleveland for the Miami Heat. Fans the state over filmed themselves burning Lebron’s jersey in protest of his departure. In 2014 when James left Miami to return to Cleveland many of those same fans revived their burned or tattered jerseys to welcome King James home. The Miami fans, however, now disgusted themselves, burned Lebron’s Heat jerseys out of protest. These examples prove fan loyalty to team far outweighs the any allegiance they might feel to an individual player. The same fans who cheered James in Miami did so not because of his skill, but because of the jersey he was wearing.

I have never felt beholden to the Republican party. Even though they have always been the lesser of two evils in my eyes, they have failed me too often to be worthy of my loyalty. The political deja vu I feel every election cycle I can remember (dating back to 1992 before I could even vote)always comes down to the same three choices:

1. Hold my nose and pull the lever for someone I am told is the lesser of two evils.
2. Stay home and be sure that my vote doesn’t count.
3. Find someone who I could reasonably support (or write in a name if I can’t) and square myself with casting a vote for someone destined to lose.

These choices I have tolerated in the past now seem repugnant to me, but I am beginning to see a fourth option emerging from the election chaos. It has more to do with attitude and less to do with action, although the action must eventually and necessarily follow. The answer is to ignore the presidential election completely (I will of course research local and congressional races) and spend the time bettering myself and those around me. I invite you to do the same.

I have come to the conclusion that the results of this election no longer matter to me and maybe they shouldn’t matter to you either. Maybe they have never mattered. I know that may sound shocking at first glance, but hear me out. Yes, I still care deeply about the results of this election. Yes, this election is the most important election of my lifetime and possibly the most important of the last two centuries. Yes, it is important that we pick a leader for our great country, and it would be wise to select a great leader to lead us, especially at this critical juncture in our nation’s history. Yes, I am grateful for the opportunity to vote, especially to participate in primary voting and help choose nominees. Yes, the primary process is messy, and could probably use some tweaking, but freedom is chaotic at times and our primary process does an amazing job at organizing that chaos in a way so that individual votes matter and still also represent the will of a broader group of people — it is much better than it was before 1968 and better than any other country (currently or historically) in the world I might add. Yes, I am very grateful that we had a diverse field on both sides of the ticket and people who could speak to the corruption in Washington (Sanders, Cruz, Trump). And yes, I am even grateful for Trump’s atypical campaign. But no, I am not giving up or hedging my bets or growing bitter because my candidate did not win out. No, I am not trying to convince people that they are wrong or stupid or dangerous and that they will cause the downfall of this country if so and so is or is not elected. And no, I am not isolating myself in the name of self preservation. I simply no longer care about winning or losing because I have come to realize that the future of this country is bigger than whoever is in charge.

In 2008 and beyond it was a common mantra for President Obama to look backwards and blame President Bush and his policies for wrecking the economy. There will probably be some more of the same when the next president is elected, and maybe even some blame heaped on Obama as well for his part. But we have to stop looking backwards. I do not want to cast aspersions at President Bush or President Obama for the rest of the decade for tinkering with the economy and kicking the can down the road. There were other political players involved and a complicit media on both sides of the aisle who convinced us that the bailout was the ONLY solution to our problems. We know now that putting temporary solutions into play did not solve, but only delayed the inevitable crisis heading our way.

When it comes to the Middle East of foreign policy, I don’t want to blame President Bush for entering the quagmire of Afghanistan or President Obama for creating a vacuum in Iraq that was filled by ISIS when he pulled our troops out. Yes, it is true that Bush and Obama were the men in charge when it came time to make hard these decisions, but even if they were advised by top officials, and even if we agree the buck stops with them, blaming them for their actions is not going to make things any better moving forward. (We certainly aren’t voting for anyone now who plans on fixing the problems they got us in so it makes little sense as to why we would waste time blaming the past.) For good or ill our past presidents actions were their own and will define them as individuals and presidents. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof — both in the future and in the past. The actions of the past need not define our present, our future, who we are as people, our potential for happiness, or the freedoms we sometimes take for granted.

We are a ship at sea sailing towards an impending storm. Even with all hands on deck and a gutsy and dutiful captain at the helm, there is no way to avoid our future fate. But while we must enter the storm, and be tempest tossed on the waters of the great deep, we need not perish.

History is cyclical, not because it repeats itself, but because the generations of Western society rise and fall in patterns dating back centuries. William Strauss and Neil Howe have taken these cycles back six centuries and have some pretty convincing evidence that we are entering another Fourth Turning. In a nutshell, it means that things are going to get really bad for a while, but if we stick together the aftermath is glorious (think Reconstruction or post WWII). With that in mind, the 2016 election is shaping up in similar fashion to the elections of 1860 and 1912. I don’t mean the political wrangling of those years necessarily, though there are the similarities of contested conventions and disgruntled candidates in both elections to be sure. Rather I am comparing the elections on what was/is at stake.

Abraham Lincoln was not the unanimous nominee of the fledgling Republican party and it took four ballots at the 1860 national convention to make him so. Lincoln’s principled stance against slavery and his eloquent oratory skills served him well in the general election against formidable opponents, but words and principles were not enough to change the country’s fate. The election of Abraham Lincoln did not stop the attack on Fort Sumter or the subsequent Civil War (some historians would go so far as to argue that Lincoln’s election was actually the catalyst that caused the Civil War). But because of who was at the helm, the United States of America battled the stormy seas and emerged from the conflict stronger and more united as a nation.

In 1912 Woodrow Wilson took advantage of a divided Republican electorate and ascended easily to the presidency (the progressive wing voted for disgruntled 3rd-party-candidate Theodore Roosevelt and his Bull Moose contingent, while the conservatives split for incumbent William Taft, and neither had enough votes to stop Wilson). Similar to Lincoln’s powerlessness to defy history, the election of Woodrow Wilson did not stop World War I, nor, despite Wilson’s promises to the contrary, the United States’ participation in the Great War. However, unlike Lincoln,Wilson’s guidance of the U.S. out from the storm was ineffective at best and dangerous at worst. When faced with the post-war decision of how to treat Germany, the Allies (France, England and a complacent Wilson) used the Treaty of Versailles to punish rather than reconcile with the Germans. This treaty was certainly one of the catalysts that led to the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazis.

Sidenote: to be true to the cycle of four turnings, the election of 1940 (FDR vs. Willkie) or the election of 1944 (FDR vs. Dewey) would be more accurate comparisons than either of Wilson’s elections (1912 & 1916), but since WWII came as a result of how WWI ended, it is fair to say that the 1912 election had repercussions that lasted for decades.

There is major trouble on the horizon in 2016: fighting in the Middle East that could escalate into global war, the potential for a financial crisis (here and abroad) that could rival and even surpass the Great Depression, the threat of monetary deflation followed by massive inflation, riots and looting, even martial law. There is already a deeply divided electorate (including some seeking revolution) and a strong distrust for the government. History dating back centuries tells us that we are on the brink of a transformative crisis. The last two transformative crises were the Civil War and the combined crisis of WWI and WWII. We are a powder keg in a world already on fire and our fuse is sitting dangerously close to the open flames.

It is arrogance to think that a single president or presidential candidate (now or ever) can thwart the cycles of history and steer us clear of our projected course, and it is naivete to blame someone else (Bush, Obama, their predecessors, etc., even though they may have helped speed up the process some) for the coming crisis. Like Lincoln and Wilson before, whoever we elect this November to lead our country will not be able steer us from our future fate. Regardless of who is nominated, the national debt will continue to grow, taxes will most likely increase as the economic growth rate continues to stagnate, the stock market bubble will grow and burst, the unemployment and under employment rates will continue to increase, and inflation will probably come like a thief in the night.

The future is coming at us like a bullet train and we are stuck on the tracks waiting for impact. Things will most certainly get worse before they get better. The downward slide will start long before we get to election day; depending on how you interpret the news, the slide may have already begun.

So why with all these dire possibilities can I be so thankful? Because there must be opposition in all things, because the Lord has given us an opportunity to humble ourselves before he does it for us, because the time has come to make weak things strong, and because whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not, we needed someone like Trump to come along and turn the primary season on its head, or at least I did.

For too long (I will speak for myself here because I don’t know your heart, but I could probably just as easily use the plural) I have looked to Washington, D.C. or to my state capital or to Salt Lake City or to my local church leadership as a barometer of my life. Trump has changed all that for the better. I have always known that the measurements that matter most are those within the walls of my own home, but more and more I realize that they are the only things that matter.

This is not the conclusion of an isolationist, but the reality of full fledged freedom. I cannot control what happens in the world or in someone else’s life, and I cannot expect anyone else to be able to control my world for me. If the world wants to figuratively or literally jump off a cliff or burn to the ground, I cannot stop it. The best I can do is reach out to those around me and convince them not to do the same:

1. How is my faith and the faith of each of my family members?
2. Are we reading our scriptures and saying our prayers?
3. Am I in good physical health?
4. Do I have an emergency plan in place in the case of a natural disaster or a nation-wide crisis?
5. Am I talking to my family about our emergency plan so that we can all be on the same page?
6. How much food storage will I need in case of such a disaster?
7. Do I have enough cash on hand or an alternative bartering system in place if the banks fail?
8. Do I need a solar-powered generator?
9. Do I need a gun?
10. Do I have neighbors around me who I can rely on and who can rely on me if times get real tough?
11. Do I have enough to share with those around me?
12. What am I doing to warn my neighbor in advance?

This moment will not necessarily define the future of our country, but our response will help define us.

For too long I have wandered the easy road. I have been content to sit idly by and allow others to do things that I was more than capable of doing for myself and my family. For too long I have kept to myself; I have loved from a distance and not engaged as I should with my brothers and sisters. I am thankful that the Lord in his mercy is giving me a chance to get my life in order, for all of us to get our lives in order, as well as the lives of our family, friends, neighbors, co-workers and anyone else who will listen, BEFORE the crisis comes and it is too late to perform any labor. The solutions to whatever lies ahead will not be solved by bureaucracy (civil or ecclesiastical), but by the people who make up these constituencies. Whether or not there is established leadership in place at that point in time will not matter. People acting in love and compassion will lead the way towards a new and glorious United States of America. I invite you to join me in that journey.