Unintended Consequences: How the Media is Helping Trump to Achieve Greatness
Let us start with the supposition that no one has ever achieved greatness without doing so in the face of adversity.
This is certainly true in sports- think of the greatness Johnny Unitas achieved when everything seemed to be going against him- his father dying when he was five while his mother began working two jobs and managing to schedule his older brother, Lenny, to deliver coal from the truck his father once drove, just to keep food on the table. Drafted in the ninth round by hometown Pittsburgh, but never given a chance to call signals in training camp and then summarily cut, the young graduate of Louisville instead played semi-pro ball on fields of cinder and broken glass for $6 per game, that fall. When the Baltimore Colts picked him up on waivers the following winter, no one could have foreseen then, that he would go on to achieve greatness as the best quarterback to ever play the game.
This is true in science and technology- think of how man conquered the barrier of sustained flight through the determination and persistence of two bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio, one Orville and Wilber Wright, brothers who designed one of the first operational wind tunnels to test their contraption, in preparation for their historic flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina- all during a time when the prevailing thought was that, if man were meant to fly, he’d have had wings. Within a dozen years, the first warplanes appeared in the skies over Belgium. Within thirty years, rockets started to be developed by the Third Reich- rockets that would take American men to the surface of the moon, sixty-five years after the Wright Brothers first achieved a sustained flight of twelve and a half seconds.
Greatness in the face of adversity has appeared in individuals throughout history.
Think of the trials and tribulations facing a Genoese sailor, who travelled throughout Western Europe, in search of a monarch who would fund an exploratory voyage westward, across the Atlantic Ocean, in an attempt to find a shorter route to India- having no idea that an entire hemisphere of unknown continents and uncharted lands constituted a world far larger, than anyone had ever thought, up to that point. When Spain’s regents, Ferdinand and Isabella, finally agreed to bankroll Columbus’s voyages, they began a stampede of future colonial aspirants throughout Europe- Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Britain and later Russia, who sought to lay claim to various parts of the New World, desiring the riches and powers it afforded.
Think of the greatness of Mohandas Gandhi who, in the face of warring factions within his own country and a determined British Empire, achieved the very founding of an independent statehood for India- now the world’s largest representative democracy. His modus operandi of non-violent resistance, often in the face of deadly opposition and desires for vengeance, would go on to inspire political movements in South Africa and in the Americas, movements to achieve racial justice, institutional change and societal transformation.
Think of the highly unlikely but ultimate victory of General George Washington who managed to take a band of farmers, frontiersmen and unskilled laborers, and transform them into a fighting force that would defeat the greatest army the world had ever known, up until that point in time. He would go on to become the nation’s first president, all while having to abide a warring cabinet who often schemed behind his back, all in pursuit of personal and partisan interests… something that another president, Abraham Lincoln, would have to overcome to achieve his own historical greatness, seventy years later.
While political opponents, scheming insiders and putative political pundits have always stood in the way of political greatness, these formidable forces have largely been overcome by very few, in particularly challenging times. Often mocked and second-guessed by legions of those who claimed that they knew better, Washington and Lincoln achieved and attained greatness in spite of the fact that they often had to “go it alone,” when it seemed that all the world was going against them.
Conversely, how could one say Barack Obama achieved greatness during his own presidency, when he was almost universally adored by the entire mainstream media and by almost all of the world’s power brokers? Facing absolutely no real opposition from his political opponents, in both the Republican and Democrat parties, Barack Obama was able to skate through eight years of a presidency that achieved relatively little in the grand scheme of things…very little, aside from a so-called Affordable Care Act which no sane politician would dare to embrace even a decade later, and an Iran “deal” that ultimately used taxpayer funds to finance terrorism throughout the world, by an Iranian regime bent on bringing the world towards an apocalypse. No, given all of the adulation and adoration heaped on him by the mainstream media, and even supplication by his political opponents, it was practically impossible, and ultimately proved unattainable, for President Obama to achieve greatness- aside from the fact that he also managed to drive the entire country to the very divisions and discordance we face, today.
Enter one Donald J. Trump, the flashy and often over-stated real estate tycoon from the 1970’s who was the irresistible and undeniable “click-bait” for tabloids and talk shows in the ensuing four decades- who he was dating, what he was building, and the deals he was making all made him a media sensation, who was almost universally adored and promoted as a marketing genius, that is until…
…he decided to run for president.
In the flash of an instant, the one-time media sensation suddenly became a pariah, a misogynist, a racist, a homophobe, a xenophobe and an Islamophobe all because, like so many of his predecessors, he chose to run as a Republican. The last sixty years of presidential politics have witnessed the very same slander and libel foisted on every Republican running for president, and yet “the Donald” was still different. Trump was even undercut by members of his own party, who resented this “upstart” who threatened to shake a tired, unimaginative and neo-conservative and globalist Republican Party to the very core of its foundation. Unlike his predecessors, Trump was the penultimate outsider- but one who also knew the ins and outs, and the “who had dirt on whom,” from politicians in both parties who at one time, sought his own financial support. Here was the man “who knew too much,” elected on a promise to drain the swamp of corruption that took hold in our nation’s capital during the course of his own lifetime. With almost universal opposition from Democrats, Republicans, the mainstream media and bureaucrats throughout government and even in the courts, Trump did the unthinkable and impossible- he defeated Hillary Clinton in an election thought to be far beyond his reach.
Worse, he has persisted in pursuing this agenda while members from within his own cabinet sought to undercut the new president through treachery, guile and a determination to see him fail. The opposition to his election and presidency, which was first evidenced in the boycott of his inauguration, continued as Democrats attempted to manufacture reasons for his impeachment and removal out of their sheer hatred for the man. Aided and abetted by a mainstream media who shares in their hatred of this President, a three-year $40 million investigation into charges that his campaign was in collusion with Russia, came up with absolutely no corroborating evidence. Meanwhile, the efforts to impeach and remove him from office continued in a desperate search to find some reason- any reason, to warrant the effort. On a flimsy and, yes, flatulent claim that the President tried to illegally gain assistance from Ukraine to help him in his re-election efforts, the stink that they themselves created all fell back on Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Adam Schiff who saw their efforts to impeach and remove the President, go down in flames…not that their efforts have so abated, they just need to find some other new reason to proceed.
Say what you will about President Donald J. Trump, but given all of the forces allayed against him, all of the treachery that has been heaped upon him by members of his own party, and even by some members of his own cabinet, no one could reasonably accuse Trump of having the same adulation afforded to his predecessor(s), by either Washington insiders or the political press. With that, along with the machinations of Democrats determined to stand in the way of his success, both here and around the world, the seeds of greatness have thus been sown on the fertile fields of Donald Trump, just waiting for an historic, life-changing challenge that will ultimately make, or break, his presidency.
Whether this challenge comes from a new and virulent corona virus that might prove to become the pandemic plague of the twenty-first century, or whether this challenge comes as the result of a military threat from without, or from domestic upheaval from within, President Donald J. Trump will be dealt the cards of unseen and foreboding challenges that will either prove his mettle, or ultimately prove to be, his own undoing, in the months and in the years ahead…
…and the potential for President Trump to achieve greatness in the very face of universal adversity, is being unwittingly and yet inexorably facilitated by a mainstream media who intends to achieve quite the opposite.
-Drew Nickell, 27 February 2020
© 2020 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
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