There is a great story in the Hebrew Bible that helps us understand the political dynamic of former president Donald Trump. With him announcing his candidacy for 2024, we need to revisit this story. Donald Trump is Hosea’s Whore.

Hosea is one of the “Nevi'im” - the prophets. This group of texts are divided between the former and the latter prophets, with Hosea being one of “the twelve” latter prophets. (Christians will use the term ‘minor prophets’.) What sets Hosea apart from the rest is the optics - if you can just imagine how its events must have struck the people of Israel.

As told in the story, God tells the prophet to marry and have children with a prostitute. The associated visuals aren’t much different than today... a woman at the street corner calling out to men passing by.

Prophets, on the other hand, were usually separated from - shall we say - the daily life of the community; one went to visit/consult with a prophet or the prophet was summoned to the court to speak to the king. One might think of a monk in a monastery to get a roughly equivalent visual.

The visual here is immensely compelling... the prophet must have come into the city and “called out” to the prostitute - not the other way around. The image is such that one “cannot not see it” - and having been seen, now cannot unsee it.

Sound familiar?

The Whore as a Metaphor for Something Else

The Hebrew Bible commonly uses prostitution as a metaphor for Israel running after their neighbors’ false gods. Here it is an image of what has become of Israel - in the eyes of Israel’s God.

As imagery, the story of Hosea is a mirror. The prophet and the whore are the mirror into which the people are compelled to look. I can imagine - because I hear exactly the same reasoning from the Left and the “Never Trump” crowd - that Israel runs up to the prophet and demands an explanation. The prophet litigates all of Israel's sins.

Israel retorts (in that thin, whiny voice I equate with the philosophy major on the political Left):

“Are you really a prophet of God? Why do you think the whore will do anything?”

The prophet responds: “It’s not about me or the whore... it's about YOU! This?” His finger circles around himself and the whore. “This is all a mirror that you would be forced to look at yourselves!”

The Ruling Class in the Eyes of the Rust Belt

The math of the 2016 election is there for all to see - those, at least, who might have a thread of curiosity left. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by two-odd million. But she lost the Electoral College by losing the Blue Wall of the Rust Belt. The 2016 election is a magnificent exhibit of the genius of the Electoral College because it forces us to come to terms with Rust Belt voters. They have been termed the “Obama/Trump Voter” - they voted for President Obama twice, but then for Trump.

Why?

Rather than relitigate the stupidities of the media Left (racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc.) let’s do this: Imagine Trump as a prostitute calling out from the street corner. Then drive into the city center of a Rust Belt town. Stop off at a diner. Then ask the folks how in the world could they possibly have voted for THAT!!??

“Son,” the older man at the bar turns and says, “you did notice the factory down the road as you drove in, right? Did you miss that neighborhood where all the homes are broken down and empty?”

“But why do you think Trump will do anything about it? Do you actually think he cares about you?” Again, in that entitled trust-fund baby’s whiny, thin voice.

“Son, it isn't about Trump. It’s about the ruling class that told us that shipping overseas our abundant raw materials and means of production in search of cheaper labor was ‘free trade’.”

“You see, these people who make the rules - they’re never the ones to suffer when they’re wrong. That’s the story of the shuttered factory and broken down homes you drove past on your way into town. Don’t you understand?”

“We used to create wealth here. We used to take raw materials we had in abundance and we made useful things. We used to enjoy the dignity of creating things others needed. Not only did these folks ship our dignity overseas, they divorced us from the creation of wealth. So we - not them - became poor. And now we’re pissed.”

The visitor starts to speak, then stops. Is he starting to undertand?

“We hear people say Trump started a trade war with China,” the older man goes on. “Are you kidding me? China started that war a long time ago. The only difference is now Trump is fighting back. I’m sure you have some fancy numbers to point to, but before you do that, might I remind you to slow down as you leave town, and look at that neighborhood and factory again? Might I ask you to consider our stories alongside your statistics before you make up your mind about our vote?”

That, more than anything else - stories rather than stats - makes the young man pause.

“Son, the White House is the pinnacle of the Ruling Class. What better way to make these people who make policy but never suffer its consequences actually have to look at themselves than to put someone like Donald Trump in the White House. Now they get to look at themselves for a while. THAT is why I voted the way I did. It is also why the ruling class in this country is beside themselves with anger; they can’t stand what they see in the mirror."

And now for 2024

As we go into the battle for the Republican Party's nomination for President, the first order of business is for the Republican Establishment types like Mitch McConnel with his coke-bottle glasses to finally get his thick skull wrapped around the dynamic that is Donald Trump... McConnel is part of the Ruling Class and Trump is Hosea’s Whore. McConnel can’t stand Trump because McConnel is looking in the mirror. At his age I doubt he can acquire the self-awareness to realize what is happening.

I had two hopes coming out of 2016. I hoped Trump would have a reasonably good sense about what fights to pick. I also hoped the Republican Establishment (e.g. McConnel and other like him) would develop at least a modicum of self-awareness having been forced to look at themselves. Neither happened. But it looks like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has learned the most important lesson Trump Voters want learned.

The governor’s base case for the Republican nomination is that he understands that on some issues the gloves simply have to come off. I’ll suggest three. And the point of listing them has less to do with the issues than with the people who have started these fights. Let me be clear, on these issues and toward these people, the time for nice has long-since passed.

1) Stopping the effort to psychologically divorce our children from us as their parents.

Consider something written in 1952 by Bertrand Russel:

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The social psychologists of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will be arrived at. First, that the influence of the home is obstructive. Second, that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Third, that verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth, that the opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity…

Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The population will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.

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Russel is speaking of mass psychology and the art of persuasion. Specifically he shows how the rhetorical dynamic that was Adolf Hitler belies the idea that humans are inherently rational, but rather are highly susceptible to propaganda.

Right now we are facing such an attack from two angles - but both go the core idea of identity and require our children’s psychological formation be stripped from the home and family: “Critical Race Theory” in elementary schools is an attempt to determine how our children see themselves in racial categories. “Gender-affirming...” at the elementary ages is exactly the same attack on home and family.

Read the Russell quote again; that is what this is all about. There is nothing to negotiate here. They started this fight. We must finish it.

2) Forcing the “interventionist school” out of America's foreign policy establishment once and for all.

There have always been two schools of thought in U.S. foreign policy: realism and interventionism. The interventionist will try to caricature realists as “isolationists.” Historically, there has never been any seriously “isolationist” thought in American foreign policy. The United States Navy - which includes the Marine Corp - has from the start projected U.S. combat power (naval and expeditionary) to ensure we can trade peaceably with other countries. The deployment of Marines to the “shores of Tripoli” was to put an end to the threat of the Barbary Pirates. When one studies the Barbary Pirates, it becomes clear quite quickly that Al Qaeda and ISIS today are just a reincarnation of the Barbary Pirates - only with a social media propaganda arm. We dealt with this before without having to occupy anything - and particularly without trying “to make the world safe for democracy.”

Our way of life has roots that go centuries deeper than our Declaration of Independence. These roots go deeper even than the Magna Carta and reach into Northern European ideas of self-government as much as into Anglo-Saxon traditions of parliament and common law. Our Western international order comes from a time when Europe had exhausted itself of religious wars. It will not be until the peoples of tribal countries exhaust themselves of religious/tribal warfare that they will be able to grow the roots needed to nurture the forms of government we take for granted. Those roots simply cannot be grown for them by our military.

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We are tired - very tired - of being lied to by the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, John Bolton, Anthony Blinken, Victoria Nuland, and Fiona Hill. These people are literally up their eyeballs in blood.

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It is hard to know what is more offensive - that these lessons have not yet been learned, or that they have been learned and are deliberately ignored to feed the military-industrial complex. Either way, we are tired - very tired - of being lied to by the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, John Bolton, Anthony Blinken, Victoria Nuland, and Fiona Hill. These people are literally up their eyeballs in blood. They must be made to answer for our war dead and for the spoiled souls of the surviving children we sent to fight their fools’ errands.

When we invaded Afghanistan I was teaching boys barely out of diapers how to hit a baseball. Over the years that followed, especially after the catastrophe that was Iraq, I grew increasingly skeptical of the civilian leadership (not the active duty boots on the ground whom I revere). My mind was made up when I watched as those boys barely out of diapers then enlisted to be sent to the same war that began back when they couldn’t wait to get their snack bar ticket after the game.

These people are no different than those who want to hijack our children’s sense of identity. There are no negotiations to be had here. Our Founding Fathers did not sacrifice their lives and treasure for us to become a global hegemon sending generation after generation of our children to fight other peoples’ battles, only to have some come home in coffins and many others sentenced to a life of substance abuse and squalid homelessness.

Again - there is nothing to negotiate. From Wolfowitz through Cheney, Bolton, Blinken, Nuland, and Hill, these people are pathologically addicted to power. Nothing less than driving these war-mongers out of government once and for all will secure peace and prosperity for future generations. They started us down this ruinous road. We must return the American experiment to its original purpose.

3) Returning to genuinely free trade.

It's not rocket science. If you divorce your population from the creation of wealth, they will become poor - and then pissed.

Wealth is created in one way, and in one way only. People use these two things God gave us called hands to take the raw materials of the earth and make useful things. The farmer grows the coffee and the potter makes the coffee mug... and now the barista has a job. “Free trade” happens when people take of the raws they have in abundance and make things they then sell to other populations who lack those raws. When everyone sells from their abundance into everyone else’s scarcities - without rent-seeking lobbies and rapacious bureaucracies skimming from the top - you have “free trade.” You also have a broadly diffused creation of wealth... which then creates a large and thriving middle class.

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“Free trade” happens when people take of the raws they have in abundance and make things they then sell to other populations who lack those raws. When everyone sells from their abundance into everyone else’s scarcities - without rent-seeking lobbies and rapacious bureaucracies skimming from the top - you have “free trade.”

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“Globalization” is simply an exploitation of the labor of the many to the advantage of the few. We have gone from the most prosperous of all peoples - with the largest middle class - to an economy of mansions, butlers, and maids. There is nothing to negotiate here; the Ruling Class’ globalist apparatus must be dismantled in its entirety. With respect to the Chinese Communist Party especially (the CCP - the problem is not with the Chinese people) we must understand that they do not view “agreements” as we do. The Chinese text of any agreement will use opaque language that will allow the CCP to interpret it in whichever way suits their purpose at any point in time. As long as China is ruled by the CCP, there is no point in negotiating trade agreements.

Tariffs are, everywhere and always, a bad idea; unfortunately they are sometimes necessary. The days of shipping from our abundance of raw materials and technological know-how to China need to come to an end. Either the companies who exploit Chinese labor wrap it up over there, or we tariff them into oblivion over here. Either way, we will once again take from our abundance and sell into others’ scarcities - and gladly allow them to do the same on fair and equitable terms. We will once again have a diffuse creation of wealth and the diffuse prosperity that comes with it. Again, this must not be the first offer in a negotiation. It must be the end in mind in an epic battle with the Ruling Class. They started this fight; we must finish it.

The Problem with Donald Trump and the Republican Party

I suspect the former President agrees with me on these three things above. And I appreciate the uncompromising nature of the fight he brings to these issues. The problem is he does not know how to pick his battles. We’re not tired of the fight over these three things. Indeed, we’re just getting warmed up. But we are exhausted with the endless petty fights over everything else.

It has been fun - and still is - watching the Ruling Class gag on all things Trump just as Israel gagged on Hosea and his whore. I had hoped for eight straight glorious years watching the show with popcorn and beer... silently hoping the Republican Party would somehow finally get the memo.

Governor DeSantis will win the nomination if he can successfully bring a Trumpian fighting spirit to the three issues above, but refuse to be drawn into distracting, petty, meaningless fights on the margins.

Otherwise we just might have to send a copy of the memo for everyone’s records.