The Bookworm Beat 12/30/17 — the random thoughts edition

For the Bookworm Beat, 2017 has been a wonderful and entertaining year. Moreover, this Bookworm predicts that 2018 will be even better.

Bookworm Beat New YearI only believe the good polls. While the polling did prove accurate in Alabama, the reality is that for the past couple of years, those people who rely on polls are probably the same people who read their horoscope in the local paper every morning to plan their day. Nevertheless, how can I not like a poll — from Gallup, no less — that sees President Trump as the second most admired man in America, coming in only 3 percentage points behind Obama.

I’m not even bothered that Obama leads. Think of it this way: For nine years, the media has practiced a form of idolatry when it comes to Obama. This is not an exaggeration. From the beginning, he was a “magical negro” and a “light bringer.” He was regularly photographed so it appeared that he had halos, rainbows, or streams of sunlight radiating from his head. He was touted as the smartest man ever to occupy the White House and the greatest president since Lincoln, FDR, and Kennedy combined! Just when one thought the hagiographers couldn’t sanctify him more, they did. They always did.

Meanwhile, to continue the religious analogy, Donald Trump has been the Prince of Darkness. No, not the Prince. The Knave, the Garbageman, the Drug Dealer of Darkness. He’s been castigated as a rapist, a Hitler-esque fascist, a bigot, a homophobe, a misogynist, an antisemite, an Islamophobe, a liar, a traitor, and an incompetent — and that’s just in the news for any single day in the past fifteen months. And yet Trump still manages to be the second most admired man in America. Talk about a tortoise and hare victory for him.

  • It appears that despite the media’s effort to destroy the Trump presidency, people have noticed a few things:
  • they’ve noticed that the economy is soaring;
  • they’ve noticed that race riots have stopped;
  • they’ve noticed that gay people are still getting married;
  • they’ve noticed that the actual rapists, with few exceptions, are Progressives;
  • they’ve noticed the increased economic freedom that comes from fewer regulations and they anticipate the roar of the economy from lower taxes;
  • they’ve noticed that an unchained American military wiped out ISIS;
  • they’ve noticed that Europeans are voting like Trump supporters not Obama supporters in their own elections;
  • they’ve noticed that the Trump administration is breaking up child sex rings and MS-13 gangs;
  • they’ve noticed that China and the rest of the world are working with Trump to isolate North Korea;
  • they’ve noticed that multi-million dollar football players look silly and uninteresting when taking a knee against the country that made them rich;
  • they’ve noticed that the world isn’t warming, it’s cooling; and
  • they’ve noticed that Trump’s rhetoric is about America and Americans, not about various race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation categories.

So even though Trump came in second, I call that a strong win — and that’s why this is one poll I believe.

Today’s and yesterday’s headlines out of England (Click on image to enlarge)

Obama and the Mullahs. We know that, when Obama ignored the people of Iran in 2009 by refusing to support their Green Revolution, when he betrayed Americans by blocking efforts to halt Hamas-Iran drug running in America, and when he brokered an unconstitutional agreement that involved him secretly shipping billions in cash to Iran, he was trying to help the Mullahs. How ironic is it, then, that the pallets of cash so enraged the beleaguered Iranian people they are now massing in great protests against the Mullahs across Iran? And also, how ironic is it that Obama’s determined efforts to raise up the Mullahs so frightened the Sunni nations in the region that they are now making common cause with Israel, a nation Obama manifestly despises?

The Orville and transgenderism. Have any of you heard of a Fox TV show called The Orville? I hadn’t, although it started several months ago, because I pay very little attention to the TV. Usually, I watch only Dancing With The Stars, Supernatural, and TCM movies. However, Mr. Bookworm had heard about The Orville and suggested we give it a try.

The show, which Seth MacFarlane wrote and in which he stars, is a quirky version of Star Trek : The Next Generation. It plays a lot of things for laughs and, of course, given MacFarlane’s involvement, its sensibility leans left. I still watch it, though, because it’s amusing, well-written, well-acted, and imaginative.

Also, as is true for all quality programming, the occasional moment of pure truth shines through the Leftist haze. That was the case with an episode that examined sex changes in children. The premise is that one of the ship’s officers comes from an entirely male race. That means, of course, that his romantic partner is male. It’s faux-homosexuality, because there are no other options for the people of this race.

The mechanics of procreation are unclear, but the officer manages to lay an egg, hatch it . . . and discover that the baby is female. It turns out, then, that the race is not entirely male. Every so often, females are born and surgical converted into males. When the officer ask the ship’s doctor to perform the surgery, she absolutely refuses. Every single member of the crew is against the decision to convert a child to the opposite sex.

I won’t say any more about the plot details, because what interested me was the premise that the ship’s officers are horrified at the thought of imposing medical transgenderism on a child. This is not implicit; it’s explicit. At one point, Seth MacFarlane, who plays the captain, says that when the child becomes an adult, the decision is hers to make, thereby proving to the transgender contingent that he believes in transgenderism. He adds, however, that it’s entirely unethical to impose this change on her when she is still a child.

I’m surprised that this episode passed under the radar of the usual LGBTQRSTUV etc. contingent. And I’m glad that Lefties, in pursuit of their art, sometimes land upon the truth.

2018. I have high hopes for 2018. In 2017, Trump followed the trajectory Scott Adams predicted: First, he was incompetent, which made it hard to compare him to Hitler. Second, once the Hitler meme was killed, he suddenly became competent. In 2018, Trump will be unchained. With that in mind, I have a few predictions:

In my wildest fantasies, I see Trump exposing the real Sting — not the foolish charges of collusion against him but, instead, a complete rout of Deep State Leftists from the FBI, the CIA, the DOJ, the IRS, the EPA, the State Department, and all the other institutions that have become increasingly corrupt over the years, a process that accelerated during the Obama era.

I see the economy continue to boom, thanks to a combination of low taxes and less regulatory meddling.

I see Israel continue to make nice with her former enemies, even as Iran’s Mullahs are destroyed from within by the long-suffering people they have abused for almost 40 years.

I see Kim Jong-Un brought low, whether by China (acting at Trump’s urging), by an internal coup, or by a short, sharp war. The last will be painful and bloody, but it will be over very quickly.

What do I see in Europe? I don’t know. I think 2018 is the hinge point or fork in the road. Europeans can either turn back the Islamic tide in 2018 or start naming all their children Mohamed.

What are your predictions for 2018?

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