Dear Editor,


Today I received this piece online. I grew up in Vinton but no longer live in the area I don't really want to add more ire, but I read your paper online and the editorial opinion submissions often. I just wanted to add this piece to those that are having those discussions about what is going on within our county's current political struggles and media information and misinformation to the ongoing back and forth… just something for thought.

(Credits added at the bottom of the page) *

Theory on Trump

Just a short note prior to you reading this article. Of all of the hundreds of articles written about Donald J. Trump this one is, in my opinion, by far the most authentic. No matter your politics you will have a better understanding of our President after reading this.

Very interesting theory on Trump's success.

The mayor of Livermore California explains Trump's popularity and success.
This is perhaps the best explanation for Trump's popularity.

Marshall Kamena is a registered Democrat and was elected mayor of Livermore, CA.
He ran on the democratic ticket as he knew a Bay Area city would never vote for a Republican. He is as conservative as they come. He wrote the following:

Trump's 'Lack of Decorum, Dignity, and Statesmanship' By Marshall Kamena, Mayor of Livermore, CA.

My Leftist friends (as well as many ardent #NeverTrumpers) constantly ask me if I'm not bothered by Donald Trump's lack of decorum. They ask if I don't think his tweets are "beneath the dignity of the office."

Here's my answer: We Right-thinking people have tried dignity. There could not have been a man of more quiet dignity than George W. Bush as he suffered the outrageous lies and politically motivated hatreds that undermined his presidency.

We tried statesmanship.

Could there be another human being on this earth who so desperately prized "collegiality" as John McCain?

We tried propriety - has there been a nicer human being ever than Mitt Romney?

And the results were always the same. This is because, while we were playing by the rules of dignity, collegiality and propriety, the Left has been, for the past 60 years, engaged in a knife fight where the only rules are those of Saul Alinsky and the Chicago mob.

I don't find anything "dignified," "collegial" or "proper" about Barack Obama's lying about what went down on the streets of Ferguson in order to ramp up racial hatreds because racial hatreds serve the Democratic Party.

I don't see anything "dignified" in lying about the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi and imprisoning an innocent filmmaker to cover your tracks.

I don't see anything "statesman-like" in weaponizing the IRS to be used to destroy your political opponents and any dissent.

Yes, Obama was "articulate" and "polished" but in no way was he in the least bit "dignified," "collegial" or "proper."

The Left has been engaged in a war against America since the rise of the Children of the '60s. To them, it has been an all-out war where nothing is held sacred and nothing is seen as beyond the pale.. It has been a war they've fought with violence, the threat of violence, demagoguery and lies from day one - the violent take-over of the universities - 'till today.

The problem is that, through these years, the Left has been the only side fighting this war. While the Left has been taking a knife to anyone who stands in their way, the Right has continued to act with dignity, collegiality and propriety.

With Donald Trump, this all has come to an end. Donald Trump is America 's first wartime president in the Culture War.

During wartime, things like "dignity" and "collegiality" simply aren't the > most essential qualities one looks for in their warriors. Ulysses Grant was a drinker whose behavior in peacetime might well have seen him drummed out of the Army for conduct unbecoming.

Had Abraham Lincoln applied the peacetime rules of propriety and booted Grant, the Democrats might well still be holding their slaves today. Lincoln
rightly recognized that, "I cannot spare this man. He fights."

General George Patton was a vulgar-talking.. In peacetime, this might have seen him stripped of rank. But, had Franklin Roosevelt applied the normal rules of decorum then, Hitler and the Socialists would barely be five decades into their thousand-year Reich.

Trump is fighting. And what's particularly delicious is that, like Patton standing over the battlefield as his tanks obliterated Rommel's, he's shouting, "You magnificent bastard, I read your book!"

That is just the icing on the cake, but it's wonderful to see that not only is Trump fighting, he's defeating the Left using their own tactics. That book is Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals - a book so essential to the Liberals' war against America that it is and was the playbook for the entire Obama administration and the subject of Hillary Clinton's senior thesis.

It is a book of such pure evil, that, just as the rest of us would dedicate our book to those we most love or those to whom we are most indebted, Alinsky dedicated his book to Lucifer.

Trump's tweets may seem rash and unconsidered but, in reality, he is doing exactly what Alinsky suggested his followers do. First, instead of going after "the fake media" - and they are so fake that they have literally gotten every single significant story of the past 60 years not just wrong, but diametrically opposed to the truth, from the Tet offensive to Benghazi, to what really happened on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri - Trump isolated CNN. He made it personal.

Then, just as Alinsky suggests, he employs ridicule which Alinsky described as "the most powerful weapon of all." Most importantly, Trump's tweets have put CNN in an untenable and unwinnable position. They need to respond.

This leaves them with only two choices. They can either "go high" (as Hillary would disingenuously declare of herself and the fake news would disingenuously report as the truth) and begin to honestly and accurately report the news or they can double-down on their usual tactics and hope to defeat Trump with twice their usual hysteria and demagoguery.

The problem for CNN (et al.) with the former is that, if they were to start honestly reporting the news, that would be the end of the Democratic Party they serve. It is nothing but the incessant use of fake news (read: propaganda) that keeps the Left alive. Imagine, for example, if CNN had honestly and accurately reported
then-candidate Barack Obama's close ties to foreign terrorists (Rashid Khalidi), domestic terrorists (William Ayers & Bernardine Dohrn), the mafia (Tony Rezko) or the true evils of his spiritual mentor, Jeremiah Wright's church.

Imagine if they had honestly and accurately conveyed the evils of the Obama administration's weaponizing of the IRS to be used against their political opponents or his running of guns to the Mexican cartels or the truth about the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the Obama administration's cover-up.

So, to my friends on the Left - and the #NeverTrumpers as well - do I wish we lived in a time when our president could be "collegial" and "dignified" and "proper"? Of course I do.

These aren't those times. This is war. And it's a war that the Left has been fighting without opposition for the past 50 years.

So, say anything you want about this president - I get it - he can be vulgar, he can be crude, he can be undignified at times. I don't care. I can't spare this man. He fights for America!

Credit:Evan Sayet" The KinderGarden of Eden, How the Modern Liberal Thinks.

Sincerely,

Teri Phillips

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KW April 21, 2020, 1:02 pm So true he doesn’t think before he says stuff but he is there for Americans, and can fix this country
JO April 21, 2020, 2:32 pm 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
NG April 21, 2020, 3:58 pm This is the biggest bunch of garbage I have ever tried to read.

You want us to believe the fake news is coming from CNN when it is coming from impeached 45 himself. He has made over 16,000 false or misleading claims and it is an everyday thing with him. I have never heard him say one thing to show any sympathy to the families who have lost loved ones in this epidemic. All he talks about is how wonderful he is.

Fighting without opposition is a really stupid statement. If anyone thinks the Democrats the Democrats haven't had opposition every step of the way they are pretty ignorant.

If any one thinks impeached 45 is fighting for America they need to pay attention to what he says. He constantly talks about himself and how every thing that he does and everything that happens reflects on him, how it makes him look. He tried to downplay the covid-19 numbers in the beginning so it wouldn't reflect bad on him. Everything revolves around him. He does not care about the United States or the people. Anyone who believes otherwise is delusional.

Norma Gould
DL April 21, 2020, 8:08 pm Oh Dear

First off, although Dr. Marshall Kamena (an optometrist) did serve as the mayor of Livermore, California, from November 2001 to November 2011, he does not currently hold that office: that position is now occupied by John Marchand. (It’s also unlikely Dr. Kamena “ran as a Democrat,” as the application process for the office of mayor instructs candidates to submit “nonpartisan qualifying papers.”)

More important, though, is that Dr. Kamena is not the author of the article referenced above.

Now, to straighten things out. The happenings in Ferguson, Mo. was a sad situation. The death of the boy, the false reporting of those in the area at the time, the horrible rioting that went on for day after day, and what the whole situation did to that town. But, at no time did President Obama place blame on anyone, except for those rioting.

The author has several things wrong about the Benghazi nightmare. Yes, there was originally some blame put on a YouTube trailer that was translated into Arabic on September 11, 2012. Yes, the person responsible for that trailer, and the film that followed, was arrested. But, it was for violations his probation, and the improper use of an alias in the production of that film. He pleaded guilty and served a year in prison.

As far as the rest of Benghazi, the all Republican committee, headed by Trey Gowdy, found that Hillary Clinton had nothing to do with the tragedy. They found that the reason that Ambassador Stevens and the 3 others were not able to be rescued, was caused by a miscommunication issue between President Obama, The Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and The Secretary of Defense. That came straight out of Trey Gowdy's mouth, the day after they determined their findings.

As for the "Violent takeover of Universities", there has never been such a thing. The Kent State Massacre was because of a protest due the a U.S. bombing in Cambodia.

Now, the article says that without Abraham Lincoln, the Democrats might still have slaves. Sit down and let me educate you. It's no secret that the slaves were freed in 1864,and that the plantation owners in the South were predominantly Democrats. Fast forward around 100 years, or so. Our country had been going through a huge battle that you might've heard about called Civil Rights. It started around 1950,or so. By this time, the families of those plantation/slave owners from 100 years earlier, we're referee to as Southern Democrats, or Dixiecrats. Over the course of the 1940s through the 1950s, a funny thing happened in American politics. The Democrats, that used to be the conservative Party, became the liberal Party. The Republicans, that used to be the liberal party, became the conservative party. Now, the Dixiecrats didn't first catch on to this. It took them the better part of two decades, but eventually they all changed over to the Republican Party. So, the families of those former slave owners, we're then the newest Republicans. So, it wouldn't be the Democrats that still owned the slaves, if we hadn't had Abraham Lincoln. It would be the Republicans that owned those slaves.

Yet another HUGE mistake in that article. It made a reference to Hitler and Socialist. Talk about fake news. Ya see, Hitler was a con artist just like Trump is. Before he started his political career in Germany, he created his own political party. He called it "The German Socialist Workers Party". This wasn't because he was a Socialist, silly. It was to fool the German citizens into believing he was. And it worked. But, then after Chancellor Hindenburg passed away, and he became Chancellor, he started replacing members of his government with his friends from Austria, and the Nazi Party, his true party. Hitler WAS NEVER a Socialist! A Nazi and a Socialist are completely opposites.

Lastly, yes Hillary Clinton did do her Senior thesis on Alinsky. But, she was very critical of him in it. She wrote that his tactics were not applicable to the existing social environment.

As far as the claim of fake news and the Democratic Party being against American values. The whole text about this topic is in reverse. The fact is, the so called
KJ May 10, 2020, 12:35 pm That is the truth! Well written Darin
GS September 20, 2020, 10:54 pm Great examples and great comparisons.
BT October 6, 2020, 12:14 pm Please don't trick reader's brain. He is a WRESTLER not a Fighter. Fighting IRS doesn't count.
CH October 9, 2020, 4:42 pm I have not seen a more concise and to the point of truth as this article. I wish it could be in the media that seems to be so far left that it is shameful. I worry what will become of the America of promise and hope when the democrats destroy it.
TL October 18, 2020, 2:00 am No, a California mayor did not write a column that ‘explains Trump’s popularity and success’
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/feb/25/facebook-posts/no-california-mayor-did-not-write-column-explains-/

2017: He Fights
https://townhall.com/columnists/evansayet/2017/07/13/he-fights-n2354580
TM January 17, 2021, 8:37 pm The article I have just looked at is accurate.
I lived and worked in the Middle East many years and fully agree with Mr. Kamena.
Matter of fact, I am a witness to more evidence of the “fake news”.
Congratulations Mr. Kamena.
I loudly applaud your thoughts...