Well, One Out of Three Ain't Bad, Is It?

This Autumn season has featured prominently in my life this year: First, the World Series, followed by the Presidential Election, then the now-annual reintroduction of the local “Holy War” between the Utes and the Cougars. In all, they comprise three major events for my little household that I fully embraced.

                                                                             

Only problem for me was the Yankees lost to the Dodgers in five games, and last night the Utes fell in a dramatic comeback win to the Cougars 22-21 in the final seconds. 

President Donald J. Trump

However surprising as it was to half the country, President Donald J. Trump was re-elected to a second non-consecutive term in an Electoral College “landslide” as it was described by the pundits, coupled with a convincing popular vote total. I loved his choice of J.D. Vance as Vice-President. It was not even a close election.

So, Yankees and Utes fan that I am, two of those major events went down in flames. Now, mind you, I’m not describing myself as a Trumpster by any means, but I have to admit his victory salvaged a .333 batting average for me, and in baseball that’s good enough to get you into the Hall of Fame.

So I will claim a victory for America in Trump’s sweeping victory. I believe his forthcoming administration will prove providential for America in the coming four  years, especially when compared to the alternative of what might have been with a Harris/Walz ticket winning. 

Stunning to me was the fact that Kamala Harris did not out-poll Biden’s last election totals in 2020 in ONE SINGLE COUNTY in America. It was a complete refutation and rejection of her "candidacy." The much-ballyhooed so-called “Blue Wall” (seven historically Democratic states) ALL voted for Trump. She simply flunked the job interview with Americans who were voting against her. 

She has a radiant smile and the giggle to go with it, I’ll give her that, but seriously, she was little more than a tool of the party she represented and that was woefully inadequate this time around. Stunningly, she was an appointed surrogate for a badly declining Joe Biden whose mental acuity was displayed for all to see in the first debate against Trump, and she didn’t even have to seek votes among her party faithful to replace Biden on the ballots of all fifty states, as Trump did. It was an attempted “palace coup” and it failed miserably. 

Trump, on the other hand, is many questionable and dastardly things too but all his faults notwithstanding, America embraced their once-former leader with open arms given the obviously defective alternative. 

He answers literally to no one but himself. He’s a genuine all-American bad a**, and you can quote me on that. 

Even before the dust had settled on the election and before he has taken office, the leaders of the terrorist Hamas organization have signaled their desire for settling the war they started with Israel. Hopefully, that will prove a harbinger for other bad actors on the world stage to get in line with America’s wishes. 

One wonders if, and one hopes, Putin and Russia might follow suit in their ill-conceived incursion into Ukraine and seek for a cessation of those hostilities. Trump’s election will change the calculus of the war mongers in the world, but don’t be deceived into thinking war will suddenly go away. We’ll have war continually until the Savior comes again, for so it has been prophesied.

I have been a silent observer this time around in the national election, not signaling my intentions on my voting preferences, and I have joked when asked about it by saying I would write in Abraham Lincoln. 

Well, I can truthfully disclose now and forever on this page today that I voted (for the first time in my life) for a straight Republican ticket. I returned my ballot by mail to Wasatch County on the day I received it in the mail, and I can now claim my .333 batting average.

I didn’t strike out, and I can stoutly maintain as I did in my title that “one out of three ain’t bad, is it?”