VIEW from behind the plow

A retired Air Force veteran commented to us recently that when he was serving overseas and witnessed the corruption that was so commonplace in many places he thought “I’m so glad my country’s not like that.”

But now, sadly, he sees the same kinds of things going on in his own country, apparently referring to the reported self-dealing that has been revealed regarding the Bidens and the Clintons in the not-too-distant past and the dirty politics being played against President Trump.

The “swamp” in Washington, D.C., has become a morass of green (money) corruption where the denizens are groping for every dollar they can find, and citizens are footing the bill.

Eric Metaxas, the host of the Eric Metaxas Show (radio) and a Christian apologist as well as an author, was interviewed recently on the Heritage Foundation’s podcast about his conversion from an anti-Trump guy to a supporter.

He said he was put off by Trump’s rough-around-the-edges style until he began to listen more closely to what he was saying and while writing an article for The New Yorker magazine. While making fun of the Trump style he found himself developing an affection for the president.

He realized that Trump was a folk hero who talked with the people rather than just with swamp dwellers.

Metaxas, who has written a lot of comedy, plus 30 children’s books, along with more serious stuff, including “Bonhoffer,” the book about the German dissident from an aristocratic family, who opposed the Nazi takeover of Germany until he was finally executed by the regime, has gone full circle on the Donald, coming to the point he sees him as a savior of the American way of life.

In the podcast with Metaxas interviewer Karino Trinko, editor in chief of The Daily Signal, asks Metaxas what he likes about President Trump and he says:

“I like almost everything about him. He’s, I would say, a very refreshing figure in American politics. And of course, that’s what makes him a disruptor.

“I guess his ability to see things slightly differently is what’s most refreshing, his ability to look at an issue and say, “Why don’t we do this?” And everybody says, “Well, you can’t do that.” And he says, “Well, why not?” He has that side to him, and I think it served him very well in a number of ways.

Cares About Conservative Values

“For me, basic conservative values, you know, low regulation, low taxes, the life issue, the unborn, freedom generally, those are things that I think are very quickly being pushed away because we have a culture [where] we’ve been so blessed with these things that we don’t really know what they are.

“And I think under the last administration, under eight years of Obama, I think a lot of people realized, ‘Holy cow, we’re drifting very far from the Constitution and from basic American values.’ [And it’s] simply because—you know, it’s like the fish who’s in water. He’s unaware of the water.

“I think that’s part of the reason a lot of Christians turned to Trump, because they saw that somehow he gets this. This is not somebody we might have picked first and there still may be many issues that we would quibble with, but honestly, getting that is so big.”

Writes ‘Donald Drains the Swamp’

The part of the interview we liked the best came when Metaxas discussed his children’s book, “Donald Drains the Swamp.”

(Donald is a caveman in the book.)

Metaxas explained:

“When Trump was in the primaries, a friend of mine – who actually is the illustrator of these books – that’s why the illustrations are brilliant, because he’s brilliant, he was the one that kind of convinced me to kind of take a look at Trump—kept saying, ‘He’s sort of like a folk hero.’ And I thought, ‘Wow, he’s right.’

“So when Trump was elected, I thought, ‘ … Tim Raglin and I have got to do another children’s book based on Trump.’ So we’d done another children’s book in the past, but we kept thinking, ‘Well, what would it be like? What would a children’s book be like?’ And we settled on this idea of him as a caveman character.

“The first book is called and ultimately, it’s like a humor book for adults in the shape of a kid’s book. Although, it works as a kid’s book because there’s nothing nasty in it. It’s not a vicious political book, but there’s humor in it. There’s characters in the swamp, … one of them has half glasses and cries a lot. Obviously, that’s a [Sen.] Chuck Schumer-type. …

“It’s all dinosaurs, and the biggest, baddest figure in the whole swamp is the George-o-saurus. Feel free to laugh.

“But … there’s all kinds of characters in here. It’s a bipartisan swamp. There’s a turtle. It looks a bit like [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell, you know, it’s kind … of goofy. But what it does is it illustrates on the simple level of a fable: What does it mean to connect the people back to their government? What does it mean to be out of touch? What does it mean to have a king that lives in the middle of the swamp and he never talks to the people he represents, [he] only talks to the people who live in the swamp, and the people live in the swamp because they want to be near the king?

“So Donald is this caveman and they go to him and they say, ‘Hey, like, we never get to talk to the king anymore. He doesn’t care about us.’ So Donald says, ‘Well, yeah, I got some time tomorrow. I’ll walk down there, I’ll check it out.’

“So he goes down there, he talks to the swamp people, and of course he discovers that the swamp doesn’t look like the green swamp just because it’s a green swamp. It’s made of money. He realizes that there’s only one solution, they’ve got to drain the swamp. And he’s a builder of caves, and he says it’s no big deal. You just dig a big ditch and the water drains out and you drain the swamp.

“I’m giving you the basics, but it really is funny … because it’s so simple and so true, because you drain the swamp. Everybody follows the money to the horizon, flowers bloom, and … here’s the fill-up for which you are not prepared, the people say, of course, ‘Hey, Donald, the king and everybody left, would you be our new king?’

You Are a Free People

“Donald says, ‘No, you are a free people now. You don’t want a king. A king tells people what to do and they have to do it. A free people governs themselves.’

“And they say, ‘Well, you mean like they’d have a leader, like a president?’

“And he goes, ‘Well, yeah. And if that’s what you’re looking for, I’m you’re caveman.’

“So he becomes the president who is elected to do the will of these people. And the money’s drained out of the swamp.

“So there’s a lot of really goofy humor in it, but there’s a central basic concept of, what is freedom? What happens when money corrupts politicians that are no longer in touch with the people? It’s really basic.

“The sequel, ‘Donald Builds the Wall,’ they’ve been so successful [that] the land of the free, as it’s now called, is thriving. The cavemen have invented the wheel. They’ve invented fire. They’re starting to cook their food.

People Want to Come Here

“So of course people want to come there because it’s wonderful, and some people come there who are not in love with freedom. They’re just there to kind of get what they can get.

“They say, ‘Well, you can’t stay here.’ So they carry them to the border and say, ‘Until you’re ready to be part of this liberty thing, you can’t be here.’ But the people keep coming back. And finally Donald says, ‘I’ve got a solution. Let’s build a wall.’

Let’s Build a Wall

Metaxas closes the interview this way:

“Presidents, if they could be like Mike Pence, that would be a wonderful thing, but sometimes they are very rough on the edges and I think you have to make a mature decision. You cannot be petulant and insist that you’re going to get a candidate who gives you everything you want.

“I would say this, in case it’s difficult, all you have to do is really fathom what a Hillary Clinton presidency would have looked like and would’ve meant for America. I think at that point, it’s like sticking your head in a basin of ice water. You wake up and you say, ‘Look, I have no choice. I’m going to bet on this candidate. And if things go bad with him, it certainly couldn’t go worse than it would with Hillary Clinton.’

Serious Dangers Existed

“I really think that was a fact, and I think there was serious danger to liberty in America on a whole number of levels. So I allowed myself to have an affection for him, which I still do.”