Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump certainly has confounded a majority of political analysts and pundits who could never have predicted he would come this far or be so popular as a candidate. His rallies are regularly attended by sold-out crowds of thousands of people, when his political opponents, often struggle just to muster hundreds.

But what makes him so special?

He is not an idealist, he’s a pragmatist. As such, he may not conform to the intellectual conservative’s ideal of someone who’s fit to serve, but such an ideal person belongs in a conservative book club, not on the political stage or in the arena, sweating, bleeding and fighting. He appeals to the working man who’s trying to make a buck, support his family, save some money for retirement…the guy who feels eroded and betrayed by all the booms and busts and backroom deals created by central banks and insider politicians.

Trump is a doer; a builder and a disrupter. He doesn’t break laws, but he uses them to his advantage, and he’s one who doesn’t play by anyone else’s rules either. He has been marching to his own drummer all of his adult life. He knows how to set goals and achieve them, regardless of the odds, and he’s done it many times to the consternation of his critics., as his accomplishments will attest.

Perhaps it’s because we, as a nation, are perceived by many citizens as being at a unique crossroads in our history. Now more than ever, it’s become clear that the old, socialist social order of the past 100 years, exemplified by progressive tax and spend politicians, creating big, and ever-growing government, massive spending on unnecessary agencies, unsustainable social welfare programs, and foolhardy policies of open borders and lax immigration enforcement doesn’t work. Such institutions must be destroyed and eradicated. Such policies dig the nation deeper into debt and force higher taxes and the hollowing out of the Middle Class.

Things must immediately be done, or we will become Europe, and then, ironically, we could eventually become Greece, bled of our industries and industrialists, mired in a deep swamp of zero-growth, high tax socialist politics and controlled by outside forces, many of them German or Bilderberg.

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, for example, represent that old, progressive, expansive, socialist guard that relies on a cult of personality as it caters to and coddles the rich elites. All the while, they are seeking to bribe the poor, non-taxpaying welfare dependents for votes at the other end of the spectrum, at the expense of the taxpaying, hard-working wage-earning classes.

Other notable socialists seeking to shred the Constitution and sink us in a Euro-style, globalist socialist, UN-governed swamp, are Kamala Harris, Beto O’Rourke, Julian Castro, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker, Andrew Yang, and Soros-clone, billionaire Tom Steyer. These folks are all the specter of Cloward-Piven writ large.

The rest of the field is polling so low as to not deserve a mention.

All of them are participating in a circular firing squad as they jockey like so many jineteras and jineteros to present themselves as the supreme anti-Trump.

But the joke is on them. The entire platforms of these DNC candidates is merely the hollow, whiny rhetoric that they are not Trump. Most of them brashly promise that they will increase taxes on the Middle Class, but don’t admit it’s just to pay back their rich donor class cronies, the Wall Street bankers, and to continue to bribe their poor, minority supporters for votes, at the expense of the taxpayers.

This Shakedown Socialism is not only absurd, it’s morally and ethically corrupt, but it must play very well with those in the sky boxes and the cheap seats, who pay no taxes, yet reap the many benefits from all that our great society has built on the backs of overburdened taxpayers.

Unlike all of the Democrat field, Trump has a concise and easily-articulated platform.

Trump’s ENTIRE platform is as follows:

(1) Borders matter.

(2) Immigration policy matters

(3) National interests, not so-called universal or globalist interests, matter

(4) Entrepreneurship and innovation matters

(5) Decentralization and smaller government matters

(6) PC speech—without which identity politics is inconceivable—must be completely repudiated.

(7) The Rule of Law, The Constitution and The Bill of Rights MATTER.

(8) Lower taxes, less regulation, and more jobs MATTER.

(9) Economic growth MATTERS.

It’s clear from these points that Trump wants to redistribute power to the citizens within our republican system of government, not centralize and consolidate power and dilute and drain our resources with non-citizens, like his opponents do. The Democrats, led by Biden, Warren, Sanders, Pelosi, and others , want to redistribute wealth to their cronies so they can seize more power from the people and consolidate it for their own selfish interests, using it as a lever to accumulate even more wealth and power. The differences and the choice to be made between the two camps could not be any more profound or distinct.

An article from the left-leaning siren Politico (http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/donald-trump-ideas-2016-214244) captured most of this, but not all.

As a confirmed Aristotelian and a student of political and social intellectual thought, I particularly disagree with the Politico author’s specific claim that conservatives have an “Aristotle” problem, in that Trump doesn’t fit the classic, Aristotelian model of virtue and excellence in leadership.

Let’s remember that Aristotle advocated leadership by aristocracy. That word didn’t mean then what it connotes now.

The ‘Aristos’ (Αρίστος) Aristotle called for were the stars of the society. They were simply the best-suited and best ones for the job. Honest citizens, at least those who don’t have their hands out, know who they are. Alexander the Great fell under that category. Pericles fell under that category. Neither was perfect but both were very well-suited for the job. Trump fits this characterization.

We don’t have an Aristotle problem. We simply have too many elite Republicans who either can only relate to a modern aristocrat (not the true aristos). We have too many “new nobles” who, as rich, urban socialites, have become self described “social liberals” and have lost their own virtue and eudemonia in the process. The question is how to pay for all the largesse they seek to spray on the rest of society to signal their own virtue. How to pay for it? The concept of “Noblesse Oblige” has now become so de rigueur that the rich believe it is appropriate act as benefactors with other people’s money!

The New Nobles can’t relate to a bull-in-the-China-shop pragmatist like Trump, an outsider on the fringe of their blue-blooded aristocratic elite social circles, especially one who has made such a big splash and name for himself in the international media and tabloids. How vulgar!

Had Donald Trump not built his own lavish and glitzy residence in Trump Tower, he would have been accepted as a resident by any of the tony, private Park Avenue co-op boards or NYC private clubs frequented by the elite on both sides of the aisle in NY society. He was an outsider. Had he not purchased the largest private plot of land in Palm Beach and built the most lavish and luxurious club, at Mar-A-Lago, he would never have been accepted by the tony, tanned, modern ‘aristocrats’ who call Palm Beach Island their winter home.

The fact that he succeeded and sort of bought his way in, not because of them, but despite them, is far more than they can handle. It galls them. And that’s why the working stiff loves him.

Salvation comes in many forms, and not always from the direction we expect.

History, thankfully, provides us with some great examples of what not to do in seeking a leader. in ancient Rome, Nero and Caligula were elites who cared little for the “little people,” but they had full support of the corrupt elites and cronies to whom they catered with lavish parties and bacchanal orgies.

In stark contrast, Pericles, in ancient Greece, though also born to a legacy of wealth in the big city, fought fierce battles with wealthy, status-quo conservatives in Athenian society who, despite his bearing and excellent track record, claimed that he was ‘not worthy’ to rule. He was a big-thinking pragmatist and a populist, who was often ridiculed by the aristocracy because he sought to give lower working-class citizens more power and access to the political system, seeking to distribute rather than centralize it.

Pericles divorced his first wife and took up domicile and wise counsel with his girlfriend, Aspasia, a ‘foreigner’ with an accent who wasn’t born in Athens and was not an Athenian citizen. As a result, he and Aspasia were badly slandered and the Athenian elites spread false rumors that Aspasia was a prostitute, when she was actually a very well-educated woman who counseled Socrates and many other wise men as their intellectual equal. She was also stunningly beautiful. Sound familiar?

Roman leaders Nero and Caligula, as contrary examples, were corrupt and dysfunctional as leaders, couldn’t and didn’t adequately secure their country’s borders, and they actually DID drain the treasuries and spent plenty of time in drunken revelry with prostitutes and other dirty characters and drunken hangers-on. While mostly praised by their own political cronies, they destroyed Rome through their own self-serving hubris, lack of ethics and immoral sexual perversions, and eventually, Rome was invaded by hordes of illegal aliens, some of them actual Vandals, who “Vandalized” it, which is where that term comes from. Sound familiar?

Pericles, who at the time had been accused of spending too much of the public treasury to rebuild Athens, finally became fed up with the red tape, bureaucracy and accusations, finally offered to spend his own money to beautify and rebuild Athens, just as long as the Athenian elites were willing to display his name prominently on all the buildings. Sound familiar?

Pericles finally built, rebuilt , solidified, unified, and glorified the republic of Athens, building out the amazing Acropolis and its crown jewel, the Parthenon, among other public projects, all for the glory of the Creator of the Universe and the source of mankind’s Enlightenment (Apollo) and Wisdom (Athena).

Athens thrived during this time and historians now point to this period as the “Golden Age of Athens,” “The Age of Pericles”. The accomplishments of Pericles still stand as the glory of Athens and a symbol of enlightenment and wisdom around the world.

No, conservatives aren’t having an Aristotle moment, as the Politico cynics suggest; Trump and America are having a Pericles moment.

As with Pericles in Athens, Trump is our best and only hope to rebuild the republic, and it may be our last hope to stabilize and extend the runway of our own Golden Age.

Welcome The Age of Trump.

With the memories of 9/11 so fresh in our minds, we should realize that we are, as a nation, at a Flight 93 Moment: There are people onboard our flight, bad people mingled in among the other passengers, fighting desperately to take us somewhere we don’t want to go.

The Globalist Socialist New World Order is not good for America or its citizens. If that course continues, the result will lead to the certain decline and destruction of our beloved republic, at the extreme suffering and expense of all of us, for the joy and enrichment a tiny minority of globalist elites.

We all know it. It’s time to take them out and regain control of this flight, or die trying.

As Todd Beamer said, “Let’s Roll!”