An argument in defense of the Republican presidential front-runner.
By: Jimbo X
@Jimbo__X
I am adamantly pro-choice. I believe in stricter gun-control measures. I believe homosexuals deserve all of the same civic rights as heterosexuals. I believe the federal government has an obligation, as does the public as taxpayers, to help out the less fortunate and advance as many citizens into middle-class self-sustainability as possible - if not for the "rightness" of the cause, then because of the blunt economic fact that the more people we have working and supporting themselves, the better off we all are as a peoples. Hell, I even supported the Affordable Care Act, and to a large degree, still do.
Of course, I also support the death penalty, oppose drug legalization and think affirmative action is a big old steaming pile of bull hockey. So, yeah, I'm not really welcome anywhere, right, left or whatever exists in-between.
Nonetheless, I believe in America. No matter how "uncool" it is, I thank the god-I-don't-actually-believe-
And what made America great, you might be wondering? A sense of solidarity. From WWII onward, we believed in a common American identity, that ours was an exceptional way of life. Our religion, race or ethnicity didn't matter(*) - we were all part of the same team, the same collective workforce that found thrift, sacrifice, honesty and selflessness to be cardinal values above all others. We cared about our families, we cared about our communities and we cared about our companies - we all knew that the success of one meant the success of all, and we all did our part to pull our respective weight.
(*)What's this, you say, about the plight of the African-American community, to contest my assertions? Well, before you call the P.C. police to put me away for life for unspeakable thoughtcrimes, just remember that up until the 1970s, the proportion of African-Americans in the U.S. labor force was higher than the proportion of Caucasian laborers, while the rate of black business ownership was actually higher before desegregation than after it. Indeed, one could argue that the proliferation of "War on Poverty" entitlement programs - in tandem with the virtual meltdown of the African-American nuclear family - all but negated whatever economic benefits may have arose from the passage of the the Civil Rights Act and continues to put black Americans at a financial disadvantage today.
Yes, there has always been poverty and racism and sexism and wealth inequity. There always will be in a state that embraces freedom, in one that allows people to make their own choices - regardless of their asininity - just as long as they are also willing to live with the consequences. Still, as long as you have the commitment to work your ass off, stay true to your morals and you make an honest, concentrated effort to succeed, you can. I grew up in a single-wide trailer in the crystal meth country, and thanks to the power of higher education, a desire to not live in poverty the rest of my life and some generous college-assistance programs (ironically enough, funded entirely by other poor people), I was able to climb out of my squalid, lower-class purgatory and enter that much-fabled "middle class" everybody keeps yammering on and on about. Granted, it may not be as romantic as the tale of the Sri Lankan dirt farmer who came to the U.S. on a leaky boat and sold rutabagas off the back of a truck to finance his PhD, but I suppose I am nonetheless proof enough that the American Dream - in some semblance, anyway - is still alive and kicking.
Now, this collective effort I speak of is NOT the same thing as classical socialism. Americans have never been a peoples who demand the government take care of the things they ought to be taking care of themselves. Rather, the unstated social contract that has taken the U.S. this far has been the shared national ideal that as long as we're willing to pay upfront for the necessary infrastructure and services - roads to drive on and rivers that aren't filled with poison and having people with bazookas and tanks and shit around to protect us from the barbarian hordes domestic and abroad - that means John and Joan Q. Government have to stay out of our business. Once we are able to carry our own load, the onus is upon us. It's our individual responsibility to support ourselves and our loved ones, to raise our children with the beliefs we want them to have and to spend our money and get into debt however we please. Just as long as we are paying the appropriate taxes, refraining from fraudulent commercial practices and not intentionally doing things we know could kill people, the Feds have no right to meddle in our affairs.
And they especially don't have the authority - morally or legally - to tell us how we ought to think and feel about things.
Up until fairly recently, that had been the adage of the Democratic Party. Perhaps no one embodied the quintessence of American social liberalism better than John F. Kennedy, whose immortal aphorism "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" perfectly encapsulated the ingrained Democratic reverence for individual responsibility.
But my, how the Democratic Party - and America itself - has lost its way.
Today, the modern liberal spits on the notion of "American exceptionalism." Instead of rallying behind the rights of the individual and celebrating our common bond - that being the desire to take care of ourselves and our own, sans obstruction from the government - they've become unabashed promoters of Balkanization, encouraging individuals to self-segregate into political enclaves that only care about their own superficial common causes. Democrats have embraced this weird quasi-Marxist doctrine besieging people to demand economic reparations because of historical misgivings - by and large, more perceived than actual - instead of imploring individuals to take control of their own lives and pursue their own paths to economic independence.
But just when it looked like the Democrats (who, by this point, have transmogrified from the party of Kennedy into unabashed European-lite socialists) were about to win the War Against Self-Sufficiency ... here comes a new challenger.
But just when it looked like the Democrats (who, by this point, have transmogrified from the party of Kennedy into unabashed European-lite socialists) were about to win the War Against Self-Sufficiency ... here comes a new challenger.
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| Because a guy promoting tighter border security is clearly a greater civic threat than people who want to murder a politician for something he never said. |
Republicans and Democrats alike absolutely despise Donald Trump, which is usually a good sign somebody is doing something right. To ensure he falters in his Oval Office ambitions, detractors on the left and the right have no qualms labeling him a racist, bigot, Nazi sympathizer or Klansman - even when evidence to support such libelous claims are 100 percent non-existent. Here's just a sampling of the "news" articles populating the Web the morning of Super Tuesday - you know, before the reality TV star and multi-billionaire real estate mogul won a paltry seven out of 11 state primaries:
- Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz DEMAND the New York Times hand over an off-the-record recording that allegedly reveals Trump saying his anti-immigration stance is bullshit.
- Trump's security guards are just choke slamming photographers left and right (uh, just never mind the photographer was caught on camera swearing at the Secret Service agent - constituting assault - kicked him - constituting battery - and tried to jump past a security guard - constituting trespass - before he got Rock Bottomed.)
- Wow golly gee, there sure are a lot of white nationalists out there who support Trump, so by association, he must be a Nazi, right?
- Did you know that Trump spoke out AGAINST NAFTA back in 1993? (Which actually legitimizes his presidential platform, no?)
- Donald Trump DIDN'T think the Great Recession was going to happen! Take that, guy who isn't able to predict the fucking future!
- Lord have mercy, Trump is PERSONALLY ordering his Gestapo thugs to eject black students from his rallies! (just, uh, overlook the fact Trump never ordered anybody to throw anybody out, the guards in question were actually from the local police department, and the ejected students purportedly chanted profanities and attempted to enter unauthorized areas at the rally before getting the boot.)
- Oh, the humanity! Trump supporters were seen pushing and shoving and potentially poking a black woman large enough to qualify as a UFC Heavyweight at a rally, who was so traumatized she smiled the entire time, flipped people off, casually clicked her iPhone as she was being escorted away and even slapped a few guards on the way out! According to a white guy pretending to be black - who apparently can tell someone is a member of white nationalist organizations merely by looking at their face - this is a national travesty, and further indication that everything tangentially linked to Trump is pretty much the same thing as the KKK.
Indeed, the masses are plum freaking out over the surprising popularity of the populist candidate, with wishy-washy millennial drama queens unable to mount a compelling argument against the Republican front-runner other than the same old invocation of Godwin's law and other hysterical hyperbole. So stretched to come up with a rebuttal to Trump's anti-illegal immigration and pro-national security policies other than screaming "racist" over and over against like stark-raving mad Puritans convinced their livestock had been bewitched by the neighbors, bespectacled British gaylord John Oliver - whom I refer to as a "gaylord" not because of suspected homosexual tendencies but because his humor and personality are about as bland and flavorless as a giant, triplewall corrugated cardboard box - spent 22 minutes direly attempting to convince the American electorate that Trump isn't to be trusted because his ancestral last name was once spelled Drumpf.
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| My goodness, look at all that voluntary wealth-redistribution going on! |
So, uh, what is it bout Trump that arouses so much liberal antipathy? Is it because he wants to construct a wall to combat illegal immigration, which the regressive left falsely equates with anti-Hispanic sentiments? Is it because he wants to beef up national security, and scrutinize foreigners a little harder before they enter the country? Or is it simply because he connects with America's working-class, non-college-educated (indoctrinated?) whites, that strange, alien subculture that for some inexplicable reason, is immune to the incontestable multiculturalism uber alles, globalization-is-great-for-everybody dogma?
Sure, Trump's proposed $25 billion Great Wall of Mexico is a little outlandish, but it's still more economically viable than Bernie Sanders' federal-budget-doubling universal health care proposal. And of course, if we're going to criticize Trump for building a wall for security reasons, the logic follows we also ought to be criticizing Russia, Israel, China, Spain, Hong Kong, Korea, Saudi Arabia, and about two dozen African nations for doing the same goddamn thing. Along those same lines, Trump's call to temporarily halt Muslim immigration to the U.S. following the lethal San Bernardino massacre is hardly unprecedented. Lest we forget, Nobel Peace Prize recipient Jimmy Carter once banned Iranians from entering the country, and the motherfucking poster child for "Being Liberal" metaphorically wiped his paraplegic ass with the Bill of Rights and sent hundreds of thousands of totally innocent Japanese, Italian and German Americans into internment camps during World War II. And really, what's so bad about temporarily bringing a halt to foreign traffic in the instance of a national emergency and creating more stringent vetting processes to weed out people who want to publicly gang rape and jack off in kiddie pools from legitimate asylum seekers? Prepare to get shouted down and name-called a "racist" or "xenophobe" if you state any of that, though, to the anti-Trump throng, who still have no idea that Constitutional rights are only afforded to people who are actual U.S. citizens.
As would any intolerant peoples who refuse to accept that others may have belief systems and ways of life different from their own, liberals continue to rail against Trump and his supporters, labeling his campaign as some sort of "white nationalism" resurgence. While it is true that a majority - but most certainly not all - of Trump's staunchest supporters are on the mayonnaise lite side of the melanin scale, he's hardly running a whiter campaign than socialist super hero Bernie Sanders, who hails from a state where the the general population is 96 percent honky. Could it be that maybe - just maybe - America's long-ignored, working class, non-urban populace is flocking to Trump because his economic principles benefit them and not because they want to live action role play The Turner Diaries?
Millions of hardworking lower middle class families have been hit hard by rising health care insurance premiums. Trump said he wants to eliminate Obamacare and give people tax credits for voluntarily paying for coverage.
That helps them financially.
Trump wants to lower taxes to 10 percent for individuals earning less than $50,000 a year, and if you make less than $25,000 a year - or you are married and bring in less than $50,000 a year - you won't pay any federal taxes whatsoever.
That helps them financially.
Trump said he's going to reduce the trade deficit and incentivize U.S. companies to bring offshore manufacturing back to the U.S., with heavy tax penalties on corporations who choose to ship American jobs abroad.
That helps them financially.
We tend to forget that non-college educated people represent 68 percent of the U.S. These are the people who really make America work - the people who fix telephone poles and pour gravel on the highway and sling hash browns and squirt pesticides for a living. In our academic-elitist society, we also tend to forget that many of these people also have high-paying jobs and have even started their own successful businesses. Their financial, political and social agendas are altogether different from the interests of all of us smarmy, bachelor's degree holdin' know-it-alls. They don't give a shit about microaggressions or gender-fluid pronouns or third wave feminism. They are too busy just scraping by, doing all they can to take care of their spouses and their children without going bankrupt and having to depend on social services the rest of their lives.
These people don't want the federal government and other taxpayers supporting them. Instead, they want the economic playing field leveled so that they actually have a shot at self-sufficiency. All of the alleged race-baiting and anti-immigrant rancor you keep hearing the lunk-heads at MSNBC and The Huffington Post screaming about masks the fact that many rural, working-class people have indeed had their economic sustainability torn asunder by NAFTA and, adding insult to injury, an influx of mass immigrant competition in the labor force. You move all the jobs out of the country, automate everything, jack up the living wage, and make poor whites, blacks and Hispanics battle for scant housing and employment, and you wonder why racial tensions are so high? Don't blame the Confederate flag or David Duke for whatever ethnocentric animosities may belie the Trump fanbase - instead, blame it on lopsided free trade agreements and corporate outsourcing.
Rather than the crude, prejudiced, negro-hating crackers they are hideously stereotyped as by the media, Trump supporters - by and large - tend to be people with a clear idea of what awaits them. Last November, Nobel Prize winning economist Angus Deaton published a report finding that middle-aged, non-college-educated whites were dying off at a rate surpassing the death toll of sexually active, homosexual young men at the height of the AIDS crisis. The catalyst? A major upswing in drug overdoses, alcohol poisonings and suicide - which, wouldn't you know it, runs parallel with the unemployment statistics for the very same demographic.
As globalization marches full speed ahead, the working class American knows his days are numbered. With no manufacturing jobs available stateside, all he can do is pray and hope that the feeble service industries and whatever low-skill technical jobs are out there don't get displaced - either in the form of legal or illegal migrant labor or technology that makes them mechanically obsolete.
With economics policies as is, the working class white knows he's on the path to complete economic ruin. If things keep going as is, they know their children will be unable to support themselves, to even be able to get on the same clumsy social footing they achieved. For them, Trump's neo-neo-conservative economic platform is literally the only thing that's going to keep them financially sustainable as laborers. While Trump detractors are bitching and moaning about "white privilege" and "heterocentrism" and "transphobia," Trump's supporters are fighting for their very survival.
Now, is Trump really going to do all the stuff he said he's going to do? Well, considering the G.O.P. hates his guts and liberals want him crucified on a giant brown dildo, it doesn't seem likely he'll get much done with Congress. But as outlandish and hilariously baseless as his promises may be, if he manages to keep half of them - hell, even a quarter of them - they're going to keep the working class family chugging along.
Not only is Trump the only candidate promoting economic nationalism, he's probably the first candidate to float the idea in more than half a century. Indeed, you can almost pinpoint the moment the U.S. economy - complete with its strong labor unions and high employment rates and high quality of life even for working class Americans - went off the rails: 1973, when Richard Nixon formerly ended the American School of Economics system. You know, that same protectionist ideology that only resulted in the U.S. becoming the greatest economic empire in history.
Since we adopted the gloriously misnamed doctrine of "free trade," what's happened? The unions collapsed and died. Illegal labor went through the roof. The nation's manufacturing sector literally left the country. Corporations were able to suck trillions out of the national economy by using cheap labor abroad. The working class became the starving class, and the downtrodden were pushed out of the economic cycle altogether.
In today's hippie-dippie academic elitist society, we've been taught since birth to believe "globalization" is the best thing since sliced bread. Our segmented, juvenile, hyper-selfish and responsibility-averse culture rejects even the notion of a shared economic identity, too busy combating invisible Klansman and non-existent neo-Nazis to even realize the same people we automatically decry as backwards hicks - and not their entitled, student-loan-saddled, faux-victimized, crybully asses - are indeed the biggest victims of modernity.
Sorry, but I will never admonish someone for voting in line with their economic interests, regardless of whatever auxiliary political ideals or beliefs they may or may not embrace. They may not be your circumstantial reasons, but there is certainly a VERY good reason why Trump supporters should be rallying behind him - essentially, he's the only person out there who, in addition to acknowledging they exist, actually advocates for economic policies that would benefit them.
Of course, Bill Maher and John Oliver and The Atlantic and all those other shitrags out there can't see that. Instead, they'll just trot out their smug (and ironically racist) false narrative that Trump loyalists are voting for him 'cause they just can't stand them coloreds and Meskins - and my goodness, is it ever a sight to behold when that fabricated narrative blows up in their faces.
What Trump symbolizes is the old Friedrich List national worker ideal, a truly colorblind society united in a shared belief that as one, we are an economic engine, and that the total success of that economic engine ensures a satisfying life for everyone who is willing to work hard to support it. And in today's political environs - where the millennial motto is "gimme, government, gimme" - such a notion rings so bizarre as to be unintelligible.
But you know what? That weird ass idea worked for almost 100 years. Again, would it be implemented if Trump becomes president? Eh, probably not, but at this point, it doesn't look like we'll ever an entry point to bringing back the concept EVER again. Globalization is about to devour America whole, and Trump represents the American School of Economics' last stand. And with so much on the line, I'll gladly take a losing fight over no fight at all.
Longtime IIIA readers know I don't vote, and that I hate politicians - every last one of 'em - with great vim and vigor. That said, if Trump continues to demonstrate himself as the ultimate champion of American economic nationalism, I might just have to go against my own scruples and at least mull pulling the lever for old Toupee Head this November.
Alike Batman, he may not be the President we want, but by golly, he's the President this formerly great country deserves. And hell, who knows - he might even be the one who, against all conceivable odds, really does save it.
Sure, Trump's proposed $25 billion Great Wall of Mexico is a little outlandish, but it's still more economically viable than Bernie Sanders' federal-budget-doubling universal health care proposal. And of course, if we're going to criticize Trump for building a wall for security reasons, the logic follows we also ought to be criticizing Russia, Israel, China, Spain, Hong Kong, Korea, Saudi Arabia, and about two dozen African nations for doing the same goddamn thing. Along those same lines, Trump's call to temporarily halt Muslim immigration to the U.S. following the lethal San Bernardino massacre is hardly unprecedented. Lest we forget, Nobel Peace Prize recipient Jimmy Carter once banned Iranians from entering the country, and the motherfucking poster child for "Being Liberal" metaphorically wiped his paraplegic ass with the Bill of Rights and sent hundreds of thousands of totally innocent Japanese, Italian and German Americans into internment camps during World War II. And really, what's so bad about temporarily bringing a halt to foreign traffic in the instance of a national emergency and creating more stringent vetting processes to weed out people who want to publicly gang rape and jack off in kiddie pools from legitimate asylum seekers? Prepare to get shouted down and name-called a "racist" or "xenophobe" if you state any of that, though, to the anti-Trump throng, who still have no idea that Constitutional rights are only afforded to people who are actual U.S. citizens.
As would any intolerant peoples who refuse to accept that others may have belief systems and ways of life different from their own, liberals continue to rail against Trump and his supporters, labeling his campaign as some sort of "white nationalism" resurgence. While it is true that a majority - but most certainly not all - of Trump's staunchest supporters are on the mayonnaise lite side of the melanin scale, he's hardly running a whiter campaign than socialist super hero Bernie Sanders, who hails from a state where the the general population is 96 percent honky. Could it be that maybe - just maybe - America's long-ignored, working class, non-urban populace is flocking to Trump because his economic principles benefit them and not because they want to live action role play The Turner Diaries?
Millions of hardworking lower middle class families have been hit hard by rising health care insurance premiums. Trump said he wants to eliminate Obamacare and give people tax credits for voluntarily paying for coverage.
That helps them financially.
Trump wants to lower taxes to 10 percent for individuals earning less than $50,000 a year, and if you make less than $25,000 a year - or you are married and bring in less than $50,000 a year - you won't pay any federal taxes whatsoever.
That helps them financially.
Trump said he's going to reduce the trade deficit and incentivize U.S. companies to bring offshore manufacturing back to the U.S., with heavy tax penalties on corporations who choose to ship American jobs abroad.
That helps them financially.
We tend to forget that non-college educated people represent 68 percent of the U.S. These are the people who really make America work - the people who fix telephone poles and pour gravel on the highway and sling hash browns and squirt pesticides for a living. In our academic-elitist society, we also tend to forget that many of these people also have high-paying jobs and have even started their own successful businesses. Their financial, political and social agendas are altogether different from the interests of all of us smarmy, bachelor's degree holdin' know-it-alls. They don't give a shit about microaggressions or gender-fluid pronouns or third wave feminism. They are too busy just scraping by, doing all they can to take care of their spouses and their children without going bankrupt and having to depend on social services the rest of their lives.
These people don't want the federal government and other taxpayers supporting them. Instead, they want the economic playing field leveled so that they actually have a shot at self-sufficiency. All of the alleged race-baiting and anti-immigrant rancor you keep hearing the lunk-heads at MSNBC and The Huffington Post screaming about masks the fact that many rural, working-class people have indeed had their economic sustainability torn asunder by NAFTA and, adding insult to injury, an influx of mass immigrant competition in the labor force. You move all the jobs out of the country, automate everything, jack up the living wage, and make poor whites, blacks and Hispanics battle for scant housing and employment, and you wonder why racial tensions are so high? Don't blame the Confederate flag or David Duke for whatever ethnocentric animosities may belie the Trump fanbase - instead, blame it on lopsided free trade agreements and corporate outsourcing.
Rather than the crude, prejudiced, negro-hating crackers they are hideously stereotyped as by the media, Trump supporters - by and large - tend to be people with a clear idea of what awaits them. Last November, Nobel Prize winning economist Angus Deaton published a report finding that middle-aged, non-college-educated whites were dying off at a rate surpassing the death toll of sexually active, homosexual young men at the height of the AIDS crisis. The catalyst? A major upswing in drug overdoses, alcohol poisonings and suicide - which, wouldn't you know it, runs parallel with the unemployment statistics for the very same demographic.
As globalization marches full speed ahead, the working class American knows his days are numbered. With no manufacturing jobs available stateside, all he can do is pray and hope that the feeble service industries and whatever low-skill technical jobs are out there don't get displaced - either in the form of legal or illegal migrant labor or technology that makes them mechanically obsolete.
With economics policies as is, the working class white knows he's on the path to complete economic ruin. If things keep going as is, they know their children will be unable to support themselves, to even be able to get on the same clumsy social footing they achieved. For them, Trump's neo-neo-conservative economic platform is literally the only thing that's going to keep them financially sustainable as laborers. While Trump detractors are bitching and moaning about "white privilege" and "heterocentrism" and "transphobia," Trump's supporters are fighting for their very survival.
Now, is Trump really going to do all the stuff he said he's going to do? Well, considering the G.O.P. hates his guts and liberals want him crucified on a giant brown dildo, it doesn't seem likely he'll get much done with Congress. But as outlandish and hilariously baseless as his promises may be, if he manages to keep half of them - hell, even a quarter of them - they're going to keep the working class family chugging along.
Not only is Trump the only candidate promoting economic nationalism, he's probably the first candidate to float the idea in more than half a century. Indeed, you can almost pinpoint the moment the U.S. economy - complete with its strong labor unions and high employment rates and high quality of life even for working class Americans - went off the rails: 1973, when Richard Nixon formerly ended the American School of Economics system. You know, that same protectionist ideology that only resulted in the U.S. becoming the greatest economic empire in history.
Since we adopted the gloriously misnamed doctrine of "free trade," what's happened? The unions collapsed and died. Illegal labor went through the roof. The nation's manufacturing sector literally left the country. Corporations were able to suck trillions out of the national economy by using cheap labor abroad. The working class became the starving class, and the downtrodden were pushed out of the economic cycle altogether.
In today's hippie-dippie academic elitist society, we've been taught since birth to believe "globalization" is the best thing since sliced bread. Our segmented, juvenile, hyper-selfish and responsibility-averse culture rejects even the notion of a shared economic identity, too busy combating invisible Klansman and non-existent neo-Nazis to even realize the same people we automatically decry as backwards hicks - and not their entitled, student-loan-saddled, faux-victimized, crybully asses - are indeed the biggest victims of modernity.
Sorry, but I will never admonish someone for voting in line with their economic interests, regardless of whatever auxiliary political ideals or beliefs they may or may not embrace. They may not be your circumstantial reasons, but there is certainly a VERY good reason why Trump supporters should be rallying behind him - essentially, he's the only person out there who, in addition to acknowledging they exist, actually advocates for economic policies that would benefit them.
Of course, Bill Maher and John Oliver and The Atlantic and all those other shitrags out there can't see that. Instead, they'll just trot out their smug (and ironically racist) false narrative that Trump loyalists are voting for him 'cause they just can't stand them coloreds and Meskins - and my goodness, is it ever a sight to behold when that fabricated narrative blows up in their faces.
What Trump symbolizes is the old Friedrich List national worker ideal, a truly colorblind society united in a shared belief that as one, we are an economic engine, and that the total success of that economic engine ensures a satisfying life for everyone who is willing to work hard to support it. And in today's political environs - where the millennial motto is "gimme, government, gimme" - such a notion rings so bizarre as to be unintelligible.
But you know what? That weird ass idea worked for almost 100 years. Again, would it be implemented if Trump becomes president? Eh, probably not, but at this point, it doesn't look like we'll ever an entry point to bringing back the concept EVER again. Globalization is about to devour America whole, and Trump represents the American School of Economics' last stand. And with so much on the line, I'll gladly take a losing fight over no fight at all.
Longtime IIIA readers know I don't vote, and that I hate politicians - every last one of 'em - with great vim and vigor. That said, if Trump continues to demonstrate himself as the ultimate champion of American economic nationalism, I might just have to go against my own scruples and at least mull pulling the lever for old Toupee Head this November.
Alike Batman, he may not be the President we want, but by golly, he's the President this formerly great country deserves. And hell, who knows - he might even be the one who, against all conceivable odds, really does save it.
