The famous fable titled The Boy Who Cried Wolf is about a boy who cries for help because he falsely claims there is a threatening wolf. The villagers come running to his cries for help, but there is no wolf. The boy does this same thing several times with the same result.
There does come a time when a wolf finally does appear, but when the boy cries for help, the villagers assume that it is another false alarm because the boy had deceived them several times in the past. In the original tale, the wolf eats the sheep. In a later version, the wolf also eats the boy.
When someone says not to cry wolf, it means that you shouldn’t mislead people or tell fake stories. That is often used as the main lesson of the fable.
But maybe it should be a lesson for the villagers too. Just because someone has been telling fake stories all along, don’t automatically assume that every story is a lie.
The Trump Wolf
There have been a lot of Trump haters going back to 2015 when he first announced his run for president on the Republican ticket. It is mostly political leftists, but not exclusively. But it wasn’t just a hate for Trump the way someone might hate all politicians or all politicians from a particular party. It was an obsessive hatred. It was given a name: TDS, or Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Being critical of Trump didn’t mean you suffered from TDS. It had to be an obsessive hatred for Trump to be TDS. It has almost been a disease of hypocrisy. If Trump says it, it must be bad. If someone else said it, it would be fine, or at least not that bad.
The problem is that many Trump haters, in their quest to destroy Trump, felt the need to make up fake stories about him. They said he colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. They said he referred to white supremacists as very fine people. They said he told people to drink bleach. They said he held a Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden. The list goes on and on. Sometimes it was just a matter of taking Trump out of context.
The leftists have been crying about Trump for about a decade now. It’s not that they had no valid criticisms. It’s that they felt the need to make things up, embellish stories about him, and often make him out to be something that he’s not.
For some people, including some people who don’t care much for Trump, it has destroyed the credibility of the Trump haters who make up fake stories. And it should destroy their credibility. The problem is that we shouldn’t necessarily always believe the opposite of what they say.
The Wolf Has Arrived
In the fable, the wolf arrives, but nobody believes the boy because he has lost credibility. People who tend to be more conservative or libertarian, or considered to be more on the right side of the political spectrum, will dismiss what the leftists are saying about Trump. The problem is that, this time, they might be right.
Depending on your perspective, Trump started out well in his second term. He pardoned or freed all of the J6 prisoners. He pardoned Ross Ulbricht. He had some seemingly good nominations for important cabinet posts such as Robert Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard. He had Elon Musk and his DOGE people uncovering waste and, more importantly, criminal spending. Despite some bad nominations, it was looking pretty good for the first month of the new Trump term for those who seek greater liberty.
Then something happened, and the wolf has arrived. It is more ferocious than some of us ever could have imagined. It has all gone downhill so fast.
The Trump team has been bombing Yemen. They have continued to fund the Israeli destruction of Gaza and the war in Ukraine. They are close to starting a war with Iran. They have been deporting not just illegal immigrants, but also trying to deport people who are here legally for the “crime” of speaking out against the Israeli state. Of course, we have also gotten the tariff fiasco along with the first $1 trillion military budget.
It is a complete disaster. It is a disaster for liberty. There was potential for Trump to do some good or at least to do less damage than his predecessors. That is all out the window now. It is actually quite shocking how fast everything went downhill all at once. If it had just been the tariff fiasco without all of the other bad stuff, there would be reason for optimism. But we are getting almost everything bad coming out of the Trump team now with the occasional exception.
The left is screaming about this stuff. It isn’t so much the leftist corporate media screaming about it, but there is a lot of criticism all over the place. Some of the criticism is still wrong or not explained in the right way. But some of it is right on target, too.
The problem is that the leftists have been crying wolf. The Trump supporters are blocking them out. When a leftist complains that Trump is shutting down free speech, the Trump supporter just shrugs and thinks it is another TDS sufferer who is lying.
These Threats Are Real
Trump was highly inconsistent and sometimes sounded like a war hawk, but generally his campaign message was one of more peace. The worst thing he is doing right now is promoting more war. He is helping to continue death in the Middle East and Ukraine while ramping up the death in Yemen. He is on the verge of a total disaster with Iran.
The massive infringements on free speech and civil liberties is the next worst thing happening right now. They are using immigration as the new terrorism, while also continuing to use terrorism as an excuse to infringe on our liberties.
Trump campaigned on fighting illegal immigration. Apparently, this might just mean arresting and deporting anyone who has a scary tattoo and could potentially be a bad person.
In a matter of weeks, the Trump team moved on to arresting legal immigrants, including a “permanent” legal resident, for objecting to the Israeli state killing people in Gaza. So, according to Team Trump, you have no rights if you are a legal immigrant. And the hardcore Trump supporters are actually trying to defend this.
Question for Trump supporters: How would you have felt if Joe Biden and company had arrested and deported permanent legal U.S. residents for questioning the COVID vaccines?
Question for Trump supporters: How would you have felt if Joe Biden and company had arrested and deported permanent legal U.S. residents because they were Christian homeschoolers?
Of course, the Trump defenders say that these people were supporting terrorism, supporting Hamas, etc. But that isn’t even true. And why weren’t they charged with an actual crime?
The Trump defenders say that these are immigrants and that they should just keep their heads down and not say anything because they are supposed to be guests in our country. Is that really the way you want things to work? You don’t think legal immigrants should have any rights or any entitlement to a political opinion?
Watch Out American Citizens
Anyway, Trump and his team are already moving on from just arresting and deporting immigrants (legal or otherwise). They are already targeting American citizens.
Trump said he is open to deporting people to El Salvador for the really bad people, like for people who hit old women over the head with a baseball bat. Apparently, Trump doesn’t understand due process, or he just doesn’t care.
It always starts with the really bad people. “Well, they don’t need due process because they are really bad people and everybody knows it.”
It’s like when they censor people who say really bad or controversial things. They don’t start with the mildly controversial things. They have to get people acclimated to the new normal.
Now we have Sebastian Gorka, Trump’s counterterrorism czar, saying that supporters of a man who is reported to have been mistakenly deported are on the side of the terrorists. And if you are supporting terrorists, then you are subject to federal crimes.
So, this guy Gorka is saying that people speaking out in this case could be prosecuted for speaking out. This could include many millions of American citizens who have been critical of the Trump team’s handling of this case. Gorka is the one who is a criminal and a traitor to America. He is directly threatening to imprison people merely for speaking.
First they came for the illegal immigrants. Then they came for the legal immigrants. Then they came for the citizens who were trying to speak against it. At some point, there is nobody left to speak against things, or everyone left is too afraid to do so.
Conclusion
This is an extremely dangerous time. The leftists have lost credibility with the other side, and rightly so. But it doesn’t mean that many of the warnings today about Trump are wrong.
In the fable, the wolf eventually does arrive.
Trump is doing his absolute best right now to prove all of his critics correct. Remember all of those warnings about Trump trying to be a dictator. Trump is trying to validate all of the TDS sufferers who lied about him.
It is so vitally important that people who supported Trump, or at least those who didn’t make up stories about him, speak out against what he and his team are doing now.
The Trump team is a serious threat to free speech and due process, two critical foundations of American liberty. We must stop these infringements now before they get worse. This means that some Trump supporters or former Trump supporters need to join in recognizing that we are on a path that destroys liberty.