It wasn’t the most memorable episode. It was partway into the
show’s second season, and the story was about a young pony desperate to
have some special talent who learns that good things come to those who
wait. The show always offers a lesson.
Early in his last year of high school, Gardiner was going through a
rough patch. A fan of routine, he was now applying to university,
approaching the moment when he would graduate and everything would
change.
“I grew up in North Van, both my parents have degrees, everyone from
my high school went to university. It was one of those high schools,” he
said. “It was just very stressful.”
So on a dull Thursday night, Gardiner turned to something completely
different. My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic — the full title of the
current series — was happy and colourful and upbeat. He watched an
episode, and then another, and then a couple more. “And I just kind of
got hooked from there.”
It became a new routine. He’d get up early on Saturday mornings to
watch new episodes and dissect them in real time on internet forums with
a growing online community of the show’s adult fans. Because the
program aired in the U.S. months before coming to Canada, he would
sometimes just be watching a livestream from a webcam pointed at
someone’s TV south of the border. Bronies
listen attentively to Andrea Libman (image on screen), voice actor for
Pinky Pie on the My Little Pony television cartoon show, at the Brony
Expo held at West Edmonton Mall’s Fantasyland Hotel in Edmonton on July
5, 2014. Larry Wong / Edmonton Journal
Bronies — a portmanteau of “bro” and “ponies” that refers to the
mostly male adult fans of American toy company Hasbro’s latest
reincarnation of My Little Pony — emerged as a strange phenomenon in the
first years after the show began. What started as a largely online
community quickly broke through into the real world as fans organized
conventions and began making and selling artwork and toys based on the
show. The largest brony convention, BronyCon, exploded from just 100
guests in June 2011 to more than 10,000 in Baltimore in the summer of
2015.
In those early years, the fandom’s visibility was sustained by a
barrage of media coverage that ranged in tone from curiosity to alarm.
“Is this the end of American manhood?” cried the American Conservative in 2014.
Eight years after Friendship Is Magic premiered on Oct. 10, 2010
(10-10-10, for those in the know), the show still seems to fill a
prominent role in Gardiner’s life. The living room of his East Vancouver
apartment features a glass display case filled with My Little Pony
plushies and plastic figurines. There’s a poster of the main pony
characters on his wall, signed by most of the series’ principal voice
actors. He can still spend several hours a week watching old episodes,
or letting them play in the background.
For 7 amazing years, this fandom has come
together to help us host an amazing event. Next year will be our last
BronyCon. Join us for a 4-day party, August 1-4, 2019 in Baltimore!
Visit https://t.co/k6aY1p950o
But the brony fandom is now shrinking almost as fast as it grew and
conventions, including BronyCon, are shutting down. Eight years in, the
novelty seems to have worn off. It’s also widely believed the show’s
next season will be its last, and the future beyond that is uncertain.
Now 24 years old, Gardiner doesn’t get up early on Saturdays anymore.
He recently finished his master’s degree and has started a new job. He
feels more stable. He used to be able to name every episode of every
season, but not anymore. And if he just stumbled onto the show now, he
said, he’s not sure he’d become a fan.
“I think it’s become more of an entertainment product than a
lifestyle. I definitely watch it for fun versus as an escape,” he said.
“I’m, like, trying to get into real life now.”
***
A lot of bronies tell versions of the same story. They didn’t intend
to like My Little Pony. They started watching to make fun of it, and
then they kept watching. And kept watching.
At the centre of this phenomenon is 4chan, the murky online
imageboard that thrives on anonymity. The first posts about My Little
Pony appeared on 4chan in the days after the show launched, as did the
term “brony.” As the legend goes, what started as a joke swiftly turned
earnest, and the volume of pony content on 4chan quickly became so
overwhelming that one moderator tried to ban it altogether. So the
bronies went elsewhere, creating their own internet forums and online
communities.
Afion, a Vancouver brony who spoke to the National Post on the
condition it refer to him by the name of his My Little Pony character
(many bronies create their own original characters, which become the
identities by which they know each other online), was one of those early
4chan converts. At first, he found the show “really, really cheesy,” he
said. Then he found himself liking the writing and the characters.
About six episodes in, he realized he was watching it “unironically.”
Our Photography Department is ready to share
their hard work and all of the wonderful photos they have taken this
year. You can view all of them here and reminisce about the fun weekend.
https://t.co/JyZBm8Sgv3pic.twitter.com/GO4nME6jX2
Informal surveys suggest
that at the peak of the fandom in 2014, bronies were at least 80 per
cent male and 75 per cent single, mostly in their teens and 20s and
living with their parents, and overwhelmingly white and straight. Some
bronies say the community also attracted a large number of people with
disabilities, especially autism. Many, like Gardiner, say the show makes
them feel happy and comforted.
Bronies often identify with one character, especially from among the
six main ponies, all female, with distinct personalities and foibles:
Fluttershy is timid, Rarity is a drama queen, and so on. From the start,
there was speculation that the interest from young men was primarily
sexual — and that’s certainly part of it for some, as is clear from the
huge volume of sexually explicit online artwork and stories. Tabatha
Hughes, a 27-year-old former chair of Canada’s sole brony convention,
BronyCAN, said some bronies come to see the show as a kind of caretaker.
“If someone’s a very important part of your life and they’ve shown you
kindness, sometimes people will interpret that as sexual desire and
romantic feeling,” she said. “So I think that kind of happened with
ponies.” But that’s not at the core of the fandom, she insisted. Most
bronies really just like the show.
Still, if it was the show that attracted young adult fans, it was the
community that kept them. “I probably would have only lasted maybe not
even till the third season if it was just about myself,” said Afion. “It
was mostly because of the friends.”
In the show’s heyday, that community grew like wildfire. Gardiner can
remember a time when the main My Little Pony discussion page on
internet forum reddit was gaining thousands of subscribers each week.
Increasingly, he said, this is what the fans of many popular shows want —
not just to passively watch, but to feel like they’re part of
something, too. “Engaged viewership,” he called it. “It’s the idea that
big series like Game of Thrones, people don’t just watch it and then go
away. They watch it and then they want to go discuss with all the other
fans.”
But online communities offer more than that. Trapa Civet, BronyCAN’s
former treasurer, a 38-year-old who used his character name, became a
furry — a member of a much broader community for fans of a whole range
of animal characters — after seeing The Lion King when he was 17, at the
start of the internet era. For Trapa, facing the shame of feeling that a
Disney movie had changed his life, the internet offered a
lifeline. “Suddenly I have a place to belong,” he said. “Suddenly you
have this group of people who are ostensibly validating your existence.”
When Friendship is Magic ends, then, it won’t just put a stop to the
flow of new content. It will take away a massive online community’s raison d’être.
On the forums today, the angst is clear. “Just because a show ends
doesn’t mean all these friends you’ve made and things you have built
will disappear,” wrote one user on Equestria Daily,
the largest My Little Pony fan site, in December 2017. “As long as we
keep celebrating pony, we can keep this going long into the future.”
Still, things are already changing. Trapa said he’s lost contact with
a lot of his former brony friends since BronyCAN ended in 2017. “It’s
not due to lack of desire. That’s just the way life works,” he said.
“Real life starts to sneak in there.” Rob Harrison dressed in a Rainbow Dash costume from My Little Pony in North Vancouver, B.C., on Sept. 15, 2018. Mark Yuen/Postmedia
In the food court at Metrotown, an enormous shopping mall in suburban
Burnaby, Afion and a dozen other bronies cluster together on a few
couches, eating and chatting on a Saturday afternoon. Several are
wearing My Little Pony T-shirts. Some carry plushies of their favourite
characters. They seem largely immune to the looks of passers-by.
“A lot of people watch the show to cope, that’s one thing,” said
Adrian, a 16-year-old with a pair of headphones slung around his neck
and a small plushie of the character Rainbow Dash. He rocked back and
forth nervously as he spoke. (He asked that the Post not use his last
name out of privacy concerns.)
Adrian is a relative newcomer to the brony fandom — he only began
watching the show in 2017, after his father died. There was an episode
about grieving that helped, he said. Before he died, Adrian’s dad used
to tell him that My Little Pony was a little girls’ show, but Adrian now
believes it’s for everyone. “Actually give something a try before you
judge it,” he said.
In the early days, the brony community existed mostly online, but
with the advent of conventions, internet bonds turned into real-life
friendships. Between conventions, groups of bronies often gather at
local meet-ups like this one.
The devotion of younger fans like Adrian is tinged with regret at
having missed the peak of the brony fandom — the “golden age,” said
22-year-old Aric, who was wearing a BronyCon T-shirt from his first
Baltimore convention last year, which he said was one of the best times
of his life. Though he’s been watching the show for years, Aric didn’t
have the money to go to the conventions until recently. Now, it feels
like his last chance. BronyCon will end this year due to declining
numbers — attendance has halved since 2015 — and Vancouver’s BronyCAN is
already gone.
Aric, whom the Post is also referring to by his first name because of
privacy concerns, credits the show with getting him some more friends
and making him a little less shy. “During summer break in high school, I
used to sit in front of my computer for 17 hours a day, doing nothing,
browsing the internet. It was really sad,” he said. “I can’t ever forget
this.”
Many older bronies have their own stories about how the show and the
community changed their lives. Hughes was working in a restaurant,
“making minimum wage, tossing salads and chopping carrots,” when she
discovered My Little Pony. She was introduced to the show by her
boyfriend at the time, who got her to help organize the 2013 BronyCAN.
Two years later, she was chairing the convention. “It just taught me
what I’m capable of,” she said.
Today, Hughes works as operations manager for a tech company, a
startup whose CEO is also a brony. She and her boyfriend live in a small
house in New Westminster. She recently finished her diploma, and things
are busy. She thought she’d last watched My Little Pony around
Christmas 2017, but she couldn’t be sure. “I think a lot of people might
have had that grow-up moment,” she said. “And it could be that a lot of
these people required the fandom in order to kind of have that change
in their life.”
***
It can be expensive to be a brony. Travelling to and from conventions
alone can cost hundreds of dollars, but many devoted bronies have also
amassed large collections of merchandise, including plushies, artwork,
figurines and sometimes full pony outfits. These aren’t just children’s
toys. Hughes spent $300 on a watercolour of Rarity, her favourite
character. Gardiner has a custom-made plushie of an original pony he
designed called Maxwell Citybuilder, which cost him $400. It’s a bit of a
status symbol at conventions, he said. He and his friends all have
high-end plushies. “We called ourselves the high-rollers.”
As the bronies have gotten older, Gardiner has started to see a
different type of merchandise appearing at conventions, including bath
towels embroidered with pony symbols. “It’s kind of the march of life,
right?” he said.
This is one of the peculiar quirks of the brony fandom: the show’s
adult fans, apparently drawn to it for its messages about friendship and
acceptance, are also obsessed with accumulating stuff. Expensive stuff.
This, of course, is the whole point of the show. Hasbro created My
Little Pony for girls in 1981, and has released four generations of the
toys since then. The accompanying TV shows are simply clever marketing
for the toys. Still, Hasbro didn’t expect to be met with legions of
adult fans, and initially didn’t seem to know what to do with them. As a
result, many bronies buy their merchandise not from Hasbro, but from
fan artists who create higher-quality products. Rob Harrison shows off his My Little Pony collection at his North Vancouver, B.C., home. Mark Yuen/Postmedia
Hasbro eventually came around to the bronies, and has begun selling
higher-end collectibles to its adult fans. The company has embraced the
bronies in other ways, too. The show’s voice actors and series creator
Lauren Faust often appear at brony conventions. Several episodes feature
inside jokes that only bronies will catch.
But it can be a testy relationship. The bronies get upset when Hasbro
is too transparent about using the show to sell toys. The Season 3
finale caused outrage when Twilight Sparkle, the central character,
suddenly grew wings — a lazy attempt to boost sales, fans decided. They
still talk about it today.
Some argue that the money is one reason for the fandom’s decline, as
the bronies face new financial responsibilities. “I think, ultimately,
the fandom was created for teens and tweens, and eventually mom and
dad’s money ran out,” said Trapa.
***
To some extent, the decline of the brony fandom was inevitable. The
show is eight seasons old and the sheen is wearing off. Some bronies
grumble about how the writing isn’t as good anymore, or about how the
focus has shifted away from the six main characters to a growing cast of
lesser ponies.
Added to that, a slew of unintended email leaks from Hasbro in
December 2017 signalled that the show may be coming to an end after
Season 9, to make way for the next generation of My Little Pony toys.
The revelation sent shockwaves through the community, now facing an
existential threat. “A lot of it is a sense that Generation 4… was kind
of lightning in a bottle,” said Gardiner. “Everything went exactly
perfect, and that won’t ever happen again.”
But many also believe the frenzied heights of the brony fandom in
2014 and 2015, which Hughes compared to a Silicon Valley start-up, were
never sustainable. “We saw a lot of people who maybe were just
interested in the one convention to see what it was. Maybe a little bit
of curiosity,” she said. “And I don’t think we had as many dedicated
fans as we thought we did.”
BronyCAN opened in 2013 to 850 guests, and peaked at more than 1,000.
But attendance soon started to drop off, and by the end, they struggled
to break even, Trapa said. He believes part of the issue is that
bronies are so narrowly focused on a single TV show with an expiry date.
“This is the first time I’ve been involved in a fandom that I know is
going to die,” he said.
*** Rob Harrison is a brony who is surrounded by his My Little Pony collection at his North Vancouver, B.C. home. Mark Yuen/Postmedia
Many bronies don’t like to talk about the fandom dying. They don’t
see it that way — to them, it’s just levelling off. “I’m definitely as
into the show as I was from the start,” said Rob Harrison. “I would say
probably even more so at this point.”
At 38, Harrison is fighting perhaps harder than any other Vancouver
brony to keep the fandom alive. After BronyCAN closed in 2017, he
decided to start up a new convention, on a smaller scale, that he hopes
will be sustainable. The Vanhoover Pony Expo launched on Jan. 11 and will run through the weekend, in defiance of those who say “the pony ride is over.”
Gregarious and confident, more outgoing than many bronies, Harrison
makes a good spokesperson for his cause. His tiny basement apartment in
North Vancouver is cluttered with plushies, figurines and a pirate
airship from last year’s My Little Pony feature film.
I’m definitely as into the show as I was from the start
Harrison recognizes that without the conventions, some friendships
won’t survive. A lot of bronies worry about that. When BronyCAN ended,
Trapa said, “people realized they might have friends that they’ll never
see again. And that’s pretty tough.”
Many of the bronies that organized BronyCAN are on board to help with
Harrison’s new convention, even those that aren’t quite as attached to
the fandom anymore. Gardiner, Hughes and Trapa are all involved. They
want it to work.
If Harrison worries that his mission is a little quixotic, that he’s
trying to resurrect a moment that’s already passed, he doesn’t show it.
He says he’s just doing it for the community. “Are they growing up? I
don’t know,” he said. “I think the whole point of this is that none of
us will ever grow up who are interested in something like this.”
Gardiner, too, hopes the new convention will last. He doesn’t like
change, even though he recognizes that an important chapter is drawing
to a close. He’s planning to go to Baltimore this year, to send off the
mother of all brony conventions with a bang. There’s no way to escape
what that represents.
“It’s kind of a symbolic end to the fandom,” he said. “I think it’s
going to be a moment in time that’s never going to happen again.”
Why Would Anyone Vote for a Democrat for President?
It's a serious question. Other than hating
Donald Trump, why would anyone vote for any of the Democratic candidates for president of the United States? They've given us precious few reasons to support them and plenty of reasons to conclude that they shouldn't be given any political power -- much less the presidency.
Here are just a few:
1. Their policy proposals would be fiscal and social disasters. The "Medicare for All" espoused by Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren is projected to cost anywhere from $30 to $50 trillion. That's already an insane amount of money. What's worse is that we have an abysmal record projecting the actual costs of social programs. When Medicare was passed in 1965, it was projected to cost $12 billion by 1990; the actual cost in 1990 was $90 billion. In 2018, the federal government spent $582 billion on Medicare. Spending on Medicaid in its first year (also 1965) was projected at $238 million; the actual cost was over $1 billion. Spending on Medicaid in fiscal year 2017 was $557 billion. Our ability to prognosticate hasn't improved in the past 50 years; projections for the 2009 Affordable Care Act were appallingly inaccurate. So you can probably safely double or even triple that single-payer health care estimate. The system would be bankrupt in short order -- and would take the quality of health care down with it.
2. Democrats are often accused of supporting regulations that cripple businesses. But this crop of candidates goes even further, promising to destroy entire industries. Sen. Elizabeth Warren -- who has never made a payroll in her life -- blithely announced that she'd make private insurance illegal, shuttering tens of thousands of American companies and putting millions of people out of work.
3. Warren isn't the only Democrat who threatens "like a dockside bully." Consider Sen. Kamala Harris' recent statements that she would "snatch" patents away from companies that won't put in price controls she wants. How many life-saving drugs has Sen. Harris developed? None. How many patents has she applied for and received? None.
4. They favor oppressive government. Michael Bloomberg -- a man who should know better -- has advocated for taxing the poor -- for their own good, of course. Bloomberg also said with a straight face that the communist government of China listens to the public and that President Xi Jinping "is not a dictator." (Tell that to the Hong Kong protesters, the untold numbers of women subjected to forced abortions or the Uighur Muslims in re-education camps.) That tells you plenty about what President Bloomberg would view as being "responsive" to the American people.
5. They are willing to shred the Constitution when it suits their purposes. Examples of this are legion including:
-- They oppose religious liberties -- including conscience protection. Former Rep. Beto O'Rourke argued that churches that do not accept his views on human sexuality, marriage and family should lose their tax-exempt status as charities.
-- Nor are they defenders of other First Amendment protections -- at least for conservatives. When Republicans or Christians bring suits to defend their freedom of speech, Democrats -- even on the Supreme Court -- now call that "weaponizing the First Amendment."
-- They want to abolish the Second Amendment.
-- With their candidate (Hillary Clinton) having lost in 2016, Democrats are all-in to eliminate the Electoral College, which -- like the structure of the U.S. Senate -- was structured to provide a meaningful voice to states with smaller populations. Both Hillary Clinton and Al Gore (in 2000) won the so-called popular vote by getting a large number of votes in California. But California doesn't get to elect the president.
6. They have no respect for the presumption of innocence, the rule of law or the integrity of the legal process. We saw this in the appalling behavior of Democratic senators (Dianne Feinstein, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris) during the confirmation hearings of Associate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. But the abuse of process since Donald Trump entered the presidential race (and won) has been even worse. Having failed with the Robert Mueller investigation on "collusion" with Russia, Democrats are now trying to impeach Trump for a phone conversation he had with the president of Ukraine.
Under President Trump, we have seen record-low unemployment including among Hispanics and African Americans; consistent job creation; reform of Veterans Affairs; a new federal ban on animal cruelty; criminal justice reform; a new North American trade deal; and no new wars.
What makes Trump such a successful president? It's a simple point that goes right to the heart of the system of American governance: Trump trusts that most Americans can run their own lives, their families, their businesses, their schools and their communities. In other words, he does not (and did not) see it as his role to walk into the White House and "fundamentally transform" the country.
Democrats, on the other hand -- with almost zero experience starting, growing or operating any enterprise of any size; no experience with meeting the needs of customers, patrons or patients; no experience making payroll -- are certain that they can come in and run a country of 330 million people.
We don't have to speculate about their failures; we need only look at the places they do control to see how successful they've been. Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New Orleans: What do citizens of those cities (and states) enjoy? Corruption. High taxes. Bankrupt governments and underfunded state pensions. Population loss. Gun violence and other crime. Homelessness. Filth and rodent infestation. Streets filled with used hypodermic needles and human feces.
The lawmakers were echoing objections made by White House Counsel Pat Cipollone in an Oct. 8 letter to top House Democrats that said Trump’s lawyers must be allowed to call and cross-examine witnesses, access evidence, and be afforded other “basic rights guaranteed to all Americans.”
The following examines the procedures followed in past impeachment investigations and explains why, contrary to Republican claims, the current inquiry does not violate Trump’s constitutional rights.
WHAT PROTECTIONS HAVE DEMOCRATS ALLOWED TRUMP SO FAR?
Members of three Democratic-led House committees have been interviewing government officials behind closed doors to try to build a case that Trump abused his power by pressuring Ukraine to investigate a rival - Democrat Joe Biden - for his personal political benefit.
While Democrats have led these interviews, Republicans who sit on the committees are also able to review documents and ask questions of the witnesses. Trump’s lawyers have been excluded.
Democrats have said they will hold public hearings soon in order to make their case against Trump to voters. House leaders have likened their investigation to a grand jury proceeding, a preliminary stage of a criminal case conducted in secret.
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WHAT DOES TRUMP WANT?
Cipollone said the House has “not established any procedures affording the President even the most basic protections demanded by due process under the Constitution and by fundamental fairness” in violation of “every past precedent.”
In addition to granting Trump the right to access evidence, examine witnesses, and have counsel present at hearings, the committees must also disclose evidence that is favorable to him, he wrote.
Cipollone argued that Republican lawmakers should be allowed to issue subpoenas, which would enable them to present their own evidence and try to undermine the Democrats’ version of events.
The White House also said the investigation was not legitimate because the full House had not voted to authorize it.
WHAT HAS HAPPENED IN PAST IMPEACHMENT INQUIRIES?
In U.S. impeachment proceedings, the House investigates and votes to impeach, and the Senate holds a trial to determine guilt or innocence and whether the president stays in office.
Some of the protections requested by the White House were given to Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon, the two presidents in modern history to face impeachment probes.
The House allowed Nixon’s defense lawyers to respond to evidence and testimony during his impeachment inquiry. Nixon resigned from office in 1974 before being impeached, however.
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Twenty-five years later, Clinton was afforded similar protections. Clinton was impeached by the House but not convicted by the Senate.
In both of those cases, the House also held a full vote to authorize an impeachment inquiry.
Some scholars have said that Clinton’s case was unique and cannot be likened to the current proceeding, however, because the Republicans who impeached Clinton relied on evidence laid out in a report by former independent counsel Kenneth Starr, who Democrats accused of political bias.
Frank Bowman, a law professor at the University of Missouri, said the U.S. Constitution gives the House the freedom to set its own ground rules for the process.
No full vote is needed to authorize an investigation and the House is not obligated to let Trump’s lawyers participate, Bowman said.
“Trump has no standing whatsoever to insist that the House do impeachment the way he would like it done,” Bowman said.
Bowman added that fairness to Trump is more of a concern if there is a trial in the Senate, which is currently controlled by Republicans. Like the House, the Senate has broad authority to set its own impeachment rules.
But some legal experts said giving Trump basic protections and allowing his lawyers to participate would make the impeachment investigation appear more fair.
That could be a wise political move for Democrats, said Ross Garber, who teaches impeachment law at Tulane Law School and has represented four governors in impeachment proceedings.
Bypassing due process safeguards that are standard in the U.S. legal system “may make the American people question the legitimacy of the impeachment process,” Garber said.
During the holiday season conservatives are going to spend lots of time across the dinner table from a family member that’s a know-it-all Democrat. No matter how much you’re determined to simply eat, laugh and watch sports, there’s always that one family member who will continue to goad you until talking President Trump and politics is unavoidable.
After you’ve destroyed that person with facts, instead of licking his or her wounds and accepting defeat, they actively recruit all of your other Democratic family members to gang up on you. Much like the original instigator, you quickly realize that their arguments are as void of facts and high on emotion as a Don Lemon monologue. Once they finally realize they can’t convince you to vote Democrat in 2020, they resort to calling Trump names and questioning how you could ever support him. The list of names might include everything from tax cheat, philanderer, racist, sexist, fake president, and Russian plant to dictator.
It’s the word “dictator” I’m most concerned with, particularly when they ignore the fact that the top-tier candidates in the Democratic primary are running as socialists. Our parents, our schools, our media and even some of our churches have failed us.
Here are four reasons why Trump isn’t a dictator:
1. Dictators don’t cut taxes: Dictators don’t sign legislation like the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” as President Donald Trump did, that allowed more Americans to keep more of their own hard-earned money. On the contrary, via over taxation, dictators seek to hoard the nation’s wealth for themselves, their allies and to buy allegiance from their military so they can crush dissent like China does (note to LeBron James).
2. Dictators don’t deregulate: Personally, I hate regulation because it’s the easiest way for unelected bureaucrats to circumvent the will of voters. However, I understand under the right circumstance, regulation is a necessary evil. I’d prefer all regulation be implemented at the state and local levels.
With that said, President Trump promised to reduce regulation on the campaign trail, and he’s kept his promise. According to the Heritage Foundation, during Trump’s first 22 months in office he only took 229 regulatory actions compared to former President Obama, who took 647 regulatory actions, and former President George W. Bush, who took 465 regulatory actions in the same length of time. Under Trump’s Executive Order 13771, which he issued just 10 days after taking office, agencies were required to “offset the cost of any new significant regulation (or guidance) with at least two deregulatory actions.” Trump also placed a budgetary cap on agencies to reduce their incremental costs. The bottom line is, dictators don’t seek to relinquish control by weakening their own government. Dictators gain more power and control over their people by creating more government dependence.
3. Dictators don’t tolerate dissent: could you imagine President Xi Jinping of China tolerating the level of criticism President Trump endures daily from the mainstream media? What about Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro? Do you think North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un would tolerate dissent without some reporter ending up dead somewhere? Yet, over 90 percent of media coverage of President Trump is negative. Real dictators respond with military force to squash dissent. Trump uses Twitter to fight back against the media elites, and he’s the dictator? Give me a break!
4. Dictators wouldn’t support Second Amendment rights: you’d think this would be a no-brainer for Democrats but it’s not. Consider Venezuela. They banned private gun ownership in 2012. However, the police, Army, and some security contractors remained armed. According to the Daily Caller, the former Venezuelan leader, Hugo Chavez, claimed “the law would curb the country’s high rate of violence and said the ultimate goal was to disarm all private citizens.” As a result of the law, only 37 weapons were handed over voluntarily, but more than 12,500 were taken by force. Chavez’s predecessor, Nicolas Maduro, ramped up the program in 2013 and today his soldiers are shooting citizens fending for food and fighting human rights in the middle of the street.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, was the first president since Ronald Reagan to speak to the National Rifle Association (NRA). He’s since spoken at several of their gatherings. Because our Second Amendment explicitly states that “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,” it’s safe to assume that no president that wanted to be a dictator would speak in front of a group of gun toting Americans that would fight to the death to ensure that never happened.
Sadly, many on the left have been so dumbed down by our educational system that they wouldn’t know what a dictator was if he or she were promising a socialist utopia like Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and running in their own Democratic primary
Harrison recognizes that without the conventions, some friendships
won’t survive. A lot of bronies worry about that. When BronyCAN ended,
Trapa said, “people realized they might have friends that they’ll never
see again. And that’s pretty tough.”
