Trump: Tourniquet, not Cure.

Stopping the Bleeding Is Not the Same as Healing the Wound

There’s a scene in every battlefield movie. A medic hits the dirt beside a wounded soldier. Blood’s gushing, adrenaline’s pumping, and someone’s yelling for help. And in that moment, the medic doesn’t reset a femur or start a blood transfusion. They grab a tourniquet. It’s not elegant, it’s not gentle, but it’s necessary. It keeps the soldier alive long enough to get better care. For me, its a good analogy for our country and the latest Trump administration. A tourniquet. Applied in haste, not precision. But it stopped the bleeding.

Now, let me start by saying that the policies of the previous administration weren’t just bad—they were catastrophic. I’m not being hyperbolic when I say that four more years under Biden, or Harris, could have ushered in a fundamental redefinition of the American republic. We were watching the boundary markers disappear—on sex, on borders, on the family, on speech.

And then something changed. A political outsider—Trump—stepped in again. He reasserted control over key areas of American life: national borders, public safety, parental rights, the protection of children, and a public square where truth would no longer be considered hate speech. He stopped the bleeding in the areas that matter most for national survival: the ability to function, the ability to form families, the ability to protect children, and the ability to have elections.

That deserves gratitude. That deserves celebration. But let’s not get it twisted. A tourniquet isn’t a cure.

Our Deeper Sickness…

Trumpism, as a philosophy or as a governing model, does not offer a coherent long-term vision. What it offers is speed, confrontation, reaction, and often just the ability to say “No” louder than anyone else in the room. That had its place. But we shouldn’t confuse that with a full diagnosis and treatment of the disease.

The truth is that America has gotten sick. The political body is inflamed. The organs of discourse, pragmatism, and shared morality are failing. And what scares me isn’t just the chaos of the left or the crudeness of the right—it’s the realization that we may not even want to be well.

That’s the question I keep returning to: Do we even want to be healed?

The issues aren’t all that complicated. But we’ve made them impossible to solve because we’ve built a political system that rewards pandering, performance, and protest. We now live in a climate where the politician who dares ask voters for sacrifice or delayed gratification is dead on arrival. We reward entertainment over ethics – and so we get what we deserve. A politics of extremes. A culture of escalating retribution. A state of perpetual whiplash.

Some on the left have veered so far into ideology that we started sterilizing kids, redefining womanhood, and teaching that empathy requires self-destruction. Some on the right have veered so far into personality cults that we excuse porn stars and power grabs because “at least he fights.” The whole system is addicted to the pendulum. Lurching left, crashing right. No time to breathe. No space to think. Just raw emotion and cultural exhaustion.

This exhaustion and polarization has left us incapable of adult conversation. Nuance is dead. Calling balls and strikes as you see them is now heresy. Try saying something like: “I don’t think we should ridicule trans adults, but I also don’t think we should fund their surgeries or let them evangelize children in schools,” and see what happens. Or, “We should deport people who are here illegally—but posting memes and videos mocking them is beneath us.” Leave any room for nuance and you can bet, the left will call it cruel and the right will call it soft. There’s no appetite for honesty—just party fidelity. We need to wake up. Our system has been captured.

Call me Naive but…

I believe that level-headed everyday Americans can negotiate the most pressing issues of our day with honesty, clarity, and dignity. All without succumbing to unhinged empathetic liberality or overzealous unforgiving conservativism.

I’m not arguing for moderation. I’m not interested in smug centrist posturing. I’m arguing for clarity. For integrity. For leaders who are politically inconsistent because they are morally grounded. That’s not compromise—it’s courage.

We need people willing to say the hard thing. To admit when their own side is wrong. To tell the truth, even when the truth doesn’t poll well. We need leaders who believe in justice and forgiveness. Who believe in consequences and compassion. Who know that sometimes, people make bad choices and must live with the results—and yet also believe in ladders out of poverty, in second chances, in grace for the broken.

Right now, our political culture is made of actors playing to the crowd. No one’s telling the truth. No one’s asking us to grow up. And that’s what makes this moment so dangerous. I don’t think we’re even looking for virtuous statesmen anymore—the kind that will ask for more from us. I think we’re looking for the easy way out: saviors to idolize and scapegoats to villainize.

The truth is though (as much as I don’t want to admit it) I don’t know if the person I am describing can even win anymore. The market might not want what the moment most needs. And that should haunt us.

That’s why I’m grateful for the tourniquet. I really am. It was our best choice in a sea of bad options. But never forget that the bleeding was only ever a symptom. The deeper disease still festers. And until we, as a people, want to be made well, we won’t be.

This isn’t just about politics. It’s about expectations. About what we hope for. About what we demand. We get the government we deserve—and right now, it’s broken. Because we are broken. But maybe—just maybe—this past decade has been the wake-up call we needed. Maybe we’ll stop settling for triage... and start searching for a cure.