resident Trump went to an Ivy League school, but he came out still talking like a New Yorker, with his street smarts intact. What does it mean to have street smarts? It’s knowledge of how to spot trouble coming, how to cope with mean bastards, and thrive. It is knowledge gained from gritty life, which gives you “a bank of courage to depend on when you are tested.” Your knowledge is based in your life experience, not conventional wisdom or academic notions, so it is actually real.
Street smarts combines common sense, self-preservation, and assertiveness. Think President Trump.
The person with street smarts has a great bullshit detector. You know how to deal with bullies and cheats, whether they be elite media or political opponents. As Willie Dixon put it, “You can’t mess with the messer, the messer’s gonna mess with you.”
Trump’s success dominating his dirty-dealing opponents has amazed and dumbfounded Democrats and the old GOP alike. They don’t understand his strengths. Like a martial arts master, Trump doesn’t absorb his enemies’ attacks. He transforms their assaults into his own energy to win.
President Trump’s street smarts go way beyond dealing with enemies. It is the key to how he carved his own successful path in life, and in the White House. The key to street smarts is noticing life as it is and dealing with it. In high falutin’ psychology terms, it is reality testing, the highest order of brain functioning.
Reality testing is essential to good judgment and effectiveness in life. It means dealing with the world as it is, not as you want it to be, nor as you fear it to be. No socialism, no global warming, no free lunch.
Good judgment requires facing things as they are. Democrats lack it almost entirely. President Trump has it in excess. Reality testing is a rare gift. It is called common sense, but it is not common.
This is why President Trump has managed to accomplish so much that was deemed impossible in the two difficult areas of the economy and foreign affairs. He pays no attention to the received truths of other people. He looks simply and without equivocation at what’s in front of him. Like any builder, President Trump has his two feet solidly on the ground at all times.
It has been a delight to conservatives to discover that President Trump is against suffocating government not because of ideology, but as a practical man. A bloated government sucking up the wealth of the country and churning out stultifying regulations is not a force for good. It is not good for the economy or opportunity or fairness or freedom. So, he’s done more to deregulate than any president before him.