Don’t believe the crow-cawing of the regime media

The eagle never lost so much time
as when he submitted to learn of the crow.

– William Blake

A key objective of the regime media over the last 40 days prior to the election will be incessantly to caw like a crow in the ears of Trump supporters, citing poll upon poll to demoralize them with evidence that MAGA cannot defeat Harris and the Democrats on Nov. 5.

This time around, unlike 2016, I won’t allow the swarm of media crows with their screeching territorial chatter to ground my high hopes for a Trump victory.

On that Tuesday night in 2016 when Trump defeated Clinton, Nov. 8, I attended an election watch party for a dear friend who was running for a local public office. It was an enthusiastic gathering at one of Little Rock’s landmark restaurants situated on the beautiful Arkansas River.

Expecting our friend to win, our hopes soared as on eagle’s wings as we partied, soaring higher throughout the evening as the results rolled in toward a convincing victory over his opponent.

Most of my friends that night were Trump supporters whose hopes for his victory in the presidential contest, like my own hopes, had long been grounded. Most polls had been squawking for weeks that Trump would almost certainly lose, even suggesting that he never wanted to be president, anyway, that his bid had been but a ruse. It was even suggested that, were he miraculously to win, he would never actually move into the White House, but would simply hand the reins to Pence, since his race had never been more than a narcissistic ego trip.

He wouldn’t win, though. Couldn’t. No way. Surely not, according to the cawing of the crows. I had come to believe them, to accept the inevitable, my once rising eagle hopes having submitted to the cackling crows of the regime media giving Trump no chance.

As results from the states began coming in, showing Trump unexpectedly strong, my long-grounded eagle hopes for Trump began to rise alongside my firm hopes for my friend’s local election victory.

Of course, for my friends in the room who were Clinton supporters (and there were many), the opposite was happening. Their eagle hopes, held aloft for months with the winds of their favorite pollsters beneath their wings, were now spiraling downward toward the crash that shook the nation and the world.

O, what whimpering and whining was to ensue from coast to coast, liberal campuses offering stunned students safe rooms where they might weep over their crushed hopes, luring them with Clinton’s paid for “Russia! Russia! Russia!” excuse to see Trump as an illegitimate president installed by Putin.

Watching a dumbfounded nation that week, analyzing how the polls could have been so wrong, I reflected on William Blake’s line from his 1790 work, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”: “The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow.”

It became clear to me that I had, in the weeks leading to the election, submitted my hopes to the pollster crows with their “no-path-to-victory-for-Trump” squawking.

Three days later, in Fayetteville, Arkansas, on Friday, Nov. 11, for that weekend’s Razorback football game against LSU, I found myself at Target, browsing magazines as my wife shopped. I was shocked to find Newsweek’s Special Commemorative “Madam President” edition on the shelf: “Hillary Clinton’s Historic Journey to the White House.”

What? Hillary had lost!

With the magazine in hand, I quickly did a Google search to see that Newsweek’s distribution team had made a mistake, sending thousands of copies of the “Madam President” edition to stores, as well as their “President Trump” edition.

Realizing their mistake, Newsweek immediately recalled over 100,000 copies, later to claim that only 17 were missing and had been sold. If true, there I was at the Fayetteville Target, staring at one of those 17 copies of “Madam President” Hillary Clinton.

I took it to the check-out, imagining that when they scanned the barcode, the magazine would be taken back, the store refusing to sell a recalled product. They didn’t, though, so I purchased the historic magazine and took it home.

I’ve kept that magazine, along with the receipt, in a safety deposit box these last eight years. Not for money, since it’s not worth very much, but as a reminder never to allow an eagle spirit to submit to the cawing of the crows.

That’s a lesson, not only for an election, but for life itself.

There’s a Southern phrase I heard in a country song once, or, perhaps I saw it on a T-shirt – I honestly don’t recall. I’ll never forget, though, the words and its lesson: “I shot my coon dog for aimin’ too low!”

Is it not the very same lesson William Blake was communicating 200 years ago with eagles and crows? Aim high!

If there’s one lesson Donald Trump learned at an early age, it’s never to aim too low.

Polls? I’ll leave them to the experts as I, instead, lean on the Cincinnati Cookie poll from Busken Bakery, which has predicted every election correctly since 1984, with the solitary exception of 2020 (which, it seems to me, is one of the best reasons for believing something untoward happened in the 2020 presidential election … just sayin’!).

Yes, the Cincinnati Cookie poll correctly predicted Trump defeating Hillary in 2016.

“May the best cookie win,” the bakery’s display says. As of now, Trump supporters can soar like an eagle with 54% Trump to only 39% for Harris, while 7% vote for independents or third-party candidates.

Eating a cookie seems the perfect way to stuff a ballot box, as CEO Dan Busken told The New York Post this week.

I’ll go with that poll, ignoring the media crows.