High Noon for Donald Trump
High Noon for Donald Trump

Haven’t we all felt this way? To heck with everybody – I’m going it alone. So here’s Trump after Speaker Paul Ryan and other GOP elites distanced themselves from him: “It is so nice that the shackles have been taken off me and I can now fight for America the way I want to.”

So it’s Donald Trump unbound and he is not listening to the experts who are telling him to focus on Hillary alone.

You can’t win, they say, if you’re at odds with everybody – Democrats, which makes sense, and even your own party, which makes no sense.

They don’t understand his strategy. His strategy is to appeal to Americans who cheered Gary Cooper in “High Noon,” the cowboy tall in the saddle but left to fend for himself against the Miller Gang. Cooper, the sheriff, needs his fellow citizens to lend a hand, but they all forsake him. 

How can you not root for the man who stands alone?

Trump has done wrong. But now Hillary, herself no specimen of virtue, and her motley crew will unearth and bring forward any woman he’s looked at cross-eyed.
Trump has done wrong. But now Hillary, herself no specimen of virtue, and her motley crew will unearth and bring forward any woman he’s looked at cross-eyed. The piling on, even today, keeps coming from The New York Times, a newspaper that can no longer be trusted. When it’s not Israel they’re bashing, it’s Trump.

Even Megyn Kelly keeps publicly refreshing the worst day of Trump’s life, a spotlight no one would want.

That is not so much about Trump. It’s about you and me and what it means to be spurned.

We’ve all had that time when we felt abandoned by friends, family, and everybody else, and if you’re different, congratulations. You are the lucky few.

The rest of us know what it’s like to be resisted at every turn. You’re in trouble, call for help, but nobody comes.

Sometimes it’s nothing much to make you feel rejected. You smile, but the smile isn’t returned. You did a favor, but nobody cares.

You were there in a pinch, but nobody remembers.

Worse, you worked hard but your work goes unappreciated. For some, that is only the result of a single day, one day of slights and snubs when nobody holds the door open for you and for that thoughtless moment alone you feel that the rest of the world doesn’t care if you live or die.

For others it’s like that for a week, a month, a year, and I know people for whom it’s like that an entire lifetime.

Only an entirely charmed life is always in good standing with the people he counts on for love and support.

I know women who would stay home because of a bad hair day.

Man or woman, you look around and there is no justice in the entire world, or even up at the corner where the clerk wishes everyone a nice day except you.

If you’re young you worry about being that wallflower at the dance, or being that face in the crowd while the others are giggling or backslapping.

Somehow you’ll never be part of that clique and somehow everybody else seems to be having fun.

What happened to all those dreams of our youth? How did it turn out this way? If we can’t get the dream, can we at least get a break now and then?

When, we ask – when is it my turn?

If you’re old you worry about anybody being there with love and care when you will need it most.

There is nothing political about any of this. That’s life. Everybody hurts. No one has it easy.

We all know the obstacles, the reversals, the failures that await us from morning till night, and when it gets really bad, when all seems lost and when it appears there is no one around to stand with us, that’s when we need to summon our strength to put up a fight.

We’ll go it alone, but watch out. You’ll be surprised what one stouthearted man or woman can do when the chips are down.

New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. New from the novelist: “News Anchor Sweetheart,” a novelist’s version of Fox News and Megyn Kelly. Engelhard is the author of the international bestseller “Indecent Proposal.” He is the recipient of the Ben Hecht Award for Literary Excellence. Website: www.jackengelhard.com