Howdy y’all, the title of this missive comes from a very memorable experience for me. It was April 1984, and I had just completed the US Army Field Artillery Officer’s Basic Course at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma. I had finished in the top 10% of the class—the Commandant’s List—and was offered a prime assignment to the 325th Airborne Battalion Combat Team in Vicenza, Italy. So, I had to make the long drive from Ft. Sill back home to Ft. Benning for Airborne School in Georgia. Airborne School is broken down into three weeks: phases, ground, tower, and jump. In that first week it is all about throwing your body on the ground and learning how to do a proper PLF (Parachute Landing Fall).

It was in that first week that Sergeant Black Hat, that is what Airborne instructors are called, took a short bit of time from smoking us with pushups to impart some wisdom. He simply said, “Men, if you set the bar low, you will always jump low. When you set the bar high, you will jump high. Set your standards high; that is what an Airborne Paratrooper does.” This is a lifelong lesson and one that we should all embrace, sadly, that is not the case, and we are witnessing that at the highest level in our Republic.

Last week my wife Angela and I watched with abject misery the NATO press conference of Joe Biden. For us, it was not about the insidious gaffes; it was about someone who has had the bar set so low that simply showing up, albeit late, breathing, and walking off the stage is deemed an accomplishment. I watched CNBC in disbelief and read later news reports that panned Joe Biden as a foreign policy expert. Let’s consider the record, especially since former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates once quipped, “Joe Biden has been on the wrong side of every foreign policy decision in his political career.”

At a time when we were close to the capitulation of North Vietnam, the Watergate incident hit the Nixon White House. Richard Nixon ended up resigning, and it was a young Senator from Delaware who began to undermine efforts to support South Vietnam. His name was Joe Biden. Biden was vehemently against the effort, regardless of victory being close at hand. Nixon had opened up bombing of North Vietnam and neighboring countries being utilized by the NVA and Viet Cong. All that came to an end. Biden was a major impetus behind the tragic and embarrassing fall of Saigon. Who will ever forget the image of the last helicopter taking off from the rooftop?

Of course, Biden would later surpass that dubious achievement as president.

We should never forget that it was Joe Biden, as Vice President, who said that the complete withdrawal of US troops from Iraq by Barack Obama would be one of the greatest foreign policy and military strategy decisions in history. Well, the end result of that incompetent political decision was the creation and rise of the most barbaric Islamic terrorist organization, ISIS. It was not about leaving behind a massive occupation force but a capability to preclude the re-establishment of a terrorist base of operations. Sound familiar? And through it all, we saw an Obama-Biden team who proved not just inept but neutered in responding to this threat. Red lines, anyone?

And do not ever forget that during the Obama-Biden years, we had US Embassies and Stations come under attack, one resulting in the death of a US Ambassador. Then again, at this point, what difference does it make?

That is just how low the bar has been set.

That brings us to the present Biden administration, where the debacle in Afghanistan is just, well, par for the course. This time, instead of helicopters taking off from rooftops, we saw Afghan men clinging to C-17 transport aircraft as they took off, eventually falling to their deaths. Biden, the great foreign policy master, left tens of billions of dollars of military equipment to the Taliban, whose five Senior leaders were restored back to power thanks to Obama and Biden. Thirteen US troops lost their lives at Hamid Karzai airport. Biden forgot about them at the debate and was so bored that he checked his watch at their ramp ceremony.

China did not threaten Taiwan until Biden took office. Russia did not continue its incursion—invasion—of Ukraine until Biden took office; it began under Obama. We did not have hundreds of thousands of single military-aged males infiltrating our Country until Joe Biden. The domestic terrorist threat was not heightened until Joe Biden. Iran was literally bankrupt as a Nation until Joe Biden released billions of dollars to them and stopped enforcing energy sanctions. The result? Houthis, Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad launching attacks…oil shipments to China and armed drones to Russia.

And yet we have delusional, mindless lemmings who want us to believe Joe Biden delivered a masterful NATO press conference? Dang it, we have set the bar so very low.
We are clearly at a constitutional crisis moment as we ponder who is running this Country. A drug addict son is now Biden’s advisor? A power-hungry wife is setting up shop in the Oval Office? Not since Woodrow Wilson have we seen this. And all of a sudden, the media and press corps are acting with unrighteous indignation when they have been colluding and complicit with this massive deceit and fraud cast upon the American people?

Probably the most disingenuous line from Biden’s NATO press conference was his uttering that we must “protect girls, not guns.” Tell that the Jocelyn Nungaray or Laken Riley, or the many other American girls, women, who are being raped and murdered by these criminal illegal immigrant males he has allowed into this Country. Biden is obviously mistaken in that he has failed to remember his very own war against girls and women in sports with his rebuke of Title IX…seeking to allow biological males to compete against our girls. So much for protecting them.

Look, I know the progressive socialist left, the Marxists, and some disturbed Republicans do not like former president Trump. But please, do not lower the standard, the bar so very low, that you accept abject incompetent, corrupt, and pathological liars (who plagiarize someone else’s life) as acceptable. And truthfully, it is not about it just being Biden; it is anyone that the left would place on the top of the ticket. The bar will remain low…and the failed policies will not change.

I once heard a saying, “In the land of the blind, the Cyclops is considered a person of great vision.” We have been lied to and deceived for the past three and a half years by the blind who elevated a cyclops to a position of leadership and power. In my military career, I served with young Privates and Corporals who displayed more leadership capability than Joe Biden…many of them were Airborne Paratroopers who set the bar high for themselves and accepted responsibility, never seeking praise or credit for their actions, which in many cases were exemplary.

America, let’s not jump low on November 5, 2024.

Steadfast and Loyal.

This article originally appeared at Town Hall.