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This week I was at the annual big shipowners conference. It was a ghost town, all the Europeans boycotted us. They announced this will be the last year. The place was reverberating with TDS. Each morning I woke up at 4:30 and didn’t leave the hotel room till 11. It was a Hilton but instead of renovating it they just downgraded to a Doubletree My best mentor has a fancy dinner each year at an exclusive spot with the top shipowners. Except he recently died so it was a memorial. I stayed up too late. I get back to the hotel room and my temperature skyrockets and nose starts running like the discharge manifold on a VLCC. No sleep. Miserable. Wake up and it’s dreary with freezing rain. All the news from Hormuz is terrible. The conference starts feeling like a funeral service. I had that uncontrollable feeling to leave. Text my wife and she asks if I can stop in Ikea. My least favorite place on earth. I hate shopping and the place is F’n labyrinth. On the drive the White House announces possible suspension of the Jones Act and half the Merchant Marine calls me in rage. I pull into the parking lot, do @MarioNawfal’s spaces then pass out in my car. I awake miserable. Then I walk into the labyrinth. It’s full of young families walking through building their lives. Dads with kids on the shoulders. Babies giggling. A couple with a baby is arguing. Not mad arguing but there is a bookshelve in two colors. Ugly Ikea white and natural wood. The wife clearly wants the wood but says they can’t afford it. The dad says she will look at it every day and will make her happy. I hold back tears. It’s only $40 more but I feel that decision in my bones because I picked the white 20 years ago and regretted it. Now I always carry a folded up hundred between my case and my iPhone for emergencies. Have for 10 years but never once used it. I pull it out. I hand it to the dad and tell him to get the wood. “We can’t accept that” So I lied and said I just won a million in the lotto. The say congrats and I walk away. But this post isn’t about paying forward or doing good deeds or Hormuz or my miserable week. This post is about America. The guy had an american flag on his hat, a kiddo and probably worked hard for that $40 upgrade. F Iran F the Globalists F the MSM I spent all week on the receiving end of TDS. Explaining my position. Why I voted Trump. Why I trust him even though I’ve been against middle east wars since day one. THIS is why. This is all that matters. Not the boomers. Not the cat ladies. Not the hipsters drinking $8 lattes. I didn’t give him that cash to feel good , I gave him that cash because at that moment I felt like would have robbed a bank or charge a foxhole to get that dad a decent looking cheap bookshelve. But I don’t have to run through anything. I won something better than the lotto. My company takes in more every year than my $1 million dollar lie. I, a poor kid from the Bronx, won the American dream. A bookshelves that’s going to collect photos of that kid growing up. That’s what we are fighting for. And that’s why I think Presidents lose their first midterm. They get so busy, the entire White House gets so busy, they never make it out to an ikea. Administrations - every administration - loses momentum because they don’t make it out to see average Americans. IDK if this war is good or necessary or whatever. But I do know one person who is making it out. The last time I saw that smile was just a few weeks ago when Pete Hegseth invited me on a trip and he stopped to give the oath to young recruits. And I watched a mom smiling wide take a photo of her son and I know she’s going to put it on her Ikea bookshelf and I just hope she got the upgrade. She deserves it. IDK of this war is good or bad or wrong or right. But I do know I want to kick there ass and win so that mom can keep putting photos of that kid on her bookshelve. And so we can get back to fixing America for every dad.