My leftist friends (as well as many ardent #NeverTrumpers) constantly ask me if I’m not bothered by Donald Trump’s lack of decorum. They ask if I don’t think his tweets are “beneath the dignity of the office.” Here’s my answer:

There could not have been a man of more quiet dignity than George W. Bush as he suffered the outrageous lies and politically motivated hatreds that undermined his presidency. Could there be another human being on this earth who so desperately prized “collegiality” as John McCain? Has there been a nicer human being ever than Mitt Romney? And the results were always the same.

This is because, while we were playing by the rules of dignity, collegiality and propriety, the left has been, for the past 60 years, engaged in a knife fight where the only rules are those of Saul Alinsky and the Chicago mob.

I don’t find anything “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper” about lying, as Obama did, about what went down on the streets of Ferguson, Mo., or lying about the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi and imprisoning an innocent filmmaker to cover your tracks. I don’t see anything “statesmanlike” in weaponizing the Internal Revenue Service to destroy your political opponents and stifle any dissent.

But while the left has been taking a knife to anyone who stands in its way, the right has continued to act with dignity, collegiality and propriety.

With Donald Trump, this all has come to an end. Trump is America’s first wartime president in the Culture War.

During wartime, things like “dignity” and “collegiality” simply aren’t the most essential qualities one looks for in their warriors. Ulysses Grant was a drinker whose behavior in peacetime might well have seen him drummed out of the Army for conduct unbecoming. Had Abraham Lincoln applied the peacetime rules of propriety and booted Grant, the Democrats might well still be holding their slaves today. Lincoln rightly recognized that, explaining to Grant's critics: “I cannot spare this man. He fights.”

Trump is fighting. And not only is he fighting, he’s defeating the left using its own tactics.

Saul Alinsky’s "Rules for Radicals" is a book so essential to the liberals’ war against America that it was the playbook for the entire Obama administration and the subject of Hillary Clinton’s senior thesis.

Trump’s tweets may seem rash and unconsidered but, in reality, he is doing exactly what Alinsky suggested his followers do.

First, Trump isolated CNN. He made it personal. Then, just as Alinsky suggests, he employed ridicule, which Alinsky described as “the most powerful weapon of all.”

He has left CNN and its friends with two options: report the news accurately, or ratchet up the propaganda.

The problem is that, if they were to start honestly reporting the news, that would be the end of the Democratic Party they serve. It is nothing but the incessant use of fake news (i.e., propaganda) that keeps the left alive.

Imagine, for example, if CNN et al. had honestly and accurately conveyed the evils of the Obama administration’s weaponizing of the IRS to against its political opponents or his running of guns to the Mexican cartels or the truth about the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the Obama administration’s cover-up.

This leaves them no other option but to ratchet up the fake news, conjuring up the next “nothing burger” and devoting 24 hours a day to hysterical rants about how it’s “worse than Nixon.”

As they become more hysterical, they become more obvious. Each new effort only makes it more clear to any objective observer that Trump is and always has been right about the fake news media.

Do I wish we lived in a time when our president could be “collegial” and “dignified” and “proper”? Of course I do. These aren’t those times. This is war.

So, say anything you want about this president. I get it. He can be vulgar, he can be crude, he can be undignified at times. I don’t care. I can’t spare this man. He fights.

Evan Sayet (contactevansayet@gmail.com) is the author of "The KinderGarden of Eden: How The Modern Liberal Thinks." A longer version originally appeared on townhall.com.