The politicians always begin every argument, every TV and radio interview, every speech with the same lie: “The American People are too smart to…”

Halt the presses! Reality time: No. They. Are. Not.

The American People chose to be led by Obama for a Wasted Decade. “Too smart”? Yeah, by half.

Frankly, immediately before The Obama Wasted Decade, the American People narrowed down the choices, from among some 200 million possibilities, to George W. Bush and John Kerry, with Papa John Edwards in the wings. In other words, we American People are a good people, a compassionate people, a pretty tolerant (and oft times too tolerant) people. But a people who are “too smart”? Well, maybe — but only if we compare Americans to everyone else out there: Venezuelans, the French, denizens of all the other continents where life has been detected, though not necessarily intelligent life.

And so we enter Year 2019 anno domini (aka the second half of Year 5779 since Creation’s first week) And the American People — a club of which we all are proud to be members, at least in terms of compassion and when comparing to everyone else in NATO (because it only gets worse after that, and Turkey is pretty bad, too) — have bestowed on our nation a new Government to be conducted in tandem by (i) Donald J. Trump as chief executive and commander-in-chief, (ii) Nancy Pelosi as the Speaker of the House whom Democrats swore not to elect, and (iii) Chuck Schumer as Nancy’s Houseboy and caddy. This is what we have in store for 2019. Happy New Year!

Call it “War Games” because 2019 really is going to be about playing games, not legislating, not leading. It will be about speechifying great values — freedom, liberty, health, fairness for all, truth, justice, and the American Way.

No one ever defines what exactly is meant by “The American Way.” Herein the secret: “The American Way” will be about spending tens of millions of dollars of your money and mine to investigate Trump. While North Korea and Iran race to see who can build their ICBM nukes faster and better, aimed at the Washington obelisk in D.C. and the almost-identical Jefferson Davis obelisk in Hopkinsville, Adam Schiff will be investigating Trump, Jerrold Nadler will be investigating Trump, and Maxine Waters will be investigating Trump. (Ocasio-Cortez still will be investigating why she cannot find the House of Representatives after landing in Seattle’s Sea-Tac airport. After all, it’s in Washington, isn’t it?) While Mahmoud Abbas and his “Palestine Authority” throw American citizens into prison for life sentences with hard labor on charges of attempting to sell a home to a Jew, the House Democrats will be demanding Trump’s taxes. While Putin consolidates power wherever he can, and while the Chinese keep cheating in international trade and hacking our national defenses, the House Democrats will want to know who has stayed at Trump’s D.C. hotel. It will be that kind of year. Investigate Ivanka, investigate Kushner, investigate Barron.

“The American Way” will see Democrats who wanted a strong border and Wall barrier for years now engaged in new War Games, refusing to allow meaningful border defenses in the future. Yes, it is a hypocritical turn-around, but it also is logical and sensible. They just cannot say aloud why they have changed positions. Their earlier position, years ago, was based on concern for lower-income workers, disproportionately Black and Latino, but also White, who get destroyed financially by the stream of illegal cheap labor. Tsunamis of Illegals crossing our southern border flooded the labor market for years, driving down below-subsistence wages that were being paid to lower economic classes of bona fide citizens and taking jobs away from many of them. The Democrats cared about that because they then saw their electoral base as including low-income workers.

However, over time — and the electoral transmogrification of Republican Nixon-Reagan California deserves much of the credit — the Democrats have come to see that a porous border guarantees them electoral superiority in a country whose legal citizens otherwise have abandoned them. The Baby Boomers who came of revolutionary age on the campuses of the 1960s now are the seniors who vote Republican. Seniors always had been a lock for Democrats promising to protect their Social Security and Medicare from Romney-like Wall Street Republicans who would tear it all down for corporate profits. But today’s seniors back Republicans because the GOP will protect those benefits paid for through a lifetime of wage deductions, and they know that the Democrats will kill all of it with single-payer socialized medicine, will kill their fixed pensions with runaway inflation, and ultimately will kill them with everything from money-saving Obamacare Death Panels to “Sanctuary Cities” that allow time-tested murderers the freedom to roam and murder the defenseless.

Women were a Democrat lock, but now Caucasian mothers are gone. The Dixie South was a Democrat lock, but now it has gone Republican. Ethnic Catholics, Orthodox Jews, blue-collar workers in the Midwest Rust Belt — all gone Republican. Sooner or later, Asian Americans will be solidly Republican as soon as they draw the inferences from the Harvard lawsuit. That is why the Democrats need open borders to import and harvest new voters by the millions, enough to turn swing states, and will not give the President his — uh, our — Wall.

“The American Way” is itself a War Game, so the Democrats will not ’fess up regarding why they have changed playing pieces. Instead they will speak of caring about border security and about all the other better ways to guard the border — they will drone on about fences, and they probably will fence drones — y’know, all the ways that have been working so well until now. If you ever doubt their dishonesty, thinking just for a Diogenes moment “Hey, I think this Democrat is honest!” just ask yourself: If Pelosi and Schiff really mean it when they talk about their passion for protecting the border, then why do they play such a direct role in advancing California as a “Sanctuary State”? That’s all you need to remember about that.

The War Games will extend to healthcare. This country has the greatest healthcare system in the world, the greatest research and development. How many people have you ever met who fly to other countries for standard surgical procedures? (A Silver medal goes to Israel, which keeps coming out with stuff that rapidly becomes American standard of care — the CT scan, the BRAVO for GERD, just an amazing litany.) However, our system by which we individuals pay for our healthcare is quirky, the result — as always happens — from trying to get around and outsmart tax laws and repressive governmental regulation. Back in the 1940s, as people came home from WWII, the Government instituted wage-and-price controls as a left-liberal concoction to avoiding post-war inflation. As a result, because every Government effort at exerting control or suppression inevitably generates a private-sector scheme to get around it, employers came up with a gimmick for raising salaries anyway, but without getting fined. The scheme: They started throwing in health coverage as a perk. That way, they could compete for good workers by secretly giving the employee more bucks, effectively raising wages without breaking the law, and the companies even got tax breaks for doing so. Even better, the coverage also was tax-free for the worker. Win-win.

These tax games always catch up with the players, and now the system of health insurance is so inextricably tied in with employment benefits, even though the need now is so anachronistic, that people often find themselves locked into terrible jobs where they hate their bosses and workplace, and in fields where they often know they do not even excel — but they fear leaving for somewhere better, a better boss, a better field, somewhere to which they are better oriented, or even to start their own businesses… because they might lose their health coverage.

Amplifying the situation is the “pre-condition.” On the one hand, there is little room to sympathize with the gambler who goes years without health coverage, betting he will not get severely sick, and then tragically gets an unforeseen severe diagnosis and now comes demanding health coverage. It is like a person without life insurance getting whacked by the Mob and, just before expiring, expecting a company to write him a ten-million-dollar life insurance policy. Or seeing his house on fire and demanding that his broker rapidly write him a million-dollar fire-insurance policy before the last window frame incinerates. Nonetheless, other people are not gamblers. There are countless fair players in America who properly have been insured all along, but who thereafter get a severe health diagnosis and suddenly find themselves locked in for the future because they now, going forward, have a “pre-existing condition.”

This matter should be addressed and resolved. It really can be. But it probably won’t. The Democrats will not want President Trump to campaign on having solved the problem. The Republicans will not want to give it to the Democrats. Instead it will be a War Game. Each side will go on TV and wax poetic over fixing health care — and no one will. Until —

Until every member of both houses of Congress and all their staffs get removed from their platinum Government healthcare plans and get put onto the same plans that Starbucks offers its baristas. That’s all it would take. And the extra-great thing about the Starbucks plan is that, as of 2019, everyone gets unlimited visits to the restroom — without even having to buy sustainable coffee beans first or having to be educated as the barista explains social justice.

So it all will be War Games. Immigration and border control. Healthcare. Whatever else we really need to have addressed. Because we the American People, who are “too smart to” have it any other way, freely have chosen to be led by a troika of Mr. Trump, Ms. Pelosi, and Chucky. An incredible manifestation of national electoral brilliance, coruscating in the sunlight.

As in so many games, there always is a joker. In “Monopoly” it is called “Go to Jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.” In “Wheel of Fortune,” it is “Bankrupt.” In football, it is called Kaepernick. And in the year of War Games it will be the Mueller Investigation. Will it end in a week, a month, a year, two years? Four years? Six years? My guess — and it is only a guess — is that it ends at the 2020 Democrat Convention when, amid 45 known declared candidates and three Illegals missing from San Francisco, seeking Sanctuary from ICE by vying for the Democrat party’s Presidential nomination, the convention breaks a deadlock in the 37th round of balloting by nominating a ticket of Robert Mueller for President and Hillary Rodham for Vice President. (With the latter’s surname alteration, she avoids being tagged a three-time loser while expressing gender fluidity, and the “Rodham” empowers her to avoid being asked all those snarly questions about Monica.) So, bad as they augur, the War Games of 2019 might not be as bad as the 2020 vision thing. Want an alternative, huh?

How about a nice game of chess?