I gave up trying to predict the outcome of the 2016 Presidential Election. If I spoke out about the very real reasons why Hillary Clinton, a/k/a Felonia von Pantsuit, could not be allowed to win the election, I was usually greeted with responses asking how Trump could possibly be more acceptable. While I loathed the idea of President Trump, the idea of a person who clearly flouted public records laws in order to conceal a pay-to-play scandal that monetized a government sinecure and put US policy up for bids by interested parties.
Having said that, I wasn’t sure that Trump could actually take down the great Clinton criminal enterprise. I decided that I wasn’t even going to watch the election results, but at about 8:30 pm, my curiosity got the best of me, and I turned to the CBS coverage, and discovered that it was actually a fight. I ended up staying with it, rotating around to the various networks and ended up really enjoying watching the various talking heads struggling to contain their disappointment. But what has been simultaneously disappointing and amusing has been the post-mortem the legacy media has engaged in after their humiliation Tuesday, and how so many of them fail to grasp the real cause of the Trump victory.
No, this wasn’t a “whitelash”. No, this wasn’t misogyny.
This was about the average American deciding that they are fed up with constantly being lectured to, with serious looks, smug condescension, and wagging fingers about how they are everything wrong with this country, and how the way they have lived, and want to continue to live, is a crime against humanity, and that even considering that they are being fed nonsense is somehow a thought crime for which they should feel utterly and completely ashamed for not abjectly debasing themselves and groveling for the pardon of their fellow citizens who fancy themselves to be the intellectual, cultural, and yes, even moral betters of the people they deign to look down upon. I’m not the first person to make this observation, or to be disappointed that instead, the introspection of these “experts” too often leads to the conclusion that it is someone else’s fault. The pollsters. The voters who could have only voted for Trump because of evil motives and dark hearts. But this is only part of the story.
The other factor is the incestuous relationship between the Left and the Media, and what they have done to Republican Party for decades.
While Trump was not my first choice, nor my twelfth choice, I did previously note, with not a small degree of amusement, Trump’s ability to take everything the Democrats and the media could throw at him, shrug it of, and essentially say “AND???” Even the Republican Party failed to understand how he was able to do this, but the answer lies in the votes of the people who made him the President-Elect: Double-standards and political correctness are not embraced by average people. For decades, Democrats have catered to excess. They have constantly advocated the use of liberty as cloak for vice. Republicans, as a general rule, have aimed for a different demographic, hence the generalization about “family values”. This has provided a powerful tool for Democrats and the Press, because while everyone is human, human failings have only been suitable for pointing out as it applies to Republican candidates. At the same time, we have had a creeping transformation of expectations focused around the dubious notion that we each have a “right” to not be offended. As this cancerous idea grew, and metastasized, victimhood has become both a sword and shield as everything has become offensive to someone. The result is that Democrats could condemn their opponents for weaknesses that they themselves would never had to defend in their own lives, and over decades, Republicans became conditioned to being cowed, to pulling punches, to not uttering obvious truths aloud, and to slinking away in the face of opponents who could be caught red-handed in all manner of morally questionable deeds, criminal acts, blatant lies, or influence peddling, and never ever display a shred of shame, and under no circumstances ever, ever,ever back down.
And into this scenario, where the average person is fed up with being told they’re the problem with America, that there is the law for the average person, and the law for the rich and powerful, and that subsets of government can pick and choose which laws they want to follow, walks a man who could never be elected. A man who has said crude things. A man who has been married multiple times. A man who has been bankrupt more than once. A man with an outsized ego (a trait he shares with many politicians, but in his case, this was “unacceptable” to our betters because he wasn’t a member of the political class.)
And when the accusations were flying like mud, he didn’t cower. He didn’t slink away. He pushed back. He’d say stupid, feisty things, rather than getting quiet. And he would say the things that average people were thinking, whether or not they were politically correct. As I look back, I am reminded of the Vulcan proverb: “Only Nixon could go to China.”
He has an opportunity that hasn’t come in a very long time. We have one party in the White House, the House of Representatives, and Senate. If he chooses smart people to advise him and to be in his cabinet…if he chooses to approach Congressional leaders with an intent to actually work with them, and he pursues an agenda of shrinking government, of cutting regulations and reversing the administrative state, and enacts tax cuts and tax reforms, then we could see a real economic improvement the likes of which we haven’t seen in this country since I was I child.
I’m feeling cautiously optimistic that we could have some real change, and I find myself praying, yes truly praying, that he is visited with divine wisdom, and that he appoints and listens to people who can destroy “business as usual” which has spawned a complacency which has converted public service into a sinecure that creates previously undreamt of wealth for the arduous task of creating nothing but laws and regulations formed by experts with no practical experience or skill.
And I hope he doesn’t blow it.
I’m praying with you, BiW. As Pastor Saeed, whose family Trump reached out to while he was imprisoned, pointed out, God has used very flawed men before…..let us hope that is so in this case.