I’m not the greatest writer. I use a conversational style that is incongruous with strict adherence to grammar and structure, and as such my columns tend to convey a conversational tone. In theory, I am speaking to you much the same way that I would if we were sitting across from each other. The points I make are rooted in observable truth and common sense, so I get some leeway from my readers on style. My reasoning is simple: I would rather speak to you than condescend to you, because so much of what we consume as media is designed to be intentionally intellectually dishonest, and to obscure fact for the sake of ideology.
The last two years, leading all the way up to the election of Donald Trump, were a referendum on the behavior of the progressive left. Regardless of which wing of the Uniparty you had claimed allegiance to, many of you knew that something was wrong. Sure, government has always been filled with self-serving oafs, power-mad dolts, and corrupt thieves…..and the public has yawned and complained, and then always gone back to sleep. The ridiculous things being discussed in entertainment and politics were just the same old-same old, and as long as none of it really mattered to your daily life, then who cared?
Then something began to happen during the Bush administration…….it was a partisanship ratcheted up to a level we hadn’t seen before. Election recounts, inflammatory media opining in the place of news, a terror attack that changed the world, and a greedy, corrupt bureaucracy all too eager to use all of these things to encroach into every aspect of our lives- using emerging technologies to spy on each of us in the name of “Homeland Security”. The United States adopted the unfortunate philosophy of war as nation-building, instead of war for territory, resources, or defense. Many of us began to question the wisdom and motivations of those we had placed in charge over us, and Barack Obama used that, as well as once in a lifetime politically-correct race politics, to fulfill his lifetime quest for personal power.
What happened next was the antithesis of the supposedly-liberal candidate Obama’s platform…………..a continuation of the soft tyranny began by the originators of the modern “New World Order”, the Bush family. Instead of dissolving the Patriot Act, Obama used it as a personal attack mechanism. As Edward Snowden exposed to the world, now the security apparatus of the NSA was a tool to blackmail, spy, and destroy any who opposed the Imperial Executive and it’s overreach of power. At the same time, the media and entertainment communities started to buy what they were selling…..that we are all the uber-progressive left, that half of the public is gay, a minority, and a victim of some type of patriarchal, entrenched white power structure.
The decisions and policies of the party in power reflected the false logic of identity politics and moral equivocation……apology tours, promoting an islamic takeover of previously secular nations ( the much promoted and disastrous ‘Arab Spring” ), bowing to hostile foreign interests in the name of rejecting American hegemony, instituting an unconstitutional mandate for each citizen to purchase a specific product ( Obamacare ), and using speech codes and media cover to run an unwanted progressive domestic agenda roughshod over the public. All to the clapping seals of The Two Coasts, media, and progressive academics.
The problem, by late 2014, was that Obama and others in government had done what people rabidly convinced of the validity of their position always do……….they reached too far. It’s one thing to ask people to accept policies they disagree with after those policies are presented and debated in the light of day, and another to obfuscate, lie and intimidate in order to pass an unwanted agenda that runs contrary to our national identity and sovereignty. Voting for the staus-quo became a non-starter for many………….. because it had become obvious that the left would continue its ruinous games, and that the right would continue to shrivel and shrink at the tiniest accusation of ( insert politically correct code word or social justice meme ).
Electing Trump was my only protest against the America I know continuing to become the America the progressives want. As a fan of The Enlightenment, I value individual freedom above all else. The degeneration of personal freedom over the last decade or so is directly relative to the advancing agendas of the left, and is inexorably tied to the degeneration of personal responsibility and the concept of individual identity. The simple concepts of a national identity and culture, assimilation, defending and maintaining borders, non-interventionism, and personal freedom and responsibility have become toxic to the progressive movement………and their collective reaction to the centrist, moderate Trump are proof of it. Only 8 years of an ideologue like Obama could make people respond to Trump the way that they are: Partisan bureaucrats, unelected and put in place by partisan democrats and neo-cons, are in open revolt against at what at any other time in history would be seen as a very moderate president.
I have yet to get an answer from any of my detractors or critics about what they are so adamantly resisting. Who has lost their constitutional rights? Who has become a victim of this new president? It seems that being angry at the election requires one to operate on many provably false assumptions……that there are no differences in the people and cultures of the world, that nations can exist without borders, that citizenship can retain its value when it has no cost or definition, that catering education to the lowest-common-denominator produces smarter students, that there is such a thing as “free trade”, that lifetime politicians are smarter than you, and that using real fascism to prevent imaginary fascism is a righteous belief. Toss in some bullsqueeze like spending billions to make all public restrooms friendly to the mentally ill, “Russian hacking” claims from exposed corrupt politicians, endless social engineering in rejection to biology, and you get the prog’s thinking.
My advice to those that are angry would be to remove the beam from their own eyes before removing the speck from others. As long as there are those that think Trump’s conversational blunders and bad jokes are the problem instead of confederate “sanctuary cities” and 20 trillion in debt, we will hear their harping…….but we don’t have to listen anymore. When the devout progressive demands the same release of documents from their politicians, and transparency in their actions………not just Trump, I will believe them. When the mainstream media spends as much time questioning the sanity and senility of people like Nancy Pelosi, who called Trump “President Bush” and Maxine Waters, who in the same press conference claimed “Putin invaded, uh…..Korea”……or Hank Johnson – who asked an Admiral in the Navy if he was concerned about Guam “flipping over” due to the weight of an American Naval Base……then I will take seriously their reporting of Trump’s gaffes. When the left condemns concepts such as “hatespeech” and groups such as the “antifas” goons, I will take them seriously……..and when I get an argument about the content of what I have written instead of my punctuation, I’ll take that seriously, too.
“Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and show the whole world that a free man, contending for liberty on his own ground, is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth.” – George Washington