It's been a bit of a sparse month for posts on the Gauntlet, but in light of the peaceful transfer of power between the administrations of the Obama regime and the Trump presidency, I thought it might be once again an opportune point at which to comment on the state of things political on the American landscape.Through the long day of televised and streamed footage presented by the legacy media franchises, the focus was on ceremony, but often shifted to commentary coded with cursory admonitions not so subtly aimed at President Trump in attempts to placate those who have certain perhaps legitimate reservations about the newly elected POTUS. The right and left, as usual, processed both the substance, and the analysis, with seemingly different ears.
So, in retrospect what is there to say? We could look back at the successes and failures of the outgoing president, and depending on your allegiance, that task has been aggravated by partisanship, especially through the election cycle, so, no, let's not. We could instead analyze Trump's inaugural address, and try to deduce how much of the rhetoric within is truly Republican dogma versus moderate populist nationalism, but there, also no. Some might suggest that trying to deduce how much change will or will not get accomplished during President Trump's forthcoming tenure is a road to hoe, but also. no. What do we pretend to be, psychics? No, I think the most informative thing that can be gleaned from today's festivities is the slowly developing snapshot of the divided political tensions that have defined this election and its aftermath.
Liberals, Socialists, Progressives and Democrat Party hardliners have long controlled college campuses and our public school system, and have over time influenced the nascent social consciousness of America's youth in order to further their globalist agenda, and to insure their future constituency. This is an undeniable truth. Other the other hand, Republicans have long been guilty of becoming the other side of the same rotten coin of beltway insider corruption. In addition, by allying with the far right evangelical demographic starting in the 1980's, they nudged themselves into being socially representative of "the fringe". For the party that has supplied the vast majority of the nations presidents since its founding, especially when one bundles standard Republicans together with Jefferson's Democratic-Republican party, the Whigs, and National Unity party, it seemed as if there might never be another sitting Republican president due to evolution of urban vs. rural demographics across the land. The Democrats and their Federalist antecedents had finally won, and it seemed that this was perhaps a permanent victory.
Ironically, President Trump's rise and triumph literally turned that paradigm upside-down. Suddenly, Anarcho-Libertarians and mainline Republicans, along with old school Conservatives, and the religious right, started to sound quite reasonable to moderate voters, even to moderate Democrat voters. Internationally, globalism took a hard hit, and the more that Democrats, as a party, embraced the fringe elements of their constituency, the more they were forced to court a cock-eyed union of aggrieved "victim identities", for whom the only commonalities that truly seemed to unite them was their emotional investment in "hating Trump". Ironically, these are the same people who generally depict Republicans as hateful, sexist, racists who long for martial law. Yet, I see every little hate coming from that side of the aisle. In my opinion.
President Trump said in his address "When you embrace patriotism, there is no room in your heart for prejudice", or something like that, and with this I agree. There are those who like to frame both sides as being equally motivated by their love of country, etc., etc., but I just don't see it. I see liberals burning the flag, destroying property, purging friends on facebook for not complying with a uniform opinion, and even manufacturing fake news stories for their own goals and to manipulate the "ignorant typical American" that I see they have contempt for. They try to convince each other that under Trump, African-Americans will be lynched, gays will be tortured, women will be pushed into elevated subservience, and illegal aliens will, heaven forbid, be deported (ignoring that fact that Obama has deported more Mexican illegals in the last eight years than any president since Eisenhower).
What I think will be most interesting over the next eight years (and I do believe it will be eight years, not four), is studying how the left bounces back from their unexpected reversal. Will they look inward to the fringe elements and lose even more of their moderate base? Will they even be able to locate candidates of substance to represent them in future vote offs? These are the real questions that present themselves, and far overshadow the simple paradigm of "will Trump achieve all that he has promised he will?". As long as President Trump doesn't prove to be a mediocre and unambitious president, the social movement, and the healthy dissatisfaction toward big government he crystallized will prevail. As Ringo Starr once famously said "Everything the government touches turns to shit". Let us all just hope that Trump's earnestness for patriotism is not concocted and that his billions will render him impervious to the pervasive corruption of D.C., and that he will be capable of "draining the swamp" as he has vowed.
For someone like me, who has sat through many presidential regimes that he has neither voted for or supported, I recommend to those who are fearful of the change-over due to partisan posturing and media rhetoric, that they might offer some patience to the process and give President Trump a chance notwithstanding their resistance to the incoming regime's policies. After all, the Republicans pined their way through "the Obama years" and waited their turn, mostly with patience, and pretty much, that's how the game is played.
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