“Elections have consequences,
and at the end of the day, I won.”
Barack Obama, January 23, 2009

 

 

Thus began the reign of arrogance that typified the attitude of the progressive elites to their opposition for even longer than Obama’s term of office, that conservative voices are irrelevant because they are stupid; they are to be mocked, silenced, and beaten into submission. Like the bullied schoolyard child, Washington Republicans have walked on eggshells, vainly trying to present an opposition without becoming a target of the voracious hyperbolic invective of the avenging assassins of the political left. Not content to restrain their disdain for the politicos who dared espouse anything but complete allegiance to their progressive agenda, the intimidators turned their ire to any who sympathized or failed to reject the values of yesterday’s America. In the moment on which the election turned, Mrs. Clinton expressed the premeditated composed statement that half of those who supported her political adversary were “the basket of deplorables… racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic… you name it… they are irredeemable”. In so doing she continued the arrogance of the president in pronouncing enormous segments of the population… NRA members, Tea Party folk, religious right, radio talk show listeners, Fox News viewers… as people who were both stupid and, yes, often evil. Ostracism is a powerful tool, and to a great extent that bullying technique has been effective in quelling the spineless opposition. But at some point that school yard bully pushes too hard, and pushes the wrong person. Like that big kid in the viral video, someone says “Enough!”, and the bully is answered in kind. Turning the other cheek has its limits, especially when people are being harmed, and sometimes the only correct response to being given the finger, even for the most civil among us, is to give it right back. That is what we have done with Trump, and the vulgarity of the choice indicates the measure of our indignation. With lifted finger we salute the polls, the exit polls, the prognosticators. With lifted fingers we salute the celebrity illuminati, the Canada bound stars, the society darlings. We salute the media elites, the Democrat elites, the Republican elites… the purveyors of the status quo. The world leaders, and not just Putin, who thought to influence our election with their unsolicited opinions, we salute you as well. We salute our college professors, big mouthed billionaires, intellectual snobs, and yes even some of our holier than thou, smarter than thou, better than thou, friends, family, and neighbors… we lift our finger to you all.

Oh, I expect tomorrow I will have some apologies to make for that. Friends and readers, Christian brothers and sisters, my mother for sure… God I suppose; but today I cheer for the bully beater, the giant killer, the vindicator of the rejected and the champion of the mocked. If Trump accomplishes nothing more, he has at the least reinstated the American foundational value of the rejection of royal tyrants, the concept that we are a nation of equals, not Morlocks and Eloi, a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, not some self appointed gaggle of elites. With this most unlikely of weapons, we the deplorables reject your characterization of us, and rebel against your snobbery and elitism. With the election of Trump the ostracism of the forgotten man is hopefully consigned to the right side of history that it’s purveyors are so fond of conjuring. At long last the imperiousness of Hillary Clinton and the mockery and arrogance of Barack Obama are on the right side of history, the past.

Lest we permit ourselves or the Democrats to simply throw Hillary Clinton under the bus and blame everything on her inadequacy as a candidate, it should be remembered that she is not the only Democratic disappointment in this election. Republicans kept both houses of Congress in what should have been a vulnerable year. The GOP again made gains in statehouses and governorships, and Democrats find themselves in their weakest position since Reconstruction. With the exception of his reelection, the term of Barack Obama has been very good for Republicans, and they find themselves with a domination in Washington they have not experienced since the 1920’s. In 2012, after the presidential defeat, Republicans performed what they termed a “post mortem” on what went wrong. In unveiled humility they pointed to things like outreach, inclusion, ground game and public perception. Though Trump can’t really be said to have remade the GOP as these party elites suggested, he did break the mold of the establishment and open the party to new voters, many among the coveted independents. The overview that something was wrong with a party that can’t beat a vulnerable candidate was one that Trump embraced. And now it is time for Democrats to do their own post mortem as to why they lost not just to Trump, but why they lost the people who voted for him, and so many of the down ballot candidates as well. Thus far, much of their post mortem consists of insults and allusions to the stupidity of Americans, indicating they have learned nothing, and that they are oblivious to how their hubris brought about their own Armageddon.

There are some voices of light on the left, and I hesitate in calling them that, because their politics are so opposed to my own; but these at least are wise enough to see the tactical missteps of their own side, Michael Moore, Van Jones, Mark Cuban, my God, even Elizabeth Warren seems sane in comparison with some of the shrill voices hyperventilating on the left. These at least are beginning to forego the snobbish ridicule and acknowledge that political debate is a conflict of ideas, and not a clash of I.Q.’s with the mental deficients rebelling against their intelligent overlords, not an invasion of the barbarian hordes on the civilized city dwellers of proper society. There are intelligent and good people on both sides of this debate, just as there are fools and degenerates. Pointing to the worst elements of either side doesn’t really make your point, and while you engage in mockery, insult and ridicule you do nothing to support your own positions, and you weaken your claim of virtue for where you stand. Having at last stood up to the bullying behavior of the elitist left, we are now faced with two choices: reasoned discourse or open war. The decision of which we choose is up to both sides of the debate. If Democrats want a place at the table they will need to look for common ground with the President, which may not be as scarce as supposed if they are civil (think, “What would Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi do?” then do the opposite.) Republicans need to be gracious winners, but that does not mean losing their spine again; it means resisting the arrogance of their predecessors and showing respect for those with whom they disagree. Despite Trump’s pugilistic personality, he has without exception shown respect to those he has defeated after the fact, and I hope he continues this with Democratic lawmakers going forward.

IMHO: What does it all mean? At best Trump garnered half of the popular vote, hardly a landslide, but enough. What is probably more significant, and hopefully not forgotten, is that America was willing to elect the man they liked the least in any Presidential election EVER, to elect a man they thought in majorities to be generally unfit for the office in both demeanor and experience, to elect a man that most of them didn’t even like, because they were unwilling to continue on a road that was leading only to decay. Though Democrats probably bit off more than they could chew and moved too far too fast with much of their social agenda and policy decisions, that was only a symptom of their elitist arrogance where they thought themselves not just wiser, but actually better than their opponents, or even their supporters. As such they saw no ethical problem with pushing through agendas without support, forcing positions without consensus, and shoving their “enlightenment” down the throats of the “unwashed masses”. That arrogance is what spelled their doom, and it was their relegation of their adversaries to baskets of subhuman deplorables that set in motion their defeat.
This is a narrow strip of turf to base a mandate, and Republicans need to use the opportunity of their situation to prove the virtue of their positions. You must fix Obamacare, you must improve the disasters of our cities and education problems, you must revitalize the economy, you must put the lie to the accusations of your adversaries and solidify your standing. The war has been won, but like the solitary Japanese soldiers at the end of World War II, there are a few on their islands that don’t yet realize it. These can be greatly ignored; as with Reconstruction and post war Japan, the real path to solidifying victory lies in putting things back together that have been broken. If you can’t do that, you haven’t really won. If you can, then you truly have made America great again.