A perennial fly in Trump supporters’ ointment has been the president’s inveterate Boomerism. Four years ago, it was common in dissident circles to half-jokingly portray Trump as a reactionary autocrat who would swoop in, throw the Clinton machine in Gitmo, and declare himself emperor.
While the God Emperor meme wore out its welcome on the Right years ago, The Left still carries on as if Trump is a Caligula on the cusp of seizing total power. In reality, their transformation of America has continued to advance with few speed bumps, while their judges have continually thwarted Trump’s agenda. As usual, the Left’s hysterics over Trump cancelling democracy tell us that’s exactly what they plan to do.
Ironically, it’s Trump’s civic nationalism and his naive trust in institutions long since corrupted that have been his Achilles’ heel. Chalk it up to his age. As Sam Hyde pointed out, people over a certain age simply lack the neuroplasticity to change longstanding beliefs. Boomers like Trump came up in a prosperous, demographically homogeneous America. Not even brazen official incompetence and cities plunging into chaos have been enough to break their conditioning.
A failure or inability to confront reality has consequences. Italy’s Matteo Salvini, another former star of nationalist-populist politics, may be undergoing a trial run of what the global elite have planned for Trump.
The key difference between Trump and Salvini is that the latter is a Gen Xer who clearly understands the causes and stakes of the crisis gripping the West. Last year he was a right wing golden boy on the fast track to the premiership. Unlike Trump, who persistently trusted the wrong people, Salvini made a series of high-risk political gambles and lost.
Rule number one of taking a shot at the king is, “Don’t miss.” Having rebuffed Salvini’s power play, Italy’s ruling coalition is making an example of him by hauling him into court on bogus kidnapping charges.
If convicted, the former Interior Minister could serve two years in prison and be barred from holding public office for six years. Keep in mind, his only crime was preventing a scabies and tuberculosis-infested boat from invading his country. For that, our rootless cosmopolitan overlords must teach him a sharp lesson.
Trump’s case is even more frustrating, since the US branch of Globohomo Inc. have made their intention to put him behind bars plain since day one. The impeachment show was a clear message that apparently didn’t take. Now we have New York prosecutors telegraphing their whole plan to lock him up over financial shenanigans and hushing up affairs.
This is exactly the kind of stuff talk radio pundits used to lambaste the Clintons for, so you know who hatched the idea. Just as impeaching Trump was a ritual substitutive atonement for Bill’s impeachment, now it’s Hillary as the Count of Monte Christo.
Strangely enough, the pandemic has provided an effective litmus test for leaders who understand the current geopolitical situation and those who are stuck in past.
Hungarian PM Viktor Orban has been one of the key leadership figures who’s shown time and again that he gets it. As early as 2013, Orban’s government made crucial reforms to Hungary’s constitution reining in the power of the courts. In response to the coronavirus, the Hungarian PM signed legislation that suspended elections and allowed him to rule by decree.
Almost since the coronavirus crisis started, there have been those who predicted that it would be used by autocrats, actual and aspirant, to tighten their grip on power. People are willing to overlook more during a crisis, to give up their civil liberties, and to listen to the authorities. In exchange, those authorities see them through the crisis on the promise that, one day, things will return to normal.
That’s awfully rich in light of the democrat officials who’ve taken advantage of the emergency to effect the biggest power grab in US history.
The problem with guys like Trump is that they mistakenly identify the power grab as the problem. What leaders like Orban know full well is that power is a tool; if you’re not wielding it, your enemies damn sure are. Instead of whining about the other side’s hypocrisy, Fidesz has played to win and turned crisis into an opportunity to implement their policies.
If you still have qualms about fighting to win, look at the results:
Due to the government’s family support policy, the number of marriages has gone up by 42 percent and the fertility rate by 21 percent in Hungary since 2010, the state secretary for youth and family affairs said on Wednesday.
This is an outstanding achievement considering the fact that the number of marriages had dropped by 23 percent between 2002 and 2010 “thanks to the previous, left-wing government’s anti-family policy”, Katalin Novák told an international conference of Christian journalists in Budapest.
The global elite have made it clear that they’re out to destroy national sovereignty, and they’ve shown time and again that they will deal mercilessly with anyone who opposes their hellish program. It should go without saying that playing nice and counting on institutions the enemy has subverted is political suicide at the least. Yet here we are, about to elect a dementia patient to the most powerful office on Earth.
The pandemic was Trump’s once-in-a-century chance to become the next FDR. He should have doubled direct payments to each household and made them recurring, monthly, and indefinite, and he should have suspended the elections while he was at it. There’s no question that, had he done so, we wouldn’t be facing a European style Orwell state, and Trump wouldn’t be facing jail time.
Instead, he took counsel from country club republicans who balk at giving spare change to ordinary Americans whose livelihoods they’ve destroyed.
As Matteo Salvini is now learning, there is no friendly handshake and amicable parting of the ways once you’ve profaned the Death Cult. It’s victory or death.
