“Speaking truth to power” has been the cry of the left for decades now, and yet there seems to be a dearth of truth and all too much sucking up to power. As the Washington establishment and the media, in an incestuous relationship, try to save their privileged position, the “emperor’s new clothes” syndrome is in full swing. “President Obama is so smart”; “President Obama is a terrific speaker”; “the unemployment rate is 5%”; “we are in a recovery”; “Hillary was a great secretary of state”; ad infinitum. Perhaps this works with the audience of The View, but for most Americans, the unreality is just too much.
Most Americans understand that their nation is in dire straits. There are very few jobs, and what little remain are given to H-1B visa holders or outright illegal alien invaders. People have lost their health insurance, their homes, and their faith in the American dream. The infrastructure is in sad shape. Manufacturing has fled the country. The Russians and Chinese launch cyber-attacks seemingly at will. The countries of the world neither respect nor fear us. To put it bluntly, as a friend of mine in NASA used to say, “We’re in deep kimchi.”
So how do our politicians, celebrities, and great institutions address these problems? Useless university degrees, safe spaces, gender-neutral pronouns, transgender bathrooms, and complaints of cultural appropriation make up the bulk of “intellectual” discussions. The rich spend thousands of dollars for a ticket to Hamilton on Broadway. This particularly brings to mind Florence King (for me the greatest of National Review columnists) when she wrote of the elites following the herd to the “trendy saltlick.” For real people, no play is worth thousands of dollars. For real people, pronouns indicate one of two genders, plural, or “it.” For real people, degrees in “feminist interpretive dance” and the like are, at best, self-indulgent wastes of time and money. For real people, the question of which bathroom or locker room to use is simple: those with indoor plumbing go here; those with outdoor plumbing go there. For real people, most of these supposedly “thorny” questions are simple and can be answered with a second or two of thought.
That’s not to say real people themselves are simple. I define real people as non-elite Americans. Real people are not celebrities, CEOs, national politicians, pontificators at think-tanks, or the majority of college professors. They are plumbers, nurses, construction workers, miners, programmers, bus drivers, school crossing guards, sanitation workers, accountants, and countless other occupations. Real people are not monolithic in either their thinking or appreciations. Some like football; others don’t care. Some fish, some hunt, and some would rather stay home and read a book. Real people are different, yet they all share a single trait: their eyes are open, and they can see what’s happening around them. Real people are not pleased by what they see.
For these Americans, this election is the last hope before our nation falls apart completely and possibly paves the way for a world government, foreign domination, and the inevitable chaos that would ensue. That is why I believe that a Donald J. Trump resounding victory is going to take place on Tuesday.
People always say you study history to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. Well, that’s not true, because we always repeat the mistakes of the past. Rather, history is not what we do; it’s who we are. History will always repeat itself to one degree or another. It may be instructive (or at least entertaining) to relate modern politics to that of ancient Rome. They had the creator of the empire, Augustus; we had Reagan. They had ineffective, licentious Tiberius and Caligula; we had Bill Clinton. They had Claudius, who dabbled in foreign wars; we had W. They had Nero, an egomaniac who brought the empire to the brink of ruin; we have Obama. What came next after the ensuing chaos was Vespasian, an outsider. He began the Flavian dynasty and got Rome’s treasury in order, stopped useless wars, brought peace and stability, and rebuilt Rome (structures such as the Coliseum were started by him and completed by his son, Titus.) In short, Vespasian made Rome great again.
Believers in the real desperately want our Vespasian to check uncontrolled spending and the destruction of American values and to stop the surrender of our national sovereignty. I am not alone in this wish. As you can see by the crowds at Mr. Trump’s rallies and the viewers online his support is massive. We are no longer the “silent majority”; we are, to paraphrase George Eliot, the roar on the other side of silence.
