An Open Letter to Donald Trump By David Solway
https://pjmedia.com/blog/an-open-letter-to-donald-trump/
Dear President-Elect Trump,
You have gone on record expressing a presumably laudable desire to “bind the wounds of division” between your supporters and opponents—anti-Trumpers and pro-Trumpers, liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, left and right—that have torn the nation apart during and after your electoral campaign. Perhaps this is the kind of political rhetoric deemed necessary in the wake of a hotly contested election in which violent passions have been unleashed. Or perhaps you truly believe that a therapeutic healing of psychic lesions is now called for and is somehow feasible.
In the event that the latter is the case, I suggest this would be a serious mistake on your part. Not every question has an answer and not every problem a solution. That is simply the nature of life or, as some would have it, the condition of fallen man. It is certainly true of the political world and, in particular, of the competing theories of what constitutes the ideal or best possible political state. In modern times in the Western world, the conflict has been between a collectivist, command-economy philosophy held by a managerial elite, whether Marxist, Socialist or Progressivist, and a democratic, free-market dispensation predicated on the franchise and a government responsible to its citizens.
It is fought on both a domestic and international scale, and is a war that will never be resolved. It will continue indefinitely, despite the demonstrably historical fact that the collectivist faction has failed wherever it has imposed its hegemony, creating only misery, destitution and virtual enslavement for the majority over whom it rules. Nevertheless, failure after failure, it will always be with us, for it is a function of the utopian quest inherent in the human soul that inevitably leads to a dystopian finale. Nemesis invariably follows hubris, but hubris is perennial.
Thus I believe it is either naïve or disingenuous—one way or another, an egregious error—to assume that the political fissure between collectivism and individuality, Socialism and classical liberalism, fantasy and reality, can ever be closed. As I wrote elsewhere, “the rift between a part of the nation committed to the values of work, family, and creative expenditure and a part of the nation mired in ignorance, pride, and destructive sentimentality—in effect, between heartland and coast, rural and urban, conservative and left-liberal—is permanent. The attempt to heal the chasm, however laudable, is doomed to fail.”
My sense of realpolitik tells me that, although the “healing” rhetoric may have a prudential value, it remains an intrinsic misconception. By definition, one cannot pacify an implacable foe, and one should not fall into the deceptively alluring trap of believing that social, cultural and political harmony can ultimately prevail on any imaginable level. Your enemies on the left—the media, the academy, the brainwashed student cohort, the entertainment industry, the Democratic Party—and your enemies on the right—the Republican aristocracy, the Muslim sector, the fringe fascists—will not go away. They will work against you indefatigably regardless of your best intentions. CONTINUE AT SITE
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