RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/11/12/will-the-democrats-ever-allow-the-country-to-heal/

It’s hard to know just how much of the country hates Donald Trump. The easy answer is about half. But that’s probably wrong. Much less than half of the country voted against him last week and it would be a mistake to think that every one of those Americans hates the man. Surely a significant portion of Harris-Walz voters made their decisions simply because they either like Democratic policies or oppose the Republican agenda. If so, it would seem that Trump has an opportunity to unify a bitterly divided nation.

Still, there’s an angry, petty and vocal faction on the left that has no interest in unity because it thrives on acidity and hatred.

Social media and cable television provide a window into these dark minds infected with Trump Derangement Syndrome. In the days after the election it’s been filled with academics and assorted university creatures raging like mental patients who should institutionalized; huffy celebrities threatening to leave the country; a Pravda press that has had nothing to contribute to civil discourse so instead spreads fresh lies and continues to condescend toward middle America; Never-Trumpers who’d rather the country become California than ever cast a vote for, or say a kind word about, the man; everyday Karens, whose steady stream of bile and instability has produced anxiety in their children; and a holier-than-everyone Barack Obama who up until recent weeks had been largely successful at hiding the fact that he’s a bitter man.

These people don’t seem to be ready to give up their animus. They still seek the social status they believe that hating Trump will give them. It’s their belief that whoever convinces their peers that they hate Trump the most is the winner.

Trump has plenty of reasons to make no effort to bring the country together. His opponents have hounded him like no other political figure in our history. He’s been the subject of dozens of vicious fabrications, a scandalous hoax, a pair of meritless impeachments, a duplicitous lawfare campaign, an unbroken string of slurs and two assassination attempts that were inspired by an endless stream of lies and venom.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/resisting-the-anti-trump-resistance

Donald Trump soundly defeated Kamala Harris, regaining the presidency and winning a second, nonconsecutive term. The polls, which underestimated Trump’s support in 2016 and 2020, again undersold the breadth of his appeal.

Trump has pulled off one of the most startling second acts in American history. On January 6, 2021, in the midst of an embarrassing and politically catastrophic riot, Hope Hicks, former Trump advisor and communications director, texted an associate, “In one day he ended every future opportunity that doesn’t include speaking engagements at the local proud boys chapter.” Following multiple indictments and trials, it was assumed that Trump would end his days in ignominy. Yet he rose from a reputational nadir to regain the most powerful office in the world.

It is beyond question that Trump is an electoral genius. It remains to be seen, however, whether he is as capable at politics—at governing—as he is at getting elected. Trump’s first term was obstructed even before it began, and he was unable to achieve much of his domestic agenda. For those interested in Trump II’s success, the failures of Trump I offer valuable lessons.

Upon entering office, Trump was embroiled in the Russia-collusion hoax, concocted by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the outgoing Obama administration, and the tentacles of the intelligence community, which used a compliant media to bind Trump “seven ways to Sunday,” in the words of Senator Chuck Schumer. Trump faced constant negative press and a lengthy and tedious investigation, culminating in an impeachment whose specifics have been forgotten.

Since the Russia hoax was arguably foisted on Trump, it may be unfair to insist that he should have handled it differently. The Trump team ought nevertheless to anticipate the return of the anti-Trump “Resistance,” and prepare to counter similar legal efforts to thwart the president and his agenda as he embarks on a new term in office.

Consider the response to Trump I’s “Muslim ban.” Shortly after taking office in 2017, Trump issued a series of executive orders aimed at protecting the border and enhancing national security. Executive Order 13780, “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,” restricted travel from seven Muslim-majority nations, though it did not mention religion; nor did it apply to dozens of other Muslim-majority countries.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/fema-employee-removed-from-role-after-reportedly-telling-relief-team-to-skip-houses-with-trump-signs-after-florida-hurricane/ar-AA1tMlOm

A Federal Emergency Management Agency employee has been fired after they advised their disaster relief team to avoid homes with signs supporting former President Donald Trump while canvassing in Florida in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton, the agency’s administrator said Saturday.

FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell called the actions of the employee “reprehensible” and said they have been terminated from their role.

“More than 22,000 FEMA employees every day adhere to FEMA’s core values and are dedicated to helping people before, during and after disasters, often sacrificing time with their own families to help disaster survivors,” Criswell wrote in a post on X before describing the employee’s actions. “This is a clear violation of FEMA’s core values & principles to help people regardless of their political affiliation.”

“This was reprehensible. I want to be clear to all of my employees and the American people, this type of behavior and action will not be tolerated at FEMA and we will hold people accountable if they violate these standards of conduct,” she added.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer invited Criswell to testify at a hearing on November 19 to discuss the incident and FEMA’s recent response to natural disasters, including Hurricanes Helene and Milton, he said in a Saturday letter to Criswell.

“In the wake of the recent major disasters that impacted Americans of all political persuasions, it is critical that FEMA adheres to its disaster relief mission,” the Kentucky Republican wrote.

CNN reported Friday that the employee had been removed from their role and that the incident was under investigation. The agency did not identify the employee and said it believed it was “an isolated incident.”

“The employee who issued this guidance had no authority and was given no direction to tell teams to avoid these homes,” a FEMA spokesperson said Friday.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/11/11/the-battle-was-won-the-wars-just-begun/

So you thought that a 312-vote Electoral College victory, an improbable popular-vote triumph, a flip of the U.S. Senate and, as of this writing, retention of a GOP House majority settled matters?

You thought common sense and true normalcy would return to government, society, and the culture?

As if. Don’t kid yourselves. The least intelligent, least articulate, and most incompetent presidential candidate ever may have failed to attain the Democrats’ customary deep blue state-fueled popular majority. 

But the reality is that America remains a deeply divided, essentially 50-50 nation. Meaning that:

Millions out there still consider the “right” to snuff babies’ lives out in the womb to preserve women’s careers and hook-up culture more important than getting married and raising a family. (Note: Six of nine state referenda establishing late-term abortion as a constitutional right passed, half in deep-red states, with only a supermajority requirement narrowly saving Florida.)
Millions more still think men can be women and women men, and members of the same sex can be “married.” Sophists and groomers will keep terrorizing “misgendering” employers and fellow workers and “trans/homophobic” politicians; pushing to mutilate children; and infiltrating schools and public spaces with propaganda, pornography, and drag queen stories.
Some 19% of Americans will habitually puff on legal weed, damaging young brains and endangering public safety, a gateway to the fentanyl poisoning a generation. 
Repeat criminals will continue to be coddled by Soros-loyal local prosecutors.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/11/10/americas-victory-trumps-win-saved-america/

President Donald Trump’s election victory on November 5 was an epochal event in American history. The American people gave Trump a mandate with almost 51% of the vote. He received over 73 million votes, more than four million more than his opponent. A new American coalition—traditional Republican voters united with lower middle class, working class, African Americans, Hispanics, and white women—provided the monumental victory. At such a significant time, it is important to consider how America arrived at such a historical moment and what must be accomplished in the years ahead.

Retrospectively, Americans must understand how they came to this place in their history. According to the exit polls, a whopping 72% of Americans understood that their country was on the wrong path. America’s political ideology, culture, and traditions were under assault by the so-called “progressive” wing of the Democrat Party. The Biden-Harris administration weakened the economy, caused inflation rates not seen since the 1970s, opened U.S. borders to some 15 million people and facilitated their relocation throughout the U.S. and so weaponized the legal system to wage lawfare against Trump, his major political and legal advisors, and against many of his supporters.

In the realm of foreign and defense policy, the debacle of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the failure to deter the war in Ukraine, the horrific attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023, and the subsequent wars it unleashed. Significantly, the Biden-Harris regime failed to deter Communist China’s hyper-aggression directed against U.S. allies like the Philippines and partners like Taiwan, and most importantly against the American people through the deaths of a quarter of a million of our fellow citizens from Chinese-provided fentanyl and the intellectual capture of so many of the American elite who parrot the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) policy positions to advance the CCP’s interests.

The deeper cause of how America arrived at this point is the embrace of Marxism by the Democratic Party and thus its increasing totalitarianism and alienation from the American people. In its embrace of this ideology, the Democrat Party demonstrated that it had completely become detached from the American experience, ideology, history, and culture in its effort to transform America into a one-party state on the road to totalitarianism. The American people saw this effort to continue the “fundamental transformation” of America—as Obama identified it on the eve of the 2008 election—and rejected it.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/11/10/the-progressive-movement-is-finished/

It was a wild ride. Imagine defunding the police, or insisting that a man can become a woman, that our very existence is killing Planet Earth, that driving an electric car is proof of your goodness, or that anyone having traditional American values is a racist bigot. Just imagine.

The Progressive movement has taken various forms over the past 60 years but it was always rooted in revolution. “Revolution against what?” you might ask. To paraphrase the great Thomas Sowell, it is a revolution against everything that works and in favor of what sounds good today. Open borders, transgenderism, “renewable” energy, white supremacy—these are just a sampling of the radicalism on full display that has proven to be an abject failure among the U.S. population.

It failed because it was all based on lies. When your entire platform is centered around lies, eventually people become wise to it. We are at that moment.

To understand why the Progressive movement has failed, one only needs to look at the Kamala Harris campaign for president in 2024. At its core, the campaign had entirely too many flaws and a boatload of dishonesty for it to be pulled off.

A big flaw was the candidate herself, an empty pantsuit that brought absolutely nothing to her own campaign except inane word salads, repeating memorized narratives, and proving to be incapable of articulating a single substantive idea for running the country. Showmanship is an important aspect of a political campaign, and Harris was lousy at putting on a show.

But the real reason why voters are rejecting Harris was the avalanche of lies. An avalanche of lies that the enablers in the mainstream media were all too happy to parrot.

Democrats expected voters to sign up for a campaign that was deceitfully hollow, counting on the insanely dishonest notion that the last four years did not happen (never mind what you experienced) and that this was a “new way forward.” A new way forward to where? Unprecedented inflation not seen in 60 years? A southern border that is as porous as a sieve. An economy that has many Americans feeling left behind.

Legitimate questions on policy specifics that seem to have veered wildly from day to day were met with a dumbfounding “My values have not changed.” What is that supposed to mean?

https://amgreatness.com/2024/11/10/the-aftermath-trumps-victory-sparks-media-outrage-and-national-introspection/

What a difference a week makes.

Last week, I reiterated the prediction I had been making since at least July: the polls were wrong. Kamala Harris was going to lose, and Donald Trump would win by a landslide. His campaign, I said, would be like George Patton’s Third Army racing across France in 1944.

All that elicited a certain amount of scoffing, of varying degrees of politeness, from the commentariat and assorted grumblers.  The actual results of the election—the biggest victory since Reagan’s blowout in 1984—seem to have precipitated the “national mental health crisis” that Mark Halperin forecast in October. As James Piereson has noted, the response of many commentators has been to blame the voters.  How could they vote for a man they had identified as evil, an incipient dictator, a fascist, the reincarnation of Hitler who would trample on the Constitution, etc.?

Thus we have The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser, who declared that Trump’s election “is a disastrous revelation about what the United States really is, as opposed to the country that so many hoped that it could be.” The people are sorry they could not rise to your level of smugness, Sue!

Peter “Mr. Moralism” Wehner weighed in with a similar threnody: “This election was a CAT scan on the American people,” he wrote, “and as difficult as it is to say, as hard as it is to name, what it revealed, at least in part, is a frightening affinity for a man of borderless corruption. Donald Trump is no longer an aberration; he is normative.” How could we have disappointed you, Pete?

And then there is the genius loci of NeverTrump agitation, William Kristol, the former conservative. Writing at The Bulwark, Kristol thundered that “The American people have made a disastrous choice. And they have done so decisively, and with their eyes wide open. . . . After everything . . . the American people liked what they saw [in Trump]. At a minimum, they were willing to accept what they saw.” Oh, those awful American people.

One of the most amusing, if inadvertently amusing, eructations came from The New York Times, which put together a histrionic video in which a series of discredited Timesmen (and Timeswomen) somberly hold forth about how “extreme” and nasty the next Trump administration is likely to be: dictatorship, camps for ideological enemies, economic recession, etc., etc. As one commentator observed, it’s as if “Jonestown had recorded a final video.”

There was a fair amount of that infantilized insanity wherever the fetid pools of wokeness oozed.  Thus we had Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, incubator of future diplomats and policymakers, advising their tender charges that “Coloring and Mindfulness Exercises,” “Milk and Cookies,” and “Legos and Coloring” were on offer to offset the trauma of Trump’s victory.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/11/09/the-election-common-sense-democrats-and-the-long-march/

Not long before Tuesday’s election, Ruy Teixeira, a Democratic political scientist and commentator, predicted that, regardless of the outcome of the election, the contemporary progressive movement was dead. Harris, he intimated, could still win the election, but the dominant force in Democratic politics for the last two decades was done. Voters had clearly and unambiguously voiced their distaste for the four pillars of contemporary progressivism: open borders/mass immigration, lax law enforcement/social disorder, identity politics, and the war on fossil fuels. As Teixeira astutely noted, the electorate simply isn’t buying what the progressives are selling.

Teixeira, it should be noted, is not alone in his concerns about and disapproval of the contemporary progressive agenda and its alienating effect on average voters. In the few days since Donald Trump handily defeated Kamala Harris, a handful of prominent Democrats have condemned their party’s polarizing platform and have echoed Teixeira’s denunciation of the progressives’ stubbornness. For example, Matt Yglesias, a longtime left-wing journalist and political commentator, posted a short “common sense” Democratic platform to restore the party’s following, overtly rejecting the entirety of the progressive plan. Like Teixeira, Yglesias slammed the progressives’ obsessions with climate, race, and anti-social behavior in particular.

Based on what we all saw the other night—the most improbable political comeback in American history and a realignment of the electorate—it is clear that both Teixeira and Yglesias are right. The progressive movement has enfeebled the Democratic Party and made it unappealing to a majority of voters. In order to stave off long-term minority-party status, Democrats must move on from contemporary progressivism and must realign themselves with the needs and wants of their traditional voters. The party must change.

There’s only one problem—and it reminds me of the old joke:

Q: How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?

A: Only one, but the light bulb really has to want to change.

Teixeira, Yglesias, James Carville, and a host of other Democrats are inarguably correct about the state of their party, the malign influences on it, and the necessity of change. The problem is that the party has to want to change first, which is not as easy as it sounds. Indeed, there are several very important reasons why the Democratic Party will not change—why it cannot change.

The most obvious and overpowering of these is the capture of the institutions.