What Happens When a Giant Awakens?
Published in Marietta Daily Journal June 18, 2017
There’s only one word for what’s
stirring in and around our national capital.
That word is hysteria. Scorned
elites from the media and the political class, who cannot accept political
defeat, have never been as effectively challenged as they are now.
The job market is improving, stocks
are doing well, and but for acting up college students, there is relative peace
in the land. Peace outside of Washington,
that is. Inside that eternal bubble,
truth deniers struggle with reality.
That reality is Donald Trump.
Trump is not legitimate, the deniers
are claiming. He’s neither from them nor
of them and doesn’t belong in the palace.
He doesn’t know what he’s doing.
Actually,
the new sheriff in town knows exactly what he’s doing. Those who have taken to the streets to oppose
him, affording the elites a measure of joy, call themselves the
Resistance. But the Resistance is
actually President Trump and his regime who are resisting the status quo of regulatory
strangulation, debt, and declining influence among other nations. There are good reasons for the President’s
enemies to quake.
This past week when the president
held his first full cabinet meeting and asked his secretaries for comments,
they took turns heaping praise upon their new boss. Admittedly, the praise got mighty thick.
Was this unusual cabinet meeting
scripted as Trump critics claimed?
Scripted or not, there is no reason to believe cabinet members weren’t
sincere. Ben Carson, not sincere? General “Mad Dog” Mattis, fawning? Sonny Perdue, not happy to be there? Dr. Tom Price, not excited to help the
president with medical care policy? And
who believes Mike Pence could ever be a poser?
The man oozes character and sincerity.
Around the table sat men and women
of practical experience: a surgeon, a farmer, an “oil man,” generals, and
business people. The nervous network and
cable TV chattering class mocked the meeting, their hysteria evident. Practical types such as the cabinet members
frighten the media. Media elites wallow
in commentary, speculation, and of course, drama. They have built nothing, have run nothing,
and have never met a payroll.
Probably
three-quarters of them have never held a wrench, never climbed upon a tractor,
never operated on a patient, never changed a tire, managed a store, worked in a
warehouse, gathered crops, wired a house, fought in war, driven a big truck, or
gotten dirty.
Hysteria
reigns because Donald Trump tapped a sleeping giant on the shoulder and gave
him hope. The victory which the giant
gave Trump in return was more than an election; it was a rebellion. It was populism rearing its oppressed
head. It was a revolt against
know-it-all commentators, big government Democrats, timid Republicans (not all
Republicans), and practically everything Hillary Clinton stood for.
The
giant had been told by all of the above that he must accept global this, global
that, and global the other. This time
the giant rejected “We are the world” for “America First.”
The
giant-awakener whom the elites detest has heralded a new political order. This new order is apparently what voters
desired when they elected Mr. Trump. As
surely as Andrew Jackson, the first president from west of Appalachia, aroused
voters who were far down the socio-economic ladder, Trump successfully wooed white working class
voters, many of whom had been alienated by the Democratic party. Consider his typically Democratic midwestern
states victories.
One
chief characteristic of the new political order is that its architect owes
nothing to the establishment. Talk about “of the people”! His victory was a rebuke of experts,
commentators, and pollsters. If
pollsters were so wrong about the architect’s chances for election, argues the
giant, why trust their reports about his approval rating?
Like
Jackson’s 1828 victory, Trump’s victory gave voice to the little guy. The little guy in America is not alone. His counterpart in Britain has spoken also,
rejecting the British establishment’s argument that Brits should be ruled from
Brussels. Even with a recent loss in
France, the little guy made a respectable showing. In Italy he is making noise as well.
What
sweet irony that our billionaire president was buoyed to power by rural, small
town, and urban voters who were less educated (formally) than in the past. Television commentators consider themselves
intellectuals. Historian Paul Johnson
said of intellectuals, “They are dangerous.
They forget that people are more important than concepts. The worst of all tyrannies is the tyranny of
ideas.”
But
common folks have awakened to their would-be tyrants, and that explains the
hysteria of the moment. Expect it for a
while longer, though I’ve no doubt the giant will prevail.
Roger Hines
6/14/17
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