Elitism’s Failures

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 1/16/21

             Today our national capital is armed to the gills. Cops and troops are rightly everywhere, some even sleeping on the floor of the Capitol building. Individual states are also shoring up security for next week’s inauguration.

            As Democrats and their media outlets would cast it, more peasants are headed toward the palace with their pitchforks. You know. The unwashed, uneducated, cultish conservative thugs, those who, according to the elitist CNN “contributor” Eugene Robinson, “need to be re-programmed.” Robinson wasn’t referring only to the thugs who stormed the Capitol, however. He made it clear he was referring to all of the supporters of Donald Trump.

            How sad, how despicable, that the lengths to which the federal government has gone to protect itself were not extended to the business owners, cops, and other non-elites in Portland, Seattle, and Minneapolis. Why no rage when Black Lives Matter and Antifa filled the streets and battled with police for three solid months? The answer is obvious and two-fold.

             First, simply because the little people whose shops were burned down by the radicals during “the summer of love” were not elitists but just normal folks. Neither were their places of work hallowed, columned structures of marble. Second, because Democrat mayors and governors not only turned aside from the summer violence but also defended the destructive “protestors” as well.

            Said elitist Kamala Harris, “The protestors are not going to let up and they shouldn’t let up.” This, while cars were being smashed, police stations were being burned, and even government buildings were being destroyed. Elitist-in-Chief Nancy Pelosi, when asked about the rioters, appeared to be at a loss for words then muttered, “People will do what they do.” Ponder the double standard for violence. Ponder who incited the summer violence, excusing it with the phrase, “justifiable frustration.”

            Compare these comments to the words of President Trump just before the Capitol storming took place, words I have read and watched three times. I challenge any reader to quote me a single sentence from the president’s speech that incited anyone to riot. Shortly after the storming of the Capitol, another elitist, Senator Mitt Romney, used a word that has since been seized and repeated by anti-Trumpers.

            “Embarrassing,” moaned the Senator. What, then, is the word for the action perpetrated upon the little people of the cities named above? I doubt that the ordinary citizens whose livelihoods were lost, whose lives were endangered and put on hold ever thought about embarrassment. They were thinking about food, housing, mortgages, their immediate future, and kids, things rich man Romney has never had to worry about.

            As for the dumbing down of the word “insurrection,” a word Democrats need to look up, the taking over of a section of a city and claiming sovereignty over it is far more seditious than trashing the House Speaker’s office, engaging in antics, and making fun of her. True insurrectionists don’t waste time with foolishness. Ne’er-do-wells do. And every political party has its share of ne’er-do-wells.

            Yes, the Capitol, the seat of our government, is hallowed and sacrosanct. But so is the common man’s “castle” and workbench. Even the wealthy FDR made clear his sincere belief in “the sanctity of the commoner.” That’s why he was considered a traitor to his class. Regard for the common folks far away from our storied capital city was what distinguished us from Europe in the first place. It was the far away folks whom Donald Trump aroused, the huge middle class who had been ignored by elitist, globalist Democrats and Republicans alike. The goons of January 6^th don’t represent this vast portion of America’s citizens. To be precise, the beautiful Capitol they trashed is but a symbol of what is hallowed and sacrosanct, namely our freedom.

            For four years uppity elitists in both parties have sullied every word President Trump has uttered. With overwrought language they have attacked his family, questioned his sanity, belittled his intelligence, rejected his election and impeached him twice. It is they who incited the January 6^th goons.

            Anyone who thinks Trump’s base will fall apart hasn’t followed politics and doesn’t understand the power of numbers. 74,000,000 Trump supporters are not going to evaporate. The tepid Republicans who bolted will fade. If they are truly conservatives they will regret their lack of discernment within six months. It has escaped them that because of Trump the middle class is doing better, borders are now meaningful, Blacks are exiting the Democrat party, Arabs and Jews are talking, and “America First” is gloriously infectious.

            Trumpism is not dead because populism is very much alive. To maintain their power, Democrats and their elitist Republican sympathizers might need to look up populism since it’s coming toward them. The Biden agenda will strengthen it.

 

Roger Hines

1/14/21 

           

 

                   Thank you, Mr. President, for dividing us

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 1/2/21

            C.S. Lewis, the atheist turned Christian, professor at Oxford and Cambridge, and author of great renown said it best. In his little book titled “The Great Divorce” Lewis argued that good and evil cannot co-exist. One or the other must win and will win.

            Lewis’ absolutism alarms many people today. Had he not died less than an hour before John F. Kennedy was assassinated, the world would probably know him better. And if he were still living, Lewis would still be alarming us. Lewis believed in objective truth and acknowledged that truth is always narrow.

            “Life is not like a pool,” Lewis wrote, “but like a tree. It does not move toward unity but away from it. Evil cannot develop into good. Time does not heal it.”

            Ayn Rand, having endured evil Russian communism before coming to America, wrote the following in 1957: “When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing, when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods but in favors, you may know that your society is doomed.”

            Lewis and Rand, total opposites on matters of faith, were both dividers who forced clarity.

            Division is sometimes not only preferable but essential, if the good and right are to prevail. We juxtapose ideas during a political debate in order to compare them and then embrace one and discard the other. We acknowledge that more often than not, two cannot walk together except they be agreed.

            Rodney King, allegedly beaten badly by cops but continuing a life of petty crime until his death, famously said, “Why can’t we all just get along?” Today during the corona virus visitation, many are saying, “We’re in this together.”

Well, no we’re not. There’s little togetherness in America. Too much mixed information is tossed us. Too many commands are being given. Too many unelected bureaucrats are running the show, politicizing a pandemic. Our representative democracy, if not at stake, is surely being tested. If right wingers become violent, watch for the difference between the official response to them and the non- response to the leftists who rioted and even took over portions of cities.

            Division is often good, and there are several divisions that our current president brought about. His critics have aptly called him a divider and indeed his role as a divider has been well received. Apparently 74 million voters – practically half of the voters in the November election – approve of the role he assumed. Here are just three of those divisions.

            He divided the general populace and the news media. Not that the media was deeply loved by the populace in the first place, but for the most part we accepted the fact that news had become commentary and simply shook our heads in disgust. The president would not do this. He challenged media elites and actually jerked them around on a string, displaying their disdain for ordinary folks, particularly conservatives. Consequently most media personalities are consumed by Trump-hate. Consequently Americans are now taking “news” with a grain of salt.

            He divided nationalists and globalists. For decades many Congressional Republicans and Democrats alike have been globalists. Ignoring the needs of the vast middle class, they allowed jobs to spread abroad, not to heartland America. The very words, “America First,” scare them. Globalists ignored the fact that America’s heartland isn’t New York and Wall Street but Peoria and Main Street.

It’s interesting that a New York billionaire, recently named the most admired man in the country, spoke to and won the hearts of the heartland rather than trafficking in the rarified air of entities like the U.N., the World Health Organization and the World Bank. Globalists, who definitely include most of America’s corporate CEOs, like to keep the gravy train running, fueling it with cheap labor. (Guess what percentage of Walmart’s suppliers are in communist China.) Forget that globalism destroys national, homogenous cultures. Consumerism and moo-la, not borders, are what matter to globalists.

            The president also divided secular elites from religious commoners. Secular elites, having lost their minds, have given us post-birth abortion, white-shaming, emasculated cops, and “What gender do you prefer?” Conservatives are asking, “What in the world can be next?” And they’re ready to fight it. Such division is good. 

            Division is often the price we pay for needed correction. C.S. Lewis and Rand, like Patrick Henry, Churchill, Reagan, and other true lovers of freedom, simply believed there was a time for “Yea, yea” or “Nay, nay.”

            Georgia’s senatorial election is such a time. The socialism that Lewis and Rand have disdained and the President has fought is up for a vote.

 

Roger Hines

December 30, 2020