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It’s All Unraveling (And Why That’s a Good Thing)
America, tired of being lied to by its coastal betters, chose a President to tear it all down to the studs, from where a more hopeful and stronger country could rise again. Much of the anger that brought Donald Trump into office was certainly directed toward Washington DC’s elites, but also our cultural pillars. With a $20 trillion national debt, politicians had been Weinsteining their constituents for decades and people of both parties have had enough of the D.C./entertainment/sports/media complex.
The only results from the Progressives’ identity politics prescribed by Leftist septuagenarians was to balkanize a once civil union. Meanwhile, the overpaid, yet feckless consultant class on the right finagles their benefactor’s largesse but yield few results. Jabba the Hutt politicians along with their K-Street enablers tied the American voter to his chain, while they focused on reelection. It’s only about their power. From their mahogany walled watering holes in DC, they laugh at us idealistic rubes while ensuring their marble streets remain shiny in National Harbor. Americans weren’t just voting against DC. They were voting against the cultural rot that started decades ago.
Meanwhile, Hollywood, known for facades phonier than Obama’s Greek columns, somewhere along the way went from dream factory with a few crazies, to become the worst stereotype conservatives always believed it was. Its incestual, intellectually shallow, immature, and chronically insecure inhabitants know only two modes: reading someone else’s words for a living or regurgitating Bill Maher’s. These people have spent so much energy on dividing the country into a caste system, they hadn’t realized their product has suffered, relegating themselves to brain-numbing CGI superhero remakes and Oscar-bait no one will ever see, but … another award show to congratulate each other on our brilliance! Movie audiences are responding with their wallets as year-over-year box office receipts have plummeted.
Hollywood’s uber-power titan Harvey Weinstein does a Polanski (hey, I thought of Roman before Matt Drudge posted… for what that’s worth) and skedaddled to “rehab.” The elite betters have now become conflicted pearl-clutchers aimlessly wandering the corridors of Warner Bros. and Paramount Studios. They still remain befuddled on how to cope with their disgusting emperor mogul literally not wearing clothes. He’s a liberal, yes, but he’s kind of toast, so… Now that a few brave souls have spoken out against Rapey McRaperson, the rest of the Hollywood’s sycophants can now say what they truly think; that the man really is gross and sexist … Trump that is.
Meanwhile, the NFL, an institution that basically owns a day of the week, is under an unprecedented assault by even its most ardent fans. Who knew that Colin and Co. kneeling during the National Anthem would make American patriots angry? Regardless of the substance of the protest, social justice issues being raised during the few moments we are all on the same team isn’t working out so well for the league. Ratings are collapsing, ad revenue is dropping, and Roger Goodell’s legacy will be presiding over the ESPNification of America’s favorite autumn pastime.
Football may never be the same, as many people are suddenly realizing there are a whole lot of other Sunday options rather than just sitting on a couch … well, unless the Steelers are on.
Meanwhile, nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the mainstream media is filled with fake news. Read that again … Main. Stream. Media. Two-thirds! Fake! Those are the networks cheerleading the removal of the duly-elected 45th President. People have tuned out CNN, NBC, ESPN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post’s tiresome Gatlin gun of anonymously sourced reports suggesting Fred Trump once brought home a Russian nesting doll when Donald was 14. Maddow has the proof and will spend an hour Glenn Becking you over the head with it. Oh, and did we tell you all his supporters are evil, dumb, racist, sexist, country music fans who deserved to be shot?
Is it any wonder why the only people watching Wolf and Jake are strapped in the airport shoeshine chair Clockwork Orange style?
Meanwhile, social media titans Facebook and Twitter along with Google and Apple have gone from running 1984 Super Bowl ads to actually being super 1984-ish. They have determined themselves as arbiters of what is offensive, what can or cannot be said, and are now impacting peoples livelihoods on outlets like YouTube which has demonetized content creators if their Al-Gore-ithms determine such content doesn’t meet their Southern Poverty Law Center litmus test.
The latest example is Rep. Marsha Blackburn, who was blocked on Twitter Monday because of a statement she made in a Senate campaign ad about the sale of fetal tissue for medical research. Of course, no one would have seen that ad (who watches commercials?) but now everyone has seen it. Thanks, Twitter censors!
Meanwhile, higher education has steadily devolved our publicly funded colleges and universities into Petri dishes of social justice indoctrination. Their focus has been on providing safe spaces for anyone slighted by even a dusting of offense while allowing masked Antifa hoodlums free rein to carry shivs and pepper spray to protest Hitler coming to campus. Racist, xenophobic, homophobic hate speech occurs on campus from the likes of that Jewish Nazi, white, cisgendered Ben Shapiro.
The pillars of our culture, those institutions that are part of our daily lives, are all affected by the politics of our time. Some blame Donald Trump, and others would say he knows when to toss jet fuel on smoldering embers, which, for better or worse, gets people talking. Every action has a reaction and Trump seems to continually fall on the right side of the unraveling. Whether it’s the NFL stating that players now need to stand, or Twitter changing their mind on allowing the GOP pro-life ad to be played, people’s voices are being heard.
The decades of rot won’t be reversed in one, two or even eight years. This is a generational effort that will require work daily by those who want to see the pillars continue to crumble before rebuilding again. The entrenched powers in the media won’t let that easily happen. They have been gobsmacked for 11 months now, walking in circles nattering incessantly in childlike rage completely unaware of the geographic dissonance between what they consider news and what their dwindling viewership cares about.
So, we must continue to remind them, along with the other powerful cultural pillars, that the election of President Trump was not an anomaly. It wasn’t a mere detour before America gets back on track to complete its metamorphosis into a Western Europe. No, this election was Americans pulling the e-brake at high speed to ensure the car stopped before heading off the cliff. Of course, that’s never good for the car, and there will be some reverberations for some time, maybe even requiring a trip to the mechanic. And for some mortified passengers, well, the screaming may not die down for a while. But we are starting to slowly turn in the opposite direction. The cliff is still close, but at least it’s in our rearview mirror, for now.
Published in General
Weiner sent a text from prison to Weinstein; said he’s grateful for the temporary shadow, and understands what it means to get your name turned into a verb.
I think you pretty well covered all the topics I can think of. This is the Flight 93 adminstration which was elected in the “Flight 93 Election.”http://claremont.org/crb/basicpage/the-flight-93-election/
Brett Stephens, the arch druid of the NeverTrumpers, disagrees. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/17/opinion/flight-93-election-trump-conservatives.html
However, it looks like a tiny wink of daylight ahead if we can just get the Congress cleaned out next fall.
To culturally appropriate an old Civil Rights theme. “I’ve been down so long it looks like up to me.”
OK, I got this far and started laughing. Kudos, Dave. Great writing.
90% reelection rates don’t bode well.
Beeyootiful.
I went over and skimmed through the Flight 93 election piece you mention. I focused on these two paragraphs:
But let us back up. One of the paradoxes—there are so many—of conservative thought over the last decade at least is the unwillingness even to entertain the possibility that America and the West are on a trajectory toward something very bad.Snip conservatives routinely present a litany of ills plaguing the body politic. Illegitimacy. Crime. Massive, expensive, intrusive, out-of-control government. Politically correct McCarthyism. Ever-higher taxes and ever-deteriorating services and infrastructure. Inability to win wars against tribal, sub-Third-World foes. A snip educational system that churns out kids who don’t know anything & at the primary and secondary levels, can’t (or won’t) discipline disruptive punks. At higher levels saddles students with six figure debts snip. And so on and drearily on. snip
Conservatives spend several hundred million dollars a year on think-tanks, snip, and such, complaining about this, snip and everything. These same conservatives are keepers of the status quo. Oh, sure, they want some things to change. They want their pet ideas adopted—tax deductions for having babies. Many of them are even good ideas. Are any of them truly fundamental? Do they get to the heart of our problems?
####
I really mis-read the area in bold. After all, here in CA, where there are a myriad of problems to consider, I could be excused for the mis-reading. The big problem in the last 96 hours has been that we no longer have any firefighters – once the jails and prisons were emptied as smoking dope is not any longer a crime, the state lost many “volunteer” firefighters.
But should we as a state focus on that when there are apparently bigger “pet” considerations? So it was that two months ago, the CA legislature decided that pure bred dogs should not be bred any more. A law was voted on to see to it that only rescue dogs be sold. (I kid you not!)
You ask if the pet ideas are truly fundamental? Maybe now that the state is burning to a crisp, the legislature will focus on the BIG PICTURE and not on the notion that they should worry about whose dog got pregnant by whom?
Really enjoyed your commentary and yes, it’s a fifty year project. Trump is a change in the trajectory. The journey is just begun. Love the passage below–
“No, this election was Americans pulling the e-brake at high speed to ensure the car stopped before heading off the cliff. Of course, that’s never good for the car, and there will be some reverberations for some time, maybe even requiring a trip to the mechanic. And for some mortified passengers, well, the screaming may not die down for a while. But we are starting to slowly turn in the opposite direction. The cliff is still close, but at least it’s in our rearview mirror, for now.”
Excellent! Poor Wolf. Pretty soon he’s going to lose all 6 of his viewers.
Speaking of driving over a cliff, I’m reminded of Thelma and Louise. I loved that scene, I like movies with a happy ending.
Yeah, they should have done a sequel.
Great column Dave, enjoyed it immensely. Spot on!
No, the CA Legislature is too busy on more important issues, like reducing the crime of knowingly giving someone AIDS without informing them you carry HIV. They lowered it from a felony to a misdemeanor.
Thanks Melissa! Hope you are both well in Budapest!
“Meanwhile, Hollywood, known for facades phonier than Obama’s Greek columns, somewhere along the way went from dream factory with a few crazies, to become the worst stereotype Conservatives always believed it was. It’s incestual, intellectually shallow, immature and chronically insecure inhabitants know only two modes: reading someone else’s words for a living or regurgitating Bill Maher’s. These people have spent so much energy on dividing the country into a caste system, they hadn’t realized their product has suffered, relegating themselves to brain-numbing CGI superhero remakes and Oscar bait no one will ever see, but … another award show to congratulate each other on our brilliance!”
Other than that and all the other stuff, what’s your problem?
Tremendous stuff Mr Sussman.
Then we’ll have to clean it out 5-10% at a time. As other commenters have noted, this will be a multi-year and probably multi-decade project.
Dave, did you read the former West Point professor’s letter that has been making the rounds? It’s a good summary of the lassitude that infected West Point that allowed the whole Spenser Rapone affair to occur.
The sheer extent of the cultural rot is horrifying. It’s like waking one morning to discover a hornet’s nest the size of a Volkswagen in your attic, a multi-generational clan of possums scratching in your walls, and your basement completely coated in black mold.
Totally spot on.
Well done. Must not be wasted and perish like an autumn leaf. Please liaise with the editors here and escalate to Mr. Bachelor. Maybe there is space for a little ‘pleasure of reading out loud’ on his show and p’cast. This urgently requires a larger, global audience than RC may provide.
Yes, I saw others write about this. Fantastic article. Highly recommend everyone read it. Thanks, Michael!
It’s sure enough unraveling and it can’t happen soon enough. Great post, David!
Nice rant, Dave. I particularly like the emphasis on how long and difficult the process of reversing the Left’s destruction of so many of our institutions and our culture will be.
Well Dave, I hope that the naysayers on the Right are finally learning that this isn’t accidental. Trump says some words, the Left freaks out, the MSM freaks out, and then the problem is solved and the MSM drops it.
James Comey was getting ready to lie like a Clinton and tear the administration apart. Trump tweets something about it might be on tapes somewhere, and the next day Comey calls himself a jerk and a liar! The MSM then has to write 432 retractions because they had been Fake-Newsing the Comey story for weeks. Trump didn’t “fall on the right side” of that.
Ditto the NFL. That wasn’t accidental. After Trump’s Tweets about standing for the Anthem, the MSM was making Trump out to be a jerk, but Americans knew better and started to boycott, without prodding. We just said “to heck with the NFL” and dropped them like a bag of dirt. It started to quiet down a little, then Pence, um, added his two cents, shall we say. Jerry Jones switched sides and then Roger Goodell suddenly joined the Trump Train. Trump didn’t “fall on the right side” of that.
Crushing CNN ratings with the constant call of Fake News. Not accidental. Russia. Trump Junior. North Korea. Global Warming. The EU’s socialist paradise. Illegals. I could list all night, but every story is the same: Tweet. Outrage. Noise. Solved. Grumbling. Silence. Next!
This is what happens when Democrats lose the White House: the tide goes out everywhere (metaphorically speaking) and you can see who is skinny-dipping and who’s wearing a bathing suit. It’s never pretty.
Great writing! This is why I continue to be a member of Ricochet!
Thanks
JcT, I can’t disagree with a word you wrote, except one thing; the naysayers on the right are pretty much all-in on Trump being the worst thing to happen to the Republic since bellbottom pants. If you follow certain N-T’s, they, along with the ‘consultant class’ I alluded, seem to have as much vitriol toward this White House as Mother Jones. Between ego and not wanting to bite the benefactor hands that feed them, I don’t see them changing their tune anytime soon.
It’s interesting to note that the they definitely like Obama more than they do Trump (or Gingrich for that matter).
Thanks, Michael. It looks like this started before Obama but I can’t help but think that it got a big push during those 8 years that the locusts ate.
Ok. This is FANTASTIC.
Well said, sir. Well said.
Thelma and Louise: The Crator