November  8, 2017

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

First Year of the Trump Presidency: The Cultural War Continues  Unabated

Friends,

Today marks one year since the election of Donald J. Trump to the presidency of the United States. Despite an unrelenting phalanx of fierce, no-holds-barred opposition from this nation’s media, entertainment/sports conglomerate and the Deep State—despite internal obstructionism from the Republican Party establishment and Neoconservative elites and the hysterical jeremiads from those self-important, self-erected political Moguls, the Bushes, John McCain, Bob Corker, Jeff Flake—And despite the sabotage inflicted on the president’s agenda  from even within his administration—Despite all this, remarkably, the Trump Counter-revolution is still alive and still, if at times haltingly, advancing.

That is not to say that the past year—or, more precisely, the past ten months—have been a complete success, nor that every action, every presidential initiative, has moved the announced and enunciated “Trump Agenda” forward. Indeed, as was to be expected, after the president’s election many lukewarm, hesitant supporters, mostly Neocons—who would have preferred another, more pliable GOP, candidate, but reluctantly went for Trump—attempted to surround him, to coopt him and shape his agenda. Already having service in the Deep State managerial swamp, they were well placed and connected to assume positions in the new administration—they were experienced and prepared to swoop in and occupy posts of power.

In this they were partially successful: the most notable example being the naming of Nikki Haley to the post of UN Ambassador. Haley was a protégé of globalist Lindsey Graham and had been a trenchant NeverTrumper prior to Donald Trump winning the Republican nomination. More horrifically, bringing in the intellectually-challenged Haley to fill the post once occupied by an Adlai Stevenson was akin to asking Inspector Clouseau (of “Pink Panther” fame) to solve a major crime. And her apparent eagerness to involve this country in another shooting conflict marked a sharp contrast with major emphases of the Trump agenda.

Yet, those efforts to coopt and to dominate the administration and shift it towards standard Republican globalism also had some significant misfires, the most spectacular being the failure of Council on Foreign Relations NeverTrumper Neocon Elliott Abrams to secure the number two position at the State Department. Only the active and vigorous response to his potential candidacy—announced as a “given” by the Neocon establishment National Review—by traditionalist, “paleo-conservative” Trump supporters was able to derail what seemed like a sure thing. Thankfully, around Trump there were men like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller and a few others who understood what the “Trump Revolution” was actually about and meant to millions of voters. And, then, there was the intuition of the president, himself. Although admittedly no intellectual and not versed in the history of “the conservative wars” between traditionalist America First conservatives and the internationalist, open borders, free trade Neocons, the president’s instincts seemed to correct or at least deflect some of the more egregious attempts by the GOP/Neocon elites to undo or subvert his agenda.

Yet, as most Trump voters knew well before the election, the president is also a clever and accomplished deal maker who is well-versed in implementing a strategy he enunciated in his now-famous volume, The Art of the Deal, and in years of successful business experience and wheeling-and-dealing. While efforts to secure the promised border wall and reduce illegal immigration, to institute extreme vetting of Muslim refugees from violence-torn countries, and to balance our trade deficit and bring back and protect American jobs have only been moderately successful, in retrospect, who would have imagined last October, when all major polls and all the bookmakers in Las Vegas predicted a smashing Hillary Clinton victory, that we would be in the position where we now find ourselves? Instead of hopelessly debating the final nails in the prepared coffin of our old, ailing republic, the electoral victory of the “deplorables” and of Middle America have, at the very least, opened a crack in the door, given us one more opportunity for serious counter-revolution against the overwhelming forces of the Deep State.

The naming of Neil Gorsuch to the US Supreme Court, the reformist directives of Betsy DeVos at the US Department of Education, the actions of Jeff Sessions at the Department of Justice, and the continuing campaign of Steve Bannon, now outside the White House, to continue the grass roots “make America great again” efforts and--just maybe—reconfigure the Republican Party, are signs that that battle continues to rage. The welcome victory of Judge Moore in Alabama, the departure from the Senate of Jeff Flake and Bob Corker, even the apparently coordinated attacks on the president by the Bushes, pere et fils, and John McCain, are indications that “Trumpism” is no paper mache’ momentary challenge to the elites.

Even the failure of establishment Republican Ed Gillespie in yesterday’s Virginia gubernatorial election offers confirmation of this. The Mainstream Media [MSM] heralds and trumpets Gillespie’s defeat by eight percentage points (plus the Democrat’s election in New Jersey) as “major setbacks” to and a “rejection” of the president and his agenda. Yet, once again, the MSM engages in wishful thinking, letting its unbridled hatred of President Trump dictate its coverage and analysis.

The simple fact is that northern Virginia, where a substantial proportion of Virginia’s population now lives, is basically one giant suburb and extension of the Deep State capital of this country, Washington DC (which, recall, only gave 4% of its votes to the president in the 2016 election). Most of the rest of Virginia—with the exceptions of urban Richmond,  Norfolk/Chesapeake, and Charlottesville, is still a Southern and mostly conservative state; but the influx of Deep State-dependent voters whose very existence is bound up in and with the along-the-Potomac managerial and governmental elites, has made Virginia increasingly a “blue state.” The result of the election yesterday only confirms that fact—and also confirms the fact, very much apparent, that the American nation is no longer “one country,” but sharply and most likely, irreconcilably and hopelessly divided.

Despite this, even The Washington Post, in its November 6 edition, was forced to admit using its own, most likely slanted polling, that were the 2016 presidential election to be held today, Donald Trump would still defeat Hillary Clinton. The electoral map is a stark indication of our division.

That may not be much consolation for Ed Gillespie—he attempted to be “all things to all (potential) Republicans.” Yes, he was persuaded to embrace a defense of Confederate monuments and, more hesitatingly, attacked Latino gangs (MS 13), but for a self-identified GOP establishmentarian with a record of support for open borders and the acceptance of standard Deep State positions on most social and cultural issues, it is very likely that hard core “deplorables” did not overnight become zealous Gillespie supporters. That, plus the increase in Left-leaning DC suburbanites, were too much to overcome in Blue-tending Virginia. The election was not a repudiation of the president. Indeed, a more sharply-focused Trump standard bearer might well have done much better…the better indication may be in the upcoming 2018 US senate race, where the president’s former Virginia campaign manager, Corey Stewart, is running hard and smart.

Finally, the clearest indication that the Trump counter-revolution continues is the feverishly unhinged and over-the-top—the openly vicious—opposition to the president and his agenda by the culturally Marxist Left, the media, the Democrats, academia and Hollywood. Never in at least the past 150 or so years have we seen such a reaction and such stark division in this nation. Watergate was a mild tempest-in-a-teapot in comparison.

While certainly distressing and filled with extreme portents for the very future of the American nation, in an ironic way, it is perhaps a good thing to have the unbridgeable divisions that were always there, always percolating just below the surface and infecting and polluting our culture, now revealed in all their unmistakable horror and with all their immense challenges for all to see.

Recently, in the Raleigh-Durham area, the principle news caster for the area’s major television station WRAL, David Crabtree, has been featured in one of those “soft” “touchy-feely” public service ads, proclaiming “We are One…we share the same things, love our children, practice our faith…united as one.” The implication is that the old concept of “E pluribus Unum” still holds. But no, no longer. We do not live in a “united” nation.

And it has not been those of us caricatured as “irremediables” and “deplorables” who have caused this rupture, who created this disunion. We have only maintained what our fathers and our ancestors believed and left to us as a legacy. It was not us, but rather the forces of revolutionary Leftist subversion and miseducation, of a cultural rot which the Left identified as “progress” and advancement, of a degeneration of thinking and language, that have succeeded in tearing this nation asunder.

2016 was, then, a potential watershed year. In retrospect, the unexpected victory last November may have been the easier part of what may be the final phase of an immense “culture war.” Despite our various weaknesses and the apparent superiority of our enemies, we yet have the inherited traditions—not yet extinguished, the remembrance of who we were and who we still can be as a people, to nourish us. But every man, every family, must in its own best way, be involved. For this is a war to the death, not so much physical, but spiritual.

We must be fully engaged—our enemies must be completely and totally vanquished. That—and our constant prayers—is, I believe, the only way to restore the country and make America great again.