November 4, 2022

 

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

 

Will Donald Trump Bring on the End of History?

Friends,

It now seems probable that former President Donald Trump will announce his candidacy for president of the United States in 2024, perhaps as soon as after the 2022 elections are completed.

Back in 2016 I was a staunch Trump supporter. And I would still support “the Donald” if he ran again in 2024, but for different reasons.

Let me explain.

I fully acknowledge that Trump is not the calm, studious, dignified statesman which many Americans have tended to associate traditionally with the nation’s highest office. He comes across at times like a bully, a man lacking certain social graces and gravitas, which are seen to be a prerequisite for the position. I have a couple of friends for whom that brash, bull-in-a-china shop quality really grates and disqualifies a candidate. As one friend expressed it: “He’s a Yankee ruffian!”

But even more off putting, perhaps the greatest failing of Trump (for me, at least) was his disastrous appointments in his administration of persons who acted almost directly contrary to the general emphasis that he seemed to stress during his 2016 campaign.

There was sabotage from within and, although apparent in some of his domestic policies, it was perhaps most glaring in his foreign policy initiatives. His vaunted Make America Great Again campaign, his opposition to foreign American adventurism, and his desire for better relations (and an understanding) with Russia were undercut by a range of advisors, from Mike Pompeo, General “Mad Dog” Mattis, John Bolton, Nikki Haley, and others, as well as many permanent Deep State professionals, sinecured into the government bureaucracy (especially at the State Department and DOJ). His appointments were, in some very significant instances, disastrous and ended by nearly destroying the prominent MAGA promises of his campaign.

Whether due to the influence of a Jared Kushner, or of the Republican National Committee, or of the Mitch McConnell-types in GOP congressional leadership—or of all of these—Trump’s “come home America” platform and resistance to an evangelical American global overreach, were dashed soon after taking office by his miscues on Syria and acceptance of the John McCain/Neoconservative globalist template.

Yet, as others have noticed, his usual first instincts, his intuitions, not borne or influenced by the corruption of the established and congressional GOP or the so-called “conservative” think-tanks inside the DC beltline, were generally correct and perceived by many newly-awakened voters, those “MAGA” folks so long ignored and despised by condescending Hilary Clinton-types and the legacy media.

Some friends have suggested that Governor Ron DiSantis of Florida would be a much more palatable candidate. For them DiSantis might be a kind of “Donald Trump without the extra and undesirable personal baggage,” someone who could enunciate and enact the same programs, certainly domestically, that Trump has advanced, but with less viral and frenzied hostility from the legacy media and an increasingly radical Democratic Party—a political organization which makes old-school Stalinism seem conservative in comparison.

I disagree, and for a number of reasons.

Each morning I read the literally hundreds of news articles and opinion pieces, from varying perspectives, which show up on MSN Edge. Increasingly I have noticed a tsunami of items which not only hysterically denounce MAGA folks and anyone fearless enough to express any sympathy (much less support) for President Donald Trump, but demand their total “canceling,” exclusion from the franchise, even imprisonment or physical execution.

Academics (and their brain-dead students), broadcasters, and writers at such publications as The Atlantic, Salon, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and The New York Times lead these virtual “MAGA search-and-kill death squads,” but a huge number of political leaders, and not just Democrats, echo these raging attacks.

The unleashed, unbridled hatred for Trump and his supporters is there for anyone to see and digest. It is visceral, violent, and very real. Those anti-Trump folks possess and are possessed by a demonic desire to destroy and liquidate their opponents. There is a palpable fierceness about them and their expressed rage, whether in the words of politicians like a Rep. Jamie Raskin, or written and spoken in the words of dozens of “journalists” employed and handsomely paid by MSNBC, CNN, or by The Washington Post.

There is also an unmistakable condescension directed at the mass of the “great unwashed,” the MAGA folks, whose role in “our democracy” is to keep quiet meekly and just keep working as virtual slaves of a super-elite of political leaders, corporate executives, tech bosses (with their fascinating algorithms which inevitably exclude any opinions which differ from the official line): an increasingly global Deep State.

What Donald Trump did in 2016 was double-fold—he awakened millions to the fact that we were not masters of our own destinies, that we were under the heel of the Deep State elites; and he also unleashed a frenzied and, in fact, satanic reaction from those who understood the significance of his victory, even if Trump actually did not. He had roused millions, and they were hearing things which no politician had hitherto actually discussed with them in any degree of seriousness or truthfulness for decades.

And that was dangerous—dangerous to their worldview, dangerous to their control over what ridiculously is called “our democracy,” and most egregiously, to their continued authority and power. It had to be stopped, it had to be squelched. 

Thus, came the transparently bogus charges of “Russian collusion”—Russiagate, which continues to fester in the fevered minds of Leftist lunatics—then, the impeachments (how many now? Who’s counting?)—the questions about the 2020 election (just raising legitimate questions gets you labeled an “election denier” and an “enemy of democracy,” and thus a candidate for exclusion and canceling)—and most recently, the completely ideological and political “January 6 Commission,” created with one purpose in mind: to, if at all possible, prevent Trump from running in 2024, and at least discredit him enough with loads of Pelosi-Cheney fecal matter so that “respectable” folks will shy away from him—I mean there are always those don’t-rock-boat, Establishment-approved papabile like the ambitious, unprincipled Nikki Haley or Mike Pompeo waiting in the wings, who might well get the endorsement of various NeverTrumpers and GOP party bosses.

And that is precisely why Trump should be the GOP candidate in 2024. For his re-appearance on the ballot could indeed make the riots and mayhem of the “summer of rage” in 2020 seem like a Sunday school party. Above all, Trump would likely produce an utter raging madness from the Leftist insaniacs, and not only would heads explode at MSNBC and CNN, but frothing-at-the-mouth, wild-eyed academics would lead their lemming-like students out into the streets. Dozens of American cities would go up in flames, again, but this time with a ferocity and abandon which would hopefully force Americans to make some very serious choices.

Back in August 2019 and February 2019 I wrote pieces, published at the Abbeville Institute and elsewhere, advocating the peaceful (if possible) separation of the United States into regions (maybe even subdivisions) of divergent views. It was my belief then that not just radically different and extreme political opinions, but also basic cultural, historical, and, yes, intractable religious and moral divergencies made the survival of the United States as one harmoniously compact country not only impossible, but inadvisable and impractical. The best and potentially most peaceful means to resolve differences which I argued then were irreconcilable, was separation, a kind of re-imagined secession.

Since then, I have altered my view somewhat. While separation might be potentially a peaceful way to address the unbridgeable divisions in our society, too many impracticalities and unresolvable difficulties present themselves, and asteroid-like events continue to destroy whatever comity that once existed between the increasing polarities afflicting the American nation.

Indeed, would any federal government, no matter under which party’s tutelage, countenance a break-up of the American union? Would Republicans, so enamored with the language, imagery and heritage of the Lincolnian revolution against the Framers’ original vision of America, if in power, enable a disaggregation of their creation and its history which they continue to glorify and canonize?

They would not.

And of course, America’s official authoritarian party, the Democrats, would never go along.

So barring a mass conversion of those arguably insane fanatics who currently control our government bureaucracy, our educational system, our media, our entertainment, and much of what remains of our culture—and who work feverishly like demons not only to separate us from our millennial inheritance, but to destroy it and us—the best alternative for us might actually be a real conflagration in our cities and streets, a real state of anarchy and civil war, through which with the grace of God we might emerge victorious.

Nationally, Trump again in the White House might well cause a major upheaval in Washington. I can visualize the possibility of members of Congress immediately demanding his removal; perhaps massive demonstrations organized by the Left would occur in Washington and other cities. Very likely violence would break out on a scale unequaled in American history. Possibly certain armed forces generals would refuse to take orders, while others did.

Most of our larger cities are governed by Leftist insaniacs. The total breakdown in law and order, riots by crazed Leftist minions, would force the mayors of those “blue” cities to decide. Certainly, depending on how widespread and grave the anarchy was and how lackadaisical the government response was, locally-organized citizens’ militia could be organized to protect homes and businesses. In “red” states there would perhaps be more of a willingness to use the National Guard.

There are interesting parallels with what occurred in Spain during the first few months of 1936 leading up to the Rising of July 18-19. Throughout the 1930s and with rapacity during the first six months of that year, Communists, Socialists, Trotskyites and Anarchists ravaged the entire country, burning churches and convents, raping, assassinating, and executing thousands of citizens considered “too conservative” or right wing. Finally, after the assassination of prominent conservative leader Jose Calvo Sotelo, order disappeared. Portions of the army, local police and militia forces, middle classes, and the significant Catholic Carlist traditionalist movement had had enough.

Despite Leftist and Marxist criticism, the rising back then by conservatives and traditionalists, and their willingness to fight for what they held dear, saved Spain from control by the Soviets and from a fate more vicious and terrible than the Gulag.

No country—no nation—can withstand for any length of time disorder, chaos and internal violence on such a scale. Either order must triumph, or the country, the society, must disintegrate. We have seen that far too often in history.

This is my reasoning for desiring a Trump victory in 2024. For he would undoubtedly provoke and release even more the frenzied, fanatical demons, those vile militants of a counter-reality who bid well to extinguish all which we hold to be good, wholesome, and true—to rupture our connections and linkage to our past and to history and to memory—and to replace them with Evil Incarnate. And just perhaps a previously somnolent populace would be forced to take action.

This could give us perhaps the one and only real opportunity we might have to reverse the abject descent into the Inferno which we now experience. It might well be our last opportunity to beat back what poet William Butler Yeats called (in “The Second Coming,” 1919) the “Spiritus Mundi,” perhaps the Antichrist itself, “a shape with lion body and the head of a man, gaze blank and pitiless as the sun.”

Far too many American conservatives, in the face of such evil, have yet to realize the depth of our predicament. As English Catholic author Hilaire Belloc described it 110 years ago:

“We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us: we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile.”  (This and That and the Other, 1912, p.282)

I say bring it on, and sooner is probably better than later, for each succeeding month, each passing year, yields more power to Evil and less to the defenders of our civilization.