January 20th, 2025 is the date that everything changed. The end of the world as we know it.
The world we knew
Since the Obama years, America had been gradually dragged leftwards against the will of the people. Complicit in this were the mass media–including the news agencies Reuters and Associated Press. From corporate boardrooms to elementary schools, wokeness held away, and woe betide anyone who dared to oppose it. People were unhappy but couldn't say a thing for fear of social ostracism and losing their jobs. Cancel culture metastasised while some pundits denied its existence.
I was all for Obama in 2012. Handsome, urbane, and compassionate, he appeared to embody the virtues I thought a president should have. That was the blue corner.
In the red corner sat the greedy, selfish, religious hypocrites who railed against abortion until one of their politicians knocked up his mistress. Rinse and repeat ad nauseam. They made laws that SNAP, the welfare payments cards, were only to be spent on food or seeds for growing food--not soap or toothpaste or sanitary towels. And their candidate was a Mormon with the tact and diplomatic skills of a rabid rhinoceros.
When they lost in 2012, the Republicans believed that they'd failed because they hadn't made their message clear enough. The truth was, they'd made it all too clear and spent eight years out of power because of it. Their salvation arrived in the unlikely form of the lumbering, crass, and downright creepy p****-grabbing Donald Trump.
Democrats lost after Obama because political correctness, which had always been a fringe craze, became mandatory, enforced with shaming and ostracism. Minorities gained outsized support at the expense of working folk–and nothing was done about the SNAP spending rules on their watch.
Four years of Trump's idiocracy in the White House--which featured his daughter Ivanka flogging her tat from the Oval office and government posts going unfilled–sent sickened voters running back to the Democrats. Biden won on the basis of not being Trump, but in the four years he had in office, two things happened: Biden began to show signs of incipient dementia, and wokeness became a totalitarian straitjacket on public discourse. Trump returned on a wave of hope that his bull-in-a-china shop approach to All The Things would free up speech and put an end to the barbarity of gender identitarianism.
The game-changer
Politicians make all kinds of promises before taking office–some of which they keep as window-dressing–others fall by the wayside. Remember Bush Senior's “Read my lips–no new taxes”? That didn't last long. Trump, however, is keeping his. And this time, Ivanka and Jared are out of the picture, though it seems that Mr. Kushner is still advising his father-in-law from behind the curtain, as it were.
And this new, more effective Trump administration is already sending shockwaves around the world. The loosening of the woke stranglehold on social media is letting people speak out where they'd usually face being banned for hate speech. British LBGT-alphabet-soup special rights organisation Stonewall is losing all of the once-lucrative corporate sponsorship it used to enjoy. Even the oh-so-woke Green Party has quietly dropped them. As the saying goes: get woke, go broke. Other countries are rethinking “gender-affirming care” as questions continue to arise about the efficacy of this approach to treating distressed kids. Basically, they have no real answer and they can't defend it anymore.
Hilariously, the American left is having a public meltdown as Trump appointee Elon Musk rampages through USAID shutting down programmes and departments and uncovering scandals. They're not indignant about the scandals, but about putting an end to them. While some of the more outlandish stories spread by Musk himself have proven to be hoaxes, it turns out that there really is no smoke without fire.
What does this mean for the left?
The influence wielded by colourful characters like Trump and Musk is smothering the Democrats, particularly those on the left. Since they've abandoned their core demographics for political edge cases and unpopular causes, it doesn't matter if Musk is exaggerating–the message they themselves are broadcasting is that they're unfit to govern. The only way out of this epic self-ownage is to demonstrate the ability to serve “we, the people,” not just “cause du jour.” By creating the impression that they can be trusted to serve the American people (whether this is actually true or not), Trump has put them on the back foot.
So then, how can the right possibly save the left? By showing them how service to the people is better than serving pet projects. By demonstrating how being willing to listen to and work with people they disagree with on principle can effect change. And by showing how diversity (of opinion) really is a strength.
I firmly believe that if the left starts genuinely caring about the Joe Bloggs's of this world instead of engaging in performative virtue signalling, they will win the next election. Until they do, they have no chance.
