Reinforcing Trumpism

Given the break-neck speed that Trump and his administration have been acting since he took office in January, it's easy to forget that his current term isn't even 150 days old, that we are barely 10% into his Presidency. That breathtaking pace and the controversies that emerge almost every day make us overlook the Democrats' state of disarray.

And their continuing disconnects from reality.

Their election post-mortems are a combination of denial, finger-pointing, and incredulity. None of these are going to get them on a track to recapture America's support and trust, and some of their post-election behaviors are apt to help the GOP get past Trump's unforced errors and bad policy decisions (cough, cough, tariffs) and Congress's fecklessness (cough, cough, Big Beautiful Bill).

To understand the how and why, hop back to 2016, when Trump was merely one of a dozen and a half contenders for the GOP Presidential nomination. He read the national mood where no one else did, and in doing so realized that the hot-blood issue for the Republican electorate was illegal immigration. He leveraged that recognition not only to separate himself from the pack, but to win the nomination and the Presidency.

The affront of his victory in 2016 drove the Democrats to campaign, and then to run the country, on a "if Trump did X, we must do the opposite" platform. This, of course, included abandoning control of the border and inviting a mass migration. This was popular over on the Left for three reasons. One, the aforementioned contrarianism. Two, the ivory-tower attitude, which was a mix of platitudes and "we love them as long as they don't come to our neighborhood." Three, the finger in Republicans' eye.

Some figured that flooding the nation with migrants, and then making them citizens later on, could tip the nation's electoral balance, but most (in my opinion) embraced mass illegal immigration because it made them feel better than those ‘evil right wingers.’

The Dems realized, very late in Biden’s term, that their audacity didn't do them any favors at the polls. The voters who supported their border policies were already on their side and ensconced in deep-Blue districts and states. But, even there, the economics of mass migration made many uncomfortable, and the perception of lawlessness that accompanied the migrants (not to mention the preferential treatment) turned many reliably Democratic voters against the party.

That realization was short-lived, apparently. In Los Angeles, the Administration's efforts to undo what the previous Administration did, i.e. deport the millions of migrants that Biden let in, has sparked riots, and destruction. Beyond the echoes of BLM lawlessness and Team Blue's resistance to managing that chaos, photos of rioters waving Mexican flags amidst the carnage will, I predict, be a major inflection point on the migrant issue.

In true head-in-the-sand style, California's governor Gavin Newsom, who time and again proves himself to be a tone-deaf Reptilian, chose to side with the rioters. Daring the administration to arrest him, Newsom is telling us that he's choosing violent anti-American migrants over the nation. He’s telling Americans that they should accept and embrace people who are overtly declaring their contempt for the nation via words and violent deeds. Oh, and there is some evidence that these riots are being funded in no small part by the government of California itself.

Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass and many other apologists forget that elected officials have a primary duty to protect the rights of the people who elected them. This includes citizens’ safety and their property, and failure to arrest and prosecute the violent, no matter your position on immigration, is gross negligence. But, because “TRUMP!,” they refuse to do their jobs, choosing to grandstand instead.

Many never-Trumpers on the Right believe that Trumpism - the "America first" set of policies that supplanted previous GOP platforms - will go away when Trump does. They believed that, had he lost to Harris, they could get their old GOP back. Never mind that the old GOP didn't do any better with supposedly core Republican values like small government and responsible spending, they thought all this "MAGA" stuff would go away.

Imagine, though, if Harris had won. The brief border crackdown that we saw in the last few weeks of Biden's term would have been reversed, and the flood would have continued. That would make the conditions that Trump leveraged in 2016 even more obvious and more ripe for reaping, and the next Republicans to run for the Presidency would have to reiterate a similar "America first" platform or be cast aside.

The Dems lost to a widely disliked candidate because they didn't read the room. On immigration, on cultural matters like transgender persons in women's sports, on energy policy, and on much more, they chose wrong, and paid the price.

They have gotten so used to the "elite" model, the "tell people what to think and how to behave" attitude of ivy-covered academia and Best-and-Brightest arrogance, that they can't fathom embracing policies that the masses desire but that their big brains dislike. The "contra-Trump" instinct also remains strong, so they choose to side with rioting migrants and their enablers no matter the optics and no matter what the working classes they supposedly champion want.

The day of the 2021 Capitol riot, I told my brother that the event would echo for a long time. The Mexican flag flying over a burning Los Angeles will, I believe, also shape domestic politics for a long time. If you're opposed to Trump's deportation of migrants (I'll briefly mention that Obama also deported millions), realize that the more Team Blue fixates on this issue, the stronger it makes Team Red. Those flags should warn the Dems off repeating their BLM riot-supporting mistakes.

I doubt they will.

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I’ll mention as a footnote that the reinforcement of Trumpism isn’t the only consequence of the coddling of violent anti-ICE protests. There’s a growing right-nationalist movement, stoked by assholes such as Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate, that’s as anti-liberty as the Left. Because we default to binary responses in the face of events like the current LA riots, this movement is gaining traction and stands a chance of creating the same conditions that the Democrats are dealing with in their party. Namely, the rift between liberals and leftists. Conservatives should be loud in their rejection of what some have dubbed the Woke Right.