Culture Wars and Trump

Culture Wars and Trump

All of a sudden, it seems, we live in a world where same-sex marriage is federally sanctioned, use of marijuana is increasingly legal in many states, infanticide after birth is increasingly accepted, literally millions of illegal immigrants populate our country and numerous states and cities term themselves as “sanctuary places” in defiance of federal law.  In addition, the millennium old legal concepts of proving guilt with evidence, and “innocent until proven guilty”, have been up-ended by cries of we believe “your truth”, and not the proven truth.  Gender is no longer related to two sexes.  Gender is “trans”, and can be whatever you want it to be.

All of the above, and other “woke” concepts, like tearing down historical monuments, reparations to minorities for harms done hundreds of years ago, have been packaged together with that known historical killer of mankind, SOCIALISM, and are being proposed for our American future as a way of life and governance by our elitist leftist politicians and their mainstream media allies, which comprise upwards of 90% of news and entertainment media.  These things did not take 100 years to form.  All it took is eight years of the apologetic, permissive Obama administration to become reality.

Obviously, not all change has a deleterious effect on our society.  Legalization of loving same-sex relationships is a human issue that does not harm society.  Legalization of marijuana, warnings about it being an entry drug notwithstanding, really has little harmful impact on society.  Objections to these items are more based on representation of increased permissiveness within scope of cultural trends, rather than being harmful themselves.

When it comes to some of the other points, acceptance and compromise is pretty much impossible.  You can try to define abortion as a “woman’s right to her body”, “women’s reproductive health”, you can’t deny that it is the greatest killer of human beings in our society.  Guns? Wars? Disease and Pestilence? These pale in comparison to nearly 1 million human beings killed per year by abortion, and 46 million killed since 1970.

Do the above cultural, sociological and political values truly represent America?  Or are they the product of wealthy coastal and large urban leftist elitists, steeped in the permissive and corrupt culture of the “pay for play” so-called “progressive” universities that permeate our higher educational landscape?  Not if you ask most normal middle Americans, termed by the coastal elitists as “clinging to their guns and bibles” in that flyover country so much despised by the “woke” leftists.  Also, not if you ask thinkers and intelligentsia steeped in the classical liberalism of the founders of our country, and what are now some of the conservative concepts flowing from it.  

Say what you like about Trump’s ethics and morals and outsize personality and character, but he saw exactly what was happening to America and attacked it head on, with no mincing of words, and sometimes with brutish disregard of some of the finer points of behavior.  Small wonder that Trump is anathema to the strident leftists.  He is the antithesis of what they are about.  Trump can’t contain the slide of our culture to the weak and apologetic left as described above, but he can slow it down by fostering pride, rather than shame in our country.  For all his boss-like foibles, posturing, exaggerations, Trump and his administration are doing the right things on taxes, on lifting restrictive administrative regulations, on judges and much more.  The fact that a spoiled, rich, egotistical dilettante from NYC could become a populist champion is something to behold.  If nothing else, his rallies in the outback are as entertaining as anything else on cable TV.

Ray Gruszecki

April 21, 2019