The Beat Goes On (with apologies to Sonny and not so much Cher)

In 2016, the two dominant political parties offered America a choice (abet a totally unattractive one).  We could elect a career politician who had demonstrated she was in it to get as much wealth out of the nation as she could grab and had no enduring position on any issue other than the right to kill the unborn.  Or, we could elect a billionaire who had made his fortune developing properties while he fed his need to be the center of the universe.  For many, it was an unattractive choice, but none of the alternative parties offered anyone who could compete with these two primary options.

Looking at the run-up to the election we see the DNC and its propaganda apparatus pull out all the stops to depict Donald Trump as a representative of evil incarnate while feeding their future queen all the softball questions and media praise they could pull from their hats.  They outspent Trump (who still had many detractors within the RNC) in the campaign, they fed Clinton the questions on the debates, and they broadcast poll after poll showing Trump didn’t have a snowball's chance in hell of defeating someone with that much political wisdom. As the (now) Speaker of the House once said, “Donald Trump will not be President, you can take that to the bank!”

What Donald Trump understood far better than Hillary Clinton was the message the average American working-class voter wanted to hear was that the President would stand with them, rather than with a political party.  Hillary’s campaign slogan was “I’m with Her,” Trump’s was “Make America Great Again.”  One played well with the urban elite who wanted, more than anything else, was to elect a woman, the other played well with people who were struggling to make ends meet. 

What they (the DNC and media elite) failed to understand was the dissatisfaction of the country outside the metropolitan centers.  At the end of the campaign their failure to understand the mood of middle-class voters and election process, as defined in the Constitution, meant Trump won.  The impossibility of that event led to an emotional breakdown for all those who want to rule the country as our lords and masters.  That phenomenon is now known as Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) and it remains on display as a daily reminder of how the DNC loyalists continue to blame America for their loss. 

Almost from the time the political experts on MSNBC burst into tears from the defeat of Ms. Clinton, there were organized protests against the new President.  We had the pussy-hat crowd marching to demonstrate their outrage against a man who had said women threw themselves at him and he could grab them in the privates.  The Antifa thugs are beating up anyone they could find that in any way represented what they viewed as someone who would have voted for the President.  All the entertainment celebrities who believe they have great political insight and clout have taken to social media to tell their followers how evil the man is.  Then we have elected members of the Federal government calling for his impeachment from the time before he was sworn-in.  Finally, we see a continuing drumbeat from ABCNNBCBS pushing the narrative of the left that the President is a criminal and will become a dictator.

When you tie these efforts with the cultural reality where we are changing the meanings of words to fit the message you want -- it seems like a struggle for the wealth of the United States has risen to a level unheard of before.  In 1964 a Canadian professor named Marshall McLuhan published a very short book titled: “The Medium is the Message.” I remember being in High School when I first heard of, and read the book.  It struck me as a rather simple insight.  Now some 50ish years later I am not sure I fully grasp the cultural significance of the idea that the mode of transmission is far more important than the actual message, but regardless of my lack of insight, there can be no doubt as to the accuracy of McLuhan’s statement.  We see the impact of the old and new mediums of message exchange on the way the political messages are controlled to ensure just the right spin.

Now, we are past the impeachment and as much as we will hear a continuing drumbeat about how bad President Trump is, I don’t think the Representatives and Senators have either the time or political will to begin another impeachment process doomed for failure before they forsake their day jobs to run for reelection.

Of course, this won’t stop the propaganda arm of the DNC from continuing to cast aspersions at the RNC, the Senators who voted to acquit, and the President, for that appears to be the only thing they have to campaign on coming into the 2020 election.  It will be interesting to see how successful that strategy turns out to be.

As one observer noted, maybe the Democrats could nominate Mitt Romney as their “centrist” candidate.  

And the beat goes on.