Democracy and despotism in a digital age.
That Cold November Rain
Win or Lose, It’s Coming.
*Bonus Election Survival Playlist Included*
First things first: I think he’ll win.
Four years ago this Tuesday I woke up gleeful, absolutely certain of a victory. Later that afternoon I had a moment of terror when I realized he’d win only if they didn’t cheat enough. I took comfort in the knowledge that the Democrats didn’t know what I knew, and therefore hadn’t cheated enough.
I cashed my PredictIt winnings that night.
This year, they won’t leave anything to chance. Trump winning fair and square may not actually determine who is inaugurated in January. Rumors are flying here that the Democrat’s black-clad shock troops have booked rooms in all the hotels and are waiting to launch Civil War 2. Cops in L.A. are on “tactical alert.” Every store with a scrap of merchandise left after the first wave of BLM lootings in June is now boarded up.
This past Saturday, the regular weekly Trump rally in Beverly Hills that attracts a few hundred patriots had over a thousand people. Out-of-town Antifas showed up and put someone in the hospital for holding a flag.
So yes, despite a likely, even decisive, Trump victory, several potential nightmares await us. I’m jumpy. Maybe this is related to my lifelong habit of staring out the windows when I fly, willing the wings not to snap off.
President Trump is on record saying that his favorite music video is Guns N’ Roses 1991 epic November Rain. I know I’m not the only one who fantasized about supermodel Stephanie Seymour’s ridiculous wedding gown, and having Slash as the best man. In the song, Axl Rose croons “Nothin’ lasts forever and we both know hearts can change. And it’s hard to hold a candle in the cold November rain.”
Factcheck: True.
High Anxiety
Boy, I was feeling really good last week! Polls were looking good, friends were giddy, I saw this hilarious ad. But then that nasty full moon came up and the weather changed and Halloween was upon my household and all the kids seemed to hit puberty at the same time.
I ran into a mom friend who informed me that she just did a massive Costco shopping trip and did you hear it’s already out of toilet paper? The guns are loaded and the American flags are rolled up and hidden in the attic under sandy boogie boards and other detritus from our lost summer.
But the worst was yet to come. On Friday I woke up to the news that an old friend tragically died young. He was a legendary source of energy and wit and fun to his large circle of devoted friends. As of this writing I still don’t know the details, but I suspect despair may have taken a toll.
An ill wind was blowing. Darkness warshed over The Dude. Never have I ever longed so fervently for a repeat of the joy I felt on Election Night four years ago. That healing balm, some chicken-brined-in-liberal-tears soup for my soul. Just one more hit. I just need one more hit!
Mr. Peachy recently got back from a road trip north through Utah and Idaho and Montana. He told me that every single gas station in Utah sells Trump merchandise, and every car has a Trump sticker. Imagine being that free! As Catholics are persecuted and beheaded in France, we non-Biden voters here in California huddle together for warmth, whispering of our secret plans to escape if the Newsom-Harris totalitarian final solution becomes real.
The truth is that we always knew a single Trump term would diminish, but not demolish, a rising American Left. A second Trump term could mortally wound it, with a little luck and some deft jujitsu. A Biden-Harris takeover will be nearly unrecoverable. The wings of the airplane will snap off and send us into an uncontrolled dive into terrain.
Bidencare rule #1: If you like your country, you can’t keep it.
Nothing Lasts Forever
The popular priest at our parish just left. He’s moving to a new parish—in Uganda. If a priest can be such a thing as “based,” he was a based, red-pilled man of God. In a farewell address, he exhorted the students at his Catholic school with this final word of advice: “Engage the world. Engage them!”
This is advice many Catholics, good people I know, have not taken yet. Maybe it’s because they’re normal and recoil from politics and the Orange Man they can barely vote for. Whenever I hint at despair, they suggest I pray, fast, and pray. All good things. I approve!
But first I’m just going to have to spend three hours on Twitter owning libs and then do some panic buying at Target.
Folx, here’s the deal: it’s time to engage the world, because whether you like it or not, the world is marching up your street and it wants to engage you.
I Do Not Concede
Many supposed conservatives have already surrendered to the Left. An army of goateed NeverTrump boomers are rushing to usher in a return to “norms” in the Biden Restoration. Norms like post-birth abortions for men with uteruses and 50 million newly minted citizens who are handed flammable U.S. flags and a box of matches with their voter registration forms.
Five families I know in Los Angeles have moved or are packing and heading to other states.
Moving buys you time. Like four more years of Trump. His election was normal Americans breaking the glass in case of emergency. Donald Trump is the lifesaving cork in a leaky lifeboat. To survive the tempest, we’re going to need to make landfall—soon.
The other side keeps announcing that they will refuse to concede, even in a clear Trump victory.
Well, guess what? I’m not conceding either. I’m not talking about the presidency, which I think Trump will win—yeah, you heard me—fair and square, but then perhaps be denied the presidency by a massive and violent machine set loose upon our heads by a craven, cynical establishment. They have already declared that they will simply refuse to allow him to continue, despite an electoral win. Their unwillingness to budge, their absolute devotion to the cause is terrifying.
But it’s also inspiring.
It offers us a new model of dealing with losing. Except for that one bright spot four years ago when an outsider snatched victory from the Jeb of defeat, the institutional Right had an unblemished record of losing.
We lost the cities as the Left took control of them, consigning generations to filth, crime, and poverty in schools run by voracious teachers unions.
We lost Hollywood, which for decades was a right-leaning global cultural force, churning out patriotic propaganda and movies that glorified small town American values, heroes, and male-female romance. Hollywood even created Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the last Republicans to win statewide office in California.
Pre-Trump conservatives were so talented at losing that they lost everything: the media, corporate white-collar America, all the schools, tutti.
Meanwhile, His Wokeness Pope Francis, a critical race theory devotee, keeps notching win after win as he badmouths the American president, revels in his hatred of conservative Catholics, and taps execrable pro-choice Bishops to be Cardinals not because they are devout, but because they are “diverse.”
There is nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. Don’t like how this is playing out? Dare to criticize the Biden family’s criminal money laundering scheme and your Twitter tongue gets ripped out.
It’s not about abortion or school shootings or the farkakta climate “emergency” or “affordable health care.” It’s about bending you to their will in the name of “unity”—and if you don’t go along, well, you didn’t really need those kneecaps, did you? Death by a thousand Kamala cackles!
The only way out of our current crucible is through. So cheer up, roll down the windows, crank up the radio, and sing along. If you’re open to musical suggestions, here’s a little playlist I made for you.
It’s hard to hold a candle in a storm, but we have to keep the beacons lit.
After all, nothing lasts forever, even cold November rain.
Rest in power, G.F.
Acta est fabula, plaudite!
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In 2010, Claremont Institute Senior Fellow Angelo Codevilla reintroduced the notion of "the ruling class" back into American popular discourse. In 2017, he described contemporary American politics as a "cold civil war." Now he applies the "logic of revolution" to our current political scene.
Claremont Institute Senior Fellow John Marini is one of the few experts on American Government who understood the rise of Trump from the beginning of the 2016 election cycle. Now he looks to the fundamental question that Trump's presidency raises: is the legitimacy of our political system based on the authority of the American people and the American nation-state, or the authority of experts and their technical knowledge in the service of "progress"?