Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
We are witnessing a historic counterrevolution after Trump’s victory, far different from his first election in 2016.
The orthodox and the supposed scripted future are now suspect. And they are likely to be dethroned—from the trivial to the existential.
Critics claim Trump has no mandate to stage such a counterrevolution. They argue that he did not win 51 percent of the popular vote or achieve a Reaganesque landslide in the Electoral College.
Yet all the initiatives he advanced and won on polled landslide public approval.
Despite being the target of Democrat lawfare for years, a defiant Trump promised to end an open border, massive illegal immigration, rising crime, and soaring prices. He pledged to slash government and its administrative state, terminate racial and gender identity politics, and restore deterrence abroad.
The people overwhelmingly wanted those messages but were waiting for an unorthodox messenger who would actually deliver them.
The Trump messenger reassured weary citizens that they were not crazy.
Instead, they had good cause to be sick of being talked down to by a media, academic, bureaucratic, and political elite that never earned nor deserved such self-appointed status.
The FBI, the CIA, and the DOJ, not the massive crowds at rallies, were the ones truly out of control.
President Joe Biden was really suffering from dementia, not those who said he was.
Criminals with weapons are as deleterious to society as law-abiding citizens deprived of them.
It is not a thought crime to believe there are two sexes—not three or four or more. No one should be forced to buy an electric vehicle, disconnect their natural gas stove, or submit to racial or gender indoctrination sessions.
Americans should speak their minds and write what they wish without worry of being censored, blacklisted, ostracized, doxxed, or shadow-banned—or jailed.
Campuses are not oases of tolerance, disinterested inquiry, and free expression.
They instead increasingly became overpriced indoctrination centers that shred the Constitution and graduate indebted students who know less—but are far more biased—than when they enrolled.
Trump and his MAGA appointees promise to slash over a trillion dollars from the annual federal budget, disbanding entire agencies.
Is the objection that an ever-expanding government—$37 trillion in debt, running nearly $2 trillion in annual deficits—should keep growing?
Trump pledges to reform the Pentagon—ending DEI Pentagon commissars and revolving-door corporate generalship.
He vows to hold the 4-star class responsible for the catastrophe in Afghanistan and to reenlist soldiers who were driven out due to draconian vaccination mandates or woke intolerance. Trump envisions changing the entire system of military procurement.
Does the status quo object on the grounds that our military leadership has been winning our wars abroad?
Is the Pentagon currently awash in eager recruits?
Has it stockpiled a huge surplus of shells, bombs, and rockets?
Trump promises historic deportations of the 12 million who destroyed the southern border and surged in without health or criminal audits.
Trump vows to rescue swamped social services and stop crimes by illegal alien felons.
Is that really worse than the Biden administration’s original massive importation of millions of illegal aliens, empowered by drug-importing and sex-trafficking cartels?
Who are the culpable? Those flagrantly mocking and breaking the law, or those vowing to enforce it?
Trump says he will deter enemies without bogging America down in “endless wars”—and did just that in his first four years as president.
Is the current alternative preferable to convincing enemies that there are few consequences to their aggression, sandbagging allies like Israel, or feeding the war in Ukraine without any plan of either winning or ending it?
The Trump revolution is also cultural and social. Shared class interests have replaced race, ethnicity, and gender chauvinism.
Athletes of all races are no longer taking a knee in protest of America’s supposed systemic racism during the national anthem. Sometimes they celebrate their scoring by doing honorific Trump YMCA/golf-swing dances on national television.
Enlistments to help craft the Trump counterrevolution are not always predicated on degrees, conventional resumes, or past lengthy government service. Race and gender do not determine qualifications alone. Nor does class.
Common sense, successful lives outside of government, and a desire to end the current nonsense count instead as better prerequisites.
For Trump, party identification, titles, and traditional prestige matter less as he is surrounded by an ideologically diverse cadre including Elon Musk, Robert Kennedy, Jr., Dana White, Tulsi Gabbard, and Joe Rogan.
The country no longer must apologize incessantly for its past or present but can move on—content that it need not be perfect to be better than all the alternatives.
The age of flashing pronouns, renaming iconic landmarks, statue toppling, trashing the dead, vandalizing with impunity the campus library, or spouting anti-Semitic venom is passing.
So, another name for the Trump counterrevolution is a simple return to sanity.
I love learning from you. I am glad that you are out there for us.
Nailed it, again! Thank you!
Correctly stated…a return to sanity…I would add a return to common sense.
Isn’t it ironic that the demographic of graduate/PhD’s is the the one that trended more towards Harris in this election, while virtually every other demographic moved to the right.
Most in this class may be “smart”, but they are far from being WISE.
And so the pendulum swings.
It seems to me we now have, or are working towards, a bureaucracy governed by common sense rather than common insanity. As we know when a system (person) continues to make the same decisions leading to over cost, beyond schedule, and under performing programs- this is the very definition of insanity. The federal government is the very definition of institutional insanity, and the patients have been running it far too long. It’s time to defund “the patients” and let the adults in the room run the government and do the people’s work. Let’s follow the law and get’er done!
Well said, VDH. Keep up the good work and the truth-telling….
A correct analysis IMO. Well said, Professor. Joseph McCarthy, Diane West, and many others (even President Eisenhower in his own way, with his warning about the MIC) have been sounding the alarm on what was growing in our midst. One other person, Jack Posobiec (formerly of Naval Intelligence and now a Podcaster) has sounded the alarm about the onslaught facing us (it ain’t over with this election; it’s just the beginning) in his book; “Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions, and How to CRUSH Them”. I’ll leave with a quote from the Intro to his book; ” Communism is when ugly, deformed FREAKS make it illegal to be normal, then rob and/or KILL all successful people, out of petty resentment and CRUELTY. The Ideology is ALL JUST WINDOW DRESSING.” (@ MysteryGrove). We’ re dealing with a sinister Left riddled with MALEVOLENCE coming from Dark Place within their psyche. As Dr. Jordan Peterson described them; ; ‘They are people who are POSSESSED by an IDEOLOGY’. Expect stormy times ahead and strong police actions that the malevolent ones will paint as dictatorial “police state” tactics, the VERY ONES they ACTUALLY will use if they continue gaining power at the expense of we, the normal people.
Thanks Victor! You have been a great spokesperson for common sense, hard work and meritocracy for the continued success of a democracy. Your readers truly understand these fundamental principles. However, the left does not. They will continue to be relentless in their clear goal to destroy America. Every minute of every day is devoted to this pursuit. Let me be clear. If American patriots do not continually battle these destructive forces, and overwhelm them, our way of life envisioned by our Founding Fathers will never be secure. This is not meant to demoralize but rather to empower good men and women. Every specie of life has had to relentlessly battle something for survival.
Amen to that Victor! Well said!