Trump vs 'elite postmodern progressive world'

FPI / September 23, 2019

Soon after the Democratic Party’s de facto leader, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, said her party’s failure to impeach President Donald Trump was a “national scandal,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi relented and warned a "whole new stage of investigation" could be approaching.

Although the story was falling apart by the second, Pelosi insisted that a whistleblower who reportedly alleged that Trump acted improperly during a July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy must be allowed to speak to Congress, and the full whistleblower complaint must be provided.

Trump said the "real story" was that "Sleepy Joe Biden" had "forced a tough prosecutor out from investigating his son's company by the threat of not giving big dollars to Ukraine."

The real source of Trump derangement syndrome, wrote historian and columnist Victor Davis Hanson is Trump’s “desire to wage a multifront pushback — politically, socially, economically, and culturally — against what might be called the elite postmodern progressive world.”

Trump “is waging a nonstop, all-encompassing war against progressive culture, in magnitude analogous to what 19th-century Germans once called a Kulturkampf,” Hanson wrote.

“As a result, not even former President George W. Bush has incurred the degree of hatred from the left that is now directed at Trump. For most of his time in office, Trump, his family, his friends, and his businesses have been investigated, probed, dissected, and constantly attacked.”

In 2016 and early 2017, FBI, CIA, and Department of Justice officials who were appointed by President Barack Obama “tried to subvert the Trump campaign, interfere with his transition, and, ultimately, abort his presidency. Now, congressional Democrats promise impeachment before the 2020 election,” Hanson wrote.

“Certainly, Trump’s agenda of closing the border, using tariffs to overturn a half-century of Chinese mercantilism, and pulling back from optional overseas military interventions variously offends both Democrats and establishment Republicans.

“To make things worse for his critics, Trump’s economy is booming as never before in the new 21st century: near record-low unemployment, a record number of Americans working, increases in workers’ wages and family incomes, low interest rates, low inflation, steady GDP growth, and a strong stock market.”

Hanson continued: “Contemporary elites increasingly see nationalism and patriotism as passé. Borders are 19th-century holdovers.

“The European Union, not the U.S. Constitution, is seen as the preferable model to run a nation. Transnational and global organizations are wiser on environmental and diplomatic matters than is the U.S. government.”

Meanwhile, Hanson wrote, “the media can no longer afford to be nonpartisan and impartial in its effort to rid America of a reactionary such as Trump, given his danger to the progressive future.

“America’s ancient sins can never really be forgiven. In a new spirit of iconoclasm, thousands of buildings, monuments, and statues dedicated to American sinners of the past must be destroyed, removed, or renamed.

“A new America supposedly is marching forward under the banner of ending fossil fuels, curbing the Second Amendment, redistributing income, promoting identity politics and open borders, and providing free college, free health care, and abortion on demand.”

Trump, Hanson noted, “fights all of the above nonstop and everywhere. In the past, Republican presidents sought to slow the progressive transformation of America but despaired of ever stopping it.

“No slugfest is too off-topic or trivial for Trump. Sometimes that means calling out former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick for persuading NFL stars to kneel during the national anthem. Huge, monopolistic Silicon Valley companies are special Trump targets. Sometimes Trump enters cul-de-sac Twitter wars with Hollywood has-beens who have attacked him and his policies.

“Trump variously goes after Antifa, political correctness on campus, the NATO hierarchy, the radical green movement, Planned Parenthood, American universities, and, above all, the media — especially CNN, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.”

Hanson continued: “For all the acrimony and chaos — and prognostications of Trump’s certain failure — a bloodied Trump wins more than he loses. NATO members may hate Trump, but more are finally paying their promised defense contributions.

“In retrospect, many Americans concede that the Iran deal was flawed and that the Paris climate accord mere virtue-signaling. China was long due for a reckoning.

“Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation proved fruitless and was further diminished by Mueller’s bizarrely incoherent congressional testimony.

“Some of the most prominent Trump haters — Michael Avenatti, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Anthony Scaramucci, and Rep. Adam Schiff — either have been discredited or have become increasingly irrelevant.”

The 45th President of the United States, Hanson noted, “has so enraged his Democratic adversaries that the candidates to replace him have moved farther to the left than any primary field in memory. They loathe Trump, but in their abject hatred he has goaded the various Democratic candidates into revealing their support for the crazy Green New Deal, reparations for slavery, relaxed immigration policies, and trillions of dollars in new free stuff.

“In a way, the left-wing Democratic presidential candidates understand Trump best. If he wins his one-man crusade to stop the progressive project, they are finished, and their own party will make the necessary adjustments and then sheepishly drift back toward the center.”

Free Press International