Postmodernism Must Win, Democracy Be Damned
There is no such thing as a day without headlines calling for President Donald Trump to resign or to be impeached. Similar demands, of course—for overturning results of the election—surfaced before the President even took office.
There is no such thing as a day without headlines calling for President Donald Trump to resign or to be impeached. Similar demands, of course—for overturning results of the election—surfaced before the President even took office.
Look back briefly: In 2016, the United States went through its quadrennial Presidential nominating process, with some 17 individuals competing for the Republican nomination. Sweeping that spectrum of political bids, Donald Trump entered the election campaigning against the Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton. By November, the two candidates, parties, their media partisans, and individual Americans had advocated for their views, debated them before hundreds of millions of voters, and verbally slugged it out on every issue including every imaginable challenge to Donald Trump’s character, qualifications, demeanor, and associations real and imagined. Thousands of media outlets talked about little else, with panels of commentators rending every campaign comment like hyenas ripping into a wapiti.
Trump’s positions, his off-the-record statements from a decade earlier, unverifiable allegations of women out of his past, press melodramas about disabled reporters, and increasingly extreme charges of racism, xenophobia, sexism, white nationalism, and fat-shaming were given days of air time. Of some hundred daily newspapers in the United States, three editorially endorsed Trump, three took a #neverTrump stance, and the rest endorsed Hillary Clinton.
On November 8, the mainstream media awaited victory by Hillary Clinton, predicted as highly probable by polls. But as election eve unfolded, a red fire of Republican victories burned across America, even sweeping several states viewed as “certain Clinton.” The American electorate in terms of electoral votes went heavily for Donald Trump, but, in a still greater surprise, gave their new President a majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
The “great republic,” the oldest continuously democratic government in the world, in a no-holds-barred election, had chosen its new government—not only its chief executive but congress—for the next four years. The American people in the democratic tradition had made their decision.
Well, yes, but that is only the perspective of those who seriously embrace democratic choice within the framework of a Constitutional Republic. The viscerally anti-democratic, Liberal-Leftist vanguard of “progressivism”—more accurately, “Postmodernism”—did not for one moment accept the verdict of the electorate. Immediately came the drive to invalidate the vote in several states. And then the concerted attack on the Electoral College, existing since the U.S. Constitution was ratified, since the founding of America, which made Clinton’s slight edge in the popular vote irrelevant. Those probing sallies, which briefly screamed from media headlines, didn’t get very far.
After the January inauguration, there began the non-stop, 24/7 search for grounds for impeaching the new President. For a while, the “Watergate Redux” strategy was tried, with every investigative reporter and headline writer digging for a Presidential “obstruction of justice,” the legally elusive, difficult-to-disprove charge that brought down President Richard Nixon.
After the January inauguration, there began the non-stop, 24/7 search for grounds for impeaching the new President. For a while, the “Watergate Redux” strategy was tried, with every investigative reporter and headline writer digging for a Presidential “obstruction of justice,” the legally elusive, difficult-to-disprove charge that brought down President Richard Nixon. That avenue, now, has been delegated to Special Prosecutor Robert Moeller.
Congressmen, TV personalities, Hollywood stars, and the media have turned to winning daily headlines by calling for President Trump to resign. As often as not, these are couched in near-hysterical language. Former vice-president Al Gore, however, asked if he had one piece of advice for the President, merely replied: “Resign.” He was not among the first 100 celebrities to stake out that “courageous” position.
At present, we are swept up in a media-ignited, media-fueled, media-proclaimed firestorm of criticism of the content, timing, balance, and hidden meaning of President Trump’s comments on the clash of demonstrators and counter-demonstrators in Charlottesville, Virginia. The clash stimulated a media starved for a story of “alt-right” violence; until Charlottesville, violence and violent protests had been limited to the Left. Based on parsing and interpolating the wording of the President’s condemnation of the violence and its perpetrators, the media have justified their cherished ultimate indictment: Nazism. Although the charge has zero actual connection with Trump, it is not the demonstrators—including some unknown number of Ku Klux Klan members and members of Nazi organizations—who are all over the media. Somehow, of course, it is President Trump. Based largely on the timing of the President’s condemnation, and that he directed it at both sides in the clash, dozens of new calls for his resignation or impeachment have surfaced.
Just commonsense: The so-called “mainstream,” but increasingly partisan-left media, which sought to head off at any cost Trump’s nomination, and then seeking to defeat his election, tossed aside journalistic standards, did not view the election as deciding anything. The American electorate was not competent to decide by vote. Democracy failed to yield the right outcome. That outcome was known only to the so-called “intellectual elite,” including the media and their academic, education establishment, activist, entertainment, and federal bureaucracy allies.
It is true that the day after the election, some media seemed to pause, briefly, in a kind of awe at what the American people had decided. Not, of course, that the decision wasn’t appalling, but that the media had managed to persuade itself that that America was marginal politically.
But soon, on any typical day, the front page of what used to be America’s “newspaper of record,” the New York Times, you could read up to half-a-dozen lead-ins to editorials and columns implying that the President’s supporters brought about national catastrophe, a humanitarian crisis, the shaming of America, and the need to remove a demented President. Check it for yourself. Just a few titles from August 21:
- The Test of Nazism That Trump Failed
- [Charles] Blow: Failing All Tests of the Presidency
- [Paul] Krugman: What Will Trump Do to American Workers?
By now, it is common for opponents of Trump to vent their fury openly on those who elected him. These examples could be multiplied a hundred times any week:
CNN commentator and Daily Beast columnist Matt Lewis says President Donald Trump’s voters are “asses” …
“[Trump] …can quite literally talk his “base” into ignoring adverse information. That will in turn make it harder for his Republican Party to abandon him as it abandoned Nixon in 1974.” (Chicago Tribute)
“Liberals don’t just hate President Trump; lots of them don’t even like the idea of being in the company of his supporters … The prevalent belief on the left that Trump isn’t just a bad president or person, but is also racist, and xenophobic; misogynistic is undoubtedly at play here too.” (Washington Post)
The American democratic process failed and now those who know better must in be the vanguard of replacing President Trump with the government America needs. If you believe this, you have never had the advantage of being taught as a child what the definition and practice of commonsense is.
Without even the slight restraint of edited media, enemies of Trump on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media tend to be hostile and obscene in comments on Trump supporters. No example needed, here; if you don’t know what I mean, you don’t know what “Twitter” even is.
Yes, it is only commonsense: The American democratic process failed and now those who know better must in be the vanguard of replacing President Trump with the government America needs. If you believe this, you have never had the advantage of being taught as a child what the definition and practice of commonsense is.
About the Author: Walter Donway
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