About “Retribution” in Today’s American Politics
Wrestling with Trump’s “I am your retribution.”
At CPAC, Trump gave a speech that had a moment that was, well, scary:
In 2016, I declared, 'I am your voice.' Today I add: I am your warrior, I am your justice, and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution!
That sure scared Rod Dreher a bit, and he wrestles with this political moment here.
I agree with him that it does not at all speak well of American politics that we have gotten to the point where a major candidate would say something like this to applause.
But what is even worse is that we are at a moment when it is probably necessary to have something that at least looks like retribution. Now, before you think I am a man who wants to watch the world burn, let me explain.
Before Obama, those times when the Democrat Party got too far Left and the electorate punished it for that, Democrats would take their punishment, listen, and moderate. The classic example was Bill Clinton after the disastrous (for Democrats) 1994 midterm elections. He had governed as a Leftist the first two years of his presidency. But when that cost him both the House and the Senate in a landslide, he said he heard the voters, he actually meant it, and he governed mostly as a centrist the rest of his presidency. (No, Clinton never was a good man. He did not have to be to get the message and listen. So credit where credit is due.)
But that changed under Obama. He got punished in two midterms, 2010 and 2014. But if he listened or heard, he didn’t show it. He was undeterred in governing as a Leftist. Nor did the 2016 victory of Trump cause most Democrats to engage in self-examination. Instead they engaged in what can only be called a prolonged attempted coup based on the Russian Hoax and other public lies. Then their main 2020 election strategy was using COVID to rig that election while keeping Biden in the basement.
One reason for this hardening of Democrats is that they are far more monolithic than in the 20th Century. Back then there were enough conservative and moderate Democrats to help pull the party back from Leftism when that was needed. Not so now. Conservative Democrats are close to extinction, and moderate Democrats are an endangered species.
So whereas we used to have two very mixed major parties, we have an extremist major party that would pretty much destroy America if it gained enough power long enough. Right now, it may be close to gaining enough power to tear up what remains of Constitutional governance and freedom.
And if the current electorate doesn’t like that, that major party will do their worst to nullify their votes through election rigging and then import a future electorate through a virtually open border. In other words, what the Democrat Party is doing now.
That is far more dangerous than Trump saying “I am your retribution.” But Trump saying that certainly reflects our dangerous moment and perhaps adds to the danger.
The thing is we may need the Democrat Party and allied RINOs to be so punished in elections and governance that it might at least look like retribution. We cannot long survive as a free nation when one major party hates our freedom and practically hates half of us as well. So the Democrat Party has to be so politically punished, probably more than once, that it either comes to its senses and reforms or dies away to irrelevance.
(By the way, this is precisely what Boris Johnson and the U. K. accomplished in their 2019 election. Labour under Jeremy Corbin was an extremist existential threat much like the current U. S. Democrat Party. Labour’s historic defeat that year has brought about the quick reform and moderation of that party. The situation in the U. K. is still not good, thanks largely to Tory fecklessness. But neither major party there is now an existential threat.)
For the good of the country, I wish the Democrat Party wasn’t that far gone. Heck, I’ve voted for a number of Democrats in the past. But the current Democrat Party has to be more than defeated. It has to be crushed. Maybe you can call that “retribution.” But it has become that dangerous.
This is why I was so disappointed by the 2022 midterms. Instead of being hit with a red wave, Democrats were hit with a red noodle. If that is all Republicans can manage after two horrible years of the Biden Regime, we are in a bad place indeed.
And that bad place includes Trump’s call for retribution. But it is hard to see the United States doing the course correction we need except through political punishment so overwhelming and prolonged that it pretty much is retribution. Trust that I say that with sadness and some fear even, not glee.
Pray. We need it.
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