By John F. Di Leo -
The first week since the Trump/Pence ticket’s solid electoral victory (winning 3084 of the USA’s 3141 counties) has been odd indeed, causing many pundits, both great and small to admit having gotten it wrong. (I, for example, always knew that between Hillary and Trump, one of them had to win, but my prediction was that if he headed the GOP ticket, the GOP would suffer devastation downballot, which blessedly turned out to be completely wrong).
But the attention from coast to coast this week has not been directed at errant predictions. Rather, the focus has been turned to groups – groups who feel offended, cheated, threatened, or dissed by their fellow citizens’ choice at the top of the ballot. And these groups are demonstrating, sometimes even rioting in the streets.
Is that in any way reasonable?
Remember, after all, that we did not have a clear-cut choice of excellence vs. disaster on our ballot. We had a pompous political novice, experienced in business and media but untried in government, running against a serially-corrupt, lifelong-socialist, pathological-liar harridan. For most voters, this was a choice between an unknown quantity and a known disaster. By only a couple of percentage points (when known vote fraud is factored out), the voters chose Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. There is no reason for the supporters of the one to feel horribly dissed by the supporters of the other.
A Lifetime of Offense
Is it just me, or has the American Left managed to cram a lifetime of hurt into a single week?
Whether we spend our time in our cities’ downtowns, or our colleges’ quads, or in our living rooms with the TV on, or at our desks before a computer screen, we have been subjected to a degree of whining that may be unprecedented in human history.
The new president hasn’t even been inaugurated yet, but his very name on a bumper sticker or yard sign is now enough to send today’s weakest adults into blubbering children, cowering in a corner in fear of the imagined bogeymen they dream the new President will send after them.
They cower for “safe spaces” in our colleges, and wear safety pins as a pointed secret handshake, to let other students know that they too share this inability to behave like grownups.
Or they cry on facebook, and call for changes in the electoral system, or for faithless electors to save their precious Hillary like a Deus Ex Machina in December; some even vocally call for assassination, without fear of the Obama administration’s Justice Department coming after them (as they would have, in any environment other than this one).
And they do riot in our streets, doing millions of dollars in damage to store windows, cars, businesses… blocking traffic, even on interstate highways… even beating people suspected of being Trump supporters. A red baseball cap or t-shirt has been enough to trigger these thugs to violent acts. Many such post-election attacks have been life-threatening; at least a couple have indeed been fatal.
This is the response we expect from a banana republic after a crooked election, not from the United States. Like it or not, the winning ticket in this case won by an overwhelming margin… however hard the Democrats tried to steal it (numerous sources estimate 3 million illegal aliens voted Democrat, and that’s not even counting the many other kinds of vote fraud practiced by that desperate minority party).
By contrast, the Right side of the aisle didn’t act that way when the Left won in 2008 and again in 2012; the Right didn’t block traffic, attack innocent pedestrians, or beg their professors to be let out of midterm exams. The Right just learned to deal with it, and concentrated on making a living, in an ever-more-difficult environment.
Remember this week, fellow voters, for future elections. Which party should serve in public office – the grown-ups or the crying children?
Who Has Reason to Fear?
Looking beyond the overdone reaction itself, however – much of which, after all, is orchestrated by MoveOn.org and other rent-a-thug leftist political groups anyway – we would do well to consider the actual case on its merits.
Even if the riots and midterm cancellations and facebook whining are over-the-top, let’s ask: do they have a case to be nervous? Is there indeed any reason for any demographic group – black, white, young, old, Catholic, Muslim, anyone at all – to live in fear today, because the Trump/Pence team defeated the Clinton/Kaine team?
Let us consider a few of the allegedly-slighted groups:
African-Americans – Many of the objections have been from black Democrats who claim that Trump’s election is somehow threatening to them. But let’s think about the rhetoric and stated policies of the two campaigns.
Trump’s policies include reductions in new immigration and existing illegal immigrants who compete with low-skilled inner city residents (who happen to be mostly black) for jobs. Trump’s policies include crackdowns on the horrific inner city crime that has devastated the communities where the vast majority of black Americans reside. So his policies will make life both more prosperous and safer for that community.
By contrast, Hillary Clinton’s policies included vast increases in immigration and the legalization of currently illegal aliens. Her election would have created even more competition for low-skilled jobs, condemning even more in the black community (and others, but especially this community) to a lifetime of unemployment and welfare. And on the issue of our crime crisis, Hillary Clinton came down squarely on the side of the criminals, shockingly promising to open the prisons and eliminate mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines, promising to emasculate law enforcement and flood our cities with convicted criminals.
Frankly, if the African-American community was inclined to protest at all, they should have protested if Hillary Clinton had won, not when Donald Trump did.
Small Town Residents and Farmers – America’s farmers were long a part of the Democratic Party coalition. Far from the country clubs and suburban neighborhoods long associated with the Republican Party, our farmers and residents of small towns were often counted as the Democratic Party base, particularly when employed in any unionized activity, such as the workers in coal mines, textile mills, automotive plants, and the communities surrounding them.
But these alliances changed as the Democratic Party ran more and more extreme candidates, and the Republican Party has recognized the need to protect these groups from extremist Democrat policies.
Donald Trump came to the defense of the coal miners whom the Obama administration put out of work… and spoke up for the natural gas, oil fields, and drilling rigs that the Obama administration has fought 24/7 for the past eight years. The Trump administration will end the EPA’s war on coal, oil and gas. This will help the people directly working in those industries, yes, but not only them!
Whole towns grew up around our oil drilling communities, our pipeline distribution depots and our coal mines. When the Left shut them down, those whole towns collapsed. The nation has been covered with small towns that dried up when the government terminated the main source of employment of a town; a mine’s closure doesn’t just put the miners out of work, it pushes the truck drivers, restauranteurs, shopkeepers, hotel workers, and everyone else who served that town out of work as well. Donald Trump’s accession to the White House will reverse this error, and put all these people back to work.
By contrast, Hillary Clinton stood for a full continuation of the Obama energy policy. She promised to close down more mines and mining towns, more drilling rigs and oil supported communities. Her policy was to import more solar panels and wind turbines from China, increasing our trade deficit and raising our energy prices across the board.
And on top of all that, Hillary Clinton’s campaign had a special attack plan for our family farmers: a huge increase in the estate tax, which forces almost all families to sell the family farm upon the deaths of their parents. A huge gift to the big agricultural conglomerates, but total devastation to America’s farmers.
Is it any wonder that small town America voted against her, and for Donald Trump, this time? The people of small town America, the union members whose jobs are dependent on oil, gas, and coal, had good reason indeed to fear a Clinton presidency, and might well have been justified in rioting if she had won. But Donald Trump? Never. He poses no threat to them; his election – at least based on his campaign speeches and published platform – is a huge net positive for these groups.
The Sexual Revolution Demographic - This is a harder group to classify, but it runs the gamut from high school students to senior citizens, and is the most vocal of Trump’s opponents. College students worried about Trump’s raunchy off-the-record speech over the years… LGBTQ activists seeking gay marriage benefits… feminism extremists who advocate things like Gender Studies college majors… and the people who, in an effort to show their support for minorities, reflexively echo these groups’ positions, perhaps without really thinking them through.
So let’s do that, for a moment. Let’s think it through. The Trump/Pence ticket is a mixture of liberal and conservative elements of the Republican Party. This administration will oppose government funding of the cultural left’s agenda; it will stop the federal government from using federal power to force schools to allow boys in girls’ locker rooms, and things like that.
By contrast, Hillary Clinton would have continued the Left’s use of the federal government to force its way on the American people, with taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand, shutdowns of caterers who decline a malicious business offer on religious grounds, and so forth. Under a Trump administration, the gay couple will still be able to hold a celebration, they just won’t be able to force a particular bakery to bake a cake (for every business that refuses a contract, another will be happy to provide it). The freedom of contract will rightly trump the politics of class envy or activist favoritism.
But were these ever really the most important issues to this demographic, in the first place?
The great political success, and ethical shame, of the Democratic Party and the Modern Left has been that the Democrats have selected a fringe issue for each of their desired groups, and then convinced those groups that this fringe issue is what matters most to them.
Consider, for example, the gay couple who wants a marriage license. The Republican might say no, and the Democrat might say yes.
Or the woman who wants the government to fund her $10/month birth control prescription, or the inner-city African-American who wants the government to fund his $30/month cellphone. The Republican will say no, and the Democrat will say yes. (Heck, the Democrat will say yes to the government funding anything).
Are these REALLY the most important issues for these groups? The Democrats have TOLD them they are… but ARE they really?
I would argue that the Democrats have conned these groups for years. In fact, these issues – these fringe issues, or “wedge issues” in political science speak, were never important to these groups at all. The Democrats just convinced them they were.
In fact, what is most important to all these groups is the same stuff – yes, the very same issues – that are important to the rest of us:
- Under which party will you be more likely to get a job, and to prosper in your career? (a $75K/year salary dwarfs that silly $12/year birth control copay or that $360/year cellphone).
- Under which party will you be more likely to be able to walk safely home in your neighborhood, to a house or apartment that hasn’t been broken into?
- Under which party will you be more likely to be able to afford to open a business, and under which party will your prospective customers be able to afford to shop with you?
- Under which party will your neighborhood – whether a small town or suburb or big city – be more likely to grow and prosper economically, through a creation of new jobs, career potential and ever-safer streets?
- Under which party will we be able to make it to a realistic retirement date, at which we will indeed be able to sleep safely knowing that we can afford our old age, without being a burden to our children?
I would argue that these are the issues that truly matter to all demographics in America… that the fake wedge issues of the Left have finally been largely exposed as fakes, and more and more Americans have awakened to these politics of class envy and artificial division.
For this reason, who did the LGBTQ demographic, the collegiate women demographic, the tattoo-and piercing demographic really have to fear in this election?
Despite being the poster children of the “I’m With Her” campaign, these groups actually had much more to fear from a Hillary election than from the Trump victory!
You will have a better chance being able to walk home safely, to get a job, to prosper in a career, and to live a happy life, because Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton on November 8.
This isn’t to say that Trump is perfect – far from it – or that it’s out of your hands and up to Washington DC now. The lion’s share of every person’s life is dependent on the person’s own choices. It’s up to you, not up to government.
But thanks to Hillary Clinton’s defeat, even her supporters have dodged a bullet here, whether they know it or not.
There’s a reason most of these protesters have had to be recruited with CraigsList ads and paid by foreign-funded organizations: REAL Americans truly don’t have that much to fear from the Trump defeat of Hillary Clinton.
And what has the Democratic Party scared to death is the fact that more and more Americans are finally figuring this out for themselves.
Copyright 2016 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicago-based international trade compliance lecturer and manager, and is also a writer, actor, and father of three.
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