There are only two things an American politician really needs to know. Thing One is that the American people are the greatest people in the world. Thing Two is that the United States of America is the greatest country in the world.

That, of course, is what President Trump said beneath the gaze of the four presidents on Mount Rushmore on July 3, 2020. That is all he said; that is all he needed to say.

But our liberal friends in the mainstream media all described it as a dark, divisive speech. Let us give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they really meant it. But why?

Okay, forget about them for a moment. Why is it that I and most of you readers responded gratefully to President Trump’s speech? It is because we experience ourselves as Americans, and the United States of America as our national home. So we like to hear America praised and its heroes honored. Correction: we ache to hear America praised and its heroes honored.

Why would that be? Because this nation is the natural cultural and political home of the middle class. We responded as we did to the Trump speech because it was an anthem to the nation of America and to the people of America, the middle class.

But our liberal friends think themselves above the banality of nationhood. They see the nation state as a dangerous and flawed political entity, liable to break out in aggressive neo-fascist white nationalist imperialism at any moment. And they know themselves as the heroes that will save us from our crypto-fascist selves, that will rule us wisely and administer us scientifically for our own good.

Meanwhile, The Victims!  Unless a president mentions The Victims in every paragraph he is a divisive, dark monster.

Remember, our liberal friends experience themselves as heroic activists pushing back against an eternity of systemic racism that would engulf The Victims in terminal injustice without the heroic peaceful protesting of progressives. They really believe that. Only political power, in the hands of progressive activists, can bend the arc of history towards justice.

Of course, I believe the opposite. I believe that the nation state will be the dominant form of political union until the Trisolarians are detected on their way from Alpha Centauri and all humans unite to fight the galactic foe. I believe that activism is mere playacting. I believe that all politics is about dividing people and the less of it the better. I believe there is no such thing as justice, only injustice, and the more politics the more injustice.

May I repeat that? “The more politics, the more injustice.” Period.

Hold on a moment while I put that in my Maxims.

I believe that the reason we ended slavery was because slavery does not pay, cannot compete with free labor. I believe that the reason that empires went out of fashion is because empires do not pay, President Xi. I believe that the big reason why we have increased real human income by 30 times in 200 years is because the nobodies that gave us everything from machine textiles to $100 smartphones are not that interested in power. Because power does not pay.

Nothing, but nothing good has come from leftie political power. That is what I believe.

In many ways, President Trump was issuing the last call to the middle class. Because if he loses in November then the woke culture of the global gentry class will swarm over us and cancel us.

But Trump was also issuing a dog-whistle to Blacks -- I am using, reluctantly, the latest dodge to keep black Americans separate from the rest of America, after Negro, black, African American, black again and now Black. Trump was saying to black Americans: come and join us, the great American middle class, and become just Americans. Last call for the middle class.

Here’s the problem for blacks, raised by a Nigerian writer on the Brit UnHerd.com. He says it’s all about “Respect… a shared sense of global disrespect for the black race.” Good point. But here’s the problem. Respect is not something given to you by patronizing liberals or mostly peaceful protests, or by laws and quotas and DIE. Respect is what you earn in the day-to-day slog of the market economy.

So President Trump’s Last Call to the Middle Class was also a last call to black America. Do you want to become respected members of the middle class -- Americans, no more and no less -- or do you want to continue as the hyphenated Little Darlings of the left, the media, the academy, and corporate America, protected and pampered by the ruling class but resented by the great middle class of America that doesn’t get to enjoy the unjust privileges of systemic liberalism?

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.