Sometimes hardship is the driving force for necessary change.

One of the most valuable lessons experience has taught me is that initial victories can degrade into bitter defeats, while heartbreaking defeats can blossom into unexpected victories. It has led me to see history not as some linear progression of events following a logical rhythm toward human happiness but rather as a complex system with repeating cycles, new variables, and endlessly moving parts. I have come to realize that almost everything in life -- whether good or bad -- should be approached with a healthy dose of “wait-and-see” circumspection.

Presidential elections offer ample support for this proposition. During the month of uncertainty following the 2000 contest when Al Gore refused to concede to George Bush, every hanging chad on Florida’s butterfly ballots seemed important. Reclaiming the White House after Bill Clinton’s sex, campaign finance, and Chinese bribery scandals felt like a critical course correction for America’s future. When Islamic supremacists attacked us at home the following year, having President Bush in the Oval Office -- as opposed to the global-warming-obsessed “inventor of the Internet” -- was a huge relief. We had a man willing to make difficult choices and take the fight to an enemy that had long sought our annihilation. He was the right man for those chaotic and trying times… right?

As the years passed, that answer became less clear. While the Patriot Act broadened the toolkit for tracking down foreign threats, its nefarious use as a domestic surveillance weapon took a sledgehammer to Americans’ privacy. Rhetorical battles against Islamic supremacy morphed into another “politically correct” surrender in which Americans were required to speak of Islam as a “religion of peace.” Fighting the terrorists overseas somehow meant we were also expected to open our doors to millions of new refugees. What originally felt like a robust offensive strategy for eliminating hostile threats transformed into an endless military occupation on the other side of the world with little in the name of long-term strategy. Why were Americans fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq? If you asked a warrior, he was there for 9/11 payback and to end the threat of Islamic terrorism. However, the official line from the White House evolved into some inscrutable notion that Americans must put themselves in harm’s way, so that ancient tribal cultures could magically become stable democracies that valued human rights. That strange vision didn’t make sense to anybody but the politicians in D.C.

In the wake of 9/11, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney erected an unconstitutional infrastructure that could be used to spy on Americans’ communications and financial transactions. They enlarged the welfare state, created whole new departments and agencies, increased debts and deficits, expanded federal intrusion into local education and family life, and squandered a great deal of goodwill both at home and abroad. Instead of championing conservative principles and constitutional governance, the Bush-Cheney White House championed American empire abroad, while sacrificing rights and freedoms at home. The 2000 election victory eventually felt like a poisoned chalice.

Worst of all, President Bush’s approval numbers were so low by the end of his two terms that Americans went shopping for a chief executive who appeared his polar opposite. A half-Black, “hope and change” leftist whose middle name is Hussein fit the bill nicely, and voters elevated the empty suit Barack Obama to the presidency. Americans who wanted the country to move beyond racial grievances of the past saw him as a unique politician who might unite the nation as never before. Those who were tired of empire building abroad saw him as a way to return D.C.’s focus to economic crises at home. Instead, Obama turned out to be one of the most divisive presidents the country has ever had -- a malicious man who never missed an opportunity to use race as a battering ram for “fundamentally transforming” the country. If you didn’t agree with nationalizing healthcare, Obama accused you of hating poor people. If you didn’t believe cops were crooks and that crooks were victims, Obama called you a racist. If you didn’t think Iran should be rewarded for building nuclear weapons, Obama accused you of loving war and loathing peace. If you didn’t think American taxpayers should have to foot the bill for a global wealth redistribution scheme disguised as an effort to fight “climate change,” you hated the environment and wanted everyone to die.

For Obama and his hatchet man Attorney General Eric Holder, you were either with them or against them -- and that made almost every American either their strong-armed vassal or targeted enemy. So much for the prospect of civic unity or the intoxicating promise of “hope and change.” Obama’s tax and spend extravagance and retooling of the Bush-Cheney Patriot Act into a surveillance system for eliminating political opponents meant that Big Government got bigger, Americans’ paychecks got smaller, and D.C.’s obsession with empire-building stayed the same. Under Obama’s stewardship, Americans became poorer, the country became more divided, and the world became more dangerous.

Yet without all the hardships created under Obama’s supervision, Republican voters would have never turned to a political outsider such as Donald Trump as a potential solution. It is confounding to watch Establishment politicians and pundits still mistake Trump’s supporters as delusional “cult members.” If anybody could be described as a cult member, it would be the hapless voter who continues to operate under the misapprehension that there is an ideological distinction separating the likes of Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, John Kerry, or John McCain. When Establishment politicians all belong to the same Uniparty and receive campaign contributions from the same corporate masters, preferring the illusion of electoral choice to the possibility of substantive change is delusional. After watching Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell fail to kill socialized medicine, finance a border wall, or hold Obama accountable for his use of the IRS and FBI to target political opponents, Republican voters understood that the Queensberry Rules of political boxing existed only to keep them silent and under control. Their choice of Donald Trump to take the fight to a corrupt Washington bureaucracy put flesh on the bones of Obama’s meaningless “hope and change.” 

President Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton felt monumental, didn’t it? It was! A true political outsider was voted into office to act as a wrecking ball against a venal and rotten Deep State. But what about all the carnage that has followed? What about the Russia collusion hoax, Antifa’s “mostly peaceful” summer of murder and arson, two fake impeachments, COVID, mail-in-ballot fraud, the DoJ’s use of January 6 to imprison Trump and his supporters as “insurrectionists,” and all the endless political persecution of parents, Christians, and conservatives that has come during installed President Biden’s tenure? What could possibly justify all of this suffering?

Let me say bluntly: if not for all of the madness we have endured these last few years, we would never have reached a moment when so many Americans see plainly the tyrannical menace festering in D.C. Without the Deep State’s in-your-face counterattacks meant to permanently silence Trump voters, people would not understand how serious the threats of censorship, surveillance, financial coercion, and ideological targeting are today. Without Donald Trump’s refusal to toe the line, Uniparty politicians would still be gaslighting Americans into believing that there is no invasion at the border. Without a national politician pursuing “America First” policies that seek to strengthen America’s economy and self-sufficiency, “globalism” would not have become a dirty word.

In America today, the fight for individual liberty has returned as a vital political issue. The struggles for religious freedom, parental rights, and the protection of life have become essential issues. Sometimes the worst hardships are the unexpected driving force for long overdue change.

Hat tip to Edwin.

Image: Edward Henry Wehner