Donald Trump and the meaning of 'Patria'
One of my favorite folk singers is Colombian musician Alejandro Bassi, who sings guitar songs with perfect articulation, playing, and timing. His music is gentle and unpretentious. Because my Spanish isn't very good, it's a pleasure to hear his clarity in singing every syllable and note.
Alejandro's songs are simple but honest. He brings me back to an era in America when entertainers and audiences could express normal feelings without fear of the P.C. police, who will now jump down our throats for Kafkaesque offenses against the latest mass delusion.
That innocent past was a better time and a better place to grow up in.
Bassi sings many love songs, and at least one that celebrates his love for country. It has a one-word title: "Patria." (See here.)
Words like "fatherland" and "motherland" are taboo today in America, maybe the most lovable nation in the world, simply filled with good and generous people. Unfortunately, our leftist witch-hunters, like Hillary's and Obama's guru Saul Alinsky, spotted our niceness as a weakness that could be exploited. Alinsky's Rules for Radicals has taught generations of profoundly ignorant, vain, and easily molded adolescents to assault normal people by using their own good values against them.
Alinsky called the great American middle "the enemy." In the Reign of O, the president has made it clear enough that he still sees us as his personal (and even racial) enemies.
Half the time, Mr. Obama simply makes up his own historical "facts," which happen to be wildly wrong. As long as it fits Obama's fantasies, it's okay by him.
In contrast, Vladimir Putin speaks more highly of the United States, especially in the Great Patriotic War, which we call World War II. Putin wants to have an alliance with us to resist the tidal wave of jihad. Putin is a Russian autocrat, not an American president, but he thinks very clearly, unlike our ego-driven politicians.
The Spanish word patria comes from the Latin for "country," but it really means my country, in just the way the word "home" really means "my home." It is a place and a people who are close to my heart. That is how Bassi sings "Patria." Americans still sing patriotic songs – the U.S. Marine Choir is magnificent – but we've somehow lost that innocent straightforward feeling of love for country and nation.
It's not that Alejandro Bassi is out of touch; rather, Americans in our generation have somehow become so wounded by years of hate-America agitprop that we cannot let ourselves feel and express love of country. It is a great loss, and there is no serious doubt about the malignancy of those who made it happen. Today that includes both the fanatical left and jihad, which have made common cause to destroy what is best about America.
Our conservative intelligentsia constantly wonder how an obvious wild man like Donald Trump could mobilize tens of millions of voters against a very good field of GOP candidates. Rather than scratching their heads and howling at the moon, which seems to be their main occupation these days, they might consider listening to Bassi's song. Because natural love of country is what motivates Trump and his voters.
Maybe Trump will turn out to be a big disappointment. Who knows? But we know that his basic message rings true with tens of millions of voters. That is not accidental. Ordinary people probably have a better grasp of who Trump is than any number of political scribblers.