Alienated patriots and the pursuit of the political millennium
There is a growing anger in America. You won't see it on PBS or on the mainstream media. You won't hear it at college orientations. But patriotic America is angry. It is angry at athletes who represent America and then denigrate our national symbols. It is angry at those who justify such despicable behavior by saying everyone has a right to protest. Yes, but if you represent America, perhaps, you should have the good sense not to spit on your country.
It is angry at elites who exported our jobs to China, borrow money from the communists, and then extend them foreign aid. It is angry at being told all whites are racists. It is angry at having a six-year-old first-grade white child being told she is responsible for all the evil in the world. It only has to look at former colonies and ask: what has anti-colonialism wrought? Is Hong Kong better off under China than the British? It is angry that Jan. 6 will be investigated but the street thuggery of BLM and Antifa is immunized from any scrutiny.
It is angry about the violence in the inner city that now spreads to solid middle-class neighborhoods. Patriotic America is the America of traditionalism — of churchgoing believers, of people who serve in the military and the police, of people who are blue-collar workers and lower-middle-class workers. It is primarily white but not exclusively so. It is more likely to be rural than urban. It is eschewed by the Obamas of the world, who see it as clinging to its religion and its guns. It clings to both with pride and conviction.
It is angry about people who become millionaires by selling socialism to the overeducated and misinformed. It awaits mobilization. It sits on the social periphery, abandoned by elites. It awaits a leader. It gets riper each day for mobilization. It will have its day, either in the arena of politics or in the streets, but it will not be denied. It yearns to for a leader, a messianic presence that will lead it to a new millennium. It seeks a savior, for the America that currently exists is seen as destined for perdition.
It is angry at ideologies posing as intellectual theories that are inoculated from being rejected, like so-called "Critical Race Theory," which like Marxism and fascism is an ideology — not a theory. Theories are subject to refutation. Critical Race Theory is not.
It is angry at bringing into this country some immigrants who not only do not share our values, but also seek to destroy us. Unlike elites and the media, when it learns of a random knife attack on innocent people where the perpetrator yells, "Allahu akbar," it doesn't need days to discern the motivation. The elites who do so are laughingstocks who undermine their own legitimacy.
The pursuit of the millennium is part of the human instinct, especially when people feel that their leaders have isolated, denigrated, and abandoned them. When jobs are exported. When elite universities gloat over changing admissions standards and admitting a disproportionate number of nonwhites, they are inadvertently sending a message that further marginalizes whites who do not share these values.
Donald Trump was the incarnation of this anger. He came on the political scene and won the presidency to the shock and disbelief of the political elite class. Yet they never comprehended why he won. They still refuse to see the consequences of their embrace of a politically correct ideology that alienates hundreds of millions of Americans.
We are, perhaps, more divided than we have been since the Civil War, and there is no one on the political stage, in the mass media, or in the institutions of so-called higher education that will bring us together.
The political "deplorables" will be tired of being stigmatized. They will grow tired of seeing their children harassed for the color of their skin. And they will do what all such people have done since time immemorial. They will embrace a political savior who will lead them to a new millennium.
Abraham H. Miller is an emeritus professor of political science, University of Cincinnati, and a distinguished fellow with the Haym Salomon Center.
Image: Currier & Ives.
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