Normal Americans, along with Donald Trump, spent four years in the political wilderness.  There, the shifting political winds scoured, burnished and hardened them. The weak were destroyed, but those that emerged were wiser, stronger and more determined. They painfully gained insights they could have gained in no other way.

So difficult were those times many went bankrupt, many were wrongfully imprisoned, many lost careers, reputations, families. Lawfare brutalized many. Some committed suicide, and many were the victims of the criminal violence Democrats/socialist/communists (D/s/cs) ordained, supported, and arrogantly praised. Remember Kamala Harris telling us the anarchists and racists responsible for the 2020 Summer of Love weren’t going to quit and shouldn’t quit? Remember the bail fund she supported and later indignantly claimed she did no such thing even though her original tweet to that effect was still up? Remember Joe Biden constantly calling Normal Americans domestic terrorists, insurrectionists, imminent threats to “our democracy” all the while claiming to be the great uniter? 

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Those years in the wilderness were necessary, even essential. Had Donald Trump won a second term in 2020—I know, I know—America’s hopes for surviving as the representative republic of Article IV, Section 4 would have been dashed, and “our democracy,” a socialist/communist tyranny of the majority, would have prevailed.

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Trump would have been serially impeached, but probably not convicted. America would have become a media circus whose main ring attraction was a never-ending show trial, with ringmasters like Chuck Shumer and Liz Cheney. Mike Pence would have likely remained as Vice President, and when Trump’s term was over, a generation of D/s/c dominance and rule would likely have begun. Alternately, had D/s/cs taken the Senate in the mid-term elections, Trump would have been convicted, Pence would have taken office, and the cycle of impeachment would have begun again until a D/s/c Speaker of the House was crowned. 

Most important was two fundamental lessons of human nature had to be internalized by a sufficient number of Americans of all races, both genders, and all political stripes: most people can learn only from their own mistakes, and many won’t change unless and until they’ve hit rock bottom or are awfully close.

Americans had to learn just how corrupt, how anti-American, even evil, is the D/s/c Party.

These were hard lessons, but the D/s/c Party, in an orgy of arrogance, self-importance and rage against Normal Americans, believing themselves invincible, believing they were at long last, inches from absolute, eternal political power, decided to give it to their garbage inferiors good and hard. Runaway inflation, weaponization of government, harassing soccer moms, persecuting Christians, trying to abolish the First and Second Amendment, EV mandates, graft, corruption and berserk deficit spending began to turn the tide against them. Their arrogance in badly mishandling the East Palestine train wreck and two hurricanes, feckless, dangerous foreign policy, Biden’s red-tinged triumph of the shill speech, the administration’s gay and trans in-your-face appointments, forcing trans bullies into girls and women’s bathrooms, locker rooms and sports, all of that forced Americans to begin to understand Donald Trump was right: they were really after them and he was just in the way.

Tampons in boy’s bathrooms, political and sexual indoctrination of school children, the abusive and extra-constitutional treatment of January 6 defendants, and the arrogant hectoring of the self-imagined elite convinced even life-long Democrats they were being betrayed. Illegal immigration, and the constant lies that the border was secure were bad enough. The cover up of Joe Biden’s obvious dementia was infuriating. When every city and state became a border state with the social horrors that imposed, Americans were just about ready to explode.

The last straws were economic. Unaffordable gas, heating and air conditioning, out of reach mortgages, unaffordable groceries, the inability to live even paycheck to paycheck was intolerable, and all the while Joe Biden and Kamala Harris gleefully, smugly claimed Bidenomics was working. Americans came to understand Bidenomics was working as intended, to harm and control them. It was the Cloward-Piven strategy gone berserk.

And then Joe Biden was deposed. Few mourned, but rage grew with Kamala Harris’ candidacy. A woman all had despised, all knew to be incompetent, suddenly was the second political coming. They finally went too far.

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Donald Trump was elected in a contemporary landslide, even—and there’s irony for you—winning the popular vote. Even the Polish Parliament chanted “Donald Trump” to celebrate his re-election.  

If, as seems likely, Republicans retain the House, he’ll have the opportunity to make America great again, an opportunity he would have been denied in a second consecutive term. The potential for J.D. Vance to win in 2028 is high.

Scourged, disdained, abused, Normal Americans, perhaps for the last time, have a chance. We had better make the most of it.

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.