Trump’s Triumph

Vincent J. Curtis

9 Nov 2016

Early this morning, Donald Trump was confirmed elected as the next president of the United States.  Trump, who has never held elective office or military command, pulled off the greatest surprise and electoral feat seen in a generation.  He did it despite all his flaws, by becoming the champion of those whom his opponent, Hillary Clinton, described as “deplorable, irredeemable, and not American.”  Those people would be the “factory workers, veterans, cops, the kitchen help, farmers, people who make trains run, pick up trash, and keep the country moving” in the words of New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin.

America has had its Brexit moment.  Trump the underdog led the “forgotten masses” to triumph.  In that respect, Michael Moore got it right.  Trump’s victory was their revenge for the contempt in which they have been held by the political elites for decades.  The basket of deplorables were fully aware of Trump’s flaws, and didn’t care.  His pugnaciousness, his disrespect of political correctness, his humanness, and his choice of enemies as well as his flaws made him even more desirable as a vessel for their discontent than some plain vanilla conservative nominee would have been.

Trump’s sheer bigness as a personality in American life and his great wealth enabled him to withstand the concerted attacks of “the fraudulent hucksters of the national liberal media” and political establishmentarians.  Trump owes his success only to the support he received from the voters.  Nobody owns Trump, except for the American electorate.

For his part, Trump put aside all political rancor in his moment of triumph.  “Now it is time for America to bind the wounds of division…To all Republicans and Democrats and independents across this nation, I say it is time for us to come together as one united people….I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all Americans…I’m reaching out to you…so that we can work together and unify our great country.”  Trump has been saying this for months, and it was Trump, not Hillary Clinton, who actually stood for ‘Stronger Together.’

Trump continued, “[O]urs was not a campaign but rather an incredible and great movement, made up of millions of hard-working men and women who love their country and want a better, brighter future for themselves and for their family.  It is a movement of Americans…who want and expect our government to serve the people – and serve the people it will…..The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.”

More than Hillary Clinton lost the election.  Progressivism and its bastard child, political correctness, lost.  Big media lost.

Progressivism is the belief in rule by experts, and no one is more expert than the shapers of public opinion, the big media.  The New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC, and CNN (the Clinton News Network), abandoned all pretence of objectivity and fairness during the campaign.  The dirty pool they played redounded against them.  They heaped their contempt not just on Trump, but on those who supported him.  The unprofessional media assault on their champion hardened their hearts, and Trump supporters turned out by the tens of thousands to cheer him at his campaign rallies.  After eight years of progressivism under Barack Obama, a large segment of the electorate yearned for change, and Trump promised to smash every convention Washington held dear.

Big changes are coming, and these changes are for the better.  From a small beginning, Donald Trump built a business worth billions.  He developed over the course of his career a perspective and a skill set unlike anything seen in America.  He has admirable goals, and he knows how to achieve them.  His first goal was the most improbable, to be elected President – and that happened.  Trump beat every professional politician in sight on his first try.  He demonstrated something never before seen.

Trump’s goals are worthy of America and its people.  They are great goals: to make America great again, to fix America’s inner cities, rebuild her infrastructure, put millions of people back to work, take care of America’s veterans, restore respect for law and order, to put the Supreme Court back onto its proper path of adjudicating law, not making it; and igniting a great economic revival.

With great goals as his aim, and with the political skills he has so unexpectedly proven, the next for years will be great years of reform and revival for America.

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