{"id":1574,"date":"2016-10-14T15:31:45","date_gmt":"2016-10-14T19:31:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=1574"},"modified":"2016-10-14T15:31:45","modified_gmt":"2016-10-14T19:31:45","slug":"the-regimes-reckoning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2016\/10\/the-regimes-reckoning.html","title":{"rendered":"The Regime’s Reckoning"},"content":{"rendered":"

Irrespectively of how he in fact will govern if he becomes president, it\u2019s no longer possible to deny that Donald Trump is indeed the anti<\/em>-Establishment candidate.<\/p>\n

To get as far as he has, Trump has had to battle the Regime every step of the way.\u00a0 Now that the election is less than a month off, it has dispatched its agents from all quarters to not just defeat Trump, but to crucify him.<\/p>\n

The Clintons and their legions of surrogates from the Obamas to the Bushes, from the Republican leadership in the Congress to all of the major media are tirelessly doing anything and everything to destroy the one person who (they at least believe) poses the biggest threat to their Empire.<\/p>\n

Yet, as of this writing, Trump is still standing and the outcome of this contest remains an open question.\u00a0 He will continue standing, I predict, right through Election Day\u2014whether he wins the race or loses it, for Trump has already won.<\/em><\/p>\n

To repeat, Trump has won.<\/p>\n

Most Americans have long admitted to having, if nothing else, an intuitive sense that both Washington D.C. and the media are corrupt.<\/p>\n

Trump has confirmed in spades that they\u2019ve been right to trust their gut.\u00a0 His candidacy has revealed for all with eyes to see the existence of a massive, sprawling government-media complex created and preserved by an elite that advances its class-interest behind the veneer of such rhetorical fictions as \u201cDemocracy,\u201d \u201cthe Will of the People,\u201d \u201cEquality,\u201d and the like.<\/p>\n

This ruling class of like-minded individuals is accustomed to directing the lives of the rest of us.\u00a0 However, its exercise of control is just as subtle as it is relentless, facilitated by an abstract, ahistorical, universalistic ideology.\u00a0 Its proponents describe the latter in terms of \u201cvalues,\u201d \u201cideals,\u201d \u201cprinciples.\u201d\u00a0 Though Democrats are wont to invoke it, the doctrine of \u201cAmerican Exceptionalism,\u201d the creed that America is nothing else than a proposition <\/em>or idea, <\/em>also expresses this ideology.\u00a0 Moreover, it makes the ideology that much more marketable by lulling the casual hearer into thinking that the affirmation of this borderless, globalist doctrine is equivalent to an assertion of patriotism.<\/p>\n

Trump, whether he intended for this to happen or not, has in effect deconstructed this myth.\u00a0 He\u2019s revealed that while the Regime promotes its fiction in the name of the citizenry, millions and millions of Americans, those to whom Hillary derisively referred as \u201cdeplorables,\u201d resolutely reject it.<\/p>\n

There have been other whistleblowers on the Regime.\u00a0 Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul are two of the most prominent that immediately come to mine.\u00a0 In fairness, even Bernie Sanders\u2019 candidacy shed light on the corruption of Democrat Party politics.\u00a0 But Trump is the first in our lifetime that has succeeded in actually exposing in all of its nakedness the manipulative, deceptive, and hypocritical nature of the whole<\/em> Establishment.\u00a0 Sanders is a leftist tool, and while Buchanan and Paul are both principled men\u2014vastly more principled, in fact, than Trump\u2014the cold hard truth of the matter is that they had neither the exposure nor the brashness to do in decades what Trump has managed to do within less than a year-and-a-half.<\/p>\n

If the left and the neocon alt-left in Washington and the media think that a defeat at the polls for Trump is going to spell defeat for the movement that his candidacy brought to the fore, then they are even more delusional than we think.\u00a0 Most Americans, regardless of party, distrust the media.\u00a0 The tens of millions of Americans who found a voice in Trump despise it.\u00a0 Whether Trump wins or loses on November 8, but especially if he loses, Trump\u2019s impassioned base will hold the Regime\u2019s court-appointed hacks accountable.\u00a0 If he loses and Hillary Clinton proves to be the disastrous president that we know she will be, the contempt on the part of Trump supporters toward the faux journalists and commentators will only intensify.<\/p>\n

An already polarized nation promises to grow still more divided and Hillary\u2019s presidency promises to be a rocky one.\u00a0 This the Deplorables will insure.<\/p>\n

As for the GOP NeverTrumpists in Congress and their apologists in the so-called \u201cconservative\u201d (neoconservative) media, there\u2019s perhaps no wing of the Regime for which the future is looking grimmer.\u00a0 Election cycle after election cycle, the same con-men and women who have now turned their backs on their party\u2019s presidential nominee\u2014a man, mind you, who garnered more voter support than any Republican primary contestant in history\u2014would spare no occasion to shame skeptical voters into supporting their <\/em>candidates: Bob Dole, George W. Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s now painfully clear that it is they <\/em>who have no shame, for they\u2019d prefer to give the election, and the country, over to Hillary Clinton and the Democrats rather than support the person who threatens to wreck their power structure.<\/p>\n

So be it.<\/p>\n

But the GOPers are sorely mistaken in thinking that it is their endorsement of Trump that will account for the reversal in their political fortunes.\u00a0 It is, rather, their refusal to give Trump all of the backing that they would\u2019ve provided to any other nominee that portends their downfall.<\/p>\n

Do the NeverTrumpists seriously believe that Trump\u2019s supporters will just return to business as usual in the event that Clinton becomes President? Do they think that the unprecedented number of voters who propelled Trump as far as he\u2019s gone will forget their treachery, that they will ever again contribute a dime or a vote toward the Republican Party?<\/p>\n

The GOP is destined to be in for a world of hurt.\u00a0 So too, however, are those \u201cconservative\u201d (neoconservative) talk radio hosts, bloggers, writers, and Fox News chatterers who sought at every turn to safeguard the status quo, i.e. their own power.<\/p>\n

The refusal to tell the truth when it needed to be told will be remembered by untold numbers of people. The D.C. and media Regimists think that if only Trump loses the election, they will be able to sleep comfortably again.\u00a0 But as a colleague of mine put it today, Trump was but a spring shower.\u00a0 There is a tsunami coming their way, a force of nature that will be all that much more catastrophic for the Regime\u2019s interests if Trump loses, for it isn\u2019t Trump, but the movement that he unleashed that will be the source of its greatest troubles.<\/p>\n

#NeverTrump will give rise to #NeverGOP, or at least #NeverNeoconGOP.<\/p>\n

The Trump phenomenon will continue\u2014and grow.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Irrespectively of how he in fact will govern if he becomes president, it\u2019s no longer possible to deny that Donald Trump is indeed the anti-Establishment candidate. 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