It’s become commonplace, though not cliché, to say that Donald Trump has transformed America’s political culture in fundamental and lasting ways. As with anything, the full impact of the Trump chapter in American history will not be understood completely until enough time has elapsed, giving the opportunity for a comprehensive and objective assessment down the line.
Naturally, a significant part of this assessment will depend on the trajectory of the next four years: whether the President can implement his agenda without encumbrances or whether he faces opposition and gridlock along the way. To the extent he faces any challenges, his legacy will also be shaped by how he manages such obstacles; if the strategy he uses to overcome any problems proves successful, it will surely provide a rubric by which many leaders long into the future will no doubt seek to emulate.
Nevertheless, even before his official swearing-in, the generational impact of Donald Trump’s second victory is acutely observable – and almost certainly here to stay long after he departs from the political arena. Part of this may be attributed to the President’s cultural impact; within the political realm, he is, unlike so many of his immediate predecessors, larger-than-life. He belongs among the echelons of Mount Rushmore’s giants, whose legendary characters he follows in life and finds himself easily kindred spirits with. Donald Trump went up against unprecedented challenges and prevailed, exhibiting a willpower that finds itself more readily at home among classical heroes. Indeed, his inner strength is so foreign to the modern sensibility; this is partly why so many revere him: he likewise boasts the force of personality to match his dominant spirit, one that will leave a permanent mark on a cultural psyche usually susceptible to all sorts of diversions and distractions.
It is necessary to invoke ancient tropes when discussing Donald Trump’s political achievement, because he has rewritten the rules of modernity, and the expectations of politics at the End of History. He has demonstrated in his many achievements that sheer personality – fueled by a relentless willpower – can overcome history’s deterministic bent, or fate, if powerful enough. But the Trump phenomenon goes beyond simple will-to-power: there is genius, born of deliberation and meticulous planning, to his grand strategy.
Evidence of this might be gleaned through his recent appointments of Charles Kushner, as ambassador to France, and Massad Boulos, as an adviser on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs. In selecting the fathers-in-law of his two daughters to key diplomatic posts, Donald Trump has signaled that his political brand will not be contained to any country or even continent, it will be one with broad-based international appeal.
Similarly, the Trump Organization continues to expand on the global arena – just recently announcing a new project in Saudi Arabia to add to its growing overseas portfolio. The economic and business side of things complements the political and cultural, demonstrating how the Trump hegemony is multidimensional – equipping it with the staying power to rewrite, if not replace, the former system. This element of conquering time and space is what makes President Trump’s hegemony so unique and puts him in an unrivaled class of generational leaders – the most influence a single man has had in shaping global events since Napoleon.
Donald Trump thus stands as the architect of a new cultural and political hegemony that, if successful, will offer a robust alternative to the deeply enervated liberal order of the twentieth century that has left Europe in shambles – embattled by Third World migrants, many of Islamic background, as well as a deeper loss of identity, born out of the rapacious secularism that has filled Christendom’s void. The Trump Order, by sharp contrast, presents itself as a form of renewal: one optimistically staked to progress, though not of the same ideology, steeped in the principles of liberal democracy that was the bulwark of the previous one.
Instead, the President’s conception of progress is aligned with true progress: one focused on the brick-and-mortar realities of everyday life for both Americans and people the world over. This is a progress that promotes stability and order, so as to generate the conditions for long-term peace and prosperity. A world ravaged by never-ending war does not readily lend itself to trade, industry, and cultural prosperity. Instead, it keeps nations stunted, sowing distrust and retarding growth.
In the modern day and age, cultural progress – in the form of beautiful and bountiful art and architecture that elevates the human spirit – can only meaningfully transpire with the requisite political order. Politics that is in a constant state of flux and turnover leads necessarily to instability and chaos, spawning paranoia, resentment, and conspiracy among peoples. These are hardly the ingredients of a vital civilization; alas, they readily signify the terminal stages of the liberalism, now rampant across the West, that has whittled most of Europe down to the bone.
Donald Trump’s political movement has begun sketching a way forward – particularly for talented men and women who seek to elevate themselves above the leveling of a lowering of standards that seems to be the consummate trend today across society. Standards are depressed and given legalistic authority by the old laws endorsed by the reigning world order, which telegraph that extraordinary feats by great men are no longer possible. If a great and talented man is to emerge, like Donald Trump or Elon Musk, and forsake his own private goods for the commonwealth, risking everything in the process, the old regime seeks to destroy him, at all costs.
As we observed in the cases of both Trump and Musk, but particularly with the President-elect, the reigning powers-that-be were willing to sabotage every single constitutional norm and fundamental right to stop him in his tracks. This includes stampeding due process, the cornerstone of American liberty, and lodging lawfare of obscene and baseless lengths against himself and everything valuable he owned. The point of this lawfare was both retaliatory: try to bankrupt Donald Trump of his personal fortunes to render him forever persona non grata. But there was also a spiritual component: send a strong message to any would-be imitators, inspired by his bravery and conviction, that their tenacity would meet a similar fate: a lifetime of crushing professional and personal woes for daring to speak out against the regime.
Elon Musk was perhaps the President’s greatest imitator; he too was met with heavy-handed justice, and likely would have faced steep penalties, censorship, and even incarceration had the election result gone the other way. But fortunately for society – and the world, this very dark alternative was not to be.
Because the Left – and the communist impulses that inspired the Woke Revolution – was defeated so handily in this November’s race, it lends further scale to the impact of Donald Trump’s political and cultural revolution. It demonstrates that the weak forces which inspire the Left, and the politicians and icons they would prefer to lionize, also frame their own moral constitutions. The ideology mirrors its proponents’ weaknesses and insecurities. Because they are weak, it is weak. The Left’s power derives from the illusions they cast in the minds of their opponents, who in their gloomiest moments submit to the view that the Left is all-powerful, and they can perpetuate their tyranny indefinitely – rooting out every last bit of opposition.
The Left’s supposed cultural and political imperium was exposed as a paper tiger with Donald Trump’s resounding victory, which deepened the fault lines within liberalism’s broader global coalition. Liberalism is a system based on a self-perfecting logic. Liberalism works, per its own self-conception, because it’s based on rules. But the rules have no bearing on anything other than the integrity of the system itself. If the system becomes decoupled from its fundamental source of legitimacy – be it the Constitution, nature, and God – then it gets rendered as malleable and crippled as the Nancy Pelosi’s and Mitch McConnell’s which comprise its political vanguard. The rules are thus only as good as the integrity of the system itself.
In this framing, Donald Trump’s not really a threat to the ascendant order, as the legacy media would really like its dwindling share of listeners to believe, and certainly not to the rule of law. However, his approach to these institutions is not that of a bureaucrat, or member of the system that takes everything for granted uncritically. His approach to politics is individualistic – akin to the older view preferred by our Founding Fathers, who followed their Greek and Roman antecedents, by understanding that constitutions and laws are established, ultimately, on the authority of great men.
Men of greatness – genuine statesmen – are not blind rules-followers, particularly if those rules prove antiquated, or stifling to creative and intellectual progress. In fact, they would find such a notion repulsive, because it renders dishonor upon that which is the root source of their greatness: their individuality. Individuality is carved out of vision and foresight; it involves some degree of independent thinking, coupled with the courage to execute one’s vision, which makes them uncommon among most people.
You therefore cannot lay down a rules-based order like a categorical imperative, expecting every single human type to neatly fall within the arrangement, leaving their uniqueness at the door. There is a need to be flexible and nimble with interpretation, much like a maestro conducting a symphony orchestra. If they are to have meaning, laws cannot be dead letters. Donald Trump’s individuality poses a threat to the older system, and its outdated laws and rigid edicts which appease the sensibilities of bureaucratic cogs, who would follow a rule machine-like even if it led them down a cliff but are offensive to men of bold vision and true greatness would break from the matrix and prefer chartering their own destinies.
Unlike so many other politicians, Donald Trump followed the road less taken. He gave himself creative license to diagnose the problems of our age, even if it deviated from the de facto rulebook of the dying liberal regime. Because he did not bind himself thoughtlessly to the system, which was clearly failing, he was reviled by those who, being of lesser spirit, find themselves inextricably attached to the failing liberal system’s rules and regulations, having insufficient creativity to think outside its narrow constraints, and the perspective to appreciate how such rules now pose an impediment to cultural and political progress. So long as they fail to grasp these lessons, Donald Trump’s political and cultural dynasty will further expand and become more powerful – which is well-deserved, because he was only one smart and bold enough to call the bluff of the political class that has led the world to crisis and offer a meaningful alternative.
That he should benefit tenfold from this trailblazing victory is not only well-deserved, but a natural equilibration of how things are supposed to be: where the best and brightest prevail, and the weak and incompetent be put out to pasture.
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