Barbarians At The Gate - The Trump Victory And The Scurrying Of The Lost Left

Bob Muzelle, culture warrior and veteran of all social wars, simply couldn't believe the news on election night. 'How...how could that...that ignoramus, that fool, that....', he sputtered trying to find words for the unthinkable, the unconscionable.  A Trump victory was simply not in the cards, a non-starter, and impossibility, but there he was, bloody ear and all, waving to an adoring crowd. 

For Bob and his colleagues, the election was supposed to be a done deal. Good always triumphs over evil, and this was no different.  The American people would see as clearly as a hand before their face the pure, unmitigated nastiness of the man, his unprincipled, arrogant, obsessive persona; and his blatant racism, misogyny, and homophobia.  How could they not?  The man was a blowhard, a fool, and crass, crude idiot out only for his own good without a sensible, compassionate thought in his head.  

'How could they...', and here again Bob spluttered and stumbled. Living for so long in the warm, comforting assumption that right and good would prevail - that the truth spread by the progressive Left would be the truth, the only truth, and nothing but the truth. 

But here he was, standing on the curb of Pennsylvania Avenue watching the preparations for the Trump Inauguration, billed as The Greatest Show on Earth, an extravaganza of whiteness, wealth, and privilege, a cavalcade of bimbos, airheads, and insurrectionists.  He shook his head in dismay. 'No class', he muttered. 'A clown show, a vaudeville act, a shameless, buggering idiotic spectacle'

Bob was not alone in his agonizing grief. No one in the progressive cabals of Washington saw this coming.  There was absolutely no way that this interloper, his crude, outlandish boor could ever make his way back to the Capital.  They had spelled out the danger of his return - the man would seize all reins of power and within months would establish the foundations for autocratic rule.  His storm troopers would be sent into the streets to round up black and gay people.  His paramilitary would set up machine gun nests all along the Southern border and mow down all asylum seekers.  He would turn Wall Street loose and the days of the Robber Barons would return. 

The outgoing President, Joe Biden, looked in the camera a few days before leaving office, and warned people of the spawn of the devil.  Donald Trump and his cadre of billionaire investors, captains of industry, and predatory insurance companies would create an oligarchy of white privilege never before seen.  His accession to office will usher in a dark period of hate, prejudice, and oppression in which only the aristocratic few will benefit. 

 

The Trump advance team howled with delight as they watched the old man tearfully address the nation. Squinting to make out the words on the teleprompter but grappling with the meaning of the words before him, Biden looked as lost and befuddled as ever.  His script-writers and confidants had carefully framed his message to the American people, put in all the 'emphasis...pause...anger...smile' prompts in the text scrolling down the teleprompter in large, oversized letters, but the President bungled the enterprise, paused when he should have shown resoluteness, smiled as he mouthed villainy, and was just the sad spectacle of failed leadership he had always been. 

Worst of all, thought Bob, was not so much the politics of the coming administration- the Left could deal with economic and financial challenges - it was the cultural upheaval that worried and dismayed him.  Trump not only brought with him bimbos and airheads, but the unwashed, backwoods, gun rack, bass boat cracker mentality of the fifty million Americans who were duped by him and voted him in office.  It was not the peaceful revolution Bob hoped for but the coming of the anti-Christ. 

 

Gone were any thoughts of a verdant, peaceful, harmonious community of good; and only images of bare-knuckled, insensate, predatory wolves of Wall Street were left. God help us, he muttered, although quickly retracted his words.  There was no God to call upon.  They, the Left, had been the country's secular salvation, and now they, martyred, tossed aside, and left on the curb were no longer. 

'Barbarians at the gate', his wife Corinne mused, remembering her Roman history.  She had watched Gladiator five times and loved the first, dramatic scene where Maximus leads a Roman army to victory against the barbarians; and although she was against any kind of imperialism and colonialism, she couldn't help cheering when the phalanx of archers shot their flaming arrows into the ranks of the Goths. She felt like a Roman, ready to take on Donald Trump and his savage horde. 

Of course neither she nor any of Bob's colleagues were up to the mark on that score.  They had resorted to backbiting, lawfare, calumny, and an insidious campaign of calumny and hatred, so no frontline heroes were they, so the last recourse - violent opposition - was not in their profile. They hadn't even the strength or will to pull up the drawbridge. 

This misjudgment, this impossibly myopic view of the issue, was the problem.  The country had changed.  The American people had changed.  Rather than accept the progressive woke agenda, they had turned against it.  The arrogant badgering, self-righteous hectoring and demeaning was galling. No mas! was the meme of middle America. We don't want what you're selling.  These were not barbarians but normal, sane, responsible Americans who saw life and country quite differently from the whiny, morose, prophets of doom who came calling. 

 

Bob watched the majorettes who would lead the parade practice on the Mall, high stepping, smiling, as beautiful as the Dallas Cowboys' cheerleaders, twirling their batons with verve and precision.  It was captivating, and Bob smiled; but quicky erased it when he realized that these young women were shills for the cartoon character waiting in the wings.  They didn't belong on Pennsylvania.  They should go back to the fervidly ignorant patriotic towns where they came from. 

As the boom and thumps of the Marine band, also practicing at the west end of the Mall came to Bob on a chill January wind, he shook his head. 'Madame was supposed to be here', he muttered, thinking of Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, a black woman of intellect, style, and agency who should have been on her way to consolidating the progressive victories recently won.  Instead it was this imposter, this fool, this unreconstructed barbarians about ready to march down the Avenue to the Oval Office. 

Bob shuddered again.  Lines of old Beatles song came into his head, 'Let it be...let it be'; but he had never been one to do so, always an activist, a true believer in right and justice.  One couldn't simply let anything be, so he stood there wondering.  A Trump supporter in Lafayette Square thought he was a bum, just standing there in an overcoat. 

Pomp, Regalia, Beautiful Women, And The Reign Of Donald Trump - Happy Days Are Here Again

The Left are a disassembled, scattered, uncertain lot.  Humiliated at the polls by a resounding Trump victory, they are at sixes and sevens, an uneven consortium of climate activists, social justice reformers, blackness heroes, open door immigrationists, and MeToo enforcers, all bewildered at the rise of Donald Trump and shocked at the country's rejection of the progressive canon. 

The principles of right action, say progressives, are endemic to American society and will eventually be recognized as such - foundational values more basic to the national character than those outdated, archaic ideas of raw individualism, laissez-faire capitalism, and Wild West euphoric expansionism of earlier days.  Diversity, equity, inclusivity, and identity are more salient and essential to the modern secular American state than any so-called divinely inspired notions of Jefferson and his colleagues.

The time might not have been right for the full-bore, take-no-prisoners assault of the Left - but these principles are no less valid than they were before the election.

This is to miss the point entirely.  The Trump victory was no less than an endorsement of Jeffersonian populism, a republic of individuals ordained to promote the commonweal and a rejection of state interventionism.  The Left's agenda of woke reform, communitarianism, and geopolitical realignment is antithetical to this original vision of America; and Make America Great Again is a rallying cry not for wild, presumptive power, but a call for return to basic principles. 

 

Because the point was missed, it is natural that the Left is grieving, saddened by what they see is the demise of polity and hopefulness, and an emotional and psychic loss. 

The pomp, circumstance, and regalia of the incoming Trump cadres violates even more the progressive's personal, inner space.  Every Las Vegas showgirl, every blonde beauty, every single white, straight tuxedoed male, and every rendition of the Star Spangled Banner and American the Beautiful rankles at a very intimate level.  'We have been violated'. 

They are right.  The Inauguration, the balls, the festivities are indeed a symbol of what is to come.  America is through being talked down to, humiliated by talks of universal, systemic racism, badgered and banged for their homophobia and climate ignorance.  Americans have had enough faux idealism, absurd sexual transformations, internationalism, and historical revisionism.  America is a country of note, worthy of recognition and respect, not the dismal, socially deformed, ignorant place described by the Left. 

In America image is everything.  It is no surprise that Hollywood is its cultural center. Beauty, elegance, sex, machismo, and Cary Grant sophistication are all its priceless products.  Advertising is the litany of American cultural populism.  Not only do ads sell things, they convey the real foundational values of America - a middle-brow consuming culture of beautiful people doing beautiful things. 

The Trump Inauguration pageantry is only the beginning.  The White House will be Hollywood East, and will be an extravaganza of showy wealth, glitz, glamour, and prosperity.  The morose, whiny, dour days are over.  No more Bernal Heights tough girl flannel and E-boots, no more people-of-color jamborees, no more bashing, intimidating righteousness.  The Trump phalanx is white, straight, religious, patriotic, and showy.  Wealth is not excess but the product of enterprise.  Tinsel, sequins, and pasties are not cheap frills but symbols of an American basicness that the Left never has and never will understand. 

Donald Trump is a man of Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the bright lights of New York.  He is one of us, more than any other President.  George Bush affected a cowboy persona, Jimmy Carter a down-home farmer, Bill Clinton a black wannabe; but Trump has never acted a part.  He is the genuine article - an ambitious, macho, crude, bar fighter; a lover of women, yachts, and mansions; a straight-shooter, an irrepressible braggadocio, a man of the people.  

 

Progressives also have an image, one that has emerged from the rumpled suit, sensible shoes era of one-with-the-people solidarity to ghetto chic, a black-is-cool ensemble derivative of pimp and ho brazen fuck you strutting, tailored for K Street with a touch of genderness. '

We are the people', they shout with the enthusiasm of a circus tout, 'so come on in'; but that inclusive finery no longer cuts the mustard.  The street gives way to the avenue - Rodeo Drive is the new icon, Anacostia and West Baltimore once again dismissed, ignored, and marginalized. 

The Nation's capital will be alight once again.  The glitterati are back, good times replace hard times, glitz and show are the memes of Pennsylvania Avenue, steak and martinis for lunch instead of oats and groats. 

The revolution is not just political or philosophical, although both are at the heart of the changing of the guard.  The new wave is more than anything cultural - a middle-brow populism, an unabashed wholesome crassness, a joy in beauty, wealth, and ambition.  Fault-finding, generic unhappiness, and hapless reform, the unfortunate character of American liberalism is out, gone, finished. 

The revulsion of liberals at the cavalcade of beautiful people is palpable.  Not only has their cherished agenda been tossed out the window, but that they have to watch these airheads, these bimbos, these assholes and pricks come marching into our town is sickening. 

'Get over it' is the new meme in town, the new DOGE broom sweeps clean, but this time it isn't just a broom but a jackhammer, ball and crane, bulldozer, and Cat - the whole place will be uprooted, rebuilt, and re-arranged.  Even after just four years Washington will retain not one scintilla of the old Biden, whingeing, unhappy Left.  

 

This is what insurrection means - not the cockamamie frat boy party of January 6th, but a true cultural makeover.  Everything will be different, and the atmosphere  of Washington itself will feel, look, and sound different. 

The parade down Pennsylvania Avenue is just the beginning. 

The Spotless Cleansing Of America - Trump, Elon Musk, And Throwing Out The Trash

After Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, both hardline butchers heading the new Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, get through, there won't be much left of the bureaucratic behemoth that has sat its lumbering, fat shanks on American affairs for generations. Just like their hero, Javier Milei of Argentina who stood before a poster board to which all the departments of government were affixed, pulled them down one by one, shouting at each, Afuera! No Hay Plata!' - Out! There's No Money - Musk and Ramaswamy will be no different.  The unnecessary, redundant, bloated caricatures of good governance will be summarily and unceremoniously ditched, tossed aside without a second thought,  left on the curb.

The Left is in shocked disarray.  How could they? How could they dismantle the very cornerstones of a caring, supportive government, the only bastions of defense against predatory capitalism, the ravages of the far Right, and the insatiable appetites of the white elites?

They can and will.  Not only will they shuck entire departments, but they will eviscerate others which are nothing but warrens of inefficiency, deliberately tangled with redundant parts in anticipation of triage and elimination.  Bureaucracies are amoeba-like moving organisms - squeeze one part and it oozes into another, always alive, surviving, and as hopelessly needless as before.  Musk and Ramaswamy understand this self-serving nature of bureaucracy and will slice and sever until it is a functionless dead thing. 

The raison d'etre of DOGE is not simply the eradication of useless bureaucratic organs but to block the barrage of legislative fiats that have been designed to transform American culture from a unified, nation-minded one envisaged by Jefferson and turn it into one without an ethos, rallying cry, or principled center.  

The country has been divided by race, gender, ethnicity, and identity, broken apart by false assumptions of diversity and inclusivity, and weakened by centripetal faux utopian forces; and DOGE will, with the support of the three branches of government now in Republican hands, begin the process of re-centering. 

The Left has already begun howling at the moon, wild-haired, crazed preachers warning of the coming of the End of Days, Armageddon, and the Last Judgment.  'Woe be unto you whose soul is at risk, you in the maw of the beast.  Repent!' but of course the frenzied, hysterical Left has always been the last to see what's what in the hinterland, and to realize that America has had enough of their badgering, black this, black that; flouncy, deepthroated transgender kindergarten readers, the erasure of history, and the culture of reverse bigotry.  

Nobody wants what the Left is selling, MSNBC is almost off the air, CNN is desperate to return to hard news before their media empire collapses, and the boardroom of the New York Times is shuddering as the paper sheds readers thanks to their unremitting promotion of political magical realism.  The tide has turn, but the vaudevillian hacks on the air are still claiming 'the victory of ideas', vowing to be at the barricades to obstruct the Republican juggernaut.  No one except a few tailgate hangers-on are interested.  The country has matured, evolved, and has finally found its voice.  DOGE is but the first visible step to the reversal of wokism and the defeatist progressive culture. 

Bob Muzelle, a social justice warrior since the days of Freedom Rides, Selma, and the march across the Pettis bridge, was distraught.  Years, decades of honest labor to reform the country and move it inexorably towards the bright, verdant, peaceful future he and his progressive colleagues had always imagined, were suddenly in jeopardy.  Bob was aware enough to know that this was not just a simple changing of the guard, a turn to the Right, but a sea change - a radical uprooting of all holy and sacred and replacing it with a laissez-faire robbery of civil rights and compassionate government. 

He and his colleagues, usually in lockstep, marching boldly forward, were at sixes and sevens, in disarray, and unsure of next steps. 'We must act, and act now', said Bob, but the quizzical, upsetting blankness on the faces of the assembly was a scary sign.  Years of lambasting Trump as the spawn of the devil, an insurrectionist racist and homophobe, a carny barker for circus politics have ended in naught.  The man is back in office; but that incontrovertible fact still didn't wake up the somnolent, still hopelessly hopeful Bob and shake some sense into him.  Nothing should change, he hammered on, nothing, for to do so would be to capitulate our hard-earned victories for the poor, the other-gendered, and the racially diverse. 

He had reason to be concerned, for Trump was serious about his frontal attack against preposterousness. Minorities should indeed shake in their boots as the scythe cut clean and low.  They would be no longer have privileged status and would have to pull their own weight to compete with the majority.  Equal opportunity was the new ethos, key to the rising fortunes of everyone.  Once one forgot race, gender, and ethnicity and focused on individualism, upward mobility and social equality through economic parity, the country would be back on track. 

 

Objectivity is the byword of DOGE - does it work, is it necessary, what is the return on investment, and could it be done privately? Risk analysis will replace assumption.  Economic productivity, wealth creation, geopolitical security, and national interest must be factored in to environmental policy. Long term performance evaluation must accompany any educational program. 

Bob was up in arms at this so-called objectivity which he saw as nothing but window dressing to cover up racist bigotry and the continued oppression of the poor; but again, the train had left the station and Americans were outraged as they watched their tax dollars pissed away on cockamamie giveaway schemes.  No Mas! they shouted, and DOGE listened while Bob turned a deaf ear. He like Alexander Hamilton never trusted the unwashed, and it was always the elite progressive cadres who were the caretakers of America's well-being. 

'Let's boycott the Inauguration', Bob suggested, but even if they did nobody would notice.  He and his progressive claques were already history, footnotes at best, examples of febrile utopianism and political hegemony.

'Think about that condo in Florida', said Bob's wife, tired of so many years of bloody seriousness and petulant lack of humor.  'You've given your all'; but Bob simply couldn't admit that decades of rancid hotels, crowded busses, and financial arrears had been worthless.  Yet what could he think, faced as he was with the total dismissal of all the had fought for?

'Good riddance', was heard more often than not on K Street for the likes of Bob Muzelle.  Washington was glad to be rid of this pompous, humorless lot. 

The plans for the Inauguration extravaganza were almost complete, and Bob sickened as he watched the glitzy blonde women, the fanfare, the pure Las Vegas tinsel of it all come to town; and for the first time, he actually considered a condo in Sarasota and long days in a chaise lounge on the beach.