We’ll Miss Donald Trump–But The Circus Years Have Taken Their Toll On Conservatism

I have loved the last four years! Donald Trump has been the kind of outrageous American president that the country has needed.  No more of the quiet, religious, sanctimony of Jimmy Carter.  No more of the ‘I am the first black President, Cabinet that looks like America’ crown of thorns Bill Clinton.  No more of the macho, arrogant aircraft carrier landing strut ‘I won the war’ Bush II.  

Donald Trump was finally America’s President, the real thing – lowbrow, arm candy, Las Vegas, Hollywood, NY real estate bully, and one of us.  No fireside chats, warm, worn sweaters, cigarette boat, Vineyard sailing pretentions.  Trump was crass, tinseled, over-the-top and grandiose.  He wanted nothing to do with the Washington Establishment, the powers that be, and least of all with progressive sanctimony and comic book Utopianism.

He has been a man of the people – not like the humbly born and raised Truman, Nixon, or Reagan, but of the reality TV generation, the generation of make up, Botox, stiletto heels, and Las Vegas faux glamour and sexual innuendo. He was a hero to the trailer trash, gun-toting, church-on-Sunday, flag-waving, patriotic crowd which had no chance for his yachts, resorts, and beautiful women but who never resented the fact that he had them.  Wanting these glitzy, showy, fancy things is at the very heart of the American dream.  Donald Trump unapologetically  tapped into this back country, hillbilly, cracker mentality, and his constituents loved it

He laughed at progressive sanctimony, gender politics, inclusivity, and multicultural absurdity,  He had no problem with the originalist idea of a heterogeneous society, but excoriated the absurdity of the Left’s exaggerations – a gay, transgender, black, feminist America.  He lambasted progressives for their naïve, moralistic assumptions, their disregard and dismissal of righteous middle Americans, and their vain hopes of Utopianism.  He was not a man of faith bun never one to gutterize it like the Left.  God or no God, religion will always have a prominence and essentiality far beyond political venality

He was a snake oil salesman, a carny barker, and vaudevillian.  No one but the progressive Left took him seriously.  He was a master prestidigitator, a circus clown, and the ringleader of a three-ring circus.  He was a borscht belt comedian, a late night talk show provocateur, and a TV jolly

As much as I have loved the bombast and  circus hijinks of the Trump presidency, from a strictly political perspective, it is better that The Donald is out of office.  Although he has championed important conservative principles – lower taxes, a rollback of the progressive juggernaut, a focus on immigration, a restoration of the place of religion in American life, and a strong foreign policy – he has done more to erode their saliency and importance than to promote them.  By his bombast, arrogance, ad hominem attacks, and complete, hostile intemperance he has energized the Left whose positions, if enacted, will erode American sovereignty, status, and influence,

I have been a champion of Donald Trump for two reasons – first because of his solid conservatism and the second because of his personality, character, and downright in-your-face rejection of progressive cant and righteousness.  Unfortunately the latter has damaged the chances of the former, but I am unrepentant.  The last four years have been truly American – outrageous, populist, and happily far more Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the mean streets of New York than the desuetude of liberalism.  Donald Trump is the first truly American president.  We are middle class, Walmart and Target shoppers, fans of daytime TV, lovers of glitz  and arm candy.  Donald Trump is our President not only because of his defiant stance against transformative liberalism but because of his embrace of popular culture.

With Biden we will revert to a more predictable, run of the mill presidential polity.  More sense and sensibility and far, far less fun.  While Biden and his progressive coteries abhor notions of individualism, heterosexuality, and value-based performance, their promotion of inclusivity and multi-culturalism will undermine the Hamiltonian principles of individualism, personal freedom, and enterprise.  

Biden and his progressive claque are not socialist in the Soviet-era sense of the word, but more profoundly communalist in social outlook than any Communist.  If they have their way, they will neuter America’s individualist spirit and defame individual expression.  America is a country of absurdity and wild exaggeration.  It is a place, for better or worse, where social outliers can find a home.  We are a nation of anti-vaxxers who believe that Armageddon and The Last Judgment will occur within our lifetime.  We believe in alien invasion, brainwave altering Russian technology, the insidious, treacherous insult of fluorides, and the one-world Jewish conspiracy. Any belief, no matter how cockamamie, has a place here. 

Donald Trump is the best spokesman for American eccentricity and real American exceptionalism that we have ever had.  He is anathema to the Upper West Side liberals who insist on the existence of one, universal, undeniable truth, and a champion of those for whom one anything is nonsense.

With Biden we will once more be beholden to ‘logic’, that fanciful supposition touted by the Left.  We will be shepherded, corralled, and hogtied to a  faux notion of ‘civility’.  We will be denied our bourgeois, lowbrow, idiocy.  We will be what the Coasts think we should be.

Having said this, and believing that an important, seminal era is about to end, I am concerned about the future of conservatism – the philosophy whose set of core principles and values are inherent in the Constitution, eroded over time, and restored by William F Buckley and Ronald Reagan.  Small government, low taxes, individual freedom, private enterprise, equality of opportunity, the centrality  of religion, a respect for self-discipline and authority, and a strong, Machiavellian foreign policy.  

Ronald Reagan espoused and promoted these values and was successful in stemming the liberal tide begun by Roosevelt.  He was a revered leader, disliked by  the opposition for his conservatism, but applauded by most for his principled, reasonable stance.

Donald Trump, because of his vaudevillian act and three-ring circus presidency has set back this agenda by decades. Few people other than his passionate base take him seriously, and therefore dismiss his political agenda.; so it is unclear whether there is the leadership to organize and mount a serious loyal opposition. If not, the gender-bending, redistributive economic, pusillanimous, vain Utopian, exclusively secular policies and programs of Democrat progressives will reign for at least four years.

My appreciation for Trump’s bourgeois Americanism, his vaudevillian exceptionalism, and his comedic hilarity – the real President for all America – has been assumed to be an endorsement of his supposed immoral positions concerning women, minorities, and gays.  Far from it.   The enemy has not been Donald Trump but sanctimony, political arrogance, self-righteousness, and elitist patriarchy.   Trump’s in-your-face calling out of liberal cant has  been a welcome roadblock to the dangerous progressive juggernaut.

So, I will miss Trump’s roadshow, but fear for the marginalization of conservatism.  Who will step up in his place to more temperately and reasonably defend core conservative principles.  Is there a Ronald Reagan or William F Buckley in the wings?