Political Vortex - Heads Are Spinning, Rats Are Scurrying, The Donald Trump Era Has Arrived

Washington had never seen anything like it.  Old political hands who could remember back to Kennedy and even had faint glimmerings of 'I Like Ike' were at sixes and sevens.  The place was in an an uproar, nothing seemed anchored, there were no safe havens, no hiding places, no shelters from the storm.  Donald Trump had unleased a political tempest the likes of which could never even be imagined. 

Never - not in the tumultuous days after the Kennedy assassination nor in the aftermath of 9/11 - has the Nation's Capital been so upside downed, so reversed, so catapulted, so whipsawed this way and that.  Of course only half of Washington is unhinged and lost.  The Republicans who marched into town a month ago see nothing but a jamboree, a cavalcade, a circus act of fabulist proportions. 

Ronald Reagan famously said that government was not the solution, government was the problem; and went about promoting an idea that hadn't been raised since before the Great Depression - that the private sector, private enterprise, and individual economic achievement were to become once again the engines of economic growth, the ethos of a free society, and the very moral center of America. 

Roosevelt, the architect of big government, champion of the caretaker state, and derogator-in-chief of obstructionist private interests, was behind this devolution; but after fifty years, it was time for a change, back to originalist roots. It was the Reagan Revolution, a one-man show of national purpose and international strength.  'Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall' was the meme of the day, the rallying cry for patriotism and American values. 

That is nothing compared to the Trump Revolution, a truly upending, deracinating, reforming movement to remove government from all but the most essential, Constitutionally sanctioned activities.  It has been less that two months since the Inauguration, and it has been a no-holds-barred, bare-knuckled revisionist movement that took the Left off guard.  

They knew that Trump, a capitalist to the core, a big-time entrepreneur, and a champion of the private sector, would make changes; but they had no idea that within hours of taking office, bulldozers were making their way down Independence Avenue and the wrecking ball was demolishing the shibboleths of the Left.  One by one, Elon Musk and DOGE barged into each federal bureaucracy, turned over filing cabinets, pored through their endless files to expose waste and abuse, and sent thousands of bureaucrats packing.

Before the diesel fumes of the first armored column dissipated and drifted off over the Potomac, Washington was a changed place.  Trump walked the walk, spoke loudly and carried a big stick, took Ronald Reagan at his word and laid down fire and brimstone in his memory; but this was no kindly Uncle Ronnie in the White House, a man of kindliness and good humor, but a living terror, a Genghis Khan.  Nothing was sacred, nothing remained in his path. 

The Left was gobsmacked, flabbergasted, and discombobulated.  They ran around Washington like chickens with their heads cut off, flapping their wings, hopping and jumping in a crazy frenzy. They howled and cried, shook their fists, waved their arms in apoplectic fury; but they had nothing but the old nostrums of Biden and Harris to offer.  The blurted and bubbled, stumbled and choked about diversity, inclusivity, democracy, and unity; but nothing could stop the juggernaut. 

Over seventy-five percent of Americans approved of the President's speech before a joint session of Congress in which he laid out his vision for a radically restructured America, a wokeless one, a steely, virile one, a patriotic, God-fearing one.  As much as the Democrats whined and protested, the country cheered.  Finally, Americans said, finally. 

Like rats leaving a sinking ship, progressives headed for land, scurrying for cover before The Great Exterminator caught up with them.  They headed to all points of the compass, any port in a storm, but at each waystation found nothing, not one iota of compassion or consideration.  In a flash, in one epiphanic moment, the whole country had turned around, turned against them, sent them packing, and wanted no more of them. 

Those that remained tried to regroup, but every group has to have a center, an nucleus, an ethos around which to gather; but progressives found they had none, nothing whatsoever.  Every last one of their pleas had been tossed aside like stale bread, not one of their talking points was listened to, not one of their imploring hopes.  Their fanciful vision of a more verdant, peaceful, considerate world - always a fairy tale, a childish story of impossible dreams fell on deaf ears. 

What was left? Their constituencies had been demoted, marginalized, and ignored.  Black people were no longer the be-all and end-all of human existence. Gender queers were relegated to Barnum & Bailey side shows, legions of illegal immigrants, academics, pimps, ho's, and welfare queens were off the radar.  The revolution was so complete it was as if they never existed. 

In horror progressives watched beautiful, white, blonde, blue-eyed young women parade into Washington.  It was a devilishly perverse scene, this gleeful march of glitz, glamour, wealth, and privilege.  The whole atmosphere of Washington changed overnight from a glum, morose, preachy, depressed lot to a happy crowd of young revelers.  This was not the America that any progressive had ever imagined would return, and yet here it was in every corner, on every stage, in every public place. 

The whole world reverberated with the shock and awe taking place in America, and world leaders - except the savvy, Machiavellian crew in Moscow and Beijing - were just as flummoxed as the American Left.  Trump was challenging the European Union, NATO, and the United Nations - the whole notion of international cooperation.  He was slapping tariffs left and right, and he was reordering America's political priorities.  Accommodation with Russia? Why, how could he?

The St. Vitus' Dance in Washington goes on.  Progressives are hippity-hopping up and down its broad avenues looking for solace and a congenial home but finding none.  Their howling and screaming is at a fever pitch but the Trump white blonde legions are not only remaking the Capital but the nation. The heart of the revolution is a new ethos - a profoundly conservative one based on originalist economics, a Jeffersonian social compact, Hamiltonian principles, and a Ronald Reagan militancy. 

'Wait till next year', Democrats yell, but the midterms of 2026 are likely to produce the same rout as the Presidential election of 2024.  The country is on a roll, and not the roll that progressives ever anticipated.  Politics is indeed an up and down affair, but the hope for a rebirth of the old, tired chestnuts of the past is but a dim, vain, impossible dream.