Remember, Remember the 5th of November

On Tuesday, the American people gave a new reason to remember, remember the 5th of November. Unlike the original Gunpowder Plot memorialized in the English verse, however, the 2024 version succeeded, and blew the establishment/ruling class/elite all to hell.

There was definitely a V for Vendetta vibe about this too. Ordinary people revulsing against a censorious and controlling regime.

To put it in a more American idiom, it was Jacksonians Strike Back. A populist hoi polloi giving the finger to their alleged betters. And Trump is–as I have said since his political emergence in 2016–the closest thing to Andrew Jackson in American politics since the man hisself 200 years ago. In personality, surely.

Trump’s triumph represents an extreme act of will, and his vendetta against the establishment forces arrayed against him. Any normal person would have collapsed in the face of the multi-front war waged on him by the powers that be. Just as Andrew Jackson’s rage against the machine that he believed had done him wrong in 1824 drove him forward in 1828, through grim determination Trump’s rage at the machine he believes did him wrong in 2020 propelled him to victory four years later. And as Jackson’s victory in 1828 was decisive and his loss in 1824 was extremely suspect, the same can be said of Trump in 2024 and 2020. And both men waged their campaigns in a fashion that violated contemporary rules of political decorum, to the outrage of their foes.

Jackson transformed American politics for decades, but he had two consecutive terms to engineer this transformation. The nature of Trump’s political career–with his two terms interrupted by that of a regime placeholder–will make it more difficult for him to have the same effect. But it is almost certain that American politics and government will not be the same.

The recriminations of the losers–in the Democratic Party and its media adjunct–have begun. It is quite a spectacle. Given the characters involved, unsurprisingly these recriminations have a strongly identitarian cast. It was the white bitches that did it! No! It was the misogynist black dudes! No! It was the racist Latinos!

They just don’t get it. It was them. They have yet to learn the wisdom of Pogo:

I wrote in the summer of 2016 that the “elite”/regime/establishment created Trump. He was a reaction to them. Without them, he would not exist as a political force. The Biden interregnum only reinforced the popular disgust with the regime, and powered Trump to a decisive victory. Trump’s victory is a repudiation driven by revulsion of a discredited regime.

But the Democrats/regime/establishment cannot bring themselves to face this reality. Normal people would react to such a humiliating defeat by taking a hard look at themselves. Or in the words of Chuck Leavell:

And it’s agonizing reappraisal,
Says Dusty Rhodes
And he’s the American Dream.

But no. They live so far up their own asses that honest self-appraisal is impossible for them. Perhaps not surprisingly, because they really don’t believe in the American Dream.

Normal people would say: “How did we possibly lose to the worst person in the world, Mr. Literally Worse Than Hitler? We must really suck. A lot of people must really hate us.”

But they are not normal people.

They are in desperate need of a 12 Step Program–the first step of which is to admit one has a problem. But in their narcissism, they are constitutionally incapable of this.

I am of mixed minds on this. On the one hand, it will delay, and quite possibly prevent, their political rehabilitation. On the other, it condemns us to yet more years of hysterical (in the neurotic sense of the word) ranting and obstructionism and political and legal warfare.

Some leftist recognize all this. From the Nation, of all places: “This Time We Have to Hold the Democratic Party Elite Responsible for This Catastrophe”:

Democrats will need to radically reform themselves if they want to ever defeat the radical right. They have to realize that non-college-educated voters, who make up two-thirds of the electorate, need to be won over. They need to realize that, for anti-system Americans, a promised return to bipartisan comity is just ancien régime restoration. They need to become the party that aspires to be more than caretakers of a broken system but rather is willing to embrace radical policies to change that status quo. This is the only path for the party to rebuild itself and for Trumpism—which without such effective opposition is likely to long outlive its standard-bearer—to actually be defeated.

The Democrats are not the only ones who need to have a Come to Jesus moment. The regime adjacent, controlled opposition, traditional Republicans need to change as well. The Grand Old Party is just old. The nation’s political polarity has shifted completely, and the traditional Republican base has flipped to D, and the traditional Democratic base has flipped to R. The Mitch McConnells et al need to go away, and new people that align with the current political realities must replace them. (J.D. Vance provides a good role model here). In the words of Oliver Cromwell: “In the name of God, Go!”

The timing and the magnitude of the changes cannot be predicted with any precision. But they will come. And when they do, remember, remember the 5th of November. Because that will be the catalyst of those changes.