Ode to 2016, Part II
It was a blistering day in May when I saw Trump in person for the first time, shortly after his primary victory. Politicians regularly make obligatory visits to the provincials during election years, but only with Trump did it feel like the man actually wanted to be there. Trump never looked uncomfortable surrounded by the crowds of neo-serfs that the American people had become, he only looked uncomfortable if forced in front of a teleprompter, the sanctuary of your average politician. While liberals laughed seeing how the Republican party had self-destructed, the beating heart of the system recoiled in fear as its controlled opposition party was hijacked by the people. In the dark recesses of the Capitol, one thing was on their mind: The total destruction of Donald Trump.
Big Data
In the shadow of the 2016 election was the data revolution. Popularized by the film Moneyball, big data had come to revolutionize nearly every field, bringing every craft down to an objective science. Clinton's campaign was a pioneer in this, whereas Trump's campaign would have been considered shoestring even 50 years prior. Nate Silver, a prominent data analyst, repeatedly wrote articles throughout the primary season explaining why Trump had no chance of winning. After being forced to face his failure, Silver ended up giving Trump a better chance of winning than most for the General, but his analysis of polls didn't even take into account how Clinton had built a behemoth of a campaign, that functioned as a well-oiled machine to identify Hillary-leaning voters and get them out to vote. This strategy was made especially easy since Hillary did not need to convince new voters, she merely needed to hold three rust-belt states that had been won by Democrats every election since 1988. Of all the reasons Trump's victory was shocking, this defeat of big data may be one of the most underrated, and it sends a message to man that there are some things that cannot be quantified. In a brief encounter with a prosthetic-armed man, Trump tapped him on the cheek, so he could feel the human touch. This connection Trump had with the people, as opposed to Hillary's cold disdain (exemplified by the "Basket of Deplorables" comment) was something no amount of money could buy and no algorithm could put a number on. Eventually, it sowed the seeds of Clinton's demise.
Big Meme
With the rise of the internet, it could be said that the system started leaking. After decades of carefully controlled media, the system suddenly became exposed to a tsunami of mockery and attacks. While Clinton had the entirety of the legacy media on her side and an enormous internet marketing team, all of that was outweighed by a small, organic group of disaffected young people, who generated unending amounts of free content for their "God Emperor." Alarmed by this odd movement, Hillary Clinton gave an unhinged speech denouncing their racist and antisemitic memes, and the Clinton campaign followed this up with a surreal denunciation of Pepe the Frog. In the depths of the internet, these browsers began to be represented by an imaginary deity "kek" that was said to bless 4chan posts with repeating digits in their assigned number. When the long-awaited post of nine repeating 7's happened to say "Trump will win," the sureness of Trump's election came to assume a prophetic nature. Growing up in a secular society, it's likely that they were almost all unaware of the trueness of the Catholic faith. Similar to many other phenomena in our society, this devotion to kek and “meme magic” reflected a deep yearning to serve a higher power in a post-Christian world. Would the Holy Spirit speak through a "shitpost" on a message board? It's hard to say, but this group's fanatic devotion to the truth, to tearing down the idols of modernity, and their recognition of something deeply sick in our society, formed the antecedent of the Catholic-centered America First movement, which may one day correct the errors of our time. Like attempting to hold the air in a leaky hot-air balloon, repressing the truth can only be done for so long, and eventually, the dysfunction of a regime based on falsity will be dragged back down to earth by the gravity of its own incompetence. In an election decided by just 70,000 people in the rust belt, this haphazard collection of adolescents, autists, and basement dwelling NEET's may well have been responsible for successfully lobbing a human hand grenade into the imperial capital from their self-proclaimed "cesspool of the internet," 4chan's /pol/ board. While a wall of censorship has now been erected to suppress this force, that didn't make it go away, and the shadow of this truth that they merely scratched still lurks over this regime. As reddit, one of the largest and most liberal sites on the internet, became flooded by Trump victory memes on November 9th, I remember thinking that if this force was properly harnessed, there would be nothing in the world that could stop it.
Midnight in America
While Trump's persona was a major part of his appeal, his ideological message was equally important. Trump's political instincts were unmatched, and somehow he realized that all of our "culture wars" and fights over "socialism" were really just a show, that decisions were made at the top regardless of what the people thought, and that the main issue was the corruption of our elite. Instead of ranting about socialism, an irrelevant boogeyman designed to keep conservatives focused on lowering taxes for the wealthy, Trump brought the word "Globalist" into America's lexicon, to refer to a disloyal and self-serving elite, willing to sell the nation out for their international interests. While Trump never "named the Jew," he implicitly nailed the issue with remarkable accuracy, and sometimes nailed it more explicitly, such as when the last ad of his campaign pointed to Lloyd Blankfein, Janet Yellen, and George Soros as enemies of the American people. The issues he focused on, mass immigration, outsourcing, foreign wars, were considered radioactive by Republicans before, precisely because they struck at the heart of this grand corruption. His forceful assertion that "there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and they knew there were none!" sent a shiver down the spine of our Zionist-occupied national security state. It was expected that bleeding heart liberals would criticize the Iraq war, simply from a general pacifism, but for the leader of the Zionist vessel GOP to claim that the Iraq war was a disaster because it was strategically disastrous for American interests, and that the government lied to get us in there, brought Trump very close to the target of what is going on in this country. Nate Silver's analytics site, FiveThirtyEight, reported how Jewish money was now going 95% to Clinton, up from 71% to Obama in the 2012 election.
Aside from policy positions, Trump set a tone that no one else had. Republican politicians loved to endlessly repeat Ronald Reagan's quote that it was "morning in America." This was inaccurate in 1980, and it managed to be vastly more out-of-touch in 2016. This mindless optimism served the GOP elite well, it pacified their voters and prevented any serious revolt against the system. It also sold them the lie that the nation’s problems could be fixed by just voting for more Republicans. At Trump's convention speech, he spoke of a formerly great nation that had now been gutted into a decayed husk of its former self. The press unanimously panned Trump's speech as "dark." For them, it really was "morning in America." For everyone else, in the post-industrial wastelands of Ohio, to the heroin riddled streets of Appalachia, to the migrant swamped towns of Arizona, even the twilight of America had long passed, and in the future loomed a long midnight.
The Tape
It's unclear how long the Washington Post had been sitting on the Access Hollywood Tape, a 2006 recording of Trump making various lewd comments about women. This tape was perhaps the reason that the system did not work as hard to crush Trump in 2016 as they potentially could have (such as by attempting to jail him as they are now.) The Washington Post was lying on the silver bullet to bring the Trump candidacy and the fledgling nationalist revolt he started to an ignominious end, sending a message to any future rebels afterwards, that they would be disgraced and destroyed just like Trump. The tape was deployed on October 7th, just three days before the second debate, and right at the beginning of early voting. Republican leaders, fearful of their own voters, but eager to knife Trump in the back, finally found the opportunity they had been waiting for. Desperate to show their loyalty to a system that would be vengeful following Trump's defeat, they fell like dominoes into sanctimonious disavowals of their own nominee. Panicked RNC Chairman, Reince Priebus, confronted Trump and told him that if he didn't drop out right then, he would lose in the biggest landslide in American history.
Trump had withstood many attacks throughout his campaign, but as he sunk to down double digits in the polls, and faced the prospect of having to publicly answer for himself in the impending debate, and then run the rest of his campaign against his own political party, it was probably appropriate of the media to finally declare Trump's campaign dead, as they had eagerly but falsely done so many times before. Reporters surrounded Trump Tower in Manhattan the next day, his declaration of withdrawal from the race was expected at any moment.
Instead, Trump declared war.
Hopes for a subjugated Trump at the second debate melted away as Trump's campaign rounded up Bill Clinton's sexual assault accusers, silenced by Hillary, and bought them front row seats. A bloodied but unbroken Trump started the debate tired and weary, but as if being charged with righteous rage, Trump gradually built up his energy as he declared that any military officer would've been court martialed for doing a tenth of what Hillary had, when she acid washed 30,000 emails, and that he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate her after taking office. A shaken Clinton then stated that she was "awfully glad that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country."
"Because you'd be in jail." Trump responded.
What started as a mournful night for my friends and I, expecting to watch a de facto end of Trump's campaign, turned to jubilation as Trump answered the call of the moment in the only way that he could have, and dragged himself back into the race. After Trump's scorched Earth performance, Republicans cowered back into line, but Trump had not forgotten their treachery, and continued his war against both political parties.
"Disloyal R's are far more difficult than Crooked Hillary, they come at you from all sides. They don't know how to win - I will teach them!" - Trump tweeted.
Teach them he did.
November 8th, 2016
Days before the election, Trump elicited widespread mockery for his decision to spend so much time campaigning in Michigan and Wisconsin, states where he had not led in a single poll all election cycle. Outraised three to one in big donors, Trump's campaign could not afford to compete with Clinton's on TV or with ground employees. Little changed from the early primary days, Trump relied on rallies. Thousands of people, many of which had never voted before, stood out in the cold and dark to watch Trump give his final rally of the election in Grand Rapids, Michigan. With such a large conventional disadvantage, Trump was forced to target these atypical states for a Republican, that no Republican had won since the 1980's. As the world’s most powerful people woke up at the dawn of the next morning, giddy to watch a satisfying and certain Trump defeat, they would soon discover that Trump was not a typical Republican.
Predictions for election night varied, but the consensus was that Hillary's chances of winning were around 85-90%. Some went further, the Huffington Post claimed that Hillary had a 99% chance of winning, and the Princeton Election Consortium claimed a similar number, with its head promising to eat a bug on live television if Trump even came close to winning. My friends were somber as I picked them up on the afternoon of election day. Despite Trump having fought to make the race at least mildly competitive following the Access Hollywood tape, his victory seemed impossible, and not just because of what the polls said. Generally, the system finds a way to win, regardless of what the numbers say, and Trump had both the system and the numbers against him. Early exit polls seemed to confirm Hillary's victory in key states, and Trump's memers on 4chan sunk into despair, anger, and finger-pointing.
Then the votes began to come in, first from safe red states such as Kentucky and Indiana. A hint of optimism arose in our living room as I noticed that Trump was running ten points ahead of Romney in most of these working-class counties. Concern flashed over the faces of the NBC anchors as their analyst noted that Hillary was not getting the expected results in Virginia. Florida, the largest swing state, was neck and neck. Our eyes were fixed to the computer screen as Florida flipped from red to blue and back again, over and over again. Increasingly nervous NBC anchor, Chuck Todd, insisted that at any moment, a wave of votes for Clinton could be expected to come in from liberal Broward County. After each commercial break, he would insist on this again, but the hypothetical wave was pushed further into the future. Clinton had bought half a million dollars of fireworks for her victory celebration, and planned an elaborate rain of "broken glass-ceiling" confetti (the glass-ceiling being the supposed invisible barrier blocking women and minorities from advancing in society). As the Florida results came in, dancing to Katy Perry was replaced with fingernail biting and anxious pacing among Hillary's supporters, waiting for NBC to return from commercial break. Finally, it did, and a despondent Chuck Todd appeared on screen, sighed deeply, and said that he just didn't think there were enough votes left in Broward County for Hillary to win. Tears began to flow at the Clinton campaign, and aides were spotted in the fetal position. Despite the crushing defeat in Florida, Trump still needed to crack the Democratic "Blue Wall" to win. While many in the mainstream thought Trump had a shot at Florida, the main obstacles to his election were Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, a wall of states, filled with union voters, that had not been red since 1988. Trump's repelling of college educated voters pushed traditional Republican states like Virginia and Colorado out of reach, so he needed to take at least one in the rust belt. Already awash with energy, our election watch party exploded as Pennsylvania suddenly flipped from blue to red. I'll never forget the look on the face of my friend, paralyzed with shock and excitement, after I shouted "PA is red! PA is red!"
4chan's /pol/ board, known as a center of anti-social, nihilistic, spiteful trolls, collapsed into an outpouring of mutual brotherly love. Disrespected, hated, and dismissed by society, they had joined the Trump Train as an avatar of vengeance, but unwittingly found themselves united in self-sacrificial love for the one man who gave them a voice. In that euphoria, they caught a glimpse of the genuine good that could not be achieved by bitter pranks or by giving in to the depraved society around them, but only by replicating that same selfless effort for something larger than both themselves and Trump. On that night, America First became inevitable.
The Beginning or the End?
Late Show host Stephen Colbert looked like a husk of a man after being told that Trump was on the doorstep of winning the election. "I can't put a happy face on that... and that's my job." he said solemnly. Mass misery followed from the left and our establishment on the morning of November 9th, along with soaring euphoria among Trumps supporters. Unfortunately, this dynamic did not last. Regime forces quickly took advantage of Trump's political ignorance and thoroughly co-opted his administration. Trump's presidency could not have ended in a more fitting way, when after being cheated and spat on one more time through a stolen election, Trump's disenfranchised voters stormed the US Capitol, in a valiant and yet hopeless last stand against the regime that had occupied their nation for nearly a century. It's not yet clear whether the Trump moment will be seen in the future as the beginning of a new renaissance, or as the last gasp of Western boldness, appropriately bookending a civilization that began with the Crusaders. Even if this story ends with our heroes jailed, there will always live the moment when the regime was defeated against all odds, by the sheer will of one man and his anonymous, forgotten supporters. If any victory emerges amidst the end of the Western story, its roots will be traced back to the spirit of 2016.