U.S. Election Aftermath (Part II): The Alt-Establishment
Even after Donald Trump’s election victory made the whole “NeverTrump” debate irrelevant, Trump’s supporters, both establishment and (allegedly) anti-establishment, have taken to every forum available to them to decry, mock, and condemn the evil NeverTrumpers who supposedly missed the boat so badly on America’s great heroic man-of-the-people/savior.
“The little whiny sniveling negative cowards who are Never Trumpers are beneath our paying attention to them. Let them drift away into the ashbin of history while we go ahead and work with Donald Trump,” says Newt Gingrich — a sniveling coward progressive-in-horse’s-rear-end’s clothing who, during the years when Donald Trump was publicly embracing and legitimizing Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of America’s socialist thug leaders, was doing exactly the same himself, which of course makes him feel defensive about Trump’s self-serving sycophant-posing-as-rebel charade, since he himself was the last title-holder in the Progressive Conservative heavyweight division.
Hold the ashbin lid for just a moment, folks. Let’s take a step back and recall what the real NeverTrumpers were actually worried about. When I say “the real NeverTrumpers,” I mean not the Washington insiders who glommed onto the movement and became its public face due to the Trump cult’s continual identification of all of Trump’s opponents as “the establishment,” but the real anti-Trump faction who smelled a fraud and desperately tried to warn their conservative countrymen not to make this horrible mistake. Has that movement really been nullified and falsified as “beneath our paying attention to them,” as Gingrich claims? How? What part of the NeverTrump movement’s objection to Trump has been disproven, in fact? I guess in order to answer that, we’d have to know what those patriots were actually saying about Trump, but then that would require listening to what they said (and say), which is why it has become so urgent to the cultists to smear and name-call them out of existence, lest anyone actually measure their concerns against the early reality of Trump as President-Elect.
Since, though not an American, I myself have been somewhat identified with the NeverTrump faction, I suppose I may just as well present my own concerns, which have been stated loudly, in detail, and frequently since January 2016, as an easy crystallization of the main points that the Trumpanzees have never bothered to address, let alone answer. In a nutshell, the concern is that Trump is not a conservative, has no guiding moral or political principles, doesn’t believe in, or even notice, the U.S. Constitution, doesn’t accept any premises of so-called social conservatism, has actively supported many hard left, big-government positions, and has a long and unapologetic history of treating politics and political advocacy as nothing but stepping stones to his personal financial advantage and self-aggrandizement.
Trump built his following on a foundation consisting of the so-called “alt-right.” These are the supporters who would follow their leader to the ends of the earth, and who consistently rationalize or ignore the many Trump statements or decisions that fly in the face of what they in their hypnotized state have chosen to believe Trump represents. These are the people who swarm Trump’s critics or skeptics like locusts, mercilessly and consciencelessly attacking honorable men and women with vulgar name-calling, personal threats, racist diatribes, and whatever else Roger Stone et al encourage them to use in lieu of any rational, consistent argument for Trump’s candidacy.
Above all the other smears, however, what the Trump cultists, along with their self-serving frontmen from Stone to Gingrich, relied on most to elevate their idol was the dreaded “Establishment” label, which they invariably stuck on anyone who asked uncomfortable questions about Trump. (For examples of some of those uncomfortable questions, see here and here.) They spewed the word Establishment at Trump’s opponents with almost as much venom as the word Jew. (In fact, the two concepts often seem to slide into one another in the stream-of-consciousness rants of Trump’s “alt-right” defenders. I recall the reader who told me to “Go back to writing about Israel,” although I never do write about Israel, and I am not Jewish. Still, I understood what he meant.)
And this bring’s me to today’s theme. The whole Trump movement was concocted, packaged, and sold as the ultimate poke in the eye to the Washington establishment, and particularly the Republican Party establishment. Other candidates who had actual track records of bucking the establishment in some ways were labelled puppets of the establishment, whereas Trump, who literally referred to himself during the campaign as a long-time member of the establishment (as a donor), and who was vocally supported against Ted Cruz by most of the old guard GOP establishmentarians that the average American could name off the top of his head, was said to be the only true crusader against the Washington status quo. “Burn it down,” they shouted with glee, fantasizing that President Trump’s first acts in office would be to fire everyone in Congress, close down the Supreme Court, and run the whole country through his Twitter account.
I wonder what those supporters, the people whose vehemence and willful blindness made Trump unstoppable during the GOP primaries, and pushed him over the top (against the worst candidate of all time) in the general election, must be thinking about the headlines these days. Trump hires Reince Priebus, the official spokesman of the GOP establishment itself, as his chief of staff. Trump considers John Bolton (“neo-con”), Rudy Giuliani (progressive supporter of the surveillance state), and apparently even the Trump cult’s Prince of Darkness himself, Ted Cruz, for important appointments. Now comes word that Mitt Romney is meeting with Trump, too! One might think the Trumpsters’ heads would be exploding right now — if one had not already watched these people twist themselves into pretzels of denial so many times over the past year.
And what about the “sniveling cowards” of the NeverTrump movement? Somewhere in the ashbin of history America’s real anti-establishment rebels are watching much that they feared, much that they warned of, taking shape, while the alt-right, which we may now officially rename the alt-establishment, continues its human pretzel act to persuade itself that, yes, Reince Priebus is an essential ally in the effort to “burn it all down.”
I conclude by reprinting here a little fable I wrote back in March of this year, originally published at American Thinker. At the time, naturally, Trump supporters answered me with their usual litany of “cuckservative,” “establishment hack,” and so on. I know, of course, that they would say the same thing today. Facts are no obstacle to a cultist.
The Jester Who Would Be King (A Fable)
by Daren Jonescu
Once upon a time, a funny court jester mocked his master, dancing around him and shouting, “I want to be king!”
The king and his subjects laughed. “And how would you rule?” asked the king, playing along with his favorite entertainer.
“I would do exactly as you do,” said the jester, for he was just a silly prankster, and had no idea how to govern a kingdom.
This answer bored the king and the people, so they did not laugh, but began to carry on with their business. But then the jester, who did not like to be ignored, thought of a wonderful new answer. He shouted, “I would do as you do, but ten times bigger!”
Now the king and his subjects were curious. “What do you mean?” the king asked. “There is no money in the kingdom to do ten times more than I do.”
“But it will cost nothing,” said the jester, “for your great deeds are only promises, and I can promise ten times more at no greater cost—an amazing deal!”
The king was slightly annoyed, but the subjects were intrigued by the jester’s idea. Noticing the people’s interest, the jester forgot about his master’s displeasure and continued to explain his wonderful thought. “You promised to build a wall to protect your kingdom,” said the jester. “But I promise to build a wall ten feet higher, and to make our neighbors on the other side of the wall pay for it—an amazing deal!”
The king looked at the jester with narrowed eyes now, but the people, remembering the wall the king had long promised, were amused by the jester’s plan. The jester, pleased at the people’s attention, continued.
“You promised to defend us against our enemies. But I promise to kill all of our enemies and all of their families, and to prevent everyone from all nations where the people look like our enemies from ever setting foot in our kingdom.” The people cheered, but the king’s face turned red.
“You promised to help your subjects buy medicine when they were sick,” the jester raved, “but I promise free healthcare for all the poor, so no one will ever die in the streets again!”
And so on and on the jester prattled, promising many great and astounding things, all of them just old promises of the king, but ten times bigger. And the people, who always loved promises, but had become bored of the king’s tired old promises, were excited by the jester’s wonderful new ones. In their excitement, they forgot that he was just a silly joker and dancer, and had no idea how to be a real king. Meanwhile, the king, though he had always enjoyed the jester’s performances and valued him very highly, thought he noticed a change in the people’s cheering, and suspected that a problem might be growing. He spoke to his subjects.
“Yes, my jester is very amusing,” said the king, “but you must remember he is only an entertainer, and does not know how to be a king.”
“But you are a king,” said the jester without thinking, “and you do not know how to be a king either!” The people cheered again, and this time their cheering definitely sounded different, and they were no longer laughing.
“You lied to the people,” the jester declared, swept along by the crowd’s enthusiasm, “and you sent them to war for your lies, and you allowed their enemies to become strong, and you, you”—and here the jester could think of nothing else to say, for he had no knowledge of the world and its difficult problems, so he merely shouted, “but I will make amazing deals!”
At this, the people, who had forgotten that the speaker was merely a court jester, became very serious. Thinking of all the king’s abuses and broken promises, they rushed at him and threw him off his throne, knocking his crown to the floor. Then they carried the jester to the throne and sat him down upon it, and placed the gold crown upon his head. They cheered and reveled at their great accomplishment. “Behold our savior, our new king!” they sang.
A few among the people had not joined the revelry. Seeing the jester now seated upon the throne, they spoke out at last against the mob. “Wait!” they implored. “Perhaps we do not need a king to rule over us at all. Perhaps we can rule ourselves according to the Old Laws, as men once did before the rise of the king.”
But these few were shouted down by the mass of the people, who did not wish to govern themselves, and who accused these objectors of supporting the deposed king. Then the mass of the people raised their right hands together, swearing allegiance to their new hero, “You, O Jester, are the new king! We will follow you! Rule over us with your mighty deals!”
Now the jester king was flattered but a little frightened, for he had always lived at court and entertained the old king, and therefore only knew how to make jokes and perform silly dances. The people stared at him anxiously, waiting for him to do all the wonderful things he had promised. But the jester king only stared at the floor. He did not know what to do.
The old king, seeing this, remembered how fond he had always been of his court jester, and how his friend’s dancing and joking had helped him to subdue the people and suppress the defenders of the Old Laws. Now he felt pity for his jester. He also felt seething hatred toward the people for their disloyalty to the crown.
Finally, when the celebration had ended, and the people had become bored and returned to their homes, the king and the jester caught one another’s eye.
“I can advise you,” said the king.
“Would you please?” pleaded the jester helplessly.
“Yes, for you have always been a good jester,” said the king.
“And you have always been a good king,” replied the jester, “and as you know I have entertained and supported you all my life.”
“Yes,” said the king, “I know you have been loyal. So if you do as I tell you, I will help you to rule. The people, who are angry with me now, will believe they have freely chosen their new king. And you will not be embarrassed, for you will do just as I have always done, but you will do it with dancing! Everything will continue as always, but the people will be entertained.”
“And of course you will be the real king, whatever the people think,” said the jester gratefully.
“Of course,” promised the king.
It was an amazing deal—for the king and the court jester.
