America on the Verge
20th November 2021
One day, when sufficient distance has been gained from the Current Year to permit sober reflection on our own era, the recent past will no doubt be seen as a watershed in American political history. The election of Barack Obama in 2008 gave politics a religious sheen for Millennials just coming of age, and for Boomers hoping to avoid confronting the wreckage left in the wake of their rule. The election of Donald Trump in 2016 gave the new religion its devil. From Russia collusion to #MeToo, from Covington Catholic to Judge Kavanaugh, American culture and politics in the years since has been an unbroken series of witch crazes, lynch mobs, and human sacrifices (some successfully carried out, others not). The Democratic Party, the corporate press, and progressive activists openly embraced political violence as a means to achieve policy goals, block political appointments, and now, to attempt to affect court decisions.
Conservatives have compromised, cowered, negotiated, and denied in the face of the Left’s radicalization, but 2020 was the year when the Right finally began to realize it was backed up against a wall.