COLUMN: Trump's vision of hope looks dark to media elites
The word of the day is “disconnect.”
That is the only word that adequately describes the vast gap between everyday Americans and the media elites, who have consistently and proudly been wrong about Donald Trump for the past 18 months.
The Republican National Convention was a real eye-opener. Night after night, the experts on CNN, MSNBC and yes even Fox News told us just how dangerous Trump is, just how unpopular he is, and just how hateful he is. Any evidence to the contrary such as polls, interviews, diversity, speeches, or your own lyin’ eyes was ignored, contradicted or denied by the talking heads — who came with one purpose only: to drive a stake through the heart of Donald J. Trump and kill his chances of becoming president once and for all.
Everything Trump did was wrong. Case in point: He let Ted Cruz speak at the convention even though Cruz did not plan to endorse Trump. Why, the media geniuses, wondered, did Trump provide a prime-time stage to his political nemesis? It never occurred to them that Trump played Cruz like a fiddle, even when many of them were declaring that Cruz had committed political suicide live on stage! Bye-bye, Ted!
Worst of all, according to the nattering nabobs of negativism (oops! plagiarism alert!), was Trump’s nomination acceptance speech on Thursday night. It was described as “dark,” “vengeful,” “incendiary,” “psychopathic” and “racist.” The Washington Post seized the opportunity to condemn Trump as “a unique threat to American democracy.”
Meanwhile, I watched a different speech, along with more than half the country. I saw an American leader who had the audacity to not just hope for change, but to promise it. I saw someone squarely confront the disastrous political consequences of a “rigged system” and say calmly what every right-thinking American has been screaming for the past 40 years: I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it any more. (Oops! plagiarism alert!)
For once, I heard a presidential candidate admitting what every honest American already knows — we can’t keep doing the same stupid things without paying the same stupid price.
Want to end violence in the inner cities? Give the people jobs and opportunity!
Want to free up American business and our energy industry? End the Kafka-esque regulatory nightmare that killed the Keystone pipeline, shut down coal mines and closed timber mills.
Want to restore manufacturing in the American heartland? Don’t sign trade deals like NAFTA and TPP that provide incentives for American companies to move jobs to Mexico and Vietnam.
Want to stop the flow of drugs across the Mexican border and halt the steady stream of illegal immigrants into our work force? BUILD THE WALL!
Dark vision? “Dystopian Mad Max America”? Only if we don’t do anything! When Oklahoma dried up and blew away in the Dirty Thirties, was it dark for Woody Guthrie to write the Dust Bowl Blues”? I don’t think so. We need someone to show us the way out before it really gets dark.
Back in the Great Depression, people seeking a way out of despair tried to reach the promised land out West with the slogan “California or bust!”
Today, for people who are tired of the same old lies spewed by the media and the politicians, there’s a new slogan that describes the one last chance many of us see to turn this country around. It would make a pretty good bumper sticker: “Trump or bust!”