The Left's Empire Takes a Hard Fall

For four years now, maybe longer, I’ve been saying like a mantra, “There is no saving the Left. There is only saving the country from them.” And so America has, definitely and decisively.

But scrolling X this morning, I’m reminded of the scene in Michael Mann’s The Insider when 60 Minutes continued to remain in denial after their corruption had been laid bare:

It took 60 Minutes too long to accept what they’d participated in with the Jeffrey Wigand scandal, just as it will take the Left too long to accept what they’ve done to themselves and this country. But time marches on without them.

And as the line goes from Citizen Kane, they’re going to need more than one lesson and they’re going to get more than one lesson.

I say the Left, but it’s really the perception of reality shaped by the legacy press, the New York Times, CBS and NBC News, the Washington Post, along with MSNBC and CNN. They’ve been lying every day to the American people and for that their reputations will pay a high price.

I’ll never forget Christmas of 2020, when my nephew, who had gotten COVID and was now immune, wanted to visit. But he wasn’t vaccinated. Because of that, several members of my family became hysterical. When I shouted at them, “HE ALREADY HAD COVID,” they sent me links to NBC news articles that said it was contagious unless you were vaccinated, which was a lie.

Donald Trump was not running against Kamala Harris so much as he was running against the media industrial complex which now, like so much of our culture, is inseparable from government.

The New York Times headline, “Trump storms back,” is designed to pander to those who are still stuck on January 6th.

They have to sell fear because that is how they feel now that they are forced to share this country with the “basket of deplorables.” They think they still speak for all of us but their ability to do that ended long ago. Now, they speak only for those still trapped in an elitist bubble that only wants Trump to go away.

This isn’t going to be an easy fight. This is only the beginning. For the Left, the fight is existential. This is, to them, about their survival, as a movement rooted in identity, one that nurses victimhood and punishes merit-based success.

So they will blame Elon Musk and his purchase of X. They will blame Joe Rogan and RFK, Jr. They will blame Vladimir Putin because supposedly he is Tulsi Gabbard’s puppet master. They will blame men for being sexists. They will blame the American people for being biased against a woman of color, even though Kamala Harris was placed in the position of winning just because she was a woman of color.

They will somehow blame the Electoral College, the Supreme Court, and Tucker Carlson. They will blame Joe Biden, who does deserve some of the blame for engaging in the corruption that has brought down the empire. The only people they won’t blame are themselves.

It’s never going to be about how they pushed the American people too far, how there will be a generation of girls growing up with scars instead of breasts, weak bones and their fertility taken from them before they had any idea what was happening. There will be boys who have been effectively castrated and will have to live that way for the rest of their lives.

It’s never going to be the ten million people flooding the border, many of whom were not fully vetted, and many of whom were dumped into small towns with the residents shamed for worrying about their own lives.

It’s never going to be their rising authoritarian lawfare that did nothing for them but destroy trust in government, the DOJ and our criminal courts while only turning Trump into a folk hero.

It’s never going to be what they’ve done to a once-thriving culture rooted not in equity but in opportunity. I think of the stories that haven’t been told, the movies that haven’t been made, the dreams that have dried up and faded away. And all for what?

I had a conversation with my 26-year-old daughter a while back. She told me there are so many books she wants to write. Every time she comes up with an idea, she shoots it down, realizing she’ll be attacked and accused of fill-in-the-blank. Publishing houses, corporations, and movie studios all play along.

I knew in that moment I had to fight for my daughter’s rights. No, not to have an abortion but the right to free thought, to opportunity. I know that free speech opens the door to offensive speech and to the Left that is actual harm. But now that I’ve seen what the other side looks like, I know that sanitizing and policing speech is worse.

What has driven the Left mad isn’t so much a loss of power, although that’s part of it. It is more a deep sadness that they think who they are, their way of life, is now under threat. This is a pattern that has played out many times throughout human history to varying degrees. The last two times were previous “Fourth Turnings.”

After the Civil War, the South believed it was under an existential threat with the freeing of the slaves. They believed it was a threat against who they were rather than what they believed. That would ultimately lead to fear and hysteria, segregation and lynchings, and systemic racism that would last decades.

In the 1950s, the fear of Communism became an existential threat to the safety and security of America after World War II. The CIA and the FBI engaged in propaganda campaigns to win “hearts and minds” to the cause, which meant neighbors informing and spying on each other, blacklists, and ongoing paranoia. The same was true: they believed it was about protecting who they were.

And now, our Fourth Turning began in 2008, the year Obama won the presidency, they bailed out the banks and the iPhone hit the market, putting social media in every household.

We believed we had remade America and there was no going back. The problem with utopias, however, is that to survive they must become authoritarian. The problem with this country is that we all like our freedom.

I helped build our empire and now I have done everything in my power, limited though it may be, to destroy it. The America we made might have started out with the best of intentions but has done nothing but limit future generations, eliminate our fundamental rights as Americans to speak our minds, and encouraged, instead, all of us to feel helpless and afraid.

I want for my daughter a better future, one of open doors, not closed ones. I especially don’t want children to be further indoctrinated in our public schools to be conformists ranked and categorized by their skin color or “gender ideology.” What madness have we delivered upon our kids?

Someone had to step in. Someone had to stand in the breach. Because of a particular set of skills, Trump turned out to be that once-in-a-generation force who holds up his mighty trident and says ENOUGH.

We’ve just watched the Hero’s Journey play out. We got the ending we wanted. We’ve watched our hero transformed through a series of battles or tests and come out the other side stronger and wiser. But there were so many people who rose up to fight on Trump’s behalf.

Trump didn’t build MAGA on his own but he was the leader the movement needed to become what Steve Bannon calls the “force multiplier.” His dream team.

His loyal supporters, a grass roots movement that kept Steve Bannon’s “War Room” going day in and day out even when he was in prison. They all donated to buy Scott Presler an SUV so he could move to Pennsylvania and help flip the state.

Not to mention, the ground game boosted by Lara Trump and Charlie Kirk whose live stream was watched by millions all over the country last night, JD Vance, Vivek Ramaswamy, RFK, Jr., and all of those who bravely endorsed Trump in the last days leading up to the election that helped drive home the win.

And of course, Elon Musk whose freeing of Twitter allowed many voices to rise, voices that would have otherwise been silenced.

It’s hard to imagine any of this happening with all of these force multipliers coming together and helping bring the country back where it belongs, in the hands of the people.

This is a moment for the Left and the Democrats to take a good long look at what they have become. And perhaps find a way to let go of the need to control all of us. I told my daughter today not to worry and to tell her friends not to worry. “You’ve all been lied to most of your lives,” I told her. “Now, you are free. You can write whatever books you want to write. You can be whoever you want to be.”

What I’ve lived through over the past five years is not something I ever would have thought would be in the cards for me. I still don’t know what it was that pushed me in the direction to be among those sounding the alarm and shaking the tree. Perhaps it’s the Gen-X in me, the generation most responsible for bringing home the win for Trump.

Why? I don’t know how else to say it except that we were born to question everything, especially authority.

The Gray Champion

I called this site Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning because, according to Neil Howe, that is the era we’re living through. It happens once every 80 years, when the “Gray Champion” rises.

Seven years ago Neil Howe was asked if Trump was the “Gray Champion,” listening to him talk about it then it probably seemed unthinkable. But through the lens of today it is undeniable.

As we wake up into our new world shaped by bright young minds and revolutionaries like Musk who needed Trump to remain unfettered wherever he chooses to take this country next, we can see everything is suddenly reborn.

The Left probably won’t learn the lessons of this election because they can’t see what they have become. They’ve been so obsessed with holding on to power they forgot a whole decade has passed them by.

In that time everything changed. It had to. As they purged all of the bad people from utopia we began building a new world outside of theirs. Those voices became more attractive over time and less people paid attention to the distant call of the legacy press. Nothing is as it once was. That is what defines a Fourth Turning more than anything.

The Trump that ran in and won in 2016 has been forever changed by circumstance. He’s the hero, after all, and now he will likely go down as one of the greatest presidents in American history. Who would have ever thought?

Says Nathaniel Hawthorne in Twice-Told Tales: “His hour is one of darkness, and adversity, and peril. But should domestic tyranny oppress us, or the invaders’ step pollute our soil, still may the Gray Champion come.”

And so he has.