Clyde Wilson:  WE’VE ONLY JUST BEGUN

We’ve only just begun to live

White lace and promises

A kiss for luck and we’re on our way

(We’ve only begun)

Before the risin’ sun we fly

So many roads to choose

We’ll start out walkin’ and learn to run

(And yes, we’ve just begun)

---The Carpenters, “We’ve Only Just Begun”

Making America great again is not something to be looked forward to.  In fact, although America has had some great people and some great moments, it has never really been Great.  And spare me and my descendants from living in a “great country.”  Rather a good and comfortable one is to be preferred.  To be fair, the candidate and most of the people who voted for Making American Great Again were not thinking of imperial or cultural greatness.  They were thinking   of  the  reasonably  just and free,  moral and prosperous  America of not too long ago.  At  least as  they  remember  it---a  country  as good as it can get for common folks.

The narrow election of Trump would seem to indicate that a substantial portion of the American public  still has a workable  common sense and  decency.

In 2014, discussing the treacherous leaders of the Republican  party, I wrote:

“A maverick candidate, who is  wise, brave, and somehow able to communicate with the people over massive jamming by the media, could perhaps get a message across about the real dangers to the commonwealth (debt, imperial over-extension, the ongoing  proletarianisation of the middle class, to mention  just a few).   We can be certain that the two parties will never touch a real issue, which might upset their cozy relations with each other and with the media.  For such an  outsider  to  succeed would require extraordinary circumstances indeed.  However, he might accomplish the wrecking of the Republican Elite, which would be a great service to the restoration of good government.”

Trump has amazingly  fulfilled  my hope . The improbable winner, I think, has grown morally and intellectually during the campaign, as is likely to happen when someone actually listens to us plain folks and really cares about  his  people  rather  than treating them as pigeons to be conned.   For those of us who want to tame the overgrown and arrogant beast in Washington,  “we’ve  only just begun.”  Can Trump tame Leviathan?   What  knowledge  and  weapons  does he have for the battle?  Winning the war was easy compared to winning the peace.  The Republican  party itself is a very poor resource for what needs to be done.

Let us exercise the virtues  of hopefulness and good faith.  We might reasonably  expect  cleansing the country of alien criminals, perhaps even some recovery of the morale and numbers of  the historic American people with  a less hostile government.   We might also expect, I think, some peel back of the truly  insane  bipartisan  bellicosity  and  foreign meddling that have characterized  the government since Bush minor.  (Or perhaps, truth to tell, since Reagan.)  We  can look forward  to efforts toward  the recovery of a substantive economy and  widespread prosperity.

Personnel  is  policy.  We will know much more when we see the President-elect’s appointments.  Reagan’s betrayal of his supporters  and  promises  was obvious very early on.  The appointing process was  seized  by  seasoned and  unscrupulous operators looking to control patronage.  Trump and his true friends will be very hard pressed to prevent the same.  Victory brings the temptation to be moderate and inclusive, to reach out  for  a wider consensus.   Not only is the Left  institutionalized in every  power in American life, but  “respectable” Republicans are waiting in the wings to assume their usual places.   This will mean nothing less than allowing the Establishment  to control  the agenda.  In my most recent book, Annals of the Stupid Party:  Republicans Before Trump,   I  trace  the evil record of the Republican party and its  uninterrupted history of  betraying conservatism and defrauding its supporters.

The Establishment  is discredited.  It must now be crushed.    It may  die if its weaknesses are  kept under attack, but it will not go easy into the night.  Trump  must  reach  out to talented and determined people  who are not in, of, or for the  evil  status quo.  Does he have the determination  and  the  close advisers who will be able to do this?   Does anybody know?

American general discussion has not, I think,  ever  fully assessed  the true meaning and accomplishment of the Great Society, now a half-century old.   It really had little to do with helping poor folks.  It had to do with the massive subsidy and institutionalization of a new class of “educators,”  therapeutic   administrators  and workers, and minority “leaders.”    There are now hundreds of thousands, perhaps several million of these people.  They have made American  education  into a tragic farce from top to bottom.  As we have seen by  their  hysterical reactions  to Trump’s candidacy, they have radically poisoned  public discourse, like the learned lady professor  who declared herself personally  fearful  of Trump.   A lot of these people receive very good salaries and have an aggressive sense of entitlement  without any talents or services.   In fact,  most of them have literally never done a real day’s work and have lived always in a dream world.

What is to be done to make them face reality?   The government cannot solve the cultural and spiritual decay of our time, but it can help by getting rid of the Great Society, defunding  its  destructive institutions and personnel.  But it is hard to see how this might be accomplished with the present Congress without a line-item veto,  which  very reasonably ought  to be an executive power.

Trump is a New Yorker and a nationalist,  the best of the lot.  But I doubt if he has the instinct or the knowledge to pursue  what  some of us decided long ago was the only solution---genuine federalism and constitutionalism--devolution, dismembering Leviathan.   He might show himself a real  revolutionary  if he chose this time to come out for the secession of California.   That would really be Making America Great Again!