The moment has arrived. President Donald Trump will become both the 45th and 47th President of the United States. It was impossible to predict what would happen in the 98 months and one week since the November night when President Trump first shocked the world, but there were signs of what was to come even before it happened. Ta. These warnings were virtually everywhere in the Western world, but virtually everywhere they were arrogantly ignored by the ruling elites. They mow it down on this snowy January day.
It cannot be overstated how turbulent 2016 was for the world order. President Trump's shock victory caps a year in which British voters have already voted to leave the European Union, and a grand scheme to suppress national sovereignty under a continental commission and bureaucracy for the benefit of finance and trade. It tore at the very heart of the liberal experiment.
Today may mark a new beginning, but what is most certain is that this day, Monday, January 20, 2025, marks the end of the liberal order. And how sweet!
The connection between President Trump's election and the referendum to leave the European Union did not resonate with elites in either Europe or the United States. Their initial reactions included some confusion and occasional moments of self-reflection, but ultimately did little to change their perspective.
The overwhelming response was to dismiss Britain's Nigel Farage and New York's brash orange man as ugly outliers from the long march of history. They were not treated as visionaries. They were not even understood to be exploiting legitimate public grievances. Instead, they were dismissed as frustrated reactionaries, ugly reverberations of an ugly past. “Britain is part of the international community,” they said. “America was never great.”
The elites who actually blamed themselves were not blaming themselves for letting down the people or betraying the national interest. Rather, they blamed themselves for giving too much airtime to the victors' complaints and for failing to adequately explain their own virtues.
As with Brexit, the same anger that nearly propelled Vermont's irascible 75-year-old socialist to the top of the blue ticket is coupled with the frustration felt by blue-collar Democrats who have defected to the Republican Party. Very few people took a step back and wondered if this was the case. candidate. They failed in this too. Today, former Bernie Sanders supporters, from Joe Rogan to your next door neighbor, are bona fide Trump supporters. Some were die-hard socialists, but most were simply tired of business as usual.
By the time the 2020 election approached, it was clear that the pressure on these two seemingly disparate septuagenarians was not letting up. Society was more tense than at any time since the 1960s. Still, few changed their minds. Even before COVID-19, Western politicians were busy crushing rebellions rather than addressing their causes. From 2017 to 2021, instead of passing meaningful reforms, the U.S. Congress did everything in its power to persecute the new president and his few loyal allies.
And in early 2020, COVID-19 revealed just how transmissible they were. Few other Western countries have followed Australia's concentration camp model, but rulers around the world have divided families, demonized Christians and other dissidents, and allied themselves with big business and Big Tech. tied.
And in January 2021, America's top companies took off their masks, shattered the myth of free internet, crippled the Parler social media app, and banned the outgoing president from the social media platform. American dissidents lost their jobs and bank accounts. The aggressive federal raids targeted older trespassers as well as younger rioters. Pressure from above continued in Europe and the wider British Commonwealth.
In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a longtime Liberal icon, brutally cracked down on truck drivers protesting mandatory vaccinations.
By the end of 2023, European peasants had also revolted. Tractors blocked roads, products were dumped and bonfires were set.
In Britain, long-cherished rights of Britons were stripped away with impunity. You're far less likely to die mysteriously in a British prison than in a Russian prison, but you're far more likely to have police come to your door for a social media post in England or Scotland than in Vladimir Putin's homeland. expensive.
For years, police, newspapers and politicians ignored rape gangs. Even today, few elites are willing to honestly address this scourge and take decisive action to end it and prevent it from happening again. While the Conservative government stalled and collapsed, it was not because Labor was the popular alternative. That's because the Conservative Party resisted the will of British voters at almost every turn and happily continued on as if Brexit had never actually happened.
In France and Germany, the trends were much the same, but crime, assaults, and general disorder among immigrants soared. as it was
predicted in 1968“The sense of alarm and outrage lies not with the immigrants, but with the people they came from and will continue to come to.” Around the world, these concerns are ignored or, worse, racist It has been dismissed as the overreaction of a nativist chauvinist.
This slur was repeated on all fronts, from Fleet Street to Hollywood, from Congress to the White House. Still, the pressure was mounting.
In 2024, the eruption long heralded by its tremors finally erupted. It's not just the US.
In the autumn of the previous year, the Dutch government collapsed and the promotion of long-time backbench provocateur Geert Wilders was imminent. This is said to be the biggest challenge to the Dutch status quo since World War II, and will continue to cause upsets around the world.
In Britain, Labor has returned to being a weak force with the support of voters furious at the Conservative Party's empty promises and reckless governance.
In France, the liberal government of Emmanuel Macron collapsed as a result of a vote of no confidence.
Twelve days later, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's government collapsed in a vote of no confidence.
Three weeks later, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his resignation, and his own government followed suit.
Like the fires that consumed large swaths of Los Angeles, the end result of decades of negligent mismanagement can no longer be blamed on the Republican Party, global warming, Russian interference, or some other shadowy, distant evil. These are the fruits of the seeds that the liberal order sowed itself. This is done. I set the conditions. All that was needed was a spark flying in a strong wind.
None of this is to say that the future is conservative. In Washington, a significant number of professional Republicans are actively on the side of the liberal order and actively oppose any substantive changes to that system. Canada's Conservative Party, led by Pierre Poièvre, resembles these Republicans more than it does President Trump's people or those in Europe's populist conservative movements. The same goes for Westminster. In France, Germany and other parts of mainland Europe, conservative opposition forces are divided, unsure and hoping for infighting. On the continent, socialist and Green party types are as likely to benefit from this collapse as (if not more) than the right.
But all this means that the postwar liberal order is dead. He died, but not at the hands of Trump, or the hands of France's Wilders, Farage or Marine Le Pen. There is nothing else but itself. It was killed by its decadence and its own condescension.
The founders of this order were restrained from excess. They have seen the League of Nations established and fail under the weight of its utopianism. Their order was a clear one, pledging to establish safe trade routes and a round table for dialogue and de-escalation between the two countries. Their goal was to prevent World War III.
Their successors usurped hard-won peace and prosperity and replaced it with adventurism, free trade, deindustrialization, outsourcing, unrestricted immigration from the underdeveloped world, the erosion of national sovereignty, and democracy. He spent his time campaigning for gay rights worldwide. They spent the merits they did not earn on priorities that actively harmed their country, and they did so with the moral zeal of worldly awakening. Anyone who questioned them was “on the wrong side of history.” Theirs was the throne given to them by their fathers. No more.
The blindfold is removed and the ruler is exposed. Ironically, the trauma of the coronavirus response has helped people wake up more than anyone else, even if they were drowsy. Some blessings come with pain.
The future is unknown, but it is definitely here. In November, the American people voted for the return of the man the world order's elites had rejected. At every turn, they resisted both the reality around them and the changes that reality demanded. Trump's inauguration as president is their decision.
Today may mark a new beginning, but what is most certain is that this day, Monday, January 20, 2025, marks the end of the liberal order. And how sweet!
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audience: The mood in Britain is changing with the return of President Trump.
