When I was young and slim, I loved going to the beach. Just standing and allowing the action of the ocean to sway my frail body back and forth with each crest of a new wave seemed to hypnotize my entire consciousness. I would stand there with eyes closed totally mesmerized. That is until a giant wave would come and knock me off my feet. And that is exactly were we find ourselves politically. We have been enjoying the lazy waves and we were all hypnotized by the inevitable victory of Hillary Clinton and a secure future.
And WHAM! The Donald J. Trump wave slammed into us. But was it really Trump’s wave? He really didn’t even think HE was going to win. He was as hypnotized as we were.
No, the wave came from much farther out to sea. And that wave has been rapidly knocking people off their stable lives throughout the world. It has a name but that name is different in different areas of the world, but it’s still the same force of nature. In America, I call it the ‘alt-right’ wave. In the Middle East, it was the ‘radical-Muslim’ wave. In Russia, I call it the ‘Stalin2.0’ Wave.
In each case the wave has two distinct parts which act hand in glove: political and religious. Let’s take Russia first. The Russian Orthodox Church has been in recent years the leading spiritual guide in Russian society and it acts in unison with the Kremlin. You could almost call it the religious left arm of the body of Russia with Putin as the stronger right arm. But they are of the same body and not really separate or equal. And in this case the strong arm has become lethal such as killing journalists and political opponents and, with Russia’s help in electing a U.S. President, that arm coupled with an ultra conservative church is ‘Stalin2.0.’
The ‘radical Muslim’ wave is more well known to us. And I use the offensive term ‘radical Muslim’ for a reason to stress the religious significance of the action of the body politic that sees no difference between the political and the religious. It is in the worst sense of the word a Theocracy. The religion dictates the political.
And in each of the two examples above the wave was supersized or ‘empowered’ by political events. The annexation of the Crimea by the Russian Federation, came less than a year before the 70th anniversary of Victory Day, a celebration of the old Stalin Communist Russia’s defeat of the Nazis. The May 9th celebration brought out throngs of Russians who were once again proud of the newly regenerated stength of their motherland under Vladimir V. Putin. And in the Russian Orthodox churches the priests echoed that pride to the return to the old conservative values of blind loyalty and obedience to the state and church.
In the Middle East they merely cut off your head. In Russia there is a growing institution of moral condemnation that has taken on the force of law. And that institution is based on the same as the Islamic State: fear of authority. So, state enforcement through law is replaced by voluntary submission, making loyalty virtually unlimited.
That same wave hit America on November 9 when we woke up to Trump’s America. Just think back to how much of Trump’s campaign centered around fear: fear of Mexican rapists, fear of immigrants taking your job, fear of Muslims moving in next door, and then there is the religious/Pence aspect of fear: fear of homosexuals, fear of trans genders in your restroom, fear of sharia law, and fear of women becoming as powerful as men. All of these fears must be washed away in the Trump/Pence/religious-alt-right wave.
And it was that Trump/Pence victory that emboldened and legitimized the ‘alt-right’ wave. They are so legitimized that they now have a four year lease on The White House. And all that liberal political correctness that has kept those angry white males down for all those decades has been washed away…in their minds.
So, that is what we are up against. A force of nature that has been circling the globe. Keep in mind that this isn’t just happening in our America. Britain has had it’s own wave called Brexit. And other countries either have been or will be hit. This is a cycle of history which like nature comes and it goes.
But just like after every hurricane, tornado and tidal wave, we regroup, we rethink and we rebuild. The first large wave that toppled us has just sped past. We must wait for the other waves and from the racists, misogynists and homophobes who Trump is picking for his government, we are in for some very rough waves.
And that’s my view of the ocean from the Hill.
View From The Hill 