Trump’s Victory Makes Clear: America Is Still America

Last night was the night America roared back. The difference in vision of what America is and what America could be between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris was as stark as has existed in a presidential election in decades. America’s verdict was decisive—the popular vote, the Electoral College, the Senate in a landslide, and, presumably, the House of Representatives will soon follow.

The American people affirmed the core message of Donald Trump’s campaign: That America is still America, that it is worth all of us fighting for, and that our destiny is to do even greater things in the future than the remarkable things our ancestors achieved in the past.

Donald Trump’s reelection campaign truly started off in February of 2023 in the small town of East Palestine in JD Vance’s home state of Ohio. East Palestine, the victim of a horrendous train derailment, is the type of town our ruling class doesn’t recognize even exists. Which is why President Trump and Senator Vance were the only people who paid attention to the toxic fog that blanketed the town after the derailment.

Beyond the message of caring about the problems of forgotten America, it was Trump’s visit at the end of that trip to a local McDonald’s that reminded all of America of another virtue of Trump’s: He genuinely is of, and loves, the American people. “So, I know this menu better than you do. I probably know it better than anybody in here,” Trump told the crowd of “nice, beautiful-looking group of people” behind the counter and in the kitchen.

The fact that Kamala Harris was such a poor candidate helped lay out the stark contrast in visions of the future of our country. Without the erudite gloss of a President Obama or the faux working-class veneer of President Biden in past elections, the Democratic Party’s pitch to America was laid quite bare.

“I will legalize recreational marijuana, break down unjust legal barriers, and create opportunities for all Americans to succeed in this new industry,” Harris tweeted just two days before Election Day.

A Democrat-aligned Super PAC put a series of ads out that appealed to this depraved vision of masculinity. One ad, literally, showed a young man alone in bed masturbating and promising voters that if Republicans won, they would take away pornography.

Tim Walz, her vice presidential candidate, took time from the campaign trail to play a game of Madden NFL on the video game streaming platform Twitch—a game he promptly ended tied 0-0 at the half.

This is the Democrats’ vision of America’s future. It is a vision where all of us are pumped full of the soma of weed, porn, and video games so that we don’t focus on the destruction of the greatest civilization God has ever given man.

If the soma of Huxley’s Brave New World isn’t enough to distract you from the systematic dismantling of our country that has been going on for decades, the Democratic vision had no qualms about looking to Orwell’s 1984. Hillary Clinton suggested just this past September that people who spread “disinformation” should be “civilly or even in some cases criminally charged.” Dissenters have already been deplatformed, shadow-banned, and debanked. Elon Musk’s private-sector businesses have endured an unbelievable barrage of regulatory and legal battles.

“Contrary to popular belief, even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history,” Neil Postman writes in the introduction to his book Amusing Ourselves to Death. “Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.”

The modern Democratic Party’s response has been: Why choose? And in the 2024 campaign, Trump and Vance provided a 180-degree vision of what the future could be.

“I’m here today with a message of hope for all Americans,” Trump said one week ago in his closing rally in New York. “I’m asking you to be excited about the future of our country again. I’m asking you to dream big again. We are going to dream big again–we haven’t been dreaming big at all. This will be America’s new Golden Age.”

One of Trump’s top surrogates down the stretch, Elon Musk, joined the campaign trail after having sent a rocket into space, allowed its 22-story booster to fall from the sky on reentry, only to use its propulsion system to guide itself back to its launch pad and land safely for eventual reuse. President Trump told the story of this incredible achievement of American ingenuity several times on the campaign trail with the wide-eyed sense of awe that has been too often missing from American society in recent decades.

And their victory was a tremendous one for American discourse. Has a campaign ever been more forthcoming with the American people? Trump and Vance both sat for countless multi-hour podcast interviews. Vance, especially, seemed to relish going on multiple Sunday Shows each week and decimating increasingly emotional and unhinged interviewers. The bullies in the mainstream media were exposed for what they are, and the reality that one can be both extremely transparent with the American people and disdainful of the activism of the regime was put on display.

A sad reality of our times is American politics has become tribal. There is a level of joy that comes from the Red Team beating the Blue Team. It’s all-the-more wonderful when that victory comes deep in the lion’s den. When the deck is stacked against you in every way imaginable and your side still emerges victorious.

That is decidedly not what made last night so wonderful in a history-changing sort of way. Last night was more meaningful and fulfilling because it provided something far more important than the high you get from a sports victory.

The radical Left in our country has a dystopian vision of America’s future and this time they weren’t capable of hiding it. And Trump—and the incredible men and women who joined him in this campaign—understand that America is a nation that settled a continent, put a man on the moon, and has delivered more peace, security, and prosperity to the world than every other nation in history combined.

That contrast was on the ballot this year. And the American people showed up, rejected the notion that our best days are behind us, and voted to be a nation that will conquer the stars.