Moses
sent 12 spies to scout out the Promised Land. They returned and
reported it was a good land, filled with milk and honey, but it was
populated by giants so large “we must have looked to them like
grasshoppers, and that is how we seemed to ourselves in our own eyes.”
Moses
admonished them that they had been asked for their report, which gave
their people information, rather than for their opinion, which made
everyone afraid. The cowardice of the spies caused the 40 years of
wandering, as Moses kept the Jews in the desert until that generation
had died off.
God’s
promise to the Jews, their fear and his rejection is a universal human
myth. The hero is given a task he rejects. In the first instance he must
confront himself and choose bravery over cowardice. The mythic hero is
aided by the Word of God, contemporary Westerners by heroic example. Winston Churchill inspired in his country’s populace an awareness of their own greatness. So does Mr. Trump.
Yet
half of America not only abides but fervently supports a codependent
decline to poverty, crime and a nascent police state. Why? The leftist
politicians and their media courtiers and designated beneficiaries
profited from the perks of power. But why did the everyday American
endorse them and their fear mongering? The actual threat wasn’t global
warming, Islamophobia, the Supreme Court, the police, Immigration and
Customs Enforcement or Mr. Trump. It was exclusion from the herd.
An
existential secret is one whose revelation would destroy the group. If
dad is a drug addict or a sex criminal, acknowledging it would shatter
the family. The protection of the secret becomes the family’s unifying
endeavor. If anyone says anything, it might reveal that everyone is in
on the secret. The sick family devotes all necessary energies to
collusion—to mutual and self-censorship.
During
the past four years, American politics has been dominated by a
coalition each of whose members, like codependent kin, has its own
investment in group integrity and the power it derives therefrom. The
superrich, academia, Islamists, Marxists and the media have colluded to
suppress the true and impose the false.
We
know that their perfidies, lawfare, slander, blacklisting and civil
persecution were practiced on conservatives and Republicans,
particularly on Mr. Trump. But the suppression was targeted primarily at
their own voters.
To
remain unthreatened by reason, the liberal populace had to be convinced
to endorse various lies and fantasies: Black Lives Matter, Israel’s
perfidy, unlimited abortion as a woman’s right, men’s right to compete
in women’s sports, the abolition of the police, Mr. Trump’s demonic
power and so on.
Why
would rational people vote to destroy their borders, their cities,
their jobs and their children? For the same reason the sick family must
tolerate its dysfunction: The co-opted liberal electorate was terrified
that any deviation would result in destruction of its protective unit.
As it would.
In
the energy devoted to accommodating lies, the mind puts them in the
same category as truth. The codependent pays a huge price from them: his
self-respect. President Biden suffers cognitive decline; the
administration and the legacy media hid that fact and suppressed its
discussion. They did the same with the chaos at the border, crime,
inflation, the putsch of Mr. Biden and his replacement through fiat.
Before
June 27, almost all Democrats and media outlets insisted that Mr. Biden
was sharp and focused. On July 21, he was ousted from the campaign, and
the hagiography of Kamala Harris
began. Conservatives’ requests for clarification of her role as “border
czar” were labeled “misogynistic.” Her catch phrases were “joy” and
“turn the page.” Why would she have wanted to turn the page on four
years of the Biden administration, of which she said she would do
nothing differently?
To
the left, it didn’t matter. “She isn’t Trump” was sufficient reason to
vote for her. Trump isn’t the devil, but a rational consideration of him
and his achievements was beyond the liberal’s ability. Mr. Trump was
the enemy because he represented a challenge they could not accept.
The
transition from party-line liberal to reasonable citizen generally
involves some degree of shame. The genius of 12-step programs is that
shame in them can be aired, and, so diffused, in a company each of which
has undergone a similar upheaval; where confessions of complicity and
shame are greeted and diffused with recognition, laughter and welcome—as
among new conservatives, and new devotees to citizenship.
Why
would sentient Americans vote away the freedoms of thought, conscience,
assembly and expression guaranteed by our Constitution? It makes sense,
as any suicide does, as an act of survival. The suicide takes his own
life to stop unbearable anguish. It is the most desperate act of
self-preservation.
Prosperity,
interconnectivity and their attendant confusions have led to chaos, the
denigration of religion, the family, law and the nations whose identity
was created out of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The U.K. now is
prosecuting those standing silently across the street from abortion
clinics. Should they testify that they were praying, they are guilty of a
crime.
Since
the ’20 election I have feared a new American revolution, the leftist
government proclaiming its intent to destroy parents whom it calls
terrorists and citizens whom it deems insurrectionists. During the past
four years Mr. Trump—raided, indicted, convicted, sued, slandered and
shot—continued to grow in popularity, and attracted the like-minded into
a coalition stronger than that of the left.
To
command, one must have lieutenants themselves capable of assuming
command and inspiring subordinates. Their absence in 2020 led to that
bump in the road; but their emergence and amalgamation in the last four
years is now the Republican Party. This isn’t a cult of personality, but
a group of citizen-workers, Americans who adore our country. We
understand ourselves not primarily as Republicans or conservatives, but
as “we the people.”
The
horror of the past four years—the appeasement of terror, the slavish
support of our enemies, the abandonment of the state of Israel, the
assaults on free speech—seemed to me the descent into chaos which has
been the end of every world power.
Rome,
Greece, Nineveh and Tyre, Babylon, Nazi Germany—all were eventually
returned to dust. I saw the irreversible decline of the U.S. and took
comfort in the scripture. The Old Testament is a record of decline of
those civilizations which fall away from God; and promises that a return
to his precepts will restore his grace. We know that one day America,
as all things, will go one with Nineveh and Tyre. But not today.
David Mamet Calls Hollywood's Diversity Efforts 'Fascist Totalitarianism' at L.A. Times Festival of Books in April 2024
