Hope, But Not Complacency

By now, you all should have heard the results of the election, whether you stayed up late watching The Young Turks melt down, or tuned into a solemn news anchor the next morning. I think all of us were a little surprised that the polls acknowledged Trump’s victory, and didn’t hail Kamala after a 3 AM surprise ballot drop. While Trump isn’t a perfect candidate, we are in a much better place than we would have been with a Kamala Harris presidency.

There are some important takeaways that we should reflect on. For starters, the nation refused to make abortion access its primary concern. That’s a positive. Even though the cultural trajectory is lousy, we ought to savor such a victory. It was shocking to see a presidential candidate make that into the main issue of an election, hoping that people would favor over anything else the supposed “right” to terminate their future children.

Even if you are entirely tuned out from the political sphere, we must acknowledge what the election really does: it buys us time. It slows down the descent of the nation, and may even bring a few political victories over the next four years. For example, the federal pressure to put boys in girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms in schools will cease. Male inmates who claim to be women will no longer be housed with women. That’s a victory that will have a tangible impact on people’s lives.

Even so, we also have to work to bring about changes in our culture. There are plenty of indicators that we are in serious trouble. The election should not have been close, given Kamala’s stances. This situation will only deteriorate over time, because of an increasingly ignorant populace. There are people who have never been exposed to traditionalist values and who don’t know how to think critically. That’s predictive of our long-term trajectory. Andrew Breitbart is credited with saying, “Politics is downstream from culture.” On this view, then, as people begin to value things that are perverse, that is what we will see promoted in the political landscape. Thus, we must fight at the cultural level.

An area that must be improved is pro-life messaging. The pro-life position was not well-defended or articulated by the Trump campaign, and abortion made serious strides in state races. People do not understand the gravity of the issue, nor the implications of supporting it. Pro-lifers shouldn’t be apologetic and constantly on the defensive. They have the moral high ground and they need to act like it.

We need to welcome back God and reason into our lives, and build up parish communities. We need to assert what type of country we are trying to move toward, rather than perpetually merely pushing back against the latest attack by hysterical degenerates. Cultural change requires discourse. That’s how we reach our neighbor and change the standards of acceptability. We don’t do it by keeping within the limits of what is acceptable to say today, but by saying what is true and supporting those who speak it (even when the truth is “offensive”). DEI and other anti-white programs should become shameful—companies should be afraid of the scandal that should be associated with them.

We must educate ourselves on the things that mattered for the foundation of the West—re-learning those heroes of antiquity and placing them back into communal memory. While the political sphere shouldn’t be simply tossed aside, note that the changes we need will not simply come from the national government. To the contrary, you can make a much bigger influence in local elections and board memberships. It’s there where it’s easier to affect change and have a bigger impact on what is closest to you.

The risk going into the Trump presidency is complacency. Viewing the election as the end of the war is a huge mistake, and it’s not one that our opponents will be making. Recall that Hilary’s 2016 defeat did not stop the 8 years of decline that has taken place since, nor did it prevent Kamala’s appearance. We’re in a long war that is spiritual as well as political. Don’t retire just because one battle was won.