GOPerdammerung: Signs
of a Seismic National Shift and a Red Tidal Wave
Americans rejected
impotence in 1980. Something comparable is afoot this election year.
by LOU AGUILAR
President Carter on April 7, 1980, announcing sanctions against hostage-holding Iran (Wikimedia Commons)
Ican remember the exact moment I became
politically aware. It was on November 4, 1979, when a group of radical Islamic
Iranians smashed into the United States Embassy and took 66 Americans hostage.
Up to that time, as a University of Maryland English major, I cared only about
film, literature, and girls —not necessarily in that order — with zero interest
in the nuances of international diplomacy. But this national insult enraged me.
So, every day I’d rush home to my off-campus apartment and devour the TV news,
expecting an imminent military response from our president. In my head I
replayed the exuberant scene from John Milius’s classic The
Wind and the Lion (1975), where a platoon of U.S. Marines march into
Tangier on a similar hostage rescue mission. Instead, night after night, all I
kept seeing were Nightline’s subtitle, “America Held Hostage — Day
___,” Jimmy Carter’s befuddled face, and the Iranians shouting, “Death to
America!”
When the wife of State Department hostage
Bruce Laingen, Penelope Laingen, recommended we “tie a yellow ribbon round the
old oak tree” — the refrain of a 1973 Tony Orlando hit —
and people actually started complying, I became angrier. I knew something had
gone wrong with the country — an impotence embodied by the man in charge of it,
President Carter. And I determined to do my small part to right the ship.
Upon graduating from college, I applied for,
and got, a newswriting internship at influential Washington, D.C. station
WTTG’s The 10 O’Clock News. There, even as a young punk, I could
recognize the historic importance of the 1980 presidential campaign, although
not yet the magnificence of the Republican candidate, Ronald Reagan. My focus
was on Jimmy Carter, and how two occurrences — one tragic and one comic —
seemed to highlight his incompetence.
The worst of these was indirectly caused by
Reagan, specifically his incomprehensible — to the Democrats — competitiveness
in the race. The Carter team had wanted to run against the unacceptably
right-wing — so they thought — Reagan as opposed to the formidably respectable
steady hand, George H. Bush. But Reagan consistently hitting Carter for the
Iran hostage fiasco resonated with the American people, and certainly me. A
July 1980 Harris poll showed Carter losing to Reagan 53 to 26
percent (independent John Anderson had 18 percent). The desperate Carter went
against his nature and authorized a military rescue of the hostages. This
resulted in eight soldiers dead and a helicopter burning in the desert without
combat.
The lesser incident, which took place two
months prior, became humorously known as the Attack of the Killer Rabbit.
President Carter was alone in a small fishing boat on a Georgia lake when a
small white rabbit swam right toward him. Carter tried to repel the beast with
a paddle and the rabbit swam away. Pictures of Carter wielding his oar against
the non-monster took on ridiculous proportion and made him a mockery at the
worst time, even in the then still valid Washington Post.
On November 4, 1980, I was at the Republican
National Headquarters helping the WTTG reporter cover election night. It was
the most electrifying night of my life. I watched a giant electronic map of the
United States go red in 44 states in what seemed like half an hour. Saw the
faces in the crowd change from shock to elation amid screams of joy. Looking
back, I view the two Carter incidents as omens of the seismic shift in American
politics and culture that took place that night. Eight years of a strong,
patriotic American comeback followed — accompanied by some of the best films
and music ever produced — leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Then
George Bush came in and mucked it with his “kinder, gentler nation” idiocy.
Nonetheless, I see similar signs of change now, and foresee a sharp turn for the
better this November 8.
As awful a president as he was, Jimmy Carter
was Ronald Reagan compared to Joe Biden. And I’m glad he lived long enough to
relinquish the Worst President of All Time title. However, Biden is only a
mindless shell — the conductor of an ugly, evil, anti-human philosophy that has
burrowed deep into the United States, driven by the dark forces of academia,
media — mainstream and social — and the entertainment industry. Its disciples
could have won a permanent victory and made America another permanent failed
state like Cuba and Venezuela if they had simply bided their time. But Donald
Trump’s 2016 defeat of their unctuous presidential standard bearer, and his
laughing at them for all to witness, wrecked their schedule and drove them mad.
They could no longer settle for rocketing
inflation, exploding crime, homeless-ridden streets, open borders, a fentanyl
death epidemic, and fabricated racial division. They had to go a rainbow bridge
too far — pushing transgenderism as normal. Consequently, they lost formerly
blue Virginia, and are about to lose several more states.
And even people once on their side said “No!”
— most notably J.K. Rowling. She blasted transgender lunacy as an attack on
women and was attacked in turn. Being the most successful writer in history,
Rowling amusedly struck back. She responded to a recent tweet, “How do you
sleep at night knowing you’ve lost a whole audience from buying your books?”,
with, “I read my most recent royalty cheques and find the pain goes away pretty
quickly.”
The Daily Wire’s
anti-trans star, Matt Walsh, was even more defiant. Walsh is currently filling
university auditoriums to capacity crowds on his What Is a Woman? college
tour, another sign that more young people are rejecting leftist indoctrination
and enabling Republican victories. “This is something I want the protesters at
this and any other forthcoming events to understand,” Walsh said in his
latest podcast. “That I will do precisely what you don’t
want me to do and say what you don’t want me to say. And there’s nothing you
can do to stop it. You are powerless, and that’s something you’re just going to
have to deal with. I know you’re accustomed to making demands and having your
demands met. But that’s not the way it’s going to work this time. Okay, I want
you to know how little your feelings mean to me. I want you to know literally
nothing you say has any effect or makes any impact.”
On November 8, the tide will turn further
right.
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