Trump’s survival highlights the new war on political heretics

In a recent, emotionally charged commentary, “The deranged left is breaking all the rules they claim to uphold to keep Donald Trump down,” veteran journalist Michael Goodwin lists the multitude of vicious things that Trump’s enemies have unleashed against him. Goodwin dates the time when “the gates of this particular hell were thrown open” to the “late summer of 2016 when the New York Times decided to abandon its legendary standards of fairness to make sure Trump didn’t win the White House.”

President Biden’s proposed “radical overhaul of the Supreme Court” is now being aimed at Trump, who is still, to the dismay of his powerful enemies, standing like a rock in the wind. The ruling elites are therefore trying to reverse the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity, so that they can launch further lawfare against their target.

When Trump tells us that his determined foes are coming after others and not only him, he’s telling the truth.

Even now as Biden is leaving office in an advanced state of dementia, he and his party and their multiple media and deep-state helpers are looking for ways to torment a hated foe. Goodwin views this plan as “the latest example of Trump haters using him as an excuse to do the things they once said should never be done.”

Although the hatred and persecution that Goodwin documents are real enough, such warfare is hardly limited to Trump. It is the predictable punishment that the ruling class here and elsewhere in the West have reserved for political heretics. Have JD Vance and Ron DeSantis been treated by their shared enemies in a nicer manner than Trump? I see no evidence of that.

Please bear in mind that these other “reactionary” figures have not been in the political spotlight as long or as often as Trump. Moreover, neither Vance nor DeSantis has yet been a serious presidential contender. Despite these differences, the corporate press and the left generally have pummeled these politicians with accusations of extremism and bigotry. We may suspect that the media’s recent, thoroughly coordinated attacks on Vance as a “weird” misogynist may be just the beginning of the sludge-throwing against this political heretic.

Such defamation can be at least partly ascribed to an attempt to deflect from Kamala Harris’ shockingly radical political record. But we may also assume that the left is really out to make an object lesson of Vance, who clearly deviates from prescribed party lines.

The same kinds of defamatory attacks are emanating from the preponderantly leftist media in Europe, where political heretics are treated as “extremist” enemies. Please note that the European Union has denied the Hungarians the right to continue exercising the rotating presidency of their organization for various ideological offenses. Such behavior in the past has included the Hungarians’ unwillingness to accept migrants for the sake of enrichment and their failure to provide the young with LGBTQ+ instruction. But Hungary’s conservative premier Viktor Orbán has also tried to negotiate an end to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Such an action has been condemned as an outrageous attempt to end Europe’s present crusade for democracy.

When Trump tells us that his determined foes are coming after others and not only him, he’s telling the truth. If Trump were not steadily in their crosshairs, then his detractors here and in Europe would be spending more time on other heretical politicians.

While Trump’s abrasive speaking style may offend the selectively offended, he is certainly not the only internationally prominent populist politician in the West who has suffered dehumanization. Other advocates for the democratic right, such as Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orbán, and the leaders of the German Alternative für Deutschland, speak more coherently and less insultingly than Trump. But they can expect comparable treatment from those who determine European and American politics and from the media priesthood that guards our woke state religion.

What makes Trump different from others is that he has survived the hideous ordeal Goodwin described. His enemies have thrown all their weapons at him. Some of the more malicious Trump-haters have even denied or at least minimized the assassination attempt against him, and yet he stays in their faces, as he exhorts us to “fight, fight!” Although there are certainly more polished representatives of the populist persuasion, no one has done more than Trump to earn the presidency because of his superhuman endurance.

What has befallen this figure should upset us. But do we in the opposition control enough resources to change the situation? I’d like to believe that we do, but Scott McConnell’s gloomy argument in the American Conservative seems quite compelling, as Harris rises in the polls in her bid for the presidency and as the MSM successfully hides her appalling past positions:

The media is a political superpower, and so far, at least has indicated it will do virtually anything to advance her [Harris’] candidacy. The chance that Trump can actually help himself in a debate with Harris seems, to me, very small.