I can understand Meghan McCain’s criticism of first-term President Trump given the shots he took at her famous father, John McCain. Some of them were well deserved, like his vote saving Obamacare. But Meghan was too smart and patriotic to last as a co-hostess on The View. She was basically run off the show by the shrieking hens still on it. Since then, she has gradually found her way back rightward, if not quite to MAGA, to the Grand Old Party. Which made her the perfect witness to the palpable culture shock between Trump’s two terms.

As she posted on X last week, “I honestly never thought I would live to see the day when it was this culturally uncool to be a Democrat. As someone who has been socially ostracized for being a Republican my entire life, let me tell you, this is a brave new world out here.”

And everyone can feel this on both sides of the political spectrum. That we conservatives went from cultural outcasts to the cool group. Politics being downstream of culture, to quote Andrew Breitbart, we retook the government in the bargain. All we needed was a strong leader to survive the forces of deception, oppression, censorship, even assassination. In Donald Trump, we got him. Last week, Trump became the 47th President of the United States. And his Second Inauguration did more than uplift the Right. It demoralized the Left far more than his first did, and after a quarter century of power.

The day began horribly for progressives with the blessing of Trump by Detroit pastor Lorenzo Sewell. Watching a young black preacher say a passionate prayer for the Hitlerian racist they fabricated really stuck in their craw. Especially when he combined the two beings most repellant to them, God and Trump, with their hero, Dr. Martin Luther King, whose most famous words they’ve perpetually betrayed.

“Heavenly Father, we’re so grateful that you gave our 45th and now our 47th President a millimeter miracle,” Sewell prayed. “We are grateful that You are the One who have called him for such a time as this, that America would begin to dream again … We pray that you will use our President. That we will live in a nation where we will not be judged by the color of our skin, but by the content of our character.”

This was all too triggering for MSNBC’s Joy Reid, who as usual tried to call out the nonexistent racism with actual racism. Reid posted on her social media, “Not since @snoopdogg self-deejayed for Donald after vowing to roast the sh-t out of anyone who performed for #trump in 2017 has #blackamerica … desired so badly to erase the memory of a man as occurred today when @lorenzosewell performed what some are describing as a #minstrel show at the #trumpinauguration today.”

To the likes of Joy Reid, a charismatic black minister praying forcefully for the popularly elected President of the United States is akin to a minstrel show — itself a nearly forgotten performance routine that only liberals keep reinvoking as a perpetual reprimand. They were far more applausive of the ludicrous Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde. Last Tuesday at the Washington National Cathedral, under the guise of sermonizing, Budde ignorantly chastised President Trump and Vice President J. D. Vance about their meanness to illegal aliens. For this, she was welcomed on every leftist show, including, of course, The View.

Unfortunately for them, unbannable free speech is part of the culture shock — as hard won by Elon Musk and now publicly supported by his social media competitors: Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook, Instagram), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Sundar Pichai (Google). All three were conspicuously present at the Trump Inauguration. So, Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh could put the Bishop Budde fiasco in perspective on his popular YouTube podcast.

“It is a truth long established that a liberal woman over fifty with a lesbian haircut is sure to support the most evil ideas and policies that mankind has ever conceived,” Walsh said, adding, “And, of course, you know, this grotesque display is coming from a female priest. You will only ever hear heresy and inanity coming from someone whose whole existence is blasphemous.”

Two years ago, Walsh would have been censored for such a statement, like his first film What is a Woman was by Twitter until new owner Musk reversed the ban. As of today, The Matt Walsh Show podcast has more than three million followers. Now there’s a culture shock.

The Trump Inaugural Balls added salt to the liberal wounds. They prominently displayed two things loathed and forbidden by the woke Left, as I’ve written about for a decade — femininity and beauty. All the women there were decked out in gorgeous fashions, starting at the top with the gorgeous First Lady. They did not reject the Male Gaze. On the contrary, they welcomed it from their black-tied men. And when the First and Second Couples took the dance floor, between guards in red dress uniform, to the Battle Hymn of the Republic, it was grand.

There were no women there with lesbian haircuts and gaudy glasses challenging the Patriarchy, nor any men pretending to be women. For these and their enablers are now the targets of the new Administration. All the damage they’ve done to the country will hopefully be undone, beginning with the cesspool indoctrinating the youth — academia.

Trump recently reiterated his intent to cut funds to “any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children.” Judging by the clean-cut young men and pretty girls at the Inauguration festivities, the culture shock may be reduced.

READ MORE from Lou Aguilar:

Can Trump Make Hollywood Great Again?

The X (Twitter) Factor That Saved America

How prescient was my new political thriller The Washington Trail – now out in paperback? Its climax depends on the Washington Redskins (okay, Commanders) being in the playoffs this year. They lost but you can win by reading it.