Victor Davis Hanson
@VDHanson
The National Nightmare Is Ending
Aprs Biden, "L'audace, l'audace, encore l'audace, toujours l'audace"!
To paraphrase mixed French 18th-century memorable quotations: after Biden, follows not the deluge, but now daring, and still more daring, and always more daring.
Why?
A combination of two self-evident truths.
Joe Biden's inept administration proved an ungodly disaster, not just for America but for the West as well, who looked abroad for a stronger America but found it weaker.
And second, Trump Invictus is now liberated--"In the fell clutch of circumstance/I have not winced nor cried aloud,/Under the bludgeonings of chance/My head is bloody, but unbowed."
He is without worry over another election, or a discredited and defanged media ("so doves do peck the falcon's piercing talons"), much less a third Nancy-Pelosi contrived impeachment.
Instead, he stalks indomitable, after failed de-balloting capers, failed lawfare vendettas, and failed two assassination attempts. To quote Shakespeare of his recent visit to Notre Dame and the once hostile Euro crowd who now mobbed him, "He doth bestride the narrow world /Like a Colossus, and we petty men /Walk under his huge legs and peep about /To find ourselves dishonorable graves".
In sum, our weakest president is to be followed by our most audacious.
Biden's bumbling arrogance nearly destroyed the American military in Kabul. It ruined Western deterrence. It showered the creepy Taliban with a multibillion-dollar new windfall arsenal.
His lies, his incompetence, and, yes, his narcissism demoralized Americans and our allies, but at least ensured he would never reach 50 percent approval again.
What immediately followed from the Kabul nightmare was as bad or indeed worse: two theater-wide wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, appeasement of Iran, hammering of Israel, a nonexistent US border, 12 million illegal aliens, the hyperinflation of staples, the weaponization of the executive branch, Third-World lawfare, looting and shoplifting legitimized, spiking crime contextualized, and printing trillions of debased dollars normalized.
Biden sought to turn the once preeminent US military into a cruel cultural woke joke.
The trainwreck of the last four years was force-multiplied by Biden's own feebleness, masked by the most scandalous media-politico conspiracy of suppresson of it in US history.
But now there is a giddy sense that restoration and normalization are not just possible but on the horizon.
The truth now is set free, and it smothers the old lying denials about the origins of COVID, about the truth of diversity/equity/inclusion, about the naked greed of the Biden family syndicate, about the dementia of Joe, about the chauvinism of three sexes, and about the joy and momentum of the fracking, gun-toting, MacDonald's veteran and border hawk Kamala Harris.
No one fears or listens to the now defenestrated frauds and tiring dissimulators: the Bidens, a Fauci, Mayorkas, Garland, Milley, Austin, Jean-Pierre, Comey, Brennan, Clapper, or McCabe--and their old lies that Hunter is brilliant, Biden is fit as a field, no gain-in-function viruses, a bat caused COVID, the border is secure, Chinese army generals are more trustworthy than Trump, the laptop was Russian, Trump is a Putin puppet, and always their nauseating "I can't recall", " I don't remember", "I have no recollection", and "I am not at liberty to say".
Our allies are feeling more confident, our enemies scared.
The idea of an impending deterrent and reliable Trump administration has terrified Iran and helped collapse Syria. Israelis buoyant. Not so Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis.
In anticipation, the dollar reigns, the stock market stays strong.
Even Trump's traditional enemies, whether on Wall Street, Silicon Valley, or in corporate board rooms are whispering that they secretly are delighted with their old nemesis's dream of more and cheaper energy, less government regulation and taxation, and confidence again that everything is now possible when a government says an exhilarant yes to dreams rather than a crabby no to them.
Suddenly the woke bullies are on the run. The porous border really can be closed; illegal alien gangs and criminals will be sent packing.
The Left now invokes no Logan Act. They are instead relieved that the President-elect is now the virtual President--and their guy is gone.
Biden yelps now that his sins were not doubling down on them and sinning even more when he had the chance.
In other words, the recently impossible is not just possible again, but likely!
Each of us, at least for this brief window of opportunity, again feels, "I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul."
In case you missed it -- that's ICYMI, as the kids say -- Justine Bateman had some thoughts on 2025 as well.
Justine Bateman
@JustineBateman
Happy New Year's Eve.
2025 will be the year of the icebreaker ships.
The year systems rigid from greed and selfishness are broken.
The year The New starts to emerge.
The year we stop this fear-of-the-future mode we've been in since Y2K.
The year you wake up every morning and say out loud, like a little kid, "Something wonderful is going to happen today."
The year you fling yourself into the unknown and trust in a remarkable landing.
This is the year we make this happen.
No one can stop us.
I have never bought into the new year being a good year,,, until now.
What about you? Do you feel the "vibe shift"?