In a Christmas season of renewal, Trump’s boldness is bringing hopeful change

For Christians, Christmas is a holiday
about hope and redemption. In some ways, that’s been the story
of 2024, too.

It’s impossible not to notice that in
many quarters across the United States, things are returning
to something more like normal. That’s a hopeful change. 

After Donald Trump was elected president
for the first time in 2016, the response was, well, crazy.

“Don’t normalize Trump” was the battle
cry of Democrats, as they proceeded to de-normalize virtually
every institution in America. 

Universities offered their students
coloring books, emotional support dogs and therapy.

Professors announced that Trump should
be impeached before he even took
office. (Apparently just being Donald
Trump was a “high crime and misdemeanor” in their eyes.)

Restaurants denied service to Trump
appointees, the FBI and other branches of government cooked up
a phony
“Russian collusion” scandal and media
organizations went berserk.

Trump’s 2020 loss was followed by civil
and criminal lawfare in both state and federal jurisdictions
and the weaponization of the bureaucracy against him and his
supporters.

An FBI SWAT-style
raid on his home featured agents rifling
through Melania’s underwear and tossing bogus classified
document covers around for staged photos. 

The Jan. 6 committee in Congress was so
fair that it shredded mountains of documents and tried to
sneak legislation immunizing its members from investigation
into last week’s spending bill.

Meanwhile the press, which boosted Joe
Biden as he campaigned from his basement, subjected Trump and
his supporters to nonstop vilification, comparing him
repeatedly to Hitler.

The hysteria led to two
assassination attempts — and after a brief
pause, lasting about 15 minutes, they started calling him
Hitler again.

A lesser man would have folded under the
pressure. Just imagine how fast Mitt Romney would have tucked
his tail between his legs, apologized for existing and
Stockholm-Syndromed himself into being a Democratic Party
tool. (Well, OK, you don’t really have to imagine that.) 

I can’t think of a Republican since
Teddy Roosevelt who could have stood up to the onslaught.

To listen to the press, Trump didn’t
have a hope of winning re-election in 2024. 

Then the Biden mirage exploded with a doddering
debate performance, and Kamala Harris was installed in
his place. Now, the media said, Trump really didn’t
stand a chance.

But Trump never gave up hope, and never
gave up the fight — and his hopes were redeemed.

And now all kinds of Americans have hope
as well. 

For those of us who hope to slash
the administrative state, there’s a better chance of
doing so than there has been in 80 years. 

For those who hope to establish
diplomacy and national defense along rational lines, there’s
been progress
already. 

For those looking for an economy that
serves the working and middle class, things look brighter. 

For those tired of the politics of
racial and sexual division, there’s hope of substantial
reform. 

For those who want to return to a normal
immigration policy, there’s more than hope, there’s a
near certainty.

Be bold, wrote Goethe, and mighty forces
will come to your aid. 

Trump was bold, and was rewarded with
support from people like Bill Ackman, Elon Musk and Vivek
Ramaswamy, along with a majority of the American electorate.

Boldness brings hope elsewhere, too.

In Argentina, Javier Millei has slashed
government even more deeply than Trump is likely to. Argentina
has been rewarded with drastically reduced
inflation, a much stronger peso, and its first budget surplus
in many years. 

Critics thought it impossible, yet
Argentina has exited its recession; wages are up and poverty
is down. Foreign investors are showing interest. 

As Millei recently told a group of
visiting Americans, “Everyone assumed that we were going to
fail politically. Today they admit, through gritted teeth,
that they are surprised.”

In tiny El Salvador, President Nayib
Bukele has waged a ferocious war against criminal gangs,
returning security to its citizens after a fierce crackdown
that sent thousands to a new
“mega-prison.” 

Now the country, once one of the world’s
great murder capitals, could close the year with the lowest
homicide rate anywhere. Draconian (or “bold” if you prefer)
actions, but they worked.   

And perhaps mighty forces are coming to
Bukele’s aid, too: The president has announced a huge gold
discovery and plans to overturn a 2017 ban on metals mining to
take advantage of it. 

Could his country become both safe and rich? I
hope so.

In Europe, too, hope is dawning. 

Voters in France, Britain and Germany
seem tired
of their open-borders administrations, which treat rape
and murder by immigrants as minor offenses but imprison
citizens for politically incorrect tweets, all while running
their economies into the ground with useless Green
initiatives. Perhaps we’ll see some change there in 2025.

It’s a Christmas season in which hope
abounds. 

So here’s the lesson to be drawn from
this extraordinary year: Be bold, my friends, and work to see
your hopes redeemed.