Penn Raine: Party tonight at Mar A Lago!

One November afternoon in 2016 I came out of a three-hour meeting shocked to find that the world’s greatest power had elected the world’s most obnoxious man as its President.

I expected the USA to sink immediately beneath a tsunami of blood. I’m not exactly sure why, just that it seemed that the democratic process had slumped to the level of a TV game show. Of course, that that was before Ardern was elected.

I say I was shocked, but I was not surprised. It was obvious to anyone who listened to anything out of the States beside Oscar acceptance speeches, that John and Jane Doe wanted something done about the creep of the rust belt, the war on traditional values and the deluge of illegal migrants through its porous border.

The idea that prosperous nations should take responsibility for citizens of failed and failing states has become a shibboleth of the Left and to deny it is to invite lazy insult from those who carelessly toss around terms such as ‘human rights’, ‘oppression’, and ‘genocide', and although illegal migration affects fewer Americans than the economy it is doubtlessly the match that lit the fire under Trump’s supporters this year.

While in the grip of what Sky News Australia calls ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ I waited for the deluge which never quite came, at least not because of Trump’s policies.

Under his watch no new wars were enjoined and efforts made to extricate the US from existing ones. He responded to middle America’s dismay over the heartland’s economic slide and removed taxes and regulations to restore jobs and capital. Probably most notorious in the eyes of liberals he reaffirmed that vile old notion of national pride. Trump required US allies to pay their share of their own security and controversially vowed to limit illegal migrants.

His loudly expressed love for America, its history and traditions sounded a dangerous note to Californian and East Coast lefty liberals who had cheered on eight years of Obama’s ‘apology tour’, and from there it was a simple linguistic shuffle for his enemies to align him with nationalistic dictators like Hitler and Putin.

Between 2016 and 2020 I became aware that my symptoms of derangement were less noticeable, that from time to time the Don even made me laugh, and that - if you can ignore Hollywood - the USA was still a viable thing. I’m not suggesting that I’d have invited him around for a drink – after all he was a known bottom-pincher and anyway I’m not a golfer.

And then came covid. Had it not been for the virus slipping out of the Wuhan lab and thence around the globe I’m sure the Kamala Harris campaign would have tried to hang that on him too. Just the same, he was punished for it, like other Western leaders have been and several that are yet to be- Australia and Canada, looking at you.

So in 2020 the MSM, lefty celebs and Big Pharma helped the Democrats pull off a cheeky move that put a confused and bewildered elderly gent into the Oval Office.

Three years later New Zealand voters showed their weariness with the ideological whining and nanny-speak of the Left which was characterised specifically by lockdowns, MIQ and mandated vaccines. In the wider societal arena it was a vote against the ‘my truth’ of identity politics and the slipping away of the democratic process.

But here’s the real surprise.

If you ask a selection of voters in this country who gave Labour the thumbs down and invite their views on Trump, most of them will immediately parrot the old tropes from CNN, BBC, New York Times et al about his fascist plans for a Fourth Reich.

At the same time these New Zealanders will probably say that they oppose biological men taking sporting medals from women, that they believe in rational scientific truths about the cause of, for example, earthquakes and that they are not the actions of angry gods.

They think that people who support abortion up until full term have lost their moral compass.

Puzzled as to why our Coalition has not yet accepted the Cass Report, they will affirm that chemical castration and mutilation of children is not the mark of a healthy society. They will say that a woman who signs up for a lifelong drug cocktail of male hormones, marries a man and becomes pregnant, is not giving her in utero child any chance of a healthy life.

These voters may be wondering how hysterical trans activists have thought through the logic of marching to support Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthi rebels, and why students enjoying the opportunity to study at our previously well-regarded tertiaries want to obliterate the Middle East’s sole democracy, Israel, and still be considered tolerant and educated.

They would much rather that judges sentenced people according to their crime not according to their ethnicity.

They will be uneasy that the NZ Law Commission is still pursuing Kiri Allen’s hate speech laws whereby calling former Olympian Caitlyn Jenner a four-letter word is ok but to call her ‘Bruce’ could have them face a criminal charge.

And yet all these issues are supported and promoted to a greater or lesser extent by Kamala’s Democrats and opposed by Trump’s Republicans.

As they say, go figure.

Meanwhile, Harrison Ford, Oprah and De Niro will be sulky that not enough of their fellow Americans obeyed their hectoring messages about how they should vote and will be amplifying their messages to resist. (Left resistance wise and good, Right resistance insurrectionist and criminal.)

And the winners who bothered to listen to the people will be partying up at Mar-a-Lago.

Penn Raine is an educator and writer who lives in NZ and France.