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Whether we like it or not -and you and I, my conservative friend, could not be more upset about it- the chances of having a second Trump term (because of what the President himself denounced as alleged electoral fraud) are remote today. The United States stand before the abyss of a socialist government. Biden will head -if the unlikely surprise does not prevent it in January- a social-communist administration, or social-democratic, or socialist democratic, but socialist in the end for Biden (and revolutionary Marxist for Harris) that will perfectly represent the new Democrat Party.
And without yet having everything secured -Trump is not giving up and together with his GOP supporters he will fight to the end, however remote the hope- as is traditional among socialists, the two donkey wings are already in a knife fight for the control an administration on which everything is riding for them.
The ultra-left (with Harris as its first recruit) already demands a much greater participation in the administration. They didn’t care much about compromising their strategic choices in Georgia. Do they trust that what they first claimed didn’t happen, but as it did, will not be “enough” to twist results, or will be repeated again? Perhaps. Or perhaps they will make another of their early demands. A government by executive decrees over a Senate with a conservative majority, which its most vociferous representatives are strongly demanding.
What used to be the traditional -and most corrupt- left-wing of the old Democrats (now social democratic with a new, organized, powerful and influential ultra-left wing) is clinging to control the administration by taking over more and more of the discourse – and objectives – of its own ultra-left. But in its own swampy way.
Everyone is betting on imposing a form of socialism on the United States, within a decade or two. But each wing is betting on its own form of socialism. They believe they have come to the White House – before stepping foot in it – to hold it for decades. They are betting on employing the most terrible intelligence weapons – formerly used exclusively against the worst external enemies – against the conservative opposition at home.
They dream is to crush the conservative movement within -and around- the GOP in order to impose their rhinoceroses –I insist on calling them rinos, because the categories that the art of political caricature has given to the analysis of the reality of the United States are more accurate and useful than those of much of today’s academics –and to transform the republic of the checks and balances of the Founding Fathers into a clientele democracy of demagogues. This is the first indispensable step on the road to socialism.
It’s not impossible, even when the United States was -and still is- an exceptional political idea and practicing Republic above all, and much more than a democracy. And that is precisely why it is a successful democratic republic like no other. One that from the first moment claimed, among the rights that justify its very existence – and legitimacy – to be a government based on the right to the pursuit of happiness. From this, more than from any other aspect, its exceptionality is born.
The search for happiness is possible, only and exclusively in a society capable of tolerating that each one pursues it as each one considers bet, as long as this pursuit does not harm third parties, no matter how much we like or dislike their way, so different from ours. It is not easy to live up to that, nor was the United States always so, but since it was first expressed, progress towards that has been unstoppable, painful and difficult, but unstoppable. It has made a difference in American political culture.
And that’s what that ultra-left has been attacking for decades from universities, the press and entertainment – and also art. Less influential than spectacular, it accidentally added to its ranks the great technologies, because in the universities they had already indoctrinated those who make them work.
We face censorship, cancellation, the imposition of a single and obligatory vision of “happiness” for all. Fiercely intolerant of dissent. Openly totalitarian imposition of what everyone must believe, feel and think. Consensus of an elite of self-proclaimed – and false – moral superiority. It started without us noticing it for a long time. It spread and came to impose itself as a closed matrix in which lives today -against reality itself- almost half the country, something that makes dialogue and real diversity impossible to achieve where it really counts.
Guillermo Rodríguez is a professor of Political Economy in the extension area of the Faculty of Economic and Administrative Sciences at Universidad Monteávila, in Caracas. A researcher at the Juan de Mariana Center and author of several books // Guillermo es profesor de Economía Política en el área de extensión de la Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Administrativas de la Universidad Monteávila, en Caracas, investigador en el Centro Juan de Mariana y autor de varios libros