Unexpected Victories
In 2016 I had little hope that much, if anything, would ever change for the better in our country, at least not without a miracle. My first opportunity to vote in a presidential election gave me the choice between McCain or Obama. My second opportunity gave me Romney or Obama. Romney solidified an idea that had been forming in my mind for a while: the GOP did not care about winning; if they did they wouldn’t have offered up those two RINOs as candidates. No. The GOP liked being the losers because then they could sit back comfortably jeering at the other side while doing nothing to stop the not-that-slow march towards communism. After that election, I switched my registration from Republican to Unaffiliated.
Looking back, this was the beginning of my recognition of the existence of the Uniparty. I wasn’t quite to the point that I believed most (if not all) of the GOP was actively working with the Democrats - two wings of the same vulture picking America apart - I just thought they were lazy cowards. But it was a beginning.
When the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare, in 2012, I fell into a deep depression. Well, deeper into depression. At that point, I was long-term unemployed. Obama’s economy was not kind to Millennials who graduated college in the middle of the recession. So-called entry-level jobs would typically require 3-5 years of experience, in that particular field and type of position. That was experience that I couldn’t get, because no one would hire someone without that experience. It was maddening. When that Supreme Court ruling came down, I was sitting at my computer, applying to jobs. When I heard the news I knew it would only destroy the economy - and my hopes of getting a job - further. I shut my laptop and cried in despair.
At that point, I decided to check out of politics. I was depressed and following politics only made it worse. There was no way I could keep going, keep trying to persevere in a seemingly hopeless situation if I kept listening to news about how America was being destroyed. For my own sanity, I had to stop. I mostly checked out for the rest of that year, only paying as much attention to the 2012 election cycle as I could stand. After Obama won his second term, I changed my political affiliation and going forward I almost entirely checked out of politics.
When the 2016 primary season began, I stayed checked out. Occasionally I would hear that yet another person had entered the Republican primaries; they sounded like a chaotic mess and I rolled my eyes. This was just more confirmation that the GOP was a joke. Then Trump came on the scene. I didn’t really know much about him, at the time, except that he seemed kind of ridiculous. Though in the back of my mind, I did remember that his ridiculous antics seemingly got under Obama’s skin when it came to the birth certificate issue. Even so, Trump entering the race still seemed like more confirmation that the Republicans were running a three-ring circus with no real intent to win, much less fix things.
Then Trump won the primary.
By this time I was in a better mental space. I also believed it was my civic duty to vote. So, as the election approached I started paying attention to what Trump was saying and found that I actually liked his policies and his plans to implement them. However, I had heard far too many politicians talk the good talk and make promises only for them to never follow through. I didn’t know if Trump would be the same. Still, there was a Supreme Court seat to be filled and the possibility of a second one being vacated (the reality of him getting to nominate three justices was a fever dream I could not have conceived of at that time). I knew if one thing could possibly change the direction of our country it was the Supreme Court. I didn’t know if Trump would follow through on that promise to appoint a justice who would uphold the Constitution. I hoped he would, but hope didn’t change the fact that he was an unknown. However, I absolutely knew that Hillary would follow through on her promises. So I voted for Trump.
I almost fully expected him to lose. I went to bed early on election night 2016. I may have been in a better mental space than I had been in 2012, but it wasn’t so good that I was willing to stay up all night to see Hillary Clinton elected president. When I awoke the next morning I checked my phone and was pleasantly surprised to see that Trump had won. But I was even more surprised at how happy I was. Giddy even. When I talked to my mom that morning, I could barely say the words “He won” because it seemed so impossible. I don’t think I’ll ever forget how I felt that November morning.
Going forward I had a renewed sense of hope and optimism. I’m not even sure why, since I still wasn’t fully sure about Trump. I wouldn’t say my vote for him was a true “Lesser of two evils” vote; I did like the promises he made and I didn’t just vote for him because he wasn’t Hillary (though that certainly didn’t hurt). But it was a vote cast with an amount of uncertainty to it. Yet despite that uncertainty - skepticism even - I felt a hope for our future that I had not felt in the entirety of my adult life.
I started paying attention to politics again. I realized that there was something more to the enthusiasm surrounding Trump and I wanted to figure out what I had missed. Perhaps unfortunately, perhaps not, I found YouTube commentators and online publications such as Steven Crowder, The Daily Wire, and Breitbart News, as well as other smaller, independent commentators. As much as I hate on the Con Inc. crowd today, they did help get me back up to speed on what was happening politically, at the time. And their various levels of trepidation regarding Trump appealed to my own trepidation (it was only later that I learned many of them had been Never-Trumpers and only changed their minds when it was the best move for their careers).
Before what I now call my Black-Pilled years, I had always tried to stay on top of what was happening in the country; I didn’t want to be an uninformed voter, no matter what terrible choices I was given at the ballot box. But this post-Trump victory was a whole new level of political interest. I obsessively went backward and devoured video after video of commentary and news regarding the weeks leading up to the election. Never before had I watched an inauguration, yet I watched Trump’s. I was enthralled. Everything he said in that speech felt like a breath of fresh air. He was promising the things I had always longed for! But saying things is still not the same as doing, so, despite my hope and growing excitement, skepticism remained. Until he started fulfilling promises he was just another politician unworthy of my trust.
The first few months of his presidency were rough. Like many, I didn’t like his now infamous Mean Tweets. They didn’t bother me personally (I actually found many of them amusing), but I worried about how they turned others off. Strategically they seemed unwise. It didn’t help that I was listening to Con Inc., at the time. They, of course, found it all very off-putting and this only served as proof, to me, that Trump was shooting himself in the foot.
Of course, at that time I didn’t have any notion of things like “Controlled Opposition” or even terms like “doomer.” Unbeknownst to me, Con Inc. was doing its pervasive job. In my case, though, it backfired. I started to feel that familiar stress brought on by constant negative news. Things like Ben Shapiro’s “Good Trump, Bad Trump” segments began to wear on me as they so often emphasized “Bad Trump” and so often seemed petty. Once again I felt the urge to disconnect. To tune out.
I didn’t go nearly as far as I did in 2012. I made the decision to stop listening to commentary for a month, but kept up with news. I read news articles (which of course I knew had their own spin on things) and watched Trump’s Twitter feed. And I started to notice a pattern. Every time Trump would do or say something controversial the media would go ballistic. Nothing new there. But then, while everybody was distracted by a misspelled Tweet or someone leaving the White House, something in the background would get done. Trump, facing open opposition from the media and somewhat more covert opposition from his own party, was weaponizing the media’s TDS to help him get his agenda through. To help him keep his promises.
I wish I could remember the exact things Trump was getting done during this time - the exact things that I was seeing that created a pattern - but I can’t. I didn’t realize that I was going through a moment that would lead to a complete change in how I would view not only Trump and politics, but the world. I was just seeing one often seemingly inconsequential thing after another after another until a pattern formed. Once is a coincidence, but when it happens over and over again, that is on purpose. That is the work of a Very Stable Genius.
This is when I finally let that hope and optimism have full rein and let go of my skepticism when it came to Trump. Well, let go of the skepticism as much as I could; I’m naturally a very skeptical person and my questioning nature is always bubbling just under the surface. But Trump had now earned enough trust that I was willing to wait and see rather than immediately criticize when he seemingly did something off the wall.
When that month-long hiatus was up, I went back to Con Inc. commentators and I was shocked. These men, these ostensibly high-IQ men whose job it is to analyze the news, didn’t see this pattern. They couldn’t see that his seeming incompetence was a smoke screen used to manipulate the Swamp. How could they not see this? It was so obvious! The only reasons I could come up with, at the time, were either that they were not, in fact, as smart as they seemed or they were blinded by pride.
I now have other thoughts as to why they couldn’t, and still can’t, see this pattern, but we won’t go into those today.
I didn’t stop listening to Con Inc. altogether at that point (though I did start gravitating more towards the ones who were seemingly solid Trump fans), but I certainly listened to them less than before and with a more critical ear. It wasn’t long after that that my mom started getting into this Q thing. She introduced me to it and while I resisted for a while, eventually, I got onboard the Q train and left Con Inc. in the dust (except to occasionally check on them to see what subversive narratives they are currently peddling).
Con Inc. could even be given partial credit for pushing me into the arms of Q and the Anons. I remember listening to Michael Knowles one day (probably the most Trump-friendly Daily Wire host). He opened his podcast by saying how he would like to talk about some important thing that people weren’t really paying any attention to, but he couldn’t because Trump said something on Twitter and the Media was going crazy over it. So instead of talking about the important thing, he had to spend his time defending Trump, who he wished wouldn’t do these things that distracted everybody.
At that moment I thought, “Isn’t this your podcast? Can’t you talk about whatever you want? You don’t have to dance just because the MSM says to.” And then I clicked over to a Q channel; I wasn’t even sure if I believed this whole Q thing yet (though I was leaning towards it being real), but I knew that the Anons talked about whatever they felt was important, rather than whatever the MSM was whining about. I could respect that, at the very least.
Q and the Anons changed my perspective on Trump even more. My eyes were open to how massive of a task Trump had chosen to undertake. How deep and wide and deviant the Swamp really is. By the time the 2018 midterms arrived, all my reservations about Trump were distant memories.
When the 2020 election came along, I was certain Trump would win, despite the fraud machine that was clearly being built up. As the election night went on and the counts slowed and then stopped, I - like many in MAGA - went to bed annoyed and frustrated, but confident the media would stop delaying the inevitable and that he would be recognized as the winner the next day. And, like virtually everyone else, I woke up to see evidence of the now infamous 3 AM ballot dumps.
The chaos of the following weeks was a blur of frustration and desperation. Evidence of fraud piled up, but to no avail. Justice was not served. The voice of the People was suppressed and an illegitimate regime was installed.
The week of Biden’s inauguration was a week of soul-searching. I definitely had a few panic moments as I wondered how we could ever get our country back after this. I spent a lot of time in prayer that week and the panic subsided, even if I still had no clue how things could be fixed. I believed (and still do) that God put Trump in office and He didn’t do so to tease us. One way or another, I believed Trump would get back in office and the Cabal would face justice.
That faith has sustained me during these last four years. It has been bolstered, from time to time, by outside forces. Jon Herold’s Devolution theory was one such force. Various wins, such as the overturning of Roe v. Wade, also helped.
Make Art Good Again has also played a role in keeping up that faith. I believe God called me to start this publication. A publication that focuses on what needs to happen on a cultural level - both within MAGA and Christian communities as well as in society at large - for us to maintain the win that I believe is in the hopefully not-too-distant future. The only way we keep the cycle of subversion from starting all over again is if we have a culture that teaches future generations to love God and Country and to be vigilant against evil infiltrations. Why would God call me to focus on writing with a post-win future in mind if there is no win to come?
I understand that this is a deeply personal reason for faith and hope. I don’t expect others to have hope just because I say I’ve felt called to write about the culture. Nonetheless, this has been a major reason that I have had and continue to have hope for the future.
Going into the 2024 election I had a very different attitude than in 2020. I was excited, but not because I actually thought Trump’s win would be acknowledged on election night or even in the week following. I fully expected them to blatantly cheat just as they did in 2020 and 2022. I expected a fight. But I was still excited because I was ready, and I believed the People were ready, to move on to the next phase of taking our country back. And even though I fully expected them to cheat, I also fully expected that this time, somehow, Trump would ultimately prevail and still end up as President next year.
When the news that Trump had won Pennsylvania dropped on election night, I was surprised. I kept waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under my feet. Even though my head bobbed from exhaustion, I made myself stay up to watch Trump give his victory speech. I wanted the assurance that he would take the narrative win before I could go to sleep. Even still, when I went to bed I was half expecting early morning shenanigans to ensue. Much like in 2016, the first thing I did when I woke up was grab my phone, this time to be sure nothing had changed.
Prior to November 5th, I was certain we would have to fight an uphill battle all the way until Inauguration Day. I didn’t think enough changes in election systems had occurred since 2020. And considering how blatant and in our faces they were about both the 2020 and 2022 steals, I had no reason to think they would not be just as blatant this time around.
However, I must admit that at least part of the reason for this belief was likely emotional self-preservation. I was steeling myself for what I suspected would be an exhausting and bumpy few months. Not to mention for the inevitable onslaught of gaslighting and gloating from the media and Leftists. I was also ready for the blame games that I was certain Con Inc. would play - just as they had in 2020 and 2022 - putting blame on a lack of voter turnout or certain voter demographics.
Now that we are past election day I can see just how important it was to secure that win on November 5th. If 2020 and 2022 showed us anything it was how difficult (impossible even) it is to fight the uphill battle from being declared the “losers.” I still fully expect the Swamp to fight back, between now and Inauguration Day (and beyond). But having the media and politicians acknowledge Trump’s win is important. Now, whatever their plans, they are the ones who have to fight an uphill battle.
Of course, even setting aside whatever opposition the Enemy will raise, both to keep Trump out of the White House and to thwart his success once he’s in there, we still have work to do. Overwhelming the cheat still means the cheat happened. And while fixing our elections is a cornerstone to getting our country back, it is but one of many corrupt areas that need to be cleaned out.
I began writing this piece on the morning after the election as a means to sort out my own thoughts and feelings about this unexpected result. I expected to write a quick, thousand-word reflection, but clearly it got away from me. In those first 24 hours after the election, I didn’t quite know how I felt. I was happy, but I did not experience the same level of giddiness and relief that I felt in 2016. Part of me was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Another part of me was very much focused on the obstacles (both known and unknown) we still need to overcome. As I finish up writing this piece, a week after the election, I feel more celebratory than I did on November 6th, even as I remain aware that we still have a long way to go.
To me, this election victory feels like the Rohan defeating Sarumon’s forces at Helm’s Deep, in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. This was a pivotal (thankfully non-kinetic) battle to be won. And we, like the Rohan, can and should celebrate the win. But we still have the Battle of The Pelennor Fields ahead of us.
So here’s to the victories, both expected and unexpected. May there be many more on the road to making America great again!