We are still in amazement and slight disorientation about the absolute explosion that happened in U.S. politics on Election Day. The sweeping victory of Trump and his party was a wonder to behold, especially because the expectations (as with 2016) was for an opposite result.
The victory is also a win for many causes and grassroots movements that have grown systematically over 30 years. They magically came together in a mere three months before the election and created a coalition that has rocked not only the United States but the entire world.
Incredibly, hardly anyone could have predicted this coming together at this speed at this time. Truly, many of the groups behind the shock did not even know they had aligned interests. Now they are presented with opportunities they likely never imagined they would have, and are dealing with all problems that confront a movement that rapidly moves from dissident to ruling status.
Let’s just consider some of these groups. Keep in mind that most of these groups previously inhabited separate sectors.
The homeschool movement started in the 1970s as fringe radicals but had grown to become a serious power in the 21st century. The graduates were winning top competitions in many realms and gaining admission to top universities. They came to define the term excellence in music, literacy, math, and many other fields. And they also gained political power as a focused interest group pushing for their rights.
This one is particularly strange because homeschooling went quickly from living under a cloud to being mandatory with school closures from 2020 onward. These closures recruited millions into the ranks as parents got a closer look at exactly what their kids were being taught at school. Outrage followed.
The medical freedom movement was adjacent but not the same and this group was concerned about issues of informed consent over vaccination, alternative therapeutics, home birthing, and all that is associated with medical and medicinal choice. This group was never left or right but simply demanded freedom. They found new followers in pandemic times when vaccine mandates suddenly invaded whole new sectors.
Similarly adjacent but different, was the food freedom movement that focused on healthy eating and food choices that were not corrupted by chemical additives and large-scale corporate agriculture. They celebrated small farmers, organic products, raw milk, fresh eggs, and ultimately regenerative agriculture that did not rely on chemical fertilizers and insecticides and so on.
This movement was mostly considered left-wing, but not necessarily because it was connected with the interests of small farmers and ranchers who have demanded the right to connect directly with their customers. They are dubbed by the media as right wing.
That is related to but not necessarily connected with small business concerns which have faced an astonishing barrage of impossible odds in the face of government-subsidized online commerce (which has ripped through the retail sector) together with ferocious foreign competition.
The retailers have struggled to survive while manufacturers have been hit from all sides. They watched as American manufacturing of all sorts flowed in only one direction: out. And this was entirely for two reasons: high regulations at home and the international strength of the dollar, owing to its status as the world’s reserve currency, guaranteed soaring trade imbalances forever, making domestic manufacturing darn near impossible.
The small-business movement connected to the labor movement that was nostalgic for a time when the United States made things and exported something other than oil and debt. And speaking of oil, the attacks on so-called fossil fuels built another resistance movement fed up with scientifically sketchy claims concerning climate change. The attempt to reset all energy production has been met with growing public incredulity.
In a different realm, we have seen something unusual in military families that have dealt with terrible pain left over from misbegotten adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. These are the most patriotic people but they see the need for a strong military to serve U.S. interests and our country and not be deployed for far-flung experiments in international nation-building.
They have also watched as the military has been misused for pointless wars, resulting in terrible injury and death, but then also deployed for purposes of social planning with DEI standards and absurd theoretics over gender switching. It’s all too much.
The movement of people deeply concerned about out-of-control illegal immigration seems disconnected but it grew robustly for 20 years. This is from a simple but profound insight. The attempt to manipulate political outcomes using demographic destabilization means losing one’s country forever. There is no reason for such a thing. This resistance movement exploded in size over the last 5 years.
This concern dovetails with a growing workers’ movement that became fed up with gains on Wall Street seeming to come at their expense, even as their income in real terms was flat and falling, to say nothing of their competition from undocumented workers. This drew more and more toward a gradual realization of their class connections with many of the other above groups.
The groups focused on seemingly arcane topics of money and its soundness gathered from the 1970s to oppose inflationary paper money and became an enormous movement over the decades, with a focus on gold and silver, and that mutated toward an inclusive Bitcoin, the profits from which have built industrial power and political influence. Following the worst inflation in 40 years, they too have found their moment in this election.
And their concerns were not unlike the anti-financialization movement that picked up after 2008. Even though Occupy Wall Street had a socialist ethos and goldbugs had a capitalist one, they have been vicariously united on the ideal: honesty in finance, truth in accounting, and transparency in governance.
We could go on to include every spin-off interest and other cultural movement concerning religion, family, pro-life, gun rights, and the restoration of traditional gender norms. The groups of dissidents from the hegemon number in the thousands with memberships in the tens of millions. And they have grown ever more sophisticated and radical over all this time.
None of them were fully aware of their united concern for overthrowing the powers that be simply because most of them have been kept apart by virtue of cosmetic differences of left and right.
What happened in 2020 was for the ages. Their common enemy revealed itself in the COVID lockdowns which empowered a select class of ruling elites in government, corporations, media, and on the global stage where they have immunized themselves against any citizen input. The outrage was slow to build against lockdowns because the shock was so enormous. The midterms of 2022 came too soon to put the coalition together.
In retrospect, the last three months of 2024 before the vote looked like a perfect moment of coming together. It was not easy and far from inevitable but the arrival of Tulsi Gabbard, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Elon Musk to the Trump effort brought not only millions of new votes but thousands of groups and associations to bear on the effort.
Mostly it brought together new consciousness, an awareness that they must all work together or hang separately. People who had been separated by bias for decades suddenly found a common enemy and a common answer, and then the magic happened.
I’ve never witnessed such citizen-based energy in my life nor been part of such an immensely powerful social and cultural movement rooted in determination and hopeful passion. The results spoke for themselves.
To be sure, the problems are only now beginning because there is absolutely no chance that the Trump administration can possibly deliver on all the dreams and expectations of the grassroots. In fact, the level of expertise of Trump support at the base far outstrips the awareness of the people tasked with the reform efforts.
The cries of betrayal are already in the air. That is to be expected but there are ways that the Trump team can get ahead of the revolution they unleashed through bold action and determined disregard of the orthodoxies of the status quo. It’s not an easy thing to do and there’s always the temptation to make excuses in the name of responsible governance.
There will never be a shortage of naysayers nor sycophants. The challenge for everyone will be to find that magical mental space of having hope, helping where possible, challenging when necessary, holding to a realistic patience, and applying every possible effort to improving the world insofar as circumstances present that opportunity.
