Champions Not Lost
The combined one-two punches of recent events have been hard to take, first a stolen election then the loss of a dear friend. Both events seem to have affected me in a deeply personal way, I suspect even more so than the average conservative. Perhaps as a foil for my forlorn emotions, I took to reading a copy of Ivanhoe that had been in the family for ages but that I had never read. It’s as beautifully written as it is at times baffling to understand in the olde English language. But its lessons on man’s capacity for bigotry and chivalry are as instructive as they are timeless.
It started me thinking on the subject of heroes and champions. Ivanhoe is the champion for Rebecca in justice and of the Saxon nation against their Norman overlords. He defends the honor of the oppressed as well as the freedom of his people. But it seems to me that champions are more than just heroes. A hero is someone who demonstrates courage, sometimes once sometimes repeatedly, perhaps in battle, or as a first responder, or someone who has saved a stranger from certain death. While such brave deeds may also be true of many champions, not all heroes are champions. Along with heroism, champions also represent a cause, usually in the form of an idea or a movement. It is this cause that motivates them and is the life behind their actions. While many of a champion’s accomplishments may be considered courageous, the actions themselves are part of an all-encompassing cause. Due to their unique talents and abilities, they quickly become identified as the persons at the vanguard of advancing the cause.
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The human experience is replete with such figures. In the Bible there is David, who after defeat of the colossus Goliath, would go on to become the champion of the nation of Israel and the establishment of Jerusalem as the city of God. In mythology we have Ulysses returning after a twenty-year absence to rescue his wife and to reclaim his kingdom. In history, the Scots have William Wallace as liberator. In more modern times, we have Abraham Lincoln as unifier and emancipator and Winston Churchill as the Last Lion against Fascism.
All of these stood head and shoulders above merely the brave. They became champions of existential causes with unwavering perseverance under pressures so great that most normal men would have buckled. They did not weigh the chances for success, they weren’t dissuaded by the odds stacked against them, they simply knew what had to be done and moved forward. What sets champions apart from merely the brave is that they defy convention in what is considered normal, or even humanly possible, and they do it repeatedly, for prolonged periods of time and, in so doing, they set a new threshold for what is possible. Champions are preternatural. They do things that are beyond what is typically considered possible, yet that are not unnatural or supernatural. Their lives, their unique abilities, their emergence onto the scene not only redefine what is considered humanly possible, they also change forever the way things are done. They are disrupters.
It appears that champions possess three attributes that eventually propel them to greatness. They have a passion for excellence in some area of their lives, but not necessarily in the immediate area of their ultimate success; they have experienced significant adversity in their lives more than once or for longer periods of time; and, they have a unique set of life experiences including upbringing and innate talents. These abilities and experiences honed by humility in the cauldron of aversity ultimately forge a character of individual who will be the exact right person for the time in which they live. Such champions challenge the status quo, rise to the level of super human personalities, and eventually change how things are done forever.
Which brings me to the reason for my recent melancholy. America, and by extension the world, has lost two of its greatest champions in the past few months. Both of our champions have been taken out of action, one lost forever, the other sidelined, maybe forever. They are men so iconic they can be referred to using only their first names. Our Rush has gone on to be with the Lord and the Donald has been unseated as president of the United States. It’s been a bad few months for the conservative movement.
February 17th was the day that radio died. Kathryn Limbaugh announced to the world that her husband had passed away after his battle with cancer. His voice and his American message saved AM radio in a time when it was dying on the airwaves, and now that voice has been silenced forever. Talk radio, AM radio, radio as we know it will never be the same. Last week I drove to Florida for work. It was my first business trip in over 30 years where I would not be able to tune into a local AM station and find Rush. For me, even a faint static filled few minutes of Rush on some distant fading radio station was better than anything else on the radio. Rush was the lone voice to which we looked for unequivocal leadership in the conservative movement. As he often jested, “It’s not said until I say it” and, “After I say it what else is there to be said?” We looked to Rush in times of hardship, tragedy and political upheaval to make sense of the news of the day and to give us hope in times of despair. He truly was our “guiding light in times of murkiness, tumult, organized chaos and even the good times too.” He never disappointed us.
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Rush was a champion in every sense of the word. He had a passion for radio from early childhood and a desire to be the best radio DJ personality he could be. He had unique talents in humor, wit, and an intellect coupled with an insatiable thirst for learning. While an icon himself, he was the ultimate iconoclast of leftist ideology both in its principles as well as its personalities. He possessed a wisdom and insight which he used to unmask individuals and political events. He routinely demonstrated his intelligence not just by making the complex easy to understand for his listeners, but maybe more because he made it sound so natural, so straight forward, dare I say…easy. Like watching a pro golfer hit a ball 190 yards right onto the green. Yet there was adversity along the way, fired seven times during his career, multiple marriage failures, health problems and even a bout with addiction to pain killers. Still, Rush never lost his passion for excellence or his belief in himself. He continued on through it all to be the daily voice of conservative Americans as well as freedom loving people all over the world.
Rush’s success would spawn an industry of local and national conservative personalities on radio and television. But he was the first, he was the best, for 32 years until his death. He was the champion for our conservative ideals, dreams and values. He was preternatural.
Like Rush, the Donald is a man of passion. He has a passion for building the best of whatever it is and, perhaps more eponymously, for self-promotion. In either case he does them well. But he has many talents as well including being able to focus on singular issues while the world around him is in chaos. He is also a master at marketing, specifically branding, not only with his own name but also in the naming of others. My personal favorite is his ability to get things done, not take no for an answer, and to challenge conventions. But there has also been enough adversity, the loss of his brother to alcoholism, failed marriages, and the near collapse of his real estate empire.
November 4th was the day that democracy died. President Trump was denied his bid for re-election. In the early hours of the morning in four separate democrat counties in four battleground states in which President Trump had a commanding lead, hundreds of thousands of mystery votes were counted by democrat county officials in the four counties, just enough to put Biden over the top in each case. The events that followed over the course of the next 3 months would reveal the extent of the media-deep state apparatus, the true nature of the ruling class elite, and the collusion between Trump-hating Republicans and every single Democrat in leadership anywhere in the country. In a word, it revealed to us how unbelievably hated Donald Trump was by almost everyone in Washington, even by those who owed him their positions of prominence. They hate him because they fear him. They fear him because he is a disrupter. He alone poses the greatest threat to their lives of luxury, power, and entitlement.
The powers that be in Washington administer four trillion dollars a year at a minimum. The power, influence and prestige that stems from dispensing this much money is staggering. Every year there are tens of thousands of people in Washington whose sole reason for existence is to dispense some portion of that 4 trillion dollars to some beneficiary, i.e., constituent group. The more money they are responsible for administering, the greater their personal power, prestige and personal privileges. The more largess they administer the more fashionable the parties they are invited to, clubs they belong to, and societies they are asked to join. They send their children to the best private schools, eat at the fanciest restaurants and are even immune to the normal consequences of the law itself. Their futures and the lives of their children are secure. “Just go to the right eastern schools which we’ll get you into, join the right fraternities and sororities, and be associated with the right causes along the way.” Mommy and Daddy and the beltway system will take care of the rest.
Which is why they hate the Donald with such vehemence. They hate him because he is a self-made titan and not beholden to any of them for his success. He did not go to their schools of choice, he does not belong to their inner circles and he has not paid them obeisance by scaling the ladder of political leadership in the obligatory way. He is the ultimate outsider preaching a message that is anathema to the ears of denizens of the swamp. His message so resonated with the American people that he defeated arguably the best field of Republican primary candidates ever and then took down the most vaunted and battle-hardened dynasties of modern American politics, the Bushes and the Clintons. Yet he did something even worse. He not only defeated the Bushes and Clintons, he humiliated them in the process. He made Jeb Bush out to look like just another lethargic, stolid politician. The heir apparent to the Bush dynasty was effectively eliminated from the race after the first debate, 100 million dollars and all. In the general election Trump took out the more treacherous Clinton machine by unabashedly calling Hillary out for exactly who she is, a corrupt career politician with no real accomplishments to show for her extensive public life. The political ruling class forgave Obama for beating Hillary 8 years prior because he was black, because he was historic, because he was clean and articulate. Donald Trump is none of these things to them. He actually says what is on his mind. He actually speaks the truth. He actually calls a spade a spade and that can’t be tolerated. It’s not right. It’s not sophisticated. It’s not demur. It’s just not presidential. They hate him because he just doesn’t deserve to be president, only their people do.
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They hate him because he’s a leader. He has shown them and the world what it means lead. He has shown them that if you put the interests of America and its people first, just how much can get done in a short period of time. Criminal Justice Reform, Right to Try, VA Reform, and moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, all highlight the ruling class elite’s combined and complete ineffectiveness. For the members of the establishment, the bureaucracy and the ruling class, the ‘process’ has a life of its own and is never measured against, or to be confused with, achievement or solutions. Lip service and intentions suffice for progress.
But for all of these transgressions, I suspect they hate him most because he is the champion of the American people. The people that pay taxes, want the best for their families and believe that America is inherently a force for good in the world. They are the makers, the people that make this country work. The ones who have been systematically maligned and buffeted into submission over 30 years by the ruling elites in favor of their most-favored constituency group, the takers. Donald Trump has become the people’s champion. Like Rush before him, he has become the champion for conservative ideals, dreams and values. And the people LOVE him for it. His is iconic.
The elites saw the rallies night after night and grew greener than the Grinch with each one. Green-ness must ooze off them even now. The chants of “We love you” surely drive them up walls they don’t even believe in. Donald Trump is a celebrity president even more popular than Obama. Much of Obama’s appeal was contrived and they all played along, but the love for Donald Trump is visceral. He has a connection with the hearts of everyday Americans and it’s obvious to the elite. It is also a testament to their collective 30 years of mismanagement of our nation’s best interests that a complete political novice can capture the presidency AND the love of the American people seemingly overnight. The irony is that their self-serving attitudes and lack of efficacy made the love affair between President Trump and the American people possible. The jealousy of the elitists is palpable. They know that all of them put together could not draw one stadium full of fans for one night in what Donald Trump does multiple times a day, day in and day out, with twice as many waiting outside hoping to get in.
The Donald may have “lost” the Presidency, but he is not lost. He is a champion. His speech at CPAC proved that he is still very much a disrupter and in command of the Republican Party, the hearts of the people and himself. It may have taken an international globalist cabal, the deep state, the Supreme Court, the Republican Party, the Democrat Party, and all of Big Tech working together to remove him from office, but champions sometimes get knocked down. Champions aren’t defined by setbacks, they aren’t weighed down by the odds against them, they move forward and do what they need to do.
In the early 1990’s just a few years into Rush’s national radio program, he read to the audience a moving letter from retired President Reagan which concluded with President Reagan writing, “I now pass the mantle of conservatism to you Rush.” Rush has now left us as well but, like President Reagan, will live on in his speeches, messages, and words of wisdom. Thankfully, he lived long enough to usher in the age of a new champion of conservatism. Donald Trump is America’s champion. The mantle has passed.