Americans Are Ungovernable...Thank God
Condoleezza Rice famously lamented, or perhaps proclaimed with admiration, that Americans are ungovernable. Yes. Yes, we are.
The British learned that when they set their former countrymen loose on this land, beginning with the landing at Plymouth Rock, and thought we’d remain good Englishmen and just sit down and shut up. In spectacular fashion, we did not. Donald Trump taps into that ungovernable-ness in us, and for those who do not fear it, we love him for it. And hopefully, those who seek to destroy our country will learn this lesson all over again.
For those who do not understand the phenomenon of Donald Trump, what follows is a small essay explaining the chord he has struck in the American body politic, even among those who are not so sure about him. He is ungovernable, and he reminds us that we are, too. And thank God we are, and are beginning to show signs of remembering this.
Recently, I saw a clip of an interview between Vivek Ramaswamy and Piers Morgan. The interview picked up with Vivek asking Piers if he would be upset or offended if Vivek pointed something out to him.
The essence of what Vivek said is the essence of what the rest of the world both envies and loathes about Americans: our insistence on adherence to the First and Second Amendments, which make all of the amendments that follow work. We say and do as we please. We confront our government when we think it has gone haywire.
At the end of the day, the Second Amendment is not about skeet shooting. It is about defense — defense from enemies foreign and domestic. This makes the rest of the world uncomfortable with Americans. And old Piers smiled self-deprecatingly for the camera and admitted that, yes, he really is uncomfortable with Americans and perhaps doesn’t really like us, as he professes to do, except from afar, because we are a bit scary.
Certainly, Trump and his support have made elements of our government uncomfortable. The full-throated support of the First and Second Amendments certainly hasn’t done anything to allay that discomfort. But the truth is that Americans are not uncomfortable with the First Amendment. We celebrate it. We are not uncomfortable with the 2nd Amendment, even those of us who do not own guns; we recognize its necessity. And we are quite comfortable that the First and Second give power to the our constitutional republican system. They are how we can be ungovernable.
Unfortunately, some in America are very uncomfortable with our ungovernable nature and our insistence on saying and doing what we want. Those folks want Americans to be compliant, governable, modeled after European submission and passivity. Believing that they are better than the ungovernable among us, they want a European capitalist-socialism, where the rich live on yachts and in luxurious homes, go to fancy restaurants, and comport themselves like the royals they discarded years ago, while the peasants — everybody else — eke out a government-supported existence at the sufferance of their betters. Those people are not comfortable with Trump or the campaign or the First and Second Amendments, or really any of our constitutional framework, because they know that this system allows Americans — un-transformed — to be a bulwark against the old world of a decayed and degenerate Europe. And they know that these Amendments are the prime tool to mitigate against such a transformation.
These Europhile globalist and one-world socialists hide their faces and their deeds from the light, pulling the strings of weaklings like Joe Biden and elevating the weak links of our society: the beta males; the über-alpha, faux-educated females with degrees in “communications” and “studies” who hate men; the mentally ill; the depressed; the forlorn; the unsuccessful, whiny losers who could not get a date in high school and have never gotten over it; and their fellow lunatics and enablers, who wish to “fundamentally change America,” who are hoping we Americans forget our ungovernable nature and accede to this European model of socialism, submission, confusion, narcissism, and nihilism.
But we have not forgotten everything about who were are. Trump came along and reminded many Americans that we are the living human embodiments of our constitutional system, which allows us to be ungovernable but live within the bounds of the law. Our entire system is one of limitation of the power of government so that our citizens are governed only in keeping with our desire to be un-governed. The entire Trump campaign is an exhortation to remember ourselves, our freedom, and our independence, and what we have sacrificed to secure our liberty and to be buoyed by America’s past achievements and to look to its promising future.
When Trump says Make America Great Again, he reminds us of who we were, who we are, and what we can yet become. He reminds us that we are different, and that because of that difference, we will not succumb to decay and despair. He reminds us of America’s reality and promise at the same time. We have it in us to roll up our sleeves and create ourselves and this nation, every day, all over again. He reminds us that we can do — we can fix it. We have done great things, and we can do great things again.
Let us continue to remain the ungovernable, somewhat scary creatures we are.
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