The 2018 Midterms: How Did We Get Here and What’s Next?

The day of reckoning is finally here after two years of psychological warfare aimed at President Donald Trump and at us – the deplorables – by the mainstream media, the Deep State, the Democrats, and the rest of the Establishment. If the Democrats succeed in wrenching one or both houses of Congress from Republican control, it will put the Trump Administration totally on the defensive for the next two years. The president’s unfinished agenda will likely be stopped in its tracks. The situation will finally be a perfect matchup uniting the MSM, the Deep State, the other nefarious players, and one or maybe both houses of the Congress – key branches of the government that will be under tight Democrat control with unchecked investigative and subpoena powers. The last day of campaigning yesterday with President Trump tirelessly crisscrossing the country for a final series of high-energy rallies reminded me of the day before the 2016 elections.

That day, too, was marked by both hope and existential angst when one imagined that the widely predicted outcome of Hillary Clinton’s election might come to pass. Last Sunday’s New York Times headline was emblematic: “A Nation in Turmoil Prepares to Deliver a Verdict on Trump.” The fact is that the nation is in turmoil largely because of the MSM. Many of the issues that have emerged and been flogged to death are nothing more than emotional triggers. Their purpose is to obscure larger more important concerns – like the existential threats posed by Jihad, Red China, and massive illegal immigration, the loss of our constitutionally protected rights including to free speech, and so many more. The latest looming illegal alien caravan invasion for example – a major lead story in recent weeks – should never have happened. If it did, it could have been dealt with swiftly and definitively without the MSM dragging it out and making it a big polarizing issue to help the Democrats. But of course it is another in a series of PsyOps – made to guilt trip the white middle class population, especially “educated white independent voters in the suburbs” – the swing voters who will hold the balance of power this year, as we have been told. The further descent of the MSM – especially but not limited to CNN and MSNBC – into a sea of total lies and left wing propaganda is mind boggling. Nothing like it has ever been seen before. The complete debasement of almost all of the nation’s media and journalism – these purveyors of Fake News – truly has become, as President Trump has insisted, an “Enemy of the People.” The rise to prominence of collectivists, socialists, Marxists, and Communists, like the prominent candidates running as Democrats for major offices in Florida, Georgia, Texas, Arizona, New York, and elsewhere, also represents an ominous new and unprecedented threat level to our future – if not in this election then very soon afterwards down the road, as in 2020. We’re at the end point – the critical mass – of the century-long Long March to Marxism – socialism – and now Communism. The Democrats have been on this road for a long time. Twenty-five years ago, Hillary Clinton was put in charge of turning what was left of our free market health care system into a government-run socialist medicine control grid. To say then that there was communist influence in this strategy – you would have been labeled a crazy. Today, Marxist influence on one of the two major political parties couldn’t be any clearer. I spent much of the past summer investigating Occupy ICE and its supporters, including the Democratic Socialists of America who have openly penetrated the Democratic Party. They are Marxists who teach Marxism in online courses at their official website! Their most popular DSA member, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, has been identified as “the future of the Democratic Party” by Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez. The platform of most of the Democrats running for office this year is almost identical to the DSA’s. Are you OK with this? Most readers of this article aren’t, but polls show a majority of Millennials are fine with it – over 50% support socialism and 7% actually prefer communism. God Help Us. Then we have the race-baiting and identity politics perfected by the Democrats. This tactic has been in full force this year in races all over the country. Oprah Winfrey, for example – arguably the most influential single media figure in the country -- recently threw her all in with identity politics and the socialist candidate running for governor of Georgia, Stacy Abrams. And in so doing, Oprah is maybe testing the waters for her own possible run for president in 2020. Don’t think it can’t happen. I can foresee a ticket of Oprah and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) as her V. P. Wouldn’t that be representative of the new, transformed America? Then there is the increasing threat of violence that is continuing to expand. Violence is a classic tactic employed throughout history by hardcore leftists, Communists, Bolsheviks, Maoists, Castroites, and Chavistas in Venezuela. The fact is, it is already unsafe in many areas of the country to be visible in public as a conservative, Trump-supporting, Christian white person. It is open season on what is now this new minority. Where will that lead, since it’s growing worse? And the Democrats have openly advocated their unhinged followers to get in the face of Republicans and make their lives miserable. Whites are now the new N-word in this country. Last week, innocuous handmade signs that were posted in a Texas neighborhood reading “It’s OK to be White” were treated like a hate crime. Police said they were searching for those responsible so they can be charged and prosecuted. No more I’M OK, YOU’RE OK. Similar signs popped up at Tufts University near Boston. Again, officials there decried them as hate speech and said they will not be tolerated. At this point it’s useful to consider the work of Colin Flaherty whose most recent article on “Black Violence: The Terror That Dare Not Speak Its Name” was published in A T on Sunday November 4. It lays out the unpleasant politically incorrect truths of the matter in stark detail. Meanwhile, when considering that writing “It’s OK to be white” is now a hate crime, a student at a public high school in Chula Vista, California that serves almost entirely illegal aliens, some of them as old as in their early 20s, painted a huge mural visible from the street. It depicted President Trump being assassinated by an Aztec warrior’s spear decapitating him. No problem there. The student took credit for the work and she was widely praised. Three years and five months ago, after seven years of President Obama’s toxic regime, a positive chapter in the transformation of America finally began. It was mid-June 2015 when Donald J. Trump descended the escalator at Trump Tower in NYC and declared his candidacy. During the next year, during multiple debates with the other 16 candidates, numerous campaign appearances, and primary elections and caucuses, candidate Trump was given a lot of attention and free airtime by the MSM. He was interviewed frequently by CNN and MSNBC, and his questioners pretty much held their fire. They were mostly cordial, respectful interviews. It’s possible the media thought that by building him up – someone who they assumed could never be elected – they’d throw a monkey wrench into the Republicans’ plans for 2016. That changed after Trump won the Republican nomination in the summer of 2016. The high point of the media’s efforts to take him down came when the secret Access Hollywood recording from a decade earlier, showing Trump in a bad light and designed to ruin his reputation with women voters, was suspiciously released less than a month before the election. Meanwhile, the previous administration, as early as late spring 2016, when it must have known that Trump had more than a sliver of a chance to be elected, began a sophisticated illegal clandestine campaign to set him up for a fall if he did somehow manage to do the impossible and win the White House. The conspiracy involved top people in the Obama government and the law enforcement and intelligence communities and was termed an “insurance policy.” Opposition to Trump – the infamous, seditious Resistance – began in earnest on Inauguration Day2017 when there were violent actions on the streets of Washington, D.C. At a massive demonstration on the National Mall and around the country the next day, prominent celebrities talked openly about advocating violence against the new president, one of them saying she dreamed of blowing up the White House. These and other seditious comments were widely applauded. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) began screaming “Impeach, Impeach, Impeach 45!” within days of Trump’s inauguration – before he had a chance to do much of anything including committing an impeachable offense. And now that individual may be chairing a House committee with subpoena power. And then the Russia collusion meme kicked off in full force in May 2017 – with the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller after the firing of FBI Director James Comey. For the next year, it was “Russia Russia Russia” as the subtext to everything – crowding out real news including what the new administration was actually doing and accomplishing. The entire Establishment – virtually all institutional sectors of society – joined the Resistance. The only exceptions were Trump’s base of supporters; the new–media and alternative-media, most of it operating online; talk radio; and on occasion Fox News. Everything else – academia, public education, popular culture, films, television, music, the Deep State bureaucracy, mainstream journalism, and the Democrats – was dedicated to getting rid of President Trump. After more than a year, when the Mueller investigation failed to come up with anything damning, everything Trump was doing as president became fair game for attacks, from his meetings with Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin, to a decade-old charge of a consensual one-night stand with porn star Stormy Daniels, and then on to the Kavanaugh affair. There was endless mud thrown at the walls by Trump’s enemies in the hopes that something would stick and lead to his ouster. Yet, his approval rating has held in the low 40s. Not bad considering the billions of dollars’ worth of hate-Trump PR that has been directed at him. What did seem to have legs were made-up issues involving “separation” of illegal alien families, and now the plight of the caravan of so-called asylum seekers advancing toward the southern border. The blame for the recent mailings of suspicious packages to Democrats and the mass shooting at the Pennsylvania synagogue was also absurdly laid at Trump’s feet. “Racism Racism Racism” has now replaced the “Russia Russia Russia” mantra. And for low-information voters steeped in four to five decades of propaganda and revisionist Social Justice Warrior-Hate America history, the field is now fertile for a complete socialist-communist transformation of America. This is first time in history that so many avowed socialists are on the ballot as Democrats with a good chance of winning their races in major contests around the country. If these carefully selected Democratic Socialists win, the Democratic party will be driven further in that hard left direction. If they all lose, saner heads might have a chance to prevail. Peter Barry Chowka writes about politics, media, popular culture, and health care for American Thinker and other publications. Follow him on Twitter @pchowka.