OPINION:
America is on the upswing.
You can feel it in the air as if an invisible mist were bringing forth good vibes and hope. There’s a palpable sense of “We’ve had it with the way it’s been, and things will start getting better. In fact, they already are.”
Right now, the season is part of it. Christmas and Hanukkah, which fell on the same day this year, turn people’s hearts toward what matters most — God’s boundless love for humanity and the love shared by family and friends. For Christians, it’s about rejoicing over Jesus as the world’s promised savior.
Bible sales are up 22%, along with hopes for another American revival.
Worldly animal spirits are also on the move. Investors are bullish, especially considering the incoming administration ending electric car mandates and the Biden-imposed shackles on America’s energy industry. People sense that $2-a-gallon gasoline may come back. The sky is, once again, the limit.
Although personal debt is still alarmingly high, a recent Bankrate survey said that 44% of Americans think their finances will improve in 2025, up from 37% at the end of 2023.
Nearly every day, we learn of wrongs righted, frauds exposed and a slow but focused justice train coming around the bend. Americans have rediscovered the heady freedom of rejecting lies told by the ruling elites — and saying so.
Federal courts are undoing years of legal malfeasance and restoring the constitutional separation of powers. The Supreme Court has clipped the wings of the Environmental Protection Agency, which vastly abused its mandate.
Weeks before retaking office in January, President-elect Donald Trump has resumed his role as a world leader, with nations such as Canada and Mexico openly reconsidering policies.
Companies are abandoning the diversity, equity and inclusion racket as fast as they can — even in Silicon Valley. Homeschooling and private education are on the rise, and parent groups are suing public school districts for miseducating children.
“Woke” Democrats insist that minorities are too stupid to get a voter ID, vote with their pocketbooks or resist the progressives’ siren song of moral confusion. Democrats have pegged Blacks and Hispanics as useful idiots motivated by the politics of resentment. It turns out that, like millions of other Americans, many minority voters are patriotic, family-oriented, favor a growing economy instead of government handouts and want to see their children and grandchildren live the American dream. It’s not for nothing that 55% of Hispanic men voted Republican.
The overall vote share for Republicans increased across the nation, even in Democratic-dominated states.
In fact, “almost ten times as many counties voted more Republican than voted more Democratic,” Charles R. Kesler notes in his article “America’s Red Shift” in the fall 2024 edition of the Claremont Review of Books.
Mr. Kesler cites CNN’s report of 2,650 counties shifting more Republican, compared with only 279 counties shifting more Democratic, and notes that polls show “a greater share of the electorate identified as Republican than as Democrats, for the first time since the New Deal — almost a century.”
Democrats no longer own blue-collar workers. The American dream was steadily being eroded by a party heavily invested in open borders, reckless spending, student loan giveaways, reverse racism, failing schools, a bizarre social agenda, a lying media and climate hysteria-inspired attacks on fossil fuels that sent inflation soaring.
Of course, regarding the national mood, people on the winning side are always happier than those who lose.
Many people were elated — not just Democrats — when Barack Obama was elected president in 2008. They saw it as vindication that America had overcome racial problems and would live up to its noble aspirations.
Mr. Obama, however, fooled a lot of people. Like his successor, President Biden, he posed as a unifying moderate during the campaign and then governed aggressively from the left. Mr. Obama launched his free stuff army when he entered the Oval Office. Both Democrats appointed a good share of lunatic judges, some of whom don’t even know what a woman is.
They imposed as much socialism and radical social engineering as they could until Mr. Trump upset the apple cart in 2016 and again in 2024.
In his winning elections — 2008 and 2012 — Mr. Obama faced moderate Republicans who were unwilling to take off the gloves and expose Mr. Obama’s Marxist background.
By contrast, Mr. Trump never blinked and called them out. He did so while fighting Democrats’ lawfare in four jurisdictions, along with Russian collusion hoaxes, two impeachments, the Jan. 6 show trial in the House and a lying media in bed with the Democratic Party. Regarding the latter, they are still in bed together, but they’re nowhere near as powerful as they once were.
Many also feel that although God has every reason to judge America, God has not turned his back on us quite yet, nor Israel. Despite both nations’ moral failings, we’re being given another chance.
The 2024 election may someday be regarded as the one in which Democrats lost their base, and a great political realignment occurred.
It may also be remembered as the time that America got back its soul and a spring in its step.
• Robert Knight is a columnist for The Washington Times. His website is roberthknight.com.
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