Victory is such a glorious word.  Anybody who has ever felt victorious knows exactly what I mean.  Those of us who have been lucky enough to grasp it also know that it does not last.  It arrives, fills the soul with a warm sensation of contentment and gratitude, and vanishes almost as quickly as it appeared.  Once the effervescence of victory blows away, those who felt its touch speak of it with reverence.  The word is pronounced more slowly and with more care as the passage of time pushes it deeper into our memories.

I hope President Trump is re-elected in the next couple weeks and that those reading now will feel what I describe above.  Some might say, “It’s just politics,” or “It doesn’t really matter,” or “We never win.”  But it isn’t just politics, it matters a great deal, and winning is only a small component of the 2024 election.  You can walk into a casino, pull the lever on a slot machine, and become a big winner.  But you will not feel victorious.

Why is that?  Because victory is about so much more than winning.  Victory is success in a struggle against overwhelming odds.  It is the completion of a challenge with almost unbearable difficulties.  To be victorious is to push through pain and anguish.  It requires transforming into something greater than you were when you started the journey.  It comes with physical and emotional costs.  That’s why victory tastes so sweet.  It is an exotic fruit that grows on a tiny island in the middle of a vast ocean.  Once you find it, nothing ever tastes the same.

Have we suffered?  Absolutely.  We’ve endured as politicians sent the best blue-collar jobs overseas and manufacturing towns collapsed.  We’ve watched the Federal Reserve print dollar bills on demand, lawmakers jack up the national debt to once unimaginable sums, and investment banks gamble with our retirement savings.  We’ve fought wars for “American freedom” only to discover that the people pushing those wars could not care less about our constitutional rights or individual liberties.  We’ve seen the American dream fade as the cost of living precipitously rises and opportunities for economic advancement disappear.  We’ve witnessed the fracturing of the Union as the federal government intentionally disregards immigration law and floods the country with tens of millions of foreign nationals with little interest in assimilation.  We’ve experienced cartel violence while officials cook the books and lie about crime going down.  Hell, yes, we’ve suffered...but we’ve also persevered.

We also haven’t been sitting on our hands all this time.  We’ve written persuasively about America’s problems, worked to get people elected, and utilized new communication platforms to grow a consequential political movement that is unlike anything the country has seen.  We bucked Establishment Republicans with the rise of the Tea Party.  We refused to get back in line so that Uniparty decepticons such as Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Liz Cheney, and Mitt Romney could continue to abuse our patience and loyalty for their own personal advantage.  We pushed the candidacy of Donald Trump even as condescending political operatives and propaganda-spewing news networks told us his election was impossible.  We resisted the relentless psychological campaigns meant to shame us into capitulation.  We remained steadfast through the Russia collusion hoax, the Mueller Inquisition, fake emoluments and quid-pro-quo scandals, Antifa violence, false allegations of racism and misogyny, and two ridiculous impeachments.  We have been called “bigots,” “nativists,” “deplorables,” “idiots,” “nutjobs,” “insurrectionists,” and even “domestic terrorists.”  Some of our most passionate members have been arrested in the dead of night, jailed without the possibility of bail, convicted in kangaroo courts, and summarily imprisoned.  And yet...we stand strong still today.  

Along our journey, we’ve learned an awful lot.  First and foremost, we realized that the people who have long run the Republican Party have more in common with Barack Obama and Chuck Schumer than they do with the average Republican voter.  In fact, it has become pretty clear that ninety percent of the Republicans in the Senate and over half of those in the House of Representatives don’t really like us at all.  They say the right things around election season.  They make sure to pick up a rifle or shotgun for a quick photo op.  They talk about freedom when it suits their purpose.  They applaud patriotism while pushing for endless war.  

Then they turn around and work against us.  They are quick to denounce patriotic Americans willing to defend their freedoms as “whack-o-birds” and “hobbits.”  They do nothing while the federal government conspires with social media companies to censor our speech.  They say little as pro-life activists are arrested for silent prayer.  They are mum as Democrat prosecutors and partisan judges persecute conservatives for their beliefs.  They deny the existence of election fraud even when documented evidence is impossible to ignore.  They all but disappear while President Trump, his advisers, and his supporters have their lives and liberty put in jeopardy.  Most have never been our friends. 

Anybody who’s ever read Sun Tzu’s Art of War knows the importance of this observation: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.  If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained, you will also suffer a defeat.  If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”  What many of us did not know until the last decade, however, is that we have been stuck in that third, wretched category for quite some time.  We have not understood the globalists running the Democrat party.  We have not understood the globalists running the Republican party.  We have been destined for defeat.

How could we possibly secure our borders, grow the real economy (as opposed to Wall Street’s magic house of financial pyramid schemes), reduce crime, increase intra- and inter-generational social mobility, and protect the Bill of Rights when both sides of the Uniparty coin have been fighting — either overtly or covertly — against us?  We have failed to accomplish any of our goals over the last century because too many Americans did not understand what they were fighting.  They did not understand that both political parties work together to spread harmful lies.  They could not fathom the grotesque powers and malicious influences of the unelected, unconstitutional Deep State.  

However, over the first quarter of the twenty-first century — a period of terror attacks, prolonged foreign wars, economic volatility, metastasizing government surveillance and censorship, and the concentrated efforts of the Washington Establishment to overthrow the people’s electoral workaround in Donald Trump — the hypnotizing illusions that have kept us dumb and docile have finally been shattered.  The days of beating ourselves because we fail to understand who we are and what our enemies want are over.  

Now, that’s progress worthy of the label!  That’s the hard, painful path that must be taken for anything of value to ever be won.  These are the heavy costs of future victory.

Time and again this election cycle, Americans tell pollsters that the four most important issues for them are (1) inflation, (2) economic hardship, (3) illegal immigration, and (4) rising crime.  The Biden/Harris/Garland/Wray Machiavellian monster answers their concerns with outrageous lies.  The Leviathan tells us that inflation is down, that the economy has never been better, that illegal immigration is a myth, and that the country is safer than ever.  Perhaps if Americans did not see the malicious Deep State for what it is, the federal government’s propaganda would still be effective.  Americans have suffered too much, though, and their suffering has been enlightening.

Get out and vote.  Claim your slice of victory.  Savor this fleeting moment.  The real work is just beginning.

Image via Pxhere.

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