Think the election was tough…

So a lot has been going on in the world as of late. This election season has been especially energetic with both sides rallying hard to the finish. As has been true for the life of our Republic, a candidate has emerged as victor. Life continues. However, you would think that wasn’t the case with the responses seen from many college students. Safe spaces and coloring books a plenty, we have took a turn back to kindergarten. What are we doing?

This might sound a little insensitive but I would like to remind college students that life is tough. Nobody is sheltered from adversity nor should they be. What matters is not the burden we are given but how we handle it. When we give it to God, we can climb anything. When we don’t, we hide in fear to color in books for children. God says in Isiah, “Fear not, I am with you; be not dismayed; I am your God. I will strengthen you, and help you.” What in your life can stand when the same Being that created volcanoes, blackholes, lions, and t-rex’s also says this to you? The same God who offers eternal life.

We grow through trials. Diamonds only become diamonds through pressure and heat. We need to look no further at the long line of people in our faith to put our lives in perspective. St. Steven, the first martyr, was the first disciple stoned for his faith. Peacefully not backing down to a crowd who ganged up on him. St. Joan of Arc, was burned at the stake, unjustly accused of witchcraft and treason. St. Eustace and his family was burned alive in a Brazen Bull for not fitting in and worshiping the pagan gods. St. Paul was shipwrecked, beaten, jailed, jailed again, beaten more, and kept getting up. Only to be beheaded. St. Ignatius of Antioch was transported across Europe with the same lions that he would be fed to at the end of his journey. St. Bartholomew was tortured and had his skin flayed off. St. Maximilian Kolbe offered to take the place of a father’s execution at Auschwitz and starved for two weeks before being injected by poison. This summer I listened to the live witness of an Iraqi bishop telling about the slaughter in his Diocese right now. Thousands are being martyred in Syria and Iraq for their faith.

The mentioned saints and martyrs are not just known for how they died in the face of adversity but how they lived for God. They didn’t fear punishment or death because they knew God was bigger than that. When St. Peter was condemned to death by crucifixion, he told his executioners that he wasn’t worthy of the death of Jesus and requested to be crucified upside down. He didn’t request crayola.

So no matter who you were rooting for in the election, take a look a these heroes of faith and countless others from when persecution is real and armed with teeth just to put things in perspective. Aspire to live gracefully and peacefully when it does happen. When the perceived slights and altercations of the world falls short of that pain, recognize that, and still live gracefully and peacefully.

 

The Election Year Thanksgiving

With complements and gratitude to Adam Jarosz for allowing me to express my views on his platform… 

With Thanksgiving around the corner and the nation needlessly divided, your dinner table will most likely have card-carrying friends and family members of the Democratic party who will not be able to grasp why their candidate was not able to beat the Republicans. I’d like for you to consider three points as you attempt to dialogue with those who are distraught and not able to comprehend how Trump bested Hillary. There’s much more to say than what I’m about to offer and others will most assuredly express themselves better than I am about to. That said, let’s get on with all that jazz… 

Number One: You Feel The Bern Yet?

Bernie Sanders was drawing enormous crowds wherever he went, creating something of a socialist revolution within the Democratic Party. His vast following, fresh ideas and appeal to young voters were reminiscent to the Ron Paul libertarian movement within the Republican Party in previous presidential elections. Supporters of Bernie were left dissatisfied and disgruntled when he could not secure the Democratic nomination. With Hillary’s loss, Democrats are now beginning the process of speculating whether or not Bernie could have gone the distance to give them the White House.

While this may at first glance seem a reasonable hypothetical to entertain, it is wrongheaded. Having a postmortem discussion involving an imaginary scenario of whether Bernie Sanders could have beaten Trump is akin to debating whether or not the Allies could have reclaimed Europe from the Third Reich had Hitler decided to not invade Russia. It would be a thought-provoking, stimulating conversation for a couple of World War II historians. I’d love to be a fly on the wall to hear two history-buffs dispute what could have been, but it misses the point. The question isn’t what if this supposed scenario played out differently with Hitler’s military decisions. The real question is, “What was Hitler thinking when he decided to pick a fight with the Red Army?”

While the disciples of Bernie Sanders maintain that their political revolution could have trumped Trump, there just isn’t a measurable way to judge such a hypothesis. Democrats seem to either be ignoring or are oblivious to the real question everyone is and will be asking for generations: “What were they thinking when they decided to make 2016 about Hillary?” The moment when the Democratic Party decided to allow Hillary to seize control of the DNC on account of it being “Hillary’s turn” is the moment when they sealed their fate and dug their own grave.

It’s really simple: THE DNC GAVE THE REIGNS OVER TO A CORRUPT ESTABLISHMENT CANDIDATE WHO WAS UNDER AN FBI CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION. Read that statement again…now again…now one more time. As the wise Mugatu noted, “DOESN’T ANYONE NOTICE THIS? I FEEL LIKE I’M TAKING CRAZY PILLS!” Folks, this isn’t advanced political rocket science. Of all the things a secretary of state had to struggle with, Hillary Clinton mishandle classified information and her email account. A blind and deaf man could see and hear this from a long way off.

Candidates who would have proven to be more attractive (if only because they weren’t under criminal investigation from the FBI) were ultimately dissuaded because it was Hillary’s turn and no one dared question the clout of the Clintons. On top of that, the DNC allowed Hillary to rig the primary elections when they knew of all the skeletons that were in the Clinton closet and the baggage that came with her. 

And this brings us to WikiLeaks…

Number Two: WikiLeaks and the Death of Journalism

No, CNN/MSNBC/CBS/CNBC/ABC/NBC. It wasn’t propaganda from Soviet-Russia. The mean ol’ Russkies weren’t in cahoots with Assange to spread conspiracy theories. Much like Han Solo and the existence of an all-powerful Force controlling everything, Democrats thought WikiLeaks was a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. Crazy thing is… it’s true. WikiLeaks. The corruption… All of it… It’s all true.

The entire planet had the opportunity to gaze into the world of the Clintons. A backstage pass. It was VIP access to authentic and genuine emails of Hillary Clinton, the DNC, the Clinton Foundation, and the campaign staff. And what did liberals in large, who during the Bush-era applauded WikiLeaks, do when offered an intimate picture of their Democratic nominee? 

Nothing.

None of it showed up in any of their social media posts. They didn’t tune in to non-liberal sources who spoke about it. They ignored it. They remained in their safe-spaces, they blocked out reality, they stayed in their echo chamber, etc. However one wants to describe it, liberals and Democrats lived (and have been living for quite some time) in an alternate universe where their beliefs were amplified and repeated to their liking while different views that would have challenged their narrative were censored, banned, or diminished.

Perhaps even more damning than the imaginary world of the left is the deafening silence of the media. The one outlet that is supposed do exactly what WikiLeaks was doing, was coddling and pampering the Clinton campaign. It’s a fry cry from the days of Watergate. They not only ignored all the lies of the Hillary campaign and revelations of WikiLeaks, they were accomplices in burying the same type of corruption they used worked tirelessly to expose in the past; just for giggles too, they even decided to actively support Clinton and defend her at every turn. When WikiLeaks was doing the job that the press ought to be doing, journalism was effectively dead.

Number Three: The West Wing, House of Cards, and Delusions of the Democratic Party

Related to the bubble that Democrats and liberals live in, you’ll find that many of them view their political party as under the paradigm of fictional Democratic President Jed Bartlett from The West Wing. An addicting show that portrayed Washington, DC and American politics as a noble, moral, and principled endeavor, Aaron Sorkin’s show had much in it that should be admired. None of the characters were not without their own faults, but they were genuine, knowledgeable, and endearing. President Bartlett and his staff had intellectual discussions and arguments over substantive policies and political philosophy. The show depicted Washington and the political-industrial complex as working hard for the American people, something any American would long to see for our political establishment. 

Now, juxtapose The West Wing with Kevin Spacey’s near flawless performance as Democrat Frank Underwood in House of Cards, a show that portrays Washington, DC in enmity with Sorkin’s universe. The show is deeply cynical, anchoring itself on abuses of, thirst and lust for power. Frank Underwood, his wife Claire, and everyone around them manipulate and connive their way up the ladder of power. Frank endlessly conspires to will himself to the top of the political food chain at any cost. He is the perfect Machiavellian; he is two-faced in his political and personal relationships, a pessimist with no regard for morals and ethics, and is drunk with self-interest. 

Both shows are fiction, but in light of all the revelations from WikiLeaks and the scandals surrounding the Clintons that even preceded Hillary’s run for president, one show approaches the realm of fantasy in the same vein as Lord of the Rings while the other one…not so much. As one watches House of Cards, the Underwoods’ accounts of scandals, murders, affairs, and media-political influence are so eerily knotted with paralleling chronicles of the Clintons and the Democratic Party that the lines of entertainment, fiction, and reality are blurred. 

The political world in House of Cards is fictitious, yet at the same time is strangely not-so-fictitious. It turns out that the real life version of the Democratic Party operates has more in common with deplorable Frank Underwood than upright Jed Bartlett. The revelations from WikiLeaks have confirmed inadvertently how the Machiavellian philosophy that guides Beau Willimon’s political drama is how the Democratic Party operates, which is chilling. 

I make this tangential observation about political dramas to illustrate a larger point regarding the moral diagnosis for the Democratic Party as it stands now: it has a tumor, and it’s not benign like the The West Wing. It’s a malignant cancer of the House of Cards variety. Unless the Democratic Party sees the need for surgery and to clean house, it’s a sure bet their party will be dead.

In Conclusion

Democrats are quick to blame Americans for their election failures. They still want to believe their narrative that Trump supporters are nothing more than uneducated racists, bigots, homophobes, transphobes, misogynists, sexists rather than face reality. The more they insist upon hurling insults, they more they demonstrate their misinformed, out-of-touch, condescending attitudes

Of all people, even Michael Moore saw through the excuses liberals hung onto. The Americans who voted for Trump have been marginalized and misunderstood by leftist elites. These Americans still haven’t recovered from the recession, their job at the factory has been shipped out overseas…again, the ACA has been anything but affordable for them, and their taxes are ascending while their income and quality of life is descending—they are downtrodden and tired of the failed Washington, DC establishment whose policies have maltreated them again and again and again.

If the Democratic Party actually cared about the anxieties of Americans, they wouldn’t have put their money on a horse that was a sure bet to come up lame. “What were they thinking when they decided to make 2016 about Hillary?” It’s an easier question to answer than, “What was Hitler thinking when he decided to pick a fight with the Red Army?”

— Mario Vinti is a man of many talents and a passionate patriot who enjoys stirring up conversation.