REUTERS//Cheney Orr
For Christians, Christmas is a holiday about hope and redemption. In some ways, that’s been the story of 2024, too.
It’s impossible not to notice that in many quarters across the United States, things are returning to something more like normal. That’s a hopeful change.
After Donald Trump was elected president for the first time in 2016, the response was, well, crazy.
“Don’t normalize Trump” was the battle cry of Democrats, as they proceeded to de-normalize virtually every institution in America.
Universities offered their students coloring books, emotional support dogs and therapy.
Professors announced that Trump should be impeached before he even took office. (Apparently just being Donald Trump was a “high crime and misdemeanor” in their eyes.)
Restaurants denied service to Trump appointees, the FBI and other branches of government cooked up a phony “Russian collusion” scandal and media organizations went berserk.
Trump’s 2020 loss was followed by civil and criminal lawfare in both state and federal jurisdictions and the weaponization of the bureaucracy against him and his supporters.
An FBI SWAT-style raid on his home featured agents rifling through Melania’s underwear and tossing bogus classified document covers around for staged photos.
The Jan. 6 committee in Congress was so fair that it shredded mountains of documents and tried to sneak legislation immunizing its members from investigation into last week’s spending bill.
Meanwhile the press, which boosted Joe Biden as he campaigned from his basement, subjected Trump and his supporters to nonstop vilification, comparing him repeatedly to Hitler.
The hysteria led to two assassination attempts — and after a brief pause, lasting about 15 minutes, they started calling him Hitler again.
A lesser man would have folded under the pressure. Just imagine how fast Mitt Romney would have tucked his tail between his legs, apologized for existing and Stockholm-Syndromed himself into being a Democratic Party tool. (Well, OK, you don’t really have to imagine that.)
I can’t think of a Republican since Teddy Roosevelt who could have stood up to the onslaught.
To listen to the press, Trump didn’t have a hope of winning re-election in 2024.
Then the Biden mirage exploded with a doddering debate performance, and Kamala Harris was installed in his place. Now, the media said, Trump really didn’t stand a chance.
But Trump never gave up hope, and never gave up the fight — and his hopes were redeemed.
And now all kinds of Americans have hope as well.
For those of us who hope to slash the administrative state, there’s a better chance of doing so than there has been in 80 years.
For those who hope to establish diplomacy and national defense along rational lines, there’s been progress already.
For those looking for an economy that serves the working and middle class, things look brighter.
For those tired of the politics of racial and sexual division, there’s hope of substantial reform.
For those who want to return to a normal immigration policy, there’s more than hope, there’s a near certainty.
Be bold, wrote Goethe, and mighty forces will come to your aid.
Trump was bold, and was rewarded with support from people like Bill Ackman, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, along with a majority of the American electorate.
Boldness brings hope elsewhere, too.
In Argentina, Javier Millei has slashed government even more deeply than Trump is likely to. Argentina has been rewarded with drastically reduced inflation, a much stronger peso, and its first budget surplus in many years.
Critics thought it impossible, yet Argentina has exited its recession; wages are up and poverty is down. Foreign investors are showing interest.
As Millei recently told a group of visiting Americans, “Everyone assumed that we were going to fail politically. Today they admit, through gritted teeth, that they are surprised.”
In tiny El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele has waged a ferocious war against criminal gangs, returning security to its citizens after a fierce crackdown that sent thousands to a new “mega-prison.”
Now the country, once one of the world’s great murder capitals, could close the year with the lowest homicide rate anywhere. Draconian (or “bold” if you prefer) actions, but they worked.
And perhaps mighty forces are coming to Bukele’s aid, too: The president has announced a huge gold discovery and plans to overturn a 2017 ban on metals mining to take advantage of it.
Could his country become both safe and rich? I hope so.
In Europe, too, hope is dawning.
Voters in France, Britain and Germany seem tired of their open-borders administrations, which treat rape and murder by immigrants as minor offenses but imprison citizens for politically incorrect tweets, all while running their economies into the ground with useless Green initiatives. Perhaps we’ll see some change there in 2025.
It’s a Christmas season in which hope abounds.
So here’s the lesson to be drawn from this extraordinary year: Be bold, my friends, and work to see your hopes redeemed.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee and founder of the InstaPundit.com blog.