The audacity of hope

But for many other Americans, 2016 was a very good year. It was a year of relatively steady if unimpressive economic growth. It was a year where major media institutions which had run pieces designed to destroy the lives of private Americans suffered major legal backlash. It was a year that saw the degradation of the careers of leftist humorists like Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah, John Oliver, Samantha Bee, Larry Wilmore, and Amy Schumer, who managed the impossible task of making people not want to buy beer. It was a year that saw the reassertion of a belief in the essential greatness of the American project: that we should not be content with the lot handed to us by a government that rushes ahead of us, warding off all concerns, but that we deserve something more.

The biggest loser in 2016 was Washington, D.C. It is a town built on assumptions and norms that have now been utterly rejected by the people. They have no use for it in its current status, with Republican and Democratic parties that have more in common than not. The American people, even many on the left who voted for Hillary Clinton, despise their elites – they dislike being talked down to, lectured, chided for their beliefs, whether that be cultural, political, religious, or just that boys and girls are different. They have demanded a better class of elites – that they be led by people who offer them that most basic and indispensable aspect of a system of self-government: respect. And the people who voted for Donald Trump believe he will deliver it.