A Fighting Chance for Normalcy

September 2024August 14, 2024By Tom Piatak

Donald Trump, Butler, Pennsylvania, shot, shooting, normalcy, normal country, normal America, Sam Francis, JD Vance — *Donald Trump (image from: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0, via flickr)*

A sniper on a roof only 150 yards from Donald Trump opened fire on July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania. If Trump had not at that instant turned his head to look at a chart behind him, he would have been killed. Secret Service snipers then killed the shooter, but one of the eight rounds had already killed Corey Comperatore. Secret Service agents near Trump protectively covered him, but Trump managed to stand up, raise his fist, and shout, “Fight!”

It never should have happened. Some in law enforcement were aware of the sniper’s presence at least 90 minutes before he opened fire. Despite there being multiple armed peace officers authorized to use deadly force on site, there was no effort to stop the sniper from firing. The picture that emerges from what we know so far is one of lassitude, buck-passing, incompetence, and perhaps a dash of cowardice masquerading as caution.

Almost as shocking, Joe Biden released a brief letter a week later renouncing the Democratic nomination for president. He later endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the nation’s highest office.

For months, Biden strongly denied he would drop out of the race. Prominent Democrats attested that Biden was in no way impaired. Even before Biden and Harris were sworn in, Biden staffers and congressional Democrats filled the news with anonymous tales of Harris’s incompetence, vanity, stupidity, and nastiness.

Those tales had the ring of truth. Who could ever forget Harris’s childlike description of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?

Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country. Russia is a powerful country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine. So basically, that’s wrong.

In a normal country during a normal time, Trump would be cruising to reelection
following the sheer incompetence of the Biden administration on full display in Butler. His instinctive physical courage and patriotism would simply be icing on a cake baked with the Democrats’ phony claims that he poses a Hitlerian danger to democracy. Who can now take Democrats seriously as they bleat about democracy? Biden offered no real explanation for dropping out and no information about who, if anyone, persuaded him to do so and how they did it. Millions of primary voters who chose Biden in the primaries were overruled in a manner so opaque as to arouse the envy of Joseph Stalin.

In a normal country during a normal time, the media would be viewed as Pravda in the Soviet Union once was. Not only did it shield Biden from any real inquiry into his capacity, it remains totally uninterested in discovering whether someone other than Biden decided to pull the plug on his campaign or who, if anyone, pressured him to do so. If Biden’s principal focus has become soft-serve ice cream and afternoon naps, who has been running the country?

Alas, America is far from being “A Normal Country in a Normal Time,” which was the title of Jeane Kirkpatrick’s seminal 1990 essay in National Interest. In it, she accurately warned that America’s “foreign-policy elites” would lead the country down a dark path after the fall of the Soviet Union. To many of us, the country we loved then seems more and more an irretrievable memory.

The battle is far from over. The globalist elites don’t want there to be “normal countries” enjoying “normal times” anywhere. They especially abhor that prospect for America, which they deny is a country at all. As Joe Biden reiterated after standing aside for Harris, “America is an idea.”

The only way for America to become a “normal country” again is for us to put “America First, Second, and Third,” as Pat Buchanan advised in his own essay at the end of the Cold War.

Donald Trump understands this. So does J. D. Vance. In fact, the clearest sign that Trump understands this is his selection of Vance as his running mate. Trump has many talents, but he was not able to do more as president because he was naive about Washington and too inclined to rely on his (generally very good) instincts alone, without any tutelage or support.

By contrast, Vance is not naive about Washington and has demonstrated intense self-discipline. By picking Vance, Trump is preparing to hand over his loyal phalanx of Deplorables, with whom he has bonded in a way no other American politician has done for many decades.

The odds remain very much against the Donald and J. D. But if Trump succeeds in handing the White House and his followers over to Vance, the wretched group running America these many decades may at last be supplanted by a new elite committed to putting America and Americans first.

The late, great Chronicles columnist Sam Francis will then crack a wry smile. Fight! ◆

Comments (9)

I am once again driving across the country and it is hitting me more than ever, especially given the political events unfolding this year, how the country is essentially collapsing from within with certain facades still obscuring to some extent. Of at least as much importance as the election is how the losing side is going to respond. There could very well be as much pushback as ever has been seen except perhaps in 1860. The response may not be as starkly overt but it may be more lastingly damaging. On this token it may be better for the country if Trump wins. As almost always his first priority is being liked which will benefit the left. If he doesn’t capitulate substantively the left certainly knows how to wage war much better than the current American right.

September 1, 2024 Michael Kaiser Reply
Some “experts” have suggested that Crooks was not killed by a Secret Service sniper as they all use “300 WIN MAG” ammo which always blows up a human head, entirely, upon impact. Crooks was killed by a less powerful round. Regardless, dead men tell no tales.

September 2, 2024 Michael Segreto Reply
Benjamin Franklin, at the 1787 Constitutional Convention was once asked: “What have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” he replied: “A republic, if you can keep it.” Let’s hope that most people are still willing to keep it.
What’s rather worrisome is an election that shouldn’t even be close will in all likelihood be just that, close. I have heard it said that people tend to vote for those who reflect their own intellectual and moral caliber; if true, take a good look at where we are now and very possibly where we might be headed should a majority of the general populace vote Kamala Harris into the office of President while at the same time expanding Democrat Party control of both Congressional Houses; a metastasizing cancer of corruption, apathy, ignorance, hostility and in some instances outright insanity will spread its poisonous influence into every corner of this nation leaving no facet of existence untouched. Some may feel that Donald Trump and the Republican Party have nothing of any superior value to offer and just present a different face stamped on the opposite side of the same coin; be that as it may, they at least represent a sane alternative to the chaos the Democrat Party and their legion of blind followers have openly embraced. The choice is either one of internal and foreign stability or wanton destruction at home and abroad. The choice is yours.

September 2, 2024 chowfun Reply
Yes, Trump is Trump and if almost anyone else was running on the GOP ticket this would not be a close election. We could have been looking forward to decisive majorities in the House and Senate. Instead, we have another cliff hanger.

But, to my eye, the GOP and Trump conspired to kill the other contenders in GOP’s aborted primaries and here we are.

At best Trump will be a speed bump on the way down because nothing I’ve heard him say or seen him do suggests he has learned anything. He seems to think he’s a unifier but the country is far beyond that and Trump seems not to have a clue. In his mind he seems to be living in the 1990s and in country that hasn’t existed since 2001.

I haven’t forgotten that Trump began the debt binge in 2020, deferred to Fauci on covid, shut down the country, for two years, did nothing during the riots, replaced Americans with foreigners at the TVA and elsewhere, has a bizarre affection for generals, admirals and professional soldiers who are the deep state’s global foot soldiers, and is still a big fan of wide open immigration.

And then there is the fact that now more than half of us receive some sort of payment from the government. Since the Democrats are less likely to cut those payments than Trump many many millions simply won’t vote for him for financial reasons alone. Further, Trump himself is vecerilly repulsive to at least half of the unaligned voters. So Harris, as repulsive as she and her party are, may well win this election.

September 2, 2024 EK-1 Reply
Very well said Mr. Piatak. It’s not about Trump. It’s about the New Era he is ushering in. A new Zeitgeist is sweeping across the entire World, and the old Zeitgeist, ushered in at the dawn of the 20th century with its obsessions for global organization to produce a homogenous Whole, come Hell or High Water or Revolution, is moving offstage. We are seeing the Return of Nations and a Revival of MANY differing National Narratives; absolute anathema to Globalist ambitions. “One size fits all” is dying. The World has recovered from the ravages of World Wars and Cold Wars. America no longer needs or wants to stand guard as Night Watchman over a war-ravaged World while it recovers. Trump is ushering in our TRADITION of minding our own business here, on the North American Continent. Any emnities we have to deal with will be concerned with crime cartels and any strong differences we might have with our neighbors on THIS Continent, while simply standing guard over the land and sea approaches to our Nation. Time to withdraw significantly from the World, to focus on rebuilding our industrial base, to MAKE our own stuff HERE, on THIS Continent. J.D., Vivek, Tulsi, RFK Jr., and many other of the younger generation of politicians understand this perfectly. Victory is eventually assured, whether or not Trump gets to “Cross the River Jordan” with his people; We The Deplorables.

September 3, 2024 Larry Bowen Reply
Thanks very much for your kind words. I substantially agree with your analysis.

September 3, 2024 Tom Piatak Reply
As of September 9, 2024, unless there is monumental fraud and theft that surpasses even what occurred in 2020 or Trump somehow implodes, my prediction is that Trump will win the election, perhaps with a majority of the popular vote and likely in an electoral college landslide. The Republicans will also retain control of the House, take the Senate, probably winning two or three seats beyond just West Virginia, Montana and Ohio. Harris is an extraordinarily weak candidate. Media bias, always reliably there for the Democrats, has gone into overdrive this year and kept her closer than she would have been with only the standard leftist slant.

September 9, 2024 Tony W Reply
Mr. Piatak very perceptively cites Jeanne. Kirkpatrick’s 1990 column in his piece. We cannot underestimate the role of American’s foreign policy elites, neoliberal and neoconservative alike, have played in bringing us to the unhappy moment in American history. The wars of the last thirty-three years, besides being foreign policy disasters in their right, opened the door for the left to further radicalize America domestically.

September 9, 2024 Tony W Reply
The author of this fine column mentioned in an X post that Facebook has banned this column on that platform. That unsurprising disclosure proves, as if we needed it, that Zuckerberg lies through his teeth when he claims that the deep state pressured him to censor pro-Trump and anti-Biden entries. Zuck didnt’t anyone to give him orders. He knew what to do and was happy to do it.

September 9, 2024 Tony W Reply