As the Midterm Election returns came in, one thing became clear: There would be no “blue wave.”  The Democrats secured the House of Representatives, though not by a wide margin, and the Republicans held the Senate, gaining a few seats.  The House Democrats and their GOP “NeverTrump” allies still skulking about the Beltway bubble will be able to make trouble for the White House, but they will not have the votes to do as they had hoped, which is to remove President Trump from office.

Trump made immigration the issue in the campaign, demonstrating once again that what the Orange Man lacks in intellectual depth or ideological consistency, he makes up for in patriotic sentiment and keen political instinct.  The Main Stream Media’s seemingly ceaseless focus on a deadly shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue (by a maniac who hated Trump) and dud pipe bombs delivered to Trump haters (they are not simply “critics”) may have swayed some suburban helicopter moms, but Trump’s campaigning, in the face of relentless media attacks, was effective.

At this juncture in Trump’s presidency, with the Midterm Elections behind us, we may draw some conclusions about what has taken place and where the political battle is headed.

First, the “crazy Democrats” (as Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, who lost her bid for re-election, characterized her wacky colleagues in a campaign ad that denied she was one of them) lack any sense of self-awareness.  The crazies live in a cloud cuckoo land where Bruce Jenner is a woman, Elizabeth Warren is a Cherokee, and Vlad Putin is a combination of Blofeld and Professor Moriarity.  The crazies’ grip on reality is as “fluid” as the next letter that will inevitably be added to LGBTQ+.  They don’t know anybody who voted for Trump, so the Russkies must have been behind Hil lary Clinton’s 2016 electoral loss.  They appear confused or indignant when reminded that it is not the Trump base that has been openly condoning political violence (as the crazies have done in cheering on Antifa); that it is not the Trump base that wants to overturn the First Amendment and limit free speech (the free speech of their opponents); that it is not the Trump base that fantasizes about “BBQ Beckys” and the replacement (if not extinction) of Middle American whites.  The crazies are, practically speaking, completely unaware of how they appear to others and apparently lack any inclination to, or capability for, self-reflection.  The circus of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings and incessant screeching about racism, sexism, “rape culture,” etc., worked against them at the polls, but the crazies seem so disconnected from reality that it appears likely their mad bacchanalia will continue.  So look for another outburst of hysteria in the weeks to come.

Second, what is actually surprising about this drama is how little political violence has come from the Trump base.  For two years, the crazies have been hollering about a Trump dictatorship, fascism, police allegedly engaging in a campaign of murdering minorities, and a Middle America that is a hotbed of Klansmen and George Lincoln Rockwell wannabes—and they’ll tell you that quicker than their therapists can say “psychological projection.”  The truth is much different: Normal Americans want to live their lives in peace and prefer to work through institutions and established processes.  If that inclination breaks down, it is the crazy left and its enablers on the pseudo-right who will bear a great deal of the blame.

Third, as demonstrated by the Main Stream Media’s “coverage” of the caravan that is moving toward America’s southern border, mass immigration has become the weapon of choice in the globalist arsenal, a weapon intended to swamp and replace real Americans with foreigners.  The enemies of historic America are cheering on (and perhaps financing) a mob carrying foreign banners, singing foreign anthems, and denouncing the “racist” country they so desperately want to live in.  What’s becoming more evident with each day of this latest caravan episode is that “invaders” is an apt description of the people who are coming our way, and that envy and ressentiment are important motivators for not only a significant portion of caravan participants themselves but also the Central American states, as well as Mexico, that have facilitated this unlawful migration.  More “migrants” will surely follow if this group is not stopped, and the end result will be the further inundation of our homeland with many more people like them, as the Global South marches on the Global North.  And that quite apart from the continued flow of deadly narcotics across our southern border, and the ease with which foreign criminal gangs enter our country.

Fourth, the Trump presidency has been a great clarifier.  The Donald has forced the enemies of America to reveal themselves.  Trump has trolled them effectively, and his instincts have been right on target in ignoring his “Deep State” advisors and bringing up “birthright citizenship,” border security, asylum, and sovereignty as concerns that must be addressed.  Trump is forcing the issue, as it were, and none too soon.  The cognitive dissonance evident in a Beltway hive mind which denies that a country without borders isn’t a country at all, as Trump has so succinctly put it, raises a number of questions: If our military wasn’t established to defend American soil, then what is its purpose?  If America has no borders and anyone, anywhere can be an American by virtue of subscribing to a list of ideological “propositions,” what can America possibly mean?  If aliens should be allowed to vote, as the crazies apparently believe, then what is the value of citizenship?  And if the well-being of Americans is not the fundamental concern of government, why should we support government with our blood and treasure?

Fifth, there isn’t going to be any easy way out—no soft landing—for America.  The social and political crisis that has been developing for decades will probably get even uglier in the years ahead.  Trump’s enemies did not succeed in securing an electoral defeat of the President and his “Deplorables,” but the result, a relative victory for Trump, represents no outright refutation of the political forces who have engaged in a deranged attack on everything we hold dear.  Trump and his supporters face an uphill battle; his enemies still control the levers of America’s institutions and the state bureaucracy.

And, sixth, the transformation of the GOP into a patriotic populist party will continue.  The jury is still out on whether or not this transformation will be realized fully, and the President’s enemies within the Republican Party surely hope to outlast him and return to the status quo.  Were it not for Trump, however, it would have been business as usual, with no transformation to speak of at all