Sea Change

Donald Trump has won the election. I presented a statement of fact last night on Instagram accompanied by a statement of commitment to work during this new administration to continue to do what I do every day in securing the alliance between America and Israel, in fighting disinformation, and exposing antisemitism, which after the last four years is at an all-time high in America during our lifetimes. And I was met with violence and dismay and “disappointment” by so many. For stating fact. No endorsement. No support. No joy, even. Just a fact. So you know what? Stuff it. Let’s say the whole piece shall we?

When you say everything is misogynist and racist and transphobic and xenophobic and fascist for 8 years, then nothing is misogynist or racist or transphobic or xenophobic or fascist. It is a tantrum and it is not how to win over huge swathes of the populace.

This is 2024. It is not 2016. A lot has happened in the last eight years. And yes, where in 2016, I was also sad and at a loss by Hilary Clinton’s defeat by a man I find to be so much of the time incredibly repulsive, this time I feel differently. Dare I say, I feel hope - not because of Trump, but because Americans seem to be on a different page. And because the last four years was unsustainable, and the thought of a Harris/Walz alliance made many terrified for the future of our freedoms and security; an alliance that viewed neighboring American Republicans as a bigger threat to them than radical Islamic terrorists.

While they were consumed by the notion that the enemy was your next door neighbor, Trump’s assailants threw everything at him to prevent him from winning what is this morning a total and utter landslide victory. Doesn’t that tell the Democrats something about their strategy, or likeability?

The leftists lost the working classes. Just like in the UK during Corbynism. They lost the immigrants. They lost the minorities. Why? Because they didn’t deal with the everyday concerns of the hard-working people that make America function every day. “He’s a rapist!” cry the elites with their college degrees. Well people can’t afford their groceries.

People will argue that this is the death of woke. But I think it comes down to simple meat and potatoes. When the Democrats focus on the ideological battles of the intelligentsia instead of securing the basic needs for the people who help make this country run every day, there is no pull to vote as “a good person” (Scooter Braun’s Instagram reach yesterday). The privileged assumption of the loyal Democrats is that half of America are evil for not being satisfied with the Biden administration. Do they care what those in ivory towers think about them? No. They have mouths to feed. People who live on the breadline don’t care about prospective projections about fascism. The Democrats abandoned the working classes and let them down.

Every single Uber driver I have spoken to for months was voting Trump. Two Black women in the gym locker room on the weekend screamed down a white girl for being shocked that they were voting Trump because “Harris is a liar”. Every immigrant from the Middle East that I have spoken to this year has voted for Trump. I live in Los Angeles. I am not stating support. I am stating facts. Please learn to read.

Harris lost 20 million of Biden’s votes from 2020 last night. It’s time to ask why and accept. It's not just about the woke mob and the domestic terrorism masquerading as “protests”. The main strategy was to point to Donald Trump as "a rapist!!!" while the everyday person in this country can’t afford gas. Most Americans don’t live in an academic petri dish, and they understand that being or not being a rapist is not a disqualifier for anything. They live in the real world, and the real world isn’t always fair, but it’s worth fighting for.

Another harsh reality: the Democrats and their rank media have become insufferable. So insufferable that this entire country voted for Donald J Trump. So who has to look in the mirror? Whether you believe it or not: Donald Trump casts an impression of a man who loves America. Whether you believe it or not, the vast majority of people in this country want to love America. That’s why they’re here. And who wants to live in a self-hating country? Which is what the Democrats have become, mired by their own inner fighting and turmoil. My friend Lee Kern makes this point in his usual effervescent brilliant way:

So yes, I have done the sacrilegous thing, by confronting the reality that Donald Trump won the election. And women are walking out on me in droves because I am simply acknowledging reality.

Do I care about women? Oh you bloody bet I care about women. Women are my main concern. Women and the female of the nations, Israel. I have watched as women with college degrees all over this country - and the world - mock and laugh at rape victims. I have watched as elitist women all over this country participate in witch hunts against female celebrities. I have watched as powerful women all over this country denied that Jewish women were raped by terrorists, who claimed their sexual assault was justified. I am a feminist. I have risked my life for my feminism and I will do all of it all over again because women need support more than any other group on this planet. But these progressives and leftists are NOT feminists. They are leftists first and forever. They have lost the meaning of feminism. And they lost this election by becoming what they despise.

Feminism was crawling into an early grave after the initial years of #MeToo - a movement that had a specific agenda and did not as promised protect women when it mattered. And feminism well and truly died on October 7. On October 7 and October 8, feminists around the world said that rape was justified. I was at dinner with one of them on Monday night. Works for the Home Office in the UK as a trauma psychologist for refugees. Had never met her before. Doesn’t believe Israel has a right to exist. Words could not formulate into sentences as they fumbled out of her mouth; a stir-fry of “they” and “those people” and “other people” and nothing. Non-specifics. No facts. Just feelings. Feelings that something bad is happening to “all the women and children, and people who have been displaced”. Was not prepared to have a dialogue and instead wanted to “agree to disagree”. Then towards the end of the evening an amazing admission that she watched a documentary on aliens the night prior and learned some things she never knew before. When trauma specialists can’t accept that Hamas raped women on October 7 feminism is as dead as a doormat. It’s not that they don’t care, they can’t care, because it disrupts their leftist politic, which comes before their rights as women. They can’t care about the Taliban’s oppression of women in Afghanistan, or the Islamic Republic’s ongoing terrorism of women in Iran, or the Sudan genocide, or any of these issues, because it takes away from their own myopic worldview that America is not just bad but THE WORST.

The Democrats lost for so many reasons. It’s an illness to not see that. To refuse to understand. To hide behind gender politics. Deal in reality. As many gross overzealous lies have been fed to one side as the other. People so deeply believe that Donald Trump is a fascistic overlord, and time will tell. I hope they are wrong. The essence of liberal politics has become a knee-jerk need to smite the opposition as inherently evil and power mad, rather than to create a politic that challenges theirs. John Aziz put it well the other day on X when he called Trumpism “an oligarchical form of flashy corporatism”. But not Hitler.

They’ll say it’s because this country hates women. Because this country is racist. What if it’s because the people who were entrusted to do their jobs cataclysmically failed, and more people were scared that they would continue to do so than had faith in the experiment? What if America wants to find itself again? As Meghan Murphy wrote: “free speech and democracy matter more than an imaginary federal abortion ban.” The headline of her piece for the Telegraph last week:

I cried when Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 – but here’s why I’m now voting for Trump

And yes, this is deeply personal for me. The woke mob destroyed the lives of so many people I adore, and mine. I don’t know what it means to be “liberal” any more — to me, it means you’re a fascist. I feel for once in years, and I mean years of war, of trials and tribulations, of cancellations, not just of myself but so many of those I hold dearest, the most brilliant, passionate, intelligent, wildly talented minds and hearts of a generation who have been bullied and pushed out of American spaces and in some cases America itself, like we might start getting back what we’ve lost, and that everyday decent people don’t care about wars of ideology but about being able to care for their families and their needs, and focusing on prosperous happy lives. I have hope, so unfollow me if you must. Like all the enraged people in my Instagram DMs this morning who have charged me with the crime of treason against the sisterhood. How dare you. How dare you.

As for what this means for the rest of the world, my friends from all over the Middle East were hopeful last night. I will defer to some of my Middle East heroes. Yemeni Zionist gay journalist Luai Ahmed, and Israeli feminist thought leader Einat Wilf.

Here is Dr Wilf’s full post.

Hopes for Peace - On Why a Trump Presidency might turn around the situation in the region: During the years 2016-2020 I struggled to explain to American audiences that from the very narrow and selfish perspective of an Israeli, and putting aside everything that was going on in the US, the Trump Administration policies in the Middle East were nothing short of perfect. They included two key pillars: Basing the American exit from the Middle East on support for Israel and Gulf allies rather than Iran, and, more to my expertise, sending a clear message to Palestinians and other Arab nations that enough is enough - they need to start coming to terms with Israel's past victories in 1948 and 1967. This second message was conveyed through a series of important policies from defunding UNRWA, closing down the PLO office in DC, removing some PA funding, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital and recognizing the Golan Heights as sovereign Israeli territory. This second message was also augmented through a Peace Plan that let the Palestinians know that they can have a state, sovereignty and economic prosperity if they actually pursue it (to which, true to form, they responded with "no, no and a thousand times no"). It is no coincidence then that the Trump Administration ended its first four term with four peace agreements between Israel and Arab/Islamic countries and momentum for more. The Biden Administration, in an act that I repeatedly described in real time as juvenile, undid almost all of the Trump Administration policies. They refunded UNRWA and other Palestinian causes, with no strings attached (Congress made it a bit more difficult), turned a cold shoulder to the Abraham Accords (for a year, refusing to even call them that), and went back to a long and failed policy of indulging Palestinians and saving them from any reckoning with their past defeats, and the absolute destruction that is their total ideology of no Jewish state in any borders. It is therefore also no coincidence that the Biden/Harris administration ends its term on the cusp of a regional war. Unfortunately, even after the October 7th massacre and invasion, with all the love that President Biden personally and truly has for Israel, the policies undertaken by the administration extended the war and the suffering, by refusing to state that the war must end with a clear Israeli victory, Hamas/Gaza surrender, full release of hostages, and that Israel is under no obligation to supply its enemies before they surrender and release the hostages. So as a new Trump administration is being formed, my hope for a change in the situation, even for peace, rest on the expectation that this administration will again emphasize support for Israel and Gulf countries over Iran, defund UNRWA completely and hopefully this time will mobilize more countries to do the same, make it clear that Israel has US backing to win the war, and that Hamas/Gaza is expected to surrender and release the hostages, that Israel is under no obligation to supply an enemy before it surrenders and as it holds hostages, that Lebanon needs to make full peace with Israel rather than another worse than useless UN resolution, and that Palestinians and other Arab countries can enjoy sovereignty, peace and prosperity when they finally finally finally understand not only that Israel is here to stay, but that the Jewish people, in building their sovereign state in the Land of Israel, are home.

I too hope for peace. I hope for change. I hope for better days. And today is like yesterday - another day where I wake up with the same fight, the same determination, and the same commitment, regardless of who joins me. If you stick around great, if you don’t, well I hope we meet again somewhere down the road.