When David Horowitz wrote his latest book Blitz: Trump Will Smash the Left and Win (Humanix, 2020) he didn’t know that ANTIFA-fueled mobs would be burning and looting cities across America, and even threatening the White House itself. Then again, knowing how Horowitz understands the Left as well as anyone else in the conservative movement, perhaps he actually did anticipate the events of the last few days.
Blitz is the go-to recap of the first Trump term, from the first days of the so-called “Muslim ban” through a deconstruction of the “partisan impeachment,” as Horowitz labels it.
Blitz is a comprehensive reset at the end of the first Trump term. It is catalog of how we got here and how the Left have lost their minds over President Trump’s new way.Horowitz diagnoses the causes and effect of Trump Derangement Syndrome. He also documents how Trump has thrived despite the unhinged hatred aimed at him.
One reason Blitz suggests is unlike his Republican predecessors, Trump didn’t let personal attacks change his tactics.
Horowitz excels in structural apologetics. He is skilled at describing the architecture that separates order from chaos, barbarianism from civilization. His own background makes this an especially good read. Horowitz grew up around communist radicals and watched them firsthand, including their violence and mob tactics, Horowitz is in a place few are.
Blitz puts the battle between Trump and the radical Left in that frame.
The Left is always trying to erode our structures, and Horowitz noted they started with Trump even before he was sworn in when hundreds of leftist leaders met in a Washington D.C. hotel to plot the resistance – including the radical now-Attorney General of Minnesota Keith Ellison. One of those structures that sustain us is an acceptance of election results as legitimate. But that wasn’t going to happen with Trump. From Blitz:
The most striking feature of the Resistance and its rejection of a legitimately elected president was its departure from the political tradition established by the constitutional framers over 230 years earlier. The most pressing fear of those framers was the threat that political factions posed to a democracy. They were conscious of the fact that historically, democracies such as classical Athens had split into rival factions that eventually tore them apart and led to their demise.
And so the day after the inauguration, the nasty woman marched, with their pink hats and venom toward the new President. The “Presidential honeymoon” Horowitz describes as essential to American stability was tossed out by the Left on day one. He notes that even seventy members of Congress refused to attend the inauguration.
The structures that sustain America were under attack, right from the beginning of Trump’s term.
Horowitz decodes the Tweeting Trump, and describes the phenomena of something bigger and more important – the willingness to confront foes. On Hillary:
Deferring to Hillary Clinton as a female, as Republicans prior to Trump had done, allowed her to hide behind a veil of gentility while she launched a one-woman witch hunt against them, calling Republicans racists, sexists, deplorables, and so on. It took a Trump to look her in the eye with seventy million people watching during one of the presidential debates and say, “You are a liar and a crook,” which she was both. Everybody knew it, but only Donald Trump dared to utter it out loud.
The most fascinating part of Blitz is Horowitz getting to the essence of what makes Trump unique, effective, and so unfamiliar to the political establishment. Trump took a wholly opposite approach than most politicians.
Trump noticed that most politicians use speech either to hide what they really think or to win love and support. Trump represents something revolutionary and unfamiliar to the political classes. Horowitz says that instead of trying to win support or hide what he thinks, he uses speeches, statements and Twitter “to define the truth.”
He is describing the world as he sees it, and how events fit into that flow. Trump isn’t trying hide his true belief; he isn’t trying to win support. He’s just describing the world as he sees it. Horowitz describes it in action, and why it works.
It showed how, by standing up to the attacks from the left, Trump was able to thrive despite their slanderous labels of “racist” and “hate monger.” It’s inconceivable that, say, Paul Ryan or Jeb Bush would have stood their ground against the “racist” smears. They would have been steamrolled by the viciousness of the left and quickly apologized for any “offense” given.
Trump’s response illustrated a basic strategy that has served him well on the political battlefield: When attacked, strike back. Strike back hard. Harder than they hit you. Use the facts concealed by political correctness, and the language of moral indictment, which progressives resort to all the time.
Trump knows there are millions of Americans who are weary of political correctness and what it has done to undermine America and conceal the truth.
This is most obvious when Trump went right at the Democrat’s stranglehold over urban African-Americans, and it worked. He called Baltimore infested. When Baltimore Congressman Elijah Cummings called him a racist, Trump highlighted video of Cummings calling his own district infested. Calling Trump a racist doesn’t affect him like it had Republicans before him.
In Blitz, Horowitz catalogs where we are, and how we got here since election night 2016. He inventories the fake scandals, the Democrat’s derangement, the sell out of the American economy to China, and what really motivates Trump.
Trump is leaving his mark on the Republican Part in a way very few of his GOP predecessors could:
Democrats have approached politics as a form of war conducted by other means, while Republicans have entered the political arena as pragmatists and accountants. But the siege of Donald Trump has begun to create a new Republican Party, passionate and combative in defense of a leader they believe has stood up for them, and—equally important—who exceeds them in his appetite for combat.
It is this willingness to fight that Horowitz emphasizes is so central to the new conservative movement in the age of Trump.
Blitz leaves readers with the “Nine Biggest Dangers to American from the Anti-Trump Left.” By my count, six of them have been roaming the streets of Minneapolis and other major cities this weekend burning and looting. “Resistance, Attacks on America’s Heritage, and Identity Politics” are but a few featured in Blitz that fuel the riots and chaos in American cities. You can always count on Horowitz to identify, catalog and define the infrastructure on the Left that desires to remake the greatest nation in history into their progressive utopia.
Blitz is a sharp guide to where we are as a nation, and what we face this election. It is a handy inventory of the worst that has happened since election night 2016, and why it is that Trump has survived, all the while remaking the art of American politics.
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