Election 2024- A Win for the Normies

The stunning election result was a resounding answer to question of who Americans will choose to lead the country for the next four years.

Put this one in your must view list of movies…………..

On the recommendation of someone whose name I cannot recall, I watched the 2005 movie, V for Vendetta, last night. I was stunned. The parallels with the past four years could not have been more stark or the premise of the movie, despite being set in England, more prescient. From the civil unrest in the US (depicted as a true civil war in the movie), to a laboratory virus exploited to gain control of the general population, to the suspension of civil liberties and free speech, to a totalitarian bureaucracy that controlled every aspect of life, to overarching government surveillance, to relentless propaganda to instill fear into people, this movie had it all. Even allowing for artistic license, the undeniable holes in the plot and superhuman capabilities of the mysterious protagonist, V, I consider it a must view.  

For the past four years, I have watched our country descend into what can only be described as a dystopic hell. For me, it began with my objection to the racial radicalization of the American College of Surgeons, which resulted in my being banned for life from contact with my fellow surgeons on the ACS website. My ban is but a tiny, personal example of an unprecedented attack on the First Amendment to our Constitution. Censorship has flourished as a direct result of the Covid pandemic and the George Floyd and BLM riots of 2020. Government collusion with big tech and social media to censor disfavored opinions and narratives, even when these were factually true, has proved how far down the road to Orwell’s 1984 we have gone.

The term “woke” has been adopted to describe the triumvirate of antiracism/DEI, gender fluidity, and climate change extremism which has led to a radical transformation and ideologic capture of nearly every institution, including professional organization such as the ACS. All of this has been aided and abetted by the radical democratic left and the Biden/Harris administration.

I have waited to comment on the election other than to acknowledge the result on my Facebook page. I had to let this sink in a little. It seemed too surreal, Trump’s victory so unexpectedly overwhelming that it took time for the magnitude of this to sink in. Now that Kamala Harris has conceded and the legacy media seems to have accepted the outcome, albeit grudgingly, I feel that I can post my thoughts.

My prayer for this election was that, regardless of who won, it would be a landslide victory to head off claims of election interference, fraud, illegitimacy, and the like. I was fed up with unrest, violent protests, and “mostly peaceful” fiery demonstrations. Thank God we have been spared that….so far.

This election was truly a referendum on many issues. It was not really a contest between two candidates, of whom I believe it can be said that most of the country wished had been someone else. It was a clash of two world views and visions of our nation going forward. We identify them, for simplicity as the left and right, represented by Harris/Walz and Trump/Vance, respectively. Harris/Walz promised more of the same of what we have seen in the past three-plus years. Trump/Vance promised a return to more traditional values and policies.

I believe the outcome demonstrated many things.

The unprecedented Electoral College result and the equally unprecedented, confirmatory popular vote was a stunning repudiation of the policies of the present administration and, by extension, of the Obama years as well. The racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity of those who voted for Trump and his gains in almost every voting demographic showed that the majority of citizens view themselves as Americans first, and not members of some hyphenated identity group. It showed that respect for, and allegiance to, our Constitution remains strong.

The result was a stinging rejection of the woke agenda of divisive identity politics of antiracism and DEI, gender confusion and fluidity, and climate extremism.

The result showed that Americans cannot be gaslit by the government or the legacy media that our borders are secure even as millions of unvetted illegal immigrants stream across the southern border or are actually flown in at taxpayer expense to be secretively deposited in cities across the country. It clearly showed the will of most Americans that our border be secured and rational immigration policies be put in place, not wide open to unvetted illegal migrants.

This election pushed backed strongly against the erosion of our justice system and lack of respect for the rule of law ranging from sanctuary cities that contravene federal law to local law enforcement mandates that demonize the police, de-criminalize felonies below an arbitrary threshold, and release violent felons to victimize honest citizens repeatedly.

It affirmed that most Americans believe in the civil liberties codified in our Constitution, especially the guarantee of freedom of expression in the First Amendment, including disfavored and hate speech. Especially these. It rejected increasing government intrusion into our private lives and Draconian mandates in every area, from forced vaccinations with experimental vaccines, to travel restrictions, restrictions in citizens’ ability to conduct business, and even bans on our freedom to assemble.

Americans rejected questioning the biological reality of binary male and female sexes, the demand that we must affirm the delusions of an unfortunate, tiny minority of confused individuals, that we must immediately affirm gender-confused children with irreversible medical transitioning, and that failure to accept these radical, ideologically driven claims made us trans haters.

The election showed that most Americans were sick of being gaslit by the legacy media that Biden and Harris were competent and that all was well, when we could see for ourselves that this was a lie.

Americans were sick of being told the economy was fine even as inflation ate away at their savings and they experienced for themselves the increasing cost of providing for basic necessities such as housing, food, and gas.

The election result was a repudiation of the erosion of our civil liberties and of government collusion with the tech sector and social media to censor unfavored opinions, even if these were factually true. It put the nail in the proverbial coffin of the legacy media as the primary source of objective information.

The election was a triumph of commonsense over propaganda and indoctrination.

In short, the normies won.

The big question is: what happens now? The Republican party, now undeniably led by Donald Trump, now controls the Executive and the Senate, and indications are that it will likely control the House of Representatives as well. This will provide opportunities for making truly transformative changes. Executive action can stem the illegal immigrant tide immediately. We can reverse the Biden attempt to subvert the Supreme Court in forgiving trillions of dollars in student loans. We can shut down the flow of dollars to Iran. We can begin to trim the numbers of employees in many government agencies and, in many cases, eliminate the agencies themselves. We can begin to exert fiscal responsibility in dialing down spending. Hopefully, many of these changes will obtain bipartisan support.

I do not believe in vendetta politics, but there must be transparency and accountability for some of the most egregious excesses of the past, especially the last four years. Justice without revenge. There has never been accountability for the financial crash of 2007 that irrevocably destroyed the lives of so many and nearly collapsed the world economy. There has been no accountability for the generational harm of the catastrophic mismanagement of the Covid pandemic or the coverup of the gain of function funding by Fauci’s NIAID, which almost certainly helped create this virus. There must be a cleaning house of agencies that have shown themselves to be either incompetent, captured by political ideology, or sold out to private interests: IRS, CDC, FDA, NIH, DOJ, FBI, CIA, Dept. of Homeland Security, HHS, and Dept. of Education, to name a few.

There is much more to be done, certainly more than will be accomplished in one presidential term, but the above would be a good start. Time will tell if President-Elect Trump has learned from his previous term and will hit the ground running. His first public video and selection of Susie Wiles, a highly successful and respected campaign manager, to be his Chief of Staff are encouraging.  

I hope and pray that Trump will use this unprecedented mandate for the good of all Americans and that those who allowed their hatred for the man to blind them to the reality around them will give him time to prove himself. May God bless and protect our President-Elect and our country.

Richard T. Bosshardt, MD, FACS, Senior Fellow at Do No Harm, Founding Fellow of FAIR in Medicine

My book gives the reader a unique, unvarnished, and painfully honest peek into the world of plastic surgery and what it takes to become one. It is strictly apolitical.