Raucous 2016 Gives Way to Subdued 2020

Everyone has felt tested the past few years. Now the country is making a big and steely decision. 

Noonan image from article

By Peggy Noonan
Oct. 29, 2020 6:59 pm ET 

Excerpt: 

I find myself going back, as I review these years, to a crisp, dark evening in December 2016, in Manhattan, where I’d joined a visiting friend, a Catholic activist, for a drink. She had been ardently anti-Trump, was heartbroken at his election and struggling to come to terms, to find some higher meaning. “Maybe this is God’s way of giving us a last chance,” she said. “I think when God gives you a last chance he gives you John Kasich [jb - see],” I said, and we both laughed. 

The 2016 election to me felt more like a chastisement, a judgment from on high of who we are and what we are becoming. 

Where did Donald Trump come from? I think now what I wrote then. He was produced by both parties’ collusion in refusing to stop illegal immigration, carelessness about war, and confusion as to how to avoid, then how to deal with, economic calamity. The Republicans were afraid to lift their wagons out of ruts formed half a century ago. Mr. Trump was clever enough to see an opening that wouldn’t harm him either way (victory or a branding opportunity) and won. 

In the time since everyone has felt tested—personally, in terms of higher loyalties, in our national life. Some maintained their poise, good cheer and judgment. Others wobbled, some a lot. It’s been a hard time. Everyone but the stupid feels wounded in some way. Twenty sixteen was raucous and wild—the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuit,

 
Image (not from article) from

Make America Great Again. 

Image of Make America Great Again in Russian - Trucker Cap
(not from article) from


Twenty twenty is altogether different—subdued, determined. As if a steely decision is being made and executed. I believe Mr. Trump is about to be fired, most spectacularly by the women of America. Those long lines at the early-voting places—they are the rallies Mr. Biden didn’t hold. They happened anyway. ...

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