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How is it possible that the conservative elite, Washington insiders, and mainstream media were so completely out of touch with reality during the 2016 US presidential election cycle?
“We were all wrong!" "The greatest political upset in our lifetime." "None of us saw this coming" are just a few of the confessions pundits, experts, and anchors expressed when it emerged that Donald J. Trump was the winner. Yet, while most of the political establishment and pundits missed the boat, there were many who recognized the growing Trump phenomenon in early spring 2016. And there were some who recognized, even during every seeming Trump-created "meltdown" or "mistake," that Donald Trump not only could win, but would win. What did they see that others didn't? More importantly, how could so many "experts" and "smart people" get the election so totally wrong? And why are they still considered experts?
American Greatness is an analysis and indictment of the mainstream media, liberal commentariat, and conservative establishment that implicitly undermined, if not insulted, some 60 million fellow Americans when they treated Donald Trump's candidacy as a sideshow. With so little humility or self-reflection—and no apology!—how can these so-called experts continue reporting on and analyzing a country and polity they have essentially admitted they do not understand? After all, what they got wrong in 2016 was not just an election. What they got wrong was America.
One writer pegged it when he compared the election to the fateful Flight 93, which was thwarted by brave Americans who sacrificed their lives to stop the terrorists. The profound essay exposed the hypocrisy of the checklist conservatives and deflated the Never-Trump movement. He recognized that Trump represented something new—the spirit of Americans. The 2016 election was the Flight 93 election. It was a “take charge or die” situation. For most Americans choosing Hillary Clinton would have been like playing Russian Roulette with a semi-automatic. With Trump at least we had better odds.
“What the media and Democrats see as Trump’s outrageous extremism,” said historian Victor Davis Hanson, “now looks, to more than half the country, like a tardy return to normalcy: employing the words “radical Islamic terror,” or asking cities to follow federal law.”
American Greatness includes the entire “Flight 93” article that started the political wave that took over Washington and it explains in great detail:
-What went wrong for the pundits and what they missed
-How “America first” is simply common sense
-How checklist conservatism failed America
-Who the media should be listening to
-How it’s time to relearn the basics
-And much more
American Greatness is not just another analysis of the mainstream media’s liberal biases. It focuses equally on the many conservative writers, thinkers, and pundits who profoundly missed the mark as well. American Greatness explains how the timing was perfect for a populist takeover, why both the Left and the Right missed the pulse of the nation, and, most important, how we can move forward to truly make America great again.
