Trump's "Rage for Change"

A Very Fourth Turning piece by Martin Gurri

Probably no author has been more predictive of the events to come than Martin Gurri, whose Revolt of the Public predicted Trump’s rise. Now, he’s written a piece for the New York Post that is equally as good. It’s a macro view of where we are now. If you know the Fourth Turning, you know that it’s about radical transformation. The American Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression, and World War II. All we know for sure is that when we come out the other side, we will be forever changed.

Gurri isn’t writing from that perspective but from his own, though the two collide. He writes:

Already, the global chessboard looks unrecognizable.

And if the winners in this great reshuffling are not yet known, it’s easy to identify the losers.

That would be the national and transnational grandees who had pictured themselves as pillars of a “rules-based world order.”

These are elite types who worship at the altar of process: Every crisis must be papered over with consultations, negotiations and proclamations, until the public’s attention wanders and the trouble is decently shoved offstage.

Trump’s rage for change, for an actual outcome, feels to them threatening and immoral — a trampling on the proprieties.

In the rules-based world order, the point isn’t to defuse lethal situations like a hostile fanatical regime acquiring nuclear bombs — it’s to play-act at doing so, while adroitly turning present difficulties into someone else’s nightmare in the future.

Remember the Israel-Palestinian “peace process” following the 1993 Oslo Accords? That alleged search for tranquility dribbled on for a decade before exploding into a bloody intifada.

I love this piece so much because he is writing about a Fourth Turning that picks up where the last one left off. You don’t have to be a supporter of Israel’s government or policies to understand the history. If you are just anti-Zionist in general, you support Israel being wiped off the map. An America without that strategic ally would be a weakened America.

I was never pro or anti-Zionist, though I see no word gets each radical fringe of the Left and the Right more riled up than that one. They have it now, and they throw it around like a curse word. But all it means to me is the creation of the state of Israel, yes, at the expense of the Palestinians, just as America was founded at the expense of the natives who were here before, and for the same reasons: manifest destiny.

But I see it less as a religious foundation and more as a strategic one, at least from the perspective of a world power like the United States. What is remarkable to me is Trump’s role in all of this. There has never been a point ever when he pitched being soft on Iran. Never. He has always talked tough and called the Obama administration too soft on Iran. The money given back to them was, so the story goes, used to fund Hamas and the attacks on October 7th.

I don’t even need to go that far to see the transformational advantage America has in eliminating the Iran threat in the Middle East, because it isn’t just the Middle East. It’s the alliance of Russia, China, and Iran that was always going to be the next world war, whether it started under Biden sending troops into Ukraine or it continues now.

Because I am half-Jewish on my dad’s side (Jewish enough for the camps but not a practicing Jew), I am attacked now for being a Zionist, which I never was. I am an American, and I am deeply patriotic. I believe in the American Experiment. I’m thrilled to be celebrating its 250th birthday, and there is no better person to lead us through this crazy, chaotic Fourth Turning than our Gray Champion, Donald Trump.

I am not with the isolationists on the Right or the oppressor/oppressed fanatics on the Left. I am with our president and our brave troops as they fight for this country. I would never be caught dead using my platform, small though it may be, to help the enemy by weakening our president in war.

Everyone is afraid this will be another Iraq, and they’re setting themselves up not to be one of the go-alongers later, when all is said and done. I might not have wanted this war to start, I might dread the potential outcome, but once it is in motion, you won’t find me weakening our leader, that much I know for sure.

Influencers? Please. Imagine D-Day as interpreted by Theo Von, Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Shawn Ryan, and JP Sears. Please. These are not men. They can’t lead America anywhere. You know what wins wars? THIS.

You want to know how we won World War II? This is how. Patton is how. MacArthur is how. Do you think they make men like this one on the Left? I can assure you, they do not.

And I’m starting to wonder if they make them on the Right. This is vulgar and rough - this is something no person would ever say out loud today. Except one. No one would have thought that guy was a real estate mogul and a former reality TV star, but here we are.

Patton:

General Patton: Be seated. Now, I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country. Men, all this stuff you’ve heard about America not wanting to fight, wanting to stay out of the war, is a lot of horse dung. Americans, traditionally, love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle.

When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big league ball players, the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. Now, I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That’s why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war. Because the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans.

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Now, an army is a team. It lives, eats, sleeps, fights as a team. This individuality stuff is a bunch of crap. The bilious bastards who wrote that stuff about individuality for the Saturday Evening Post don’t know anything more about real battle than they do about fornicating.

Now, we have the finest food and equipment, the best spirit, and the best men in the world.

You know, by God, I actually pity those poor bastards we’re going up against. By God, I do. We’re not just going to shoot the bastards. We’re going to cut out their living guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We’re going to murder those lousy Hun bastards by the bushel.

Now, some of you boys, I know, are wondering whether or not you’ll chicken-out under fire. Don’t worry about it. I can assure you that you will all do your duty. The Nazis are the enemy. Wade into them. Spill their blood. Shoot them in the belly. When you put your hand into a bunch of goo that a moment before was your best friend’s face, you’ll know what to do.

Now, there’s another thing I want you to remember. I don’t want to get any messages saying that we are holding our position.

We’re not holding anything. Let the Hun do that.

We are advancing constantly and we’re not interested in holding onto anything -- except the enemy.

We’re going to hold onto him by the nose, and we’re gonna kick him in the ass.

We’re gonna kick the hell out of him all the time, and we’re gonna go through him like crap through a goose!

Now, there’s one thing that you men will be able to say when you get back home, and you may thank God for it.

Thirty years from now when you’re sitting around your fireside with your grandson on your knee, and he asks you, “What did you do in the great World War II?” -- you won’t have to say, “Well, I shoveled shit in Louisiana.”

Alright now you sons-of-bitches,

You know how I feel.

Oh, I will be proud

to lead you wonderful guys

into battle anytime,

anywhere.

That’s all.

So yeah, I stand with our president amid war. You bet I do.

Godspeed, Donald Trump and our brave military.