Is the Tide Turning?

I didn’t write last week about the conviction of President Trump on 34 felony counts of letting his accountant assign legal expenses as legal expenses in his ledger. There are plenty of people responding to that.

But I’m wondering about the fallout of the lawfare attacks. Are people realizing what has been going on? Are they waking up and rejecting the overlords? And—is this bigger than just the US presidency? Is it worldwide?

Here are some evidences that the tide might be turning back toward freedom, prosperity, and civilization.

 

El Salvador

Tucker Carlson interviewed the president of El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele: “President Nayib Bukele: Seeking God’s Wisdom, Taking Down MS-13, and His Advice to Donald Trump” Tucker Carlson.

President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele
screenshot from here

In the interview, it is right after an inauguration. But I gather it is his reelection; he has had two or three years to make progress. And the progress has been significant. As President Bukele says, you have to start with peace—get rid of unrest from war, from civil war, from crime. And once you have peace, to walk around freely, to have your rights respected, then you can work on quality-of-life things: infrastructure, economics, developing resources.

When he started out, El Salvador was the murder capital of the world. It was full of cartels, gangs, drug lords, violent criminals. Now, in three years, it has become the safest country in the Western hemisphere.

The US has a murder rate of 6 per 100,000 population. El Salvador has a rate of 2. It is literally three times safer than the US. It’s safer than Canada, safer than Chile, safer than Europe.

Tucker Carlson asks, how did they do it? What lessons are there for the rest of us? Bukele says the transformation happened in just a couple of weeks. They built up the police. They used the army to fight crime, equipping them with needed weapons, vehicles, drones, whatever was needed.

There were about 70,000 gang members, creating terror by random killing—with 6 million targets. It took a miracle—a lot of prayer that civilian casualties would be as low as possible. They did it without any civilian casualties. There were eight casualties among police and military. But they made 70,000 arrests. There were an additional 500,000 collaborators, but they spared them, because most of them were just trying to survive while being pressured by the gangs. Getting the 70,000 murderers off the streets meant essentially crime was completely eradicated.

MS-13 is a satanic group, he says. So it took a miracle from God to fight them. That is not hyperbole. One story he told was of a gang member, in prison now, who left the gang. He had been casual about killing; he didn’t know how many, 10 or 20. But then they had him in a room where they were ceremonially killing a baby. He asked what they were doing, and they told him the Beast had asked them to do it. That crossed a line even for that hardened murderer.

The real battle is between good and evil.

Tucker asks the question, why, if a country has the means to shut down crime, why would it not do so?

We’re wondering that question here locally. Crime is high. Violent criminals are put back out on the streets. Even the liberal DA was pushing back, because things had crossed a line for her. So the Democrats put up a let-out-all-the-criminals-out extremist to replace her.

Out here in the relative safety of the suburbs, we don’t have a lot of theft—unless you leave your car out of the garage or fail to have a security system. We can still safely walk the streets. But maybe it’s best not to do that at night. It’s not downtown Chicago (or even downtown Houston). But it’s not El Salvador either.

Once there is peace, then the next step is economic—to raise the standard of living. We should be watching how they do.

 

Argentina

The conservative president of Argentina, Javier Milei, did an interview with Ben Shapiro: “On the Front Lines of Freedom | President of Argentina, Javier Milei” Sunday Special, Ben Shapiro, The Daily Wire April 14, 2024.

President of Argentina, Javier Milei
screenshot from here

As Ben Shapiro tells us in his introduction, Milei is “an economist by profession and a maverick by nature.” His approach is libertarian, in a nation that has been dominated by populists and socialists. He has been a popular interviewee on economic issues since 2018, and hosts his own radio show, “Demolishing Myths.” His presidency is new; he was elected November 19, 2023, winning in a landslide election with the highest percentage of the vote in the history of Argentina as a democracy.

As Shapiro tells us,

In his victory speech, Milei promised the reconstruction of Argentina and an end to its economic decline in a new era. Since taking office President Milei has lowered the number of ministries from 18 to 9, deregulated the Argentine economy, and slowed inflation in the country.

Early in the interview President Milei explains the plan they undertook, and its almost immediate results:

We announced a zero deficit program, an adjustment in order to no longer have a fiscal deficit and to stop the issuing on the treasury front. We started also to clean up the balance sheets of the central bank to bring down the ten points of GDP in relation to the central bank. And at the same time as there was a currency gap of 200%, we introduced a staged correction to try and reduce the gap. And we were hoping that zero deficit would be achieved during 2024 at some point. All analysts predicted that would be impossible to achieve. And we basically succeeded in doing that within a single month.

A single month! They made the largest fiscal adjustment in human history, according to the IMF. They adjusted their central bank, taking a fiscal deficit of 10 percentage points of GDP down to 4. Within three months they made an adjustment amounting to 12 points of GDP.

Inflation in December 2023 had been at 25%. It dropped to 20% in January, and plummeted to 13% in February. March, a complex month (end of a quarter), would be around 12.5%, but they hope to quickly bring it down into single digits.

How has he done this? President Milei explains a change in the Argentine people. The usual politician asks for your vote to give the politician more power. They are asking for votes to give people control over their own lives, to give them back their freedom—as he puts it, “to be the architect of your own destiny.” This required a change in attitude among the people, a change that has been coming for some time.

And, mainly, they have succeeded “by embracing the values of the West, which means embracing the ideas of the Founding Fathers of the United States.” He explains that Argentina’s original constitution, drafted mainly Juan Bautista Alberdi back in 1853, was patterned after the US Constitution. When it was implemented in 1860, Argentina went from a backwater to becoming a leading world power. Those principles lead to prosperity. He says,

In fact, the 1000 reforms we sent to Congress in the first month, if all of them were to stand, to remain effective, Argentina would climb up 90 spots in terms of economic fame.”

He thinks they would be comparable to Germany, given a couple of decades. That’s with 1000 reforms. They still have another 3,000 to put forward. A better model, he thinks, is Ireland, which went from being the poorest European country to, within a few decades, achieving GDP 50% higher than that of the United States.

A Reuters article, “IMF staff, Argentina agree loan review to help unlock $800 million” May 13, 2024, verifies President Milei’s positive report: 

Milei's plan "has resulted in faster-than-anticipated progress in restoring macroeconomic stability and bringing the program firmly back on track," the IMF said. It cited also important work to protect vulnerable groups given "the backdrop of a contraction in economic activity."

 

European Parliament

European parliament votes went conservative this week. According to a Brookings commentary, “The European Parliament elections have upended French politics,” summarizes the situation thus: “The far-right is now the premier political force in France.”  What do they mean by far right? They mean, as Democrats in the US use the term, anyone slightly more conservative than extreme liberals. They use the phrase “far right” to scare people into thinking such mild conservatives are jack-booted thugs who may show up at your door at any moment in full-on Nazi fashion.

European Parliament results, chart found here

In a response to the Brookings article, Ashe in America, in a Badlands Media Brief (scroll down to this story) tells us MAGA is bigger than America; it’s worldwide:

MAGA is a global movement. The idea that each nation preserve and protect its people, traditions, culture, and history is the hearts’ cry of our current political moment—globally.

As evidence, he brings up this quote from the article:

‘RN [Rassemblement National, or National Rally party] has completely appropriated much of the vocabulary traditionally reserved to the left (a new move by the far right in France, but one that the MAGA wing of the U.S. Republican Party has frequently used). This is upending and fundamentally restructuring French politics.’

Words, apparently, matter. We’ve been in a war of words, or ideas—as every war is, even underneath a kinetic war. Maybe we’re beginning to prevail. As Ashe in America sums up: “Deconstructing their narratives and forcing a principled stance on Rights is working.”

 

Summary

There are other nations that show the worldwide movement toward freedom, prosperity, and civilization. Italy elected such a leader; I hope she can succeed. There are a couple of European leaders, interviewed I think by Tucker Carlson (or possibly Jordan Peterson), who are reliably conservative—and religious. (I should have kept notes, because I can’t recall who they are right now.)

What surprised me in the stories today was the speed with which things can change. You lock up 70,000 criminal gang members, and the country goes from murder capital to safest place. You get rid of unnecessary government ministries, and debt and inflation plummet, while GDP rises—almost overnight.

If the Beast of Revelation, or Babylon the whore of all the earth, is that ugly tyranny we’ve been battling in its various murderous forms, then we are seeing that it can be overcome quickly:

“Alas, alas, that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate.”—Revelation 18:19

In the end, it will be Christ’s return the demolishes the evil. But in the meantime, we can follow His principles to do our part. Wherever we follow the principles of freedom, prosperity, and civilization, we see blessings can come very quickly.

 

Additional Things I’ve Noticed That Show Things May Be Changing:

·       “Survey: Voters Are Increasingly Rejecting Lies of Gender Ideology” Katherine Hamilton, Breitbart, June 12, 2024  

·       “Catherine Herridge identifies 'most important 10 seconds' of special counsel's remarks after Hunter Biden conviction” Chris Enloe, The Blaze, June 12, 2024  “we have additional trials and investigative work to be done” 

·       Catherine Herridge’s X post 

·       “Forget ‘Never Trumpers’—More Voters Now Say They’ll Never Vote For Biden” Robert Schmad, Daily Caller, May 18, 2024 

·       “‘My Goodness’: CNN Data Guru Breaks Down How Bad Biden Is Doing With Black Voters” Harold Hutchison, Daily Caller, May 17, 2024 

·       “Who’s really calling the shots in the Biden administration?” Stephen B. Presser, The Blaze, June 11, 2024 

·       “Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping” Annie Linskey and Siobhan Hughes, Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2024 

·       “‘Biggest Mistake Of My Life’: Biden 2020 Voters Explain Why They’re Backing Trump In 2024” Mary Lou Masters, Daily Caller, May 17, 2024