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Watching Donald Trump’s Ohio rally Saturday reminded me of the best scene in Gone With the Wind, which comes early in the movie at the Twelve Oakes barbecue. It’s a brilliantly constructed sequence wherein Scarlett O’Hara’s (Vivien Leigh) egoistical pursuit of Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard) during the grand social occasion contrasts with the undercurrent of imminent Civil War. Except the Southern male aristocrats gathered in the Georgia mansion’s den don’t dread the war, they eagerly look forward to it. “Gentlemen can always fight better than rabble,” one of them crows. Scarlett’s father Gerald (Thomas Mitchell) then asks a more somber Ashley, the wartime troop captain, for his opinion. “Well, gentlemen,” says Ashley. “If Georgia fights, I go with her. But like my father, I hope the Yankees let us leave the Union in peace.” I can appreciate the sentiment. If Trump runs, and wins the Republican nomination, I go with him. But like many others, I hope he passes the “make America great again” baton to a younger warrior.
For I believe political and cultural war is now unavoidable. The other side has crossed the Rubicon. They’ve done more than insult us. They’ve threatened us. Joe Biden and his entire governmental apparatus — spearheaded by AG Merrick Garland’s Justice Department and SecDef Lloyd Austin’s Pentagon — have publicly condemned all patriotic, peaceful opposers to the Marxist transformation of our country as anti-democratic traitors.
And they have put their agents where their mouths are, raiding Trump’s home and intimidating MAGA supporters in true Stasi-like fashion. Now they must be made to pay for it, and so extremely that such a domestic menace will never resurface. This said, Trump’s Youngstown, Ohio speech was the finest, most defiant he has ever given, and the perfect response to Biden’s The Great Dictator screed in Philadelphia.
