The rest of us were backdrop, or cannon fodder, or simply masses that followed the leads of those destined to direct us.
Of course, the masses do have an impact, assuming that they follow through on the initiatives of their leaders – political and cultural – on ideas, trends and patterns that end up having a pervasive effect on their societies.
In America today, we might be witnessing the exception that proves the rule. A discrete group of individuals – academics, cultural, media and political figures - has bequeathed onto their cultures postmodernism, and the nihilistic impact of its destruction, or as they say, deconstruction, of the truth, of facts, of values, of absolutes, of roles, relationships and traditions.
In other words, in the name of some undefined or even unconceived utopian vision, the elites have ordained a dismantling of all that we have come to regard as the pillars and attributes of Western Civilization.
Americans now live in a country where serious people are worried about what pronouns they should be referred to, what gender they should adopt, and what victimization might, at some point in time, have been inflicted on themselves or upon those that they deem to be perennial victims.
They have enshrined the immutability of one’s race or ethnicity as the defining characteristic of one’s being.
If a modern day Rip Van Winkle were to now emerge from a 20 year snooze, he would be blown away by the self-inflicted absurdity that we have allowed to be brought upon ourselves.
And, as in the ancient world, they have assigned divine or near divine status to nature, with the twist that somehow we can appease and impact the gods of climate and nature through our submission and mortification.
If a modern day Rip Van Winkle were to now emerge from a 20 year snooze, he would be blown away by the self-inflicted absurdity that we have allowed to be brought upon ourselves.
So how can the state of things today offer the hope that we might be seeing an exception to the rule of the determination of the arc of history?
The answer lies in the democratization of information, known as the Internet. If knowledge is power, the Internet, in all its various permutations and expressions, has given all of us both instantaneous information, and the ability to act on it.
Today, we are witnessing the harnessing of the lessons learned by tens of millions of Americans: the values, traditions of American history and culture.
While millions of these Americans, not so lovingly labelled “the Deplorables” by Hillary Clinton in 2016, might only have a high school education, they have studied, learned and assimilated the genius of the American respect for the individual, opportunity and mobility, as well as the ability of an individual to transcend the circumstances of his birth.
They see in American history, a flawed but magnificent effort to raise the level of the dignity and well being of the great swath of humanity that compromises the nation. They revere those who sacrificed to maintain that effort, those who saw that in defending America they were defending something grand, glorious, humane and decent.
And they are not willing to see it tossed, as progressive, woke, cancel culture, critical race theory advocates and other postmodern trendsetters are attempting to do, onto the scrap heap of history alongside communism, socialism (National or otherwise), theocratic despotism and other isms that wildly succeeded in ruining the lives of hundreds of millions around the world.
Today, the Deplorables are steeped in a wisdom that has completely eluded their elite leaders: common sense.
They have also become the ultimate custodian of the mindset and motivation that birthed America: individualism.
These two attributes have the power to reverse the all too apparent tailspin that has beset America and much of the rest of the West.
The Deplorables know that they are not racist people; they know that America is not the fount of all evil; they also know that they have individual human rights, and just as a woman has a right to the integrity of her body, so do they.
We are witnessing the beginning of a highly unusual if not unprecedented - by history’s metrics - bottom up, grassroots uprising designed to restore American culture, rescue American history, and rediscover traditional American values.
Any one of sound mind, who values the existence of America, not to mention its leadership of the free world, must want to cheer them on. Their mission must succeed. The alternatives are too frightening to contemplate.
Douglas Altabef is the Chairman of the Board of Im Tirtzu, Israel’s largest grassroots Zionist organization, and is a Director of the Israel Independence Fund. HeIn America can be reached at [email protected].