We live in the Age of Trump. Kamala Harris’ failure to realize this helps explain why we can bestow a name to our time (placeholder presidents do not bequeath an “Age of Biden” or a “Fillmorian Era” to the history books) that started in 2015 and, as a result of this week’s events, will continue until 2029, and perhaps beyond. A populism characterizes this age, albeit not primarily of the kind pundits fixate upon when discussing Donald Trump. With perspective, historians will recognize that heeding the masses neither on border integrity nor on a retreat from foreign wars, stands as the glaring demarcation line between the Age of Trump and past and future eras. His is not a populism of the ballot box or of the dollar, but a populism of the tongue. People love Donald Trump because they hate scolds forbidding them from speaking their minds. The federal government does not guarantee Americans equal incomes or equal looks. The Constitution forbids the federal government from granting speech rights to the favored while denying them to the frowned upon. Ordinary Americans felt this enshrined equality was threatened. The populist billionaire entered politics just as political correctness reemerged as “woke.” It demanded the outward acceptance of lies as the price of admission to polite society. Just as the Reformation came as a reaction to the Renaissance, the Age of Trump arrived because of the pervasive wokeness that preceded and overlapped. This hysterical force, similar to the Salem Witch Trials or the Clown Scare of the last decade, kicked a feminist off social media for posting “men aren’t women,” blacklisted doctors who questioned the COVID narrative, and imposed the term “Latinx” on Hispanics, despite a 2023 Pew poll discovering just 1 percent of them prefer that label and that 40 percent, according to another survey, find it offensive. It employed censorship, but its preferred method of silencing involved transforming those who disagreed into pariahs through the mechanism of cancel culture. If the top-rated cable news network dared to air heterodox thoughts, then they did not get to air Kellogg’s or Bud Light or Ozempic ads but curiously 1-800-number commercials touting reverse mortgages, precious metals, and pillows. If your comedy prioritized funny over ideological correctness, then late-night television exiled you to the recesses of the podcast world. And, if you said something 130 years ago that offended someone today, the mob came and murdered your statue. Donald Trump shouted “the emperor has no clothes” to all that. His example awarded a permission slip, formerly known as the First Amendment, to those cowed into a disconnect between thoughts and words. The public attitude toward woke — in comedy, in Congress, and in corporations — now mirrors the “Death to Disco” movement of the late 1970s. This past Tuesday was America’s Disco Demolition Night toward DEI crusaders and social justice warriors. Why did America connect with Trump and not Harris? Trump says what he thinks. Harris says what others tell her to. The latter remains a captive of the dying era of rote speech spoken not to say anything but rather to say nothing offensive to the special, protected groups. Her 11th-hour gambit of demonizing her opponent as a fascist seemed similarly straight out of the woke playbook. The former spearheads this time of full exercise of the principles of the First Amendment granted to every American equally. In a word, the Age of Trump is genuine. People prefer milk to nondairy creamer, an orchestra to synthesizers, and Ghostbusters to Female Ghostbusters. In the Age of Trump, they can spot the fake. The phony fact-checker industry that proliferated in Trump’s wake depicts him as the biggest liar since Pinocchio. In fact, Trump’s honesty attracts voters to him. The billionaire speaks sans teleprompter or filter. Yes, this exposes his occasional pettiness, exaggerations, and braggadocio. Of greater salience, it exposes him. Whether fulfilling orders in the McDonald’s drive-thru or in a sanitation truck, the Republican nominee appeared immune from Michael-Dukakis-in-the-tank moments because he comes off naturally. Donald Trump, a man more comfortable in his own skin than any who walks the earth, cannot be anyone but Donald Trump. Contrast this with his vanquished opponent, a nervous, giggling woman who spent the first half of the campaign dodging the press and the second half mastering ways to dodge the questions the press posed to her. Perhaps a product of San Francisco by necessity camouflages herself and her outlook when running for president of the United States. Who is Kamala Harris? After nearly four years as vice president and more than three months running for president, few can answer with confidence. She repeatedly told us she grew up in a middle-class neighborhood, to the point, à la an affirmation or a mantra, that we began to disbelieve her. In her worst moments, Kamala Harris sounded like A.I. Kamala Harris. On Election Eve, the Democratic nominee encountered a surprised Pennsylvania couple, presumably party activists of some sort, at their home. “I wasn’t expecting that,” the husband explained, “thought it was [Gov. Josh] Shapiro.” Harris informed the man, “Well, I want to door-knock.” The couple understood, retreated inside their house, and the cameras then readied for the manufactured scene. The pseudo-moment encapsulated her career, her campaign, and why she lost. When, as an unknown, she received plum jobs, a car, and an entrée to the politically connected through her outré relationship with a short bald man 30 years her senior, she displayed a hollowness of soul later seen in her plagiarized Smart on Crime book and her cringeworthy conversations with child actors in a promotional video for NASA passed off as genuine interactions. This career pattern continued during the campaign when she adopted various manners of speech foreign to her own (“Ya betta thank a union member!”), embarrassed herself by repeating “32” as a cry for help of sorts over a teleprompter glitch, and spoke in a programmed manner in interviews once she finally deigned to submit herself to them. Post-Donald Trump, a presidential aspirant sticks to the script at his or her own risk. The teleprompter, invented in 1952, remains a useful tool, but dependence on that screen places yet another screen between politicians and the electorate — atop the pollsters, advisers, speechwriters, and others looking to “Johnny Bravo” a candidate. Such well-compensated hangers-on insist on the 1952 technology for the same reason they shielded their charge from the oh-so 2024 technology of podcasts: control. The coterie of Democrat poohbahs Johnny Bravo-ed Kamala Harris, who merely fit the suit, into certain defeat. Trump spoke to. Harris spoke down. Trump talked to communicate. Harris talked to communicate that she is apart from the masses in this special clique that knows what every letter in the ever-expanding alphabet-people initialism means but cannot explain what a woman is. Trump highlighted what he believes. Harris hid what she believes. The normalization of the group lie in the 2024 campaign of ideological obfuscation, marked by evasive language and euphemism that alienated voters, also permeated the strictly political deceit, embraced to the detriment of the party by every leading Democrat in America, that President Methuselah remained as alert and clearheaded as ever. The teleprompters and protection from the press that doomed Harris doomed Joe Biden, too, once he exposed himself to an uncontrolled environment without advisers telling him what to say. A party in a perpetual how-dare-you mode at the unfiltered speech of normal Americans ran a campaign afraid to air its true thoughts for fear of alienating those normal Americans. Elites daily in judgment faced the predictable verdict of ordinary people quadrennially in judgment of them. One cannot win the presidency post-Donald Trump through such a fondness for obliquity, evasion, and euphemism. The choreographed candidate appears counterfeit juxtaposed to the live-without-a-teleprompter, shoot-from-the-hip, I’ve-gotta-be-me Donald Trump. It all — the pressure on the public for guarded speech that suppresses true thoughts, the dishonest propping-up of unwell leaders and policies at the political level, the use of euphemism and evasion to disguise ugly ideas with sweet labels at the ideological level — recalled the waning days of the Soviet Union. The who-moved-my-cheese response to changing conditions from the Kremlin meant the death of the Soviet Union. The liars in charge did not adapt, so they were overcome. Americans, fed fakeness for so many years, craved authenticity in 2024. In style and content, nobody speaks like Kamala Harris in a private setting. Donald Trump spoke conversationally and clearly without anybody whispering lines in his good ear. The political lesson bequeathed by the times? Be yourself. In America, the rules have changed. We live in the Age of Trump. And the Democratic Party could die in the Age of Trump if does not abide by the new rules. READ MORE from Daniel J. Flynn: Kamala’s Conceited Cunctatious Concession Voters Prefer Warts-and-All Trump to Photoshopped Harris Kamala Harris Flunked the Job Interviews The post The Age of Trump appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.