by Antony Stark, ©2025
(May 25, 2025) — What we are currently witnessing in America today is more than a simple change from a Democrat to a Republican administration. What is occurring is essentially a full-blown Reaction against the entire transnational progressive project that has been dominating American life since the end of the Second World War.
Reaction balanced against the chronic dis-order created by Revolutionary extremism is a common historical equation: revolutionary action provokes counter-Revolutionary re-action. Mired in the failures of revolutionary excess, the reaction’s goal is to end chaos, restore order and return society to more normative, traditional patterns of life.
The reality of the current counter-Revolution is about more than the greatest rejection of the Left since Reagan, more than Donald Trump emerging as the most consequential political figure in a half a century and even more than the major re-alignment of political groups that Trump has wrought by increasing his vote with Black males, Hispanics, Moderates and the Young, who were once all thought to be solidly, perhaps permanently, a part of the Democrat Party coalition.
https://www.newsweek.com/voter-groups-donald-tump-election-exit-polls-1981483
Trump crushed the Democrats even among once reliably loyal Blue-Collar workers:
“In 2024, Harris got 48.5% and Trump 49%, meaning that between 2008 and 2024, the Democrats lost almost 30% of working-class voters.”
There is no doubting it: the country is in the grip of a full-blown counter-Revolutionary political Reaction; Donald Trump is its author and “America First” is its goal.
Democrat Party approval ratings with these groups are at historic lows, with the Democrats also now on the wrong side of cultural issues that have proved to be wildly unpopular with voters.
In 2024, voters roundly rejected WOKE policies, often by margins 80% to 20%. MAGA Conservative policy views on cultural issues such as ending the access of biological males to female sports and bathrooms, opposing critical race theory in K-12 schools, and opposing the gender mutilation of children in the name of trans-rights are all far more popular with the electorate.
https://foreignpolicyintel.substack.com/p/8020-issues-how-republicans-win-while
https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_513f3242-8818-11ef-aba3-2b7497f57024.html
Even the much-vaunted abortion issue, on which feminist Democrats placed so much hope, fizzled; once SCOTUS sent it back to the states, it lost its ability to galvanize female voters nationally. The issue was such a dud that Trump wound up taking 5% more of the female vote than he did in 2020.
https://www.ibtimes.com/shocking-chart-shows-more-women-voted-trump-2024-2020-3749892
Today’s Reaction is a reflection of public anger against the type of Revolutionary policies inflicted on American society by WOKE socialist Democrats and all they represent, including one-way “Free Trade” deals, Open Borders, neo-Con war-mongering, confiscatory taxes, grotesquely wasteful government spending, ever-expanding government debt and dangerous laxity regarding crime and punishment.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/651719/economy-important-issue-2024-presidential-vote.aspx
https://www.city-journal.org/article/trump-won-on-the-issues
Trump’s Reaction sides with the general public’s very low opinion of the Legacy Media.
Trump’s Reaction agrees with the public’s contempt for Ivy League colleges that have disgraced themselves by their support for everything that is anti-Western, anti-American and anti-Semitic.
https://forward.com/fast-forward/608938/poll-ban-campus-protests-support-police
Trump’s Reaction shares the public’s revulsion with the cultural toxic waste that the “Entertainment” Industry excretes into society.
https://washingtonstand.com/commentary/antiwoke-movement-flips-the-script-in-hollywood-
This across-the-board rejection of the Transnational Progressive Order represents a counter-Revolution of immense power and depth.
Trump’s Reaction seeks the re-construction of all that was best in the traditional order (GOD, Freedom, Liberty, Capitalism, Limited Government and American Exceptionalism) purged of what had become weak, decadent, stagnant, corrupt, tyrannical and lacking-in-ambition to accomplish great and exceptional things.
On the economic front alone, should Trump’s tariff policy succeed in un-doing major aspects of the post WW II economic vision, replacing it with a more Nationalist oriented policy, that alone would be a counter-Revolutionary change so profound that it would rock the rapidly decaying, seriously compromised and badly failing “Rules Based International Order” that has been in place since 1945, to its core.
That economic order, which is dominated by powerful transnational elites, has for decades been using their instrumentalities on the American Left to cynically mollify us with an endless series of “new deals,” designed by “experts” who seek to create a “progressive,” supposedly omni-competent, mega-intrusive Deep State to “help us” live “secure” lives.
Truman’s “Fair Deal,” Kennedy’s “New Frontier,” Johnson’s “Great Society,” Nixon’s “Abundant Society,” Clinton’s “New Covenant” and Obama’s “Fundamental Change” all claimed to be enriching us when they were in fact immiserating us instead. They all claimed to be “liberating” and “improving” our lives while robbing us of our freedom and Ordered Liberty.
Real improvement arrived in the “First 100 Days” of Trump’s second term, which has surpassed that of any president since the phrase came into existence under FDR’s original revolutionary “New Deal” in 1933; but Trump’s anti-New Deal Reaction intends to use Democrat weakness to go in a completely counter-revolutionary, America First, direction.
The Left is so shattered and divided that they can do nothing but throw performative public tantrums, while disgruntled voters flee toward common sense policies that defy the Left’s jejune political nostrums. They can vent incandescent, maniacal rage against Trump, but Democrats cannot win armed with nothing but outdated ideological dogmas that are totally bereft of new ideas.
Its young, activist Base, led by incendiaries like AOC and David Hogg, are demanding much more; they are bitterly angry with the Democrats’ ignominious 2024 defeat and they see it as the result of a greedy, geriatric, donor-obsessed Party leadership that lacked the revolutionary vitality and determination to effectively resist Trump’s relentless attacks.
The more “moderate” Corporate Donor Wing has lost much of its former control over the direction of the Party and fear being replaced by new leaders who are fueled by the same angry lust for class warfare that the Base feels towards the MAGA “oligarchs.” This rising leadership insists that only being as extreme, un-yielding and hard-Left as possible will inspire the true-believers to have the strength and the willpower to defeat Trump.
The Right should welcome this development.
An excessive, often violent, resistance by the Left to the Trump Reaction will likely turn off general election voters who are already disgusted with the policy failures and social upheaval created by dysfunctional Democrats.
During this turning of history’s page,the radicals are only interested in securing total control of the Democrat Party. This is because the Marxist Base cares less about the next national election than it does about the ultimate success of the Revolution itself; controlling one of the two national parties is necessary to accomplish that goal.
Such ideological myopia represents an historic opportunity for MAGA to make truly breakthrough counter-revolutionary gains and then lock those gains in through legislation, multi-agency integrated regulations, and possibly some fortuitous landmark SCOTUS rulings.
Since the activist Base elements of both parties tend to control the outcome of primary elections, any candidates on the Democrat side espousing the “moderate” views of the Corporate Donor wing are more likely to lose primaries for being too “weak.”
The problem this presents is that Democrats who are carried to victory in the primaries by the radical Base are likely to be seen as too extreme for the far more moderate voters who participate in the general election and thus cause the Left to suffer a disastrous electoral defeat even worse than the one that struck them in 2024.
Such a take-over by the Leftwing Base is suicidal; it has the potential to inflict a defeat on the Democrats so hellacious that it could destroy their long-term electoral prospects just as surely as FDR’s revolutionary victories in 1932 and 1936 all but ended not only Republican dominance, but Republican relevance for generations.
The Right must ensure this reversal by recruiting the millions of post-COVID Gen-Z voters who are excited by Trump’s vision and energy; if this crucial voting bloc is solidified and organized during their formative years to support the Trump Reaction, it will serve as a generational foundation for the Right for years to come.
And it has to do it now.
Because MAGA Conservatives will need their numbers to defeat the Left in 2026 and 2028 in order to create enough time to establish its dominance… not just over one or two election cycles but, as Roosevelt did, over one or two generations.
If Trump’s Golden Age is to occur, it must begin with the success of the Trump Reaction.
Antony Stark is the co-author of the book “The Seventh Crisis – Why Millennials Must Re-establish Ordered Liberty.”
Mr. Stark is spot on with his assessment of the current political landscape. The resignation of Klaus Schwab couldn’t have made me happier. For decades the Global Elites have been conspiring to take over America and thus control our lives. This was accomplished (until now) by using the Democrat Party as their vehicle to get it done. Having President Trump at the helm has been a new dawn in the societal and fiscal direction of the USA, and globally! The Biden Administration, or those that were running the country, have much blood on their hands globally. I personally hope the Democrats keep spewing their crazy policies that are unpopular with 80% of the electorate and cause their party to become irrelevant going forward. Thanks Mr. Stark for the concise article outlining how this all started, and where we are headed.
All good, but the libs still control the media, education and many parts of the government. If there is to be real change many more of them need to be removed from positions of authority.
This is a great summation of the current domestic political status, yet Mr. Stark, in this short essay manages to accomplish that while referencing the period from the cessation of WW2 hostilities up to the present day. Also, he destroys the myths about various presidential initiatives as being beneficial in a mere sentence or two. Most important , from my perspective, is the need to build upon this rare opportunity to restore our nation to it’s once free and true prominence….that beacon of light for the world to aspire to….and to do so with the inclusion of the legions of young freedom loving Americans.