Trump's Cultural Counterrevolution

This time it's different.

On Friday, President Trump posted on his social media network Truth Social a promise to rescind former President Biden’s executive order phasing out plastic straw use in the federal government.

“I will be signing an Executive Order next week ending the ridiculous Biden push for Paper Straws, which don’t work. BACK TO PLASTIC!" wrote the president.

Some might interpret Trump’s attention to this matter as frivolous, just another example of an undisciplined president who still hasn’t learned how to pick his battles. Certainly, his detractors in the media will present it this way, whether they believe it themselves or not.

But there is another way to look at Trump’s tirade, which is likely far more calculated than its presentation may appear. It is a clear message to his adversaries that no stone will be left unturned in what can only be described as the beginning of a cultural counterrevolution the Trump administration has begun during the opening weeks of his second term in office.

This counterrevolution has been launched with a “shock and awe” approach. In the space of a few weeks, Trump has pulled the United States out of the Paris Climate Accord, dismantled USAID, begun the process of abolishing the Department of Education, and ordered schools to cease allowing biological men to compete against women in sports or lose their federal funding. He has even committed to siccing DOGE on the Department of Defense, something Trump 2016-20 would never have considered.

Oh, and the straw nonsense. That’s over, too. No stone unturned.

The cultural counterrevolution’s goal, of course, is to overturn the cultural revolution which began in the 1960s, accelerated during the Obama administration, and reached its climax during the Biden administration. Its philosophical roots in the Frankfurt School, transplanted to the United States during the 1930s, it set out overthrow what was left of classical liberal America after the New Deal and WWII.

Led by Frankfurt School founder Herbert Marcuse, his protégé Angela Davis, and other sixties radicals, the revolution sought to exploit racial injustice, very real at the time, to advance the theory that capitalism itself, as well as individual liberty, were inherently racist and must be destroyed. They at first tried violent revolution through groups like the Weather Underground and Black Panthers. But once that approach failed, they began the “long march through the institutions.”

Christopher Rufo has written an excellent book, America’s Cultural Revolution, chronicling this revolution and the impact a relatively small number of people, including Marcuse, have had in advancing it.

The impact of Marcuse in particular cannot be understated. He is the font from which most of the insidious ideas flow. Much has been said and written about critical race theory over the past few years, but it is important to understand that this is just a subset of the much older critical theory developed in the 1930s by Marcuse and other Frankfurt School founders.

Their need to look at history, law, and other disciplines in an entirely different manner grew out of the realization that there would be no proletariat revolution in the West. They had all sorts of rationalizations for this, but in reality, it was because the so-called proletariat was far better off after the industrial revolution than before it. Marx’s predicted “crisis of capitalism,” in which wages would be driven down to where the workers could no longer afford the products they produced, failed to materialize. Quite the opposite had occurred, as any competent economist could have predicted (and did).

Rather than admit to themselves communism was a bad system, they sought to bring it about another way. Instead of inciting the entire working class to revolt, they would ally themselves with oppressed subgroups within society and persuade them that it was capitalism and classical liberalism itself which caused their oppression. They specifically targeted racial minorities, women, and homosexuals.

Sexual licentiousness was an integral part of the revolution, encouraging promiscuity to liberate women from the repressive nuclear family and society in general from the repressiveness of its sexual morays. To first decriminalize and then destigmatize adultery, homosexuality, and other forms of “licentiousness” was a first step. Later, gay marriage and even the abolition of gender itself would follow.

The revolution was successful because there were very real injustices in 20^th century American society that people of good will fully supported ending. American blacks, in particular, were subject to legal disabilities, and not just in the Jim Crow South, which no one argues didn’t need to be removed.

But the Marxists never planned to stop at removal of legal disabilities or even general social tolerance of racial or sexual minorities because their end goal was never equal justice. Their goal was to abolish capitalism and individual liberty and replace it with socialism and authoritarian rule. Thus, generations after racism or bigotry ceased to be an institutional problem, the Marxists are still claiming it is worse than ever.

Untutored in political theory and distracted by the creature comforts capitalism had bestowed upon them, most Americans were unaware this revolution was occurring until its progress became exponential. During the Biden administration, it was on the doorstep of total victory.

The profit motive had been replaced by DEI in American corporations. Biological men were winning women’s sporting events and beauty contests. Covid vaccines were mandated by executive fiat following medical martial law in the form of lockdowns and mask mandates. The revolution returned to violence in the streets, this time cheered on by American lawmakers who no longer felt the need to hide their contempt for their constituents. Illegal immigration swelled to tsunami levels.

The clock was ticking on the prohibition, for all practical purposes, of gas-powered automobiles. Most Americans, unable to afford vastly more expensive electric cars, would be relegated to public transportation, another huge incursion into their liberty and prosperity.

“This is the most important election of our lifetimes” had become a laugh line among libertarians and other critics of the establishment by the two thousand teens. That American society would be fundamentally different depending upon whether John McCain, Mitt Romney, or Barack Obama occupied the Evil Office was ludicrous on its face to any but the hopelessly indoctrinated. But 2024 seemed different.

They may not be able to articulate it politically, but a majority of Americans knew something was rotten in 2024 and that time might be running out to stop it. It wasn’t that their so-called representatives didn’t care about them; they seemed to be deliberately acting against their interests. Many may not have liked Donald Trump personally, but they knew one thing: anyone the establishment was trying this hard to get rid of was someone they needed in Washington.

It was different even than 2016. Trump had snuck into the White House that year, taking the establishment by surprise and eking out slim majorities in swing states to win the Electoral College. In 2024, there was a desperation in the air and not without good reason.

This time, Trump won the popular vote, the equivalent of a landslide for a Republican in 21^st century America, even if his margin was only a few million votes. A solid majority of Americans decided whatever was going on in Washington had to stop. And they were willing to send in a wrecking ball to see that it did.

The media portray Trump’s mission as one of personal vengeance. They’re right. Trump certainly is motivated to exact revenge upon everyone who has wronged him over the past eight years. Those who torpedoed his first administration. Those who weaponized the legal system against him, attempting to rob him of his fortune and liberty. Those who may even have allowed assassins the opportunity to end his life.

The good news is these are the very same people who have attempted to bring the United States under global totalitarian rule. A vengeful Trump surrounded by an ideologically “extremist” cabinet is precisely what America needs to rid itself of this tyranny.

Let’s hope Trump’s anger does not subside.

Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?