Trump’s Appeal Can be Reduced to Four Words: “We Have a Country”

By Nicholas Stix

When I read the essay that I excerpt below, it immediately brought back a massive miniseries that I saw—in part, at least—back in early 1987 (I had to check the dates). It was called Amerika, ran over 14 hours long, including commercials, and cost $40 million, then a record for a miniseries.

Amerika was about America in the year 1997, ten years after the Soviets conquered us, following a thermonuclear attack that somehow was carried out in the atmosphere, and destroyed all computer-driven technology, including all our military assets and communications here and abroad, thus making it impossible to launch a counter-attack.

Most of the foregoing I had to learn (or re-learn) just now. What I recall of the miniseries was that much of it was terrible, but some of it was overwhelming in its power. Kris Kristofferson gave a lead performance as the leader of the resistance that was, in Marvin Kitman’s words, Lincolnesque.

The two main things I recalled were that Christina Lahti played an American woman who was literally sleeping with the enemy, and that character actor Ford Rainey played an ancient patriot who committed an act of defiance.

I recall trying to talk about the series to a philosophy professor of mine in grad school at a wine-and-cheese reception, following one of the awful guest lectures by tenure holders that we grad students were forced to listen to every Wednesday at noon. I perfected a method of silent clapping following those lectures. You cup both hands.

I was talking to this prof, who I would later learn was a neocon, about why Amerika was important, in spite of its shortcomings. He just smirked.

Millions of sophisticated Americans smirked. But millions of other Americans heard in it mystic chords of memory.

Speaking of chords, according to The Pretend Encyclopedia, the late, great, Basil Pouledaris (Lonesome Dove composed eight hours of music for this production, only a tiny portion of which made it to the small screen. I wonder whatever happened to that music, and if it could be salvaged, and produced for sale.

In any event, there was “a thermonuclear attack” on America: It was called “the civil rights movement,” and it left us powerless before a communist takeover.

“I think the main reason people either love or hate Trump can be summed up in four words, four words he spoke when asked in the Las Vegas debate why he thought he could really build a wall on the border.

“The four words are, ‘We have a country.’ Some hate Trump saying that because we are not supposed to have a country. The country is for immigrants, not us. We are evil and weak people who deserve to be dispossessed.”

[Read the whole thing at VDARE.]