Not that President Trump will get any credit.

The news obsesses over the recent government shutdown, the latest Robert Mueller arrest, and, of course, fake news — from the BuzzFeed Michael Cohen non-story to the smears of the Covington Catholic High School students.

But aside from the weekly hysterias, the world has dramatically changed since 2016 in ways we scarcely have appreciated.

The idea that China systematically rigged trade laws and engaged in technological espionage to run up huge deficits is no longer a Trump, or even a partisan, issue.

The world did not fall apart after the U.S. pulled out of the flawed Iran nuclear deal. Most yawned when the U.S. left the symbolic but empty Paris Climate Accord. Ditto when the U.S. moved its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

In retrospect, most Americans accept that such once-controversial decisions were not ever all that controversial.

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Of the many memorable scenes and sequences from the film, “Casablanca¸” one that stands out for both its subtlety and its continuing resonance comes when the Bulgarian Bride—her name is Annina Brandel in the script—sits down with Rick Blaine (Bogart) and asks for some very important advice. Watch the scene above first before we discuss it.

It’s a quandary to which we can all relate. One of her lines of dialogue, however, has an especially timely meaning: “The Devil has the people by the throat.”

In the context of the film, the Devil is Hitler and the Nazis; the Brandels were lucky to escape with their lives. Today, the Devil is much closer to home – right here in America, wearing a pink pussy hat on his horns.

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Fascism and Communism—those tragic sisters from the 1900s that led to the greatest human suffering, poverty, and mass starvation in human history—should barely be remembered today.

Instead, they are ascendant in the Democrat Party. Cultural Marxism and fascist socialism are the new Democrat chic. The entire country is in an uproar. Everyone feels a sense of doom and gloom.

Conservative pundits have latched onto the fun words “hysteria” and “Trump derangement syndrome.” These words, though cute, mask the seriousness of what is actually happening.  The Democrat Party has become the enemy of America and all it stands for.  It’s time to get real about this.

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After news broke of Robert Mueller’s pre-dawn raid on Roger Stone's home Friday morning in Florida by twenty-nine heavily-armed agents in nineteen vehicles, lights flashing, CNN serendipitously on hand to film the raid, millions of us realized once and for all that we are no longer living in the America we knew and loved.

Mueller was appointed to conceal and obliterate the volumes of evidence of crimes committed by Hillary Clinton; her campaign; and a group of higher-ups in the FBI, DOJ, and CIA, all of whom were involved in a scheme to prevent Trump from being elected.

Mueller’s pure Gestapo tactics make it catastrophically clear that America is no longer a constitutional republic, a nation of laws and justice.  An unelected, tangential officer of the DOJ has for two years abused his position of power to destroy many lives in the cruelest of ways with impunity.

No one is stopping him and his band of legal bullies. Including the President of the United States.

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The behavior of our national media over the past two and a half years has been contemptible.  Our Democrat Party with their Obama-weaponized FBI, DOJ, and CIA broke nearly every law on the books in their effort to destroy Donald Trump.

They have failed every step of the way but have not given up.  They continue to demean themselves, and this past weekend was a two-fer.

The fake BuzzFeed story that should have been dismissed out of hand was gleefully embraced by every pundit on every news outlet.  They could not contain their joy at yet another "bombshell" that would lead to impeachment.  Only Fox held back for confirmation.  When Mueller's office released a statement that "the BuzzFeed story was inaccurate," they were devastated.

Next came the wholesale sliming of a group of Catholic schoolboys who did nothing but gather to wait for their bus after marching in the pro-life rally.  This has brought the degeneracy of the Democrats and their media propagandists into full flower.

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Unlike the year before, Russia entered 2019 with low expectations and deepening disappointment in its own faltering revival.

In contrast, the World Cup provided a focus for anticipation in 2018, and the presidential elections, pre-determined as the outcome was, raised hopes for increases of pensions and social benefits. Those hopes turned into frustration with the upping of the retirement age by five years.

The smoldering conflict with Ukraine no longer generates any “patriotic” mobilization. Public attention and concerns are currently centered on domestic problems. As many as 57 percent of respondents foresee a probable looming economic crisis, while only 32 percent do not (Levada.ru, December 24, 2018).

President Vladimir Putin still insists on achieving an economic “breakthrough,” but his orders cannot alter the reality of stagnation. Illustratively, the World Bank revised its growth forecast for Russia downward to 1.5 percent; though, even that appears overly optimistic (RBC, January 9, 2019).  The bad news doesn’t end there.

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China’s Far West of Xinjiang is twice the size of Texas and almost as big as Alaska at 640,000 square miles.  It borders Mongolia, a tiny bit of Russian Siberia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, a tiny bit of Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Tibet.

Beijing officially calls it the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, as almost 50% of Xinjiang’s 25 million people are Uyghurs (wee-gurz), a Turkic Caucasian ethnic group that is Islamic in culture and religion.  Turkic-Islamic ethnicities such as the Kirghiz and Kazakhs comprise another 10%.

To many of them, Xinjiang (“New Frontier” in Mandarin) is East Turkestan, looking upon the 5 “Stans” of the former Soviet Union collectively as inspirationally independent West Turkestan.

Not long ago, together they were almost 100%, but due to massive relocation of millions of Han Chinese to Sinicize the region, their demographic dominance has been seriously diluted by Beijing design.

Thus it is tragically ironic that this “Uyghur Autonomous” province has been increasingly turned into a concentration camp imprisoning vast numbers of Uyghurs and other Moslems.

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