The moment has arrived. President Donald Trump will now be both the 45th and 47th president of the United States. Impossible as it was to predict the events of the 98 months and one week that have passed since the November night Trump first shocked the world, there were signs from before it even happened that pointed to what was to come. These warnings were virtually everywhere in the Western world, and virtually everywhere, they were imperiously ignored by the ruling elites. On this snowy January day, they reap it.
It’s hard to overstate just how tumultuous a year 2016 was for the global order. Trump’s shock victory capped a year that had already seen British voters vote to leave the European Union, tearing at the very heart of a grand liberal experiment in the repression of national sovereignty under continental commissions and bureaucracy, to the benefit of finance and trade.
Today might mark a new beginning, but more certain than anything, this day, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025, marks the liberal order’s end. And how sweet it is.
