A catastrophic breakdown in the constitutional order threw journalist Walter Lippmann into a sense of dread back in 1938. Public opinion had gotten too big for its britches.
It was the beginnings of what he called a "morbid derangement in the true functions of power" – a subtle but radical shift in the relationship government and the governed.
The derangement was so alarming that Lippmann believed, if not reversed, it would bring about the fall of the West. He was right.
"Mass opinion has acquired mounting power in this century," he wrote in "The Public Philosophy" (1955). "It has shown itself to be a dangerous master of decisions when the stakes are life and death."
Warning signs blared the loudest between the world wars.
After winning the first war, the West wanted peace so badly that it pretended not to see Hitler giving a middle finger to the Peace Treaty. Year after year, he rearmed. Year after year, they acted as if he wasn't – reacting to events rather than governing them.
They refused to confront Hitler while he was, at the time, so easy to stop. So he soon became nearly impossible to stop.
But who could blame them? Confronting reality couldn't have come at a worse time.
With wreckage still piled up from both WWI and the Great Depression, they longed for "peace, safety, and a nice life."
"They were so very late," Lippmann wrote. "They had refused to take in what they saw, they had refused to believe what they heard, they had wished and they had waited, hoping against hope."
Why? Because leaders were being ruled by the tyranny of prevailing opinion.
Like a hired pilot letting a passenger fly his plane, or a hired doctor letting his patient do his own surgery, leaders "hired" by the people were so ruled by prevailing opinion that it crippled their ability to make hard decisions, even when impending danger screamed for them.
The people can elect and remove government. They can approve and disapprove of its performance. But the people cannot "exercise" the government, as Thomas Jefferson once wrote.
Since inertia is built into changing many minds rather than a few, the public tends to fixate on old events as reality compels governments to grapple with new ones.
"A mass cannot govern," Lippmann wrote. "… we must adopt the habit of thinking as plainly about the sovereign people as we do about the politicians they elect. … No more than the kings before them should the people be hedged with divinity."
It's far safer for timid politicians to be wrong than it is popular to be right – being right too soon risks political death.
"The unhappy truth is that the prevailing public opinion has been destructively wrong at the critical junctures," Lippmannwrote.
Yet as early as 1934, one man clearly understood Britain's "critical juncture" and spoke loudly and often about it. Much like Trump today, Winston Churchill was a political freak of nature. Long before he was locked in combat against Hitler's tyranny, he battled the tyranny of public opinion.
Drunk on the "liquor of peace," Churchill's opponents lavished their rhetorical energies on short-sighted, Chuck Schumer-like platitudes. Any talk of taking hard "necessary measures" was ridiculed, downplayed, and rationalized.
Sound familiar?
In the end, Churchill – "political freak" and right too soon – lost the debate. Slow-moving public opinion, preoccupied with a situation that no longer existed, was overrun by fast-moving events.
The storm came, and "The Unnecessary War," as Churchill called it, became the bloodiest in history.
"There never was a war more easy to stop than that which has just wrecked what was left of the world from the previous struggle," Churchill wrote. "… The malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous."
Fast forward. Mass opinion has never been more powerful.
Social media. Fake news. Grifting podcasters. Conflicting polls. TikTok politicians. Low-information voters, addicted to a glut of dumbed-down video sugar cubes. The View.
Lippmann's "morbid derangement" has been hedged with a kind of divinity that elected leaders bow to, no matter how absurd.
The West has become unrecognizable since 1938, thanks to timid politicians who are terrified of making hard but necessary decisions.
They only hold on, for now, by a Trumpian thread – a golden window of opportunity.
Especially in America.
Foreign-born ingrates have teamed with home-grown radicals – in and out of office – to work with global thugs to destroy America from within. That's reality.
Warning signs blare loudly in George Floyd's Minnesota. As a hodgepodge of agitators openly rebel against federal authority, activist politicians gurgle cauldrons of rhetorical fuel ontosmoldering mobs.
We're at a critical juncture.
Year after year, they've "rearmed." Year after year, too many pretend not to see it.
We are so very late. Longing for "peace, safety and a nice life," they've refused to believe what they're seeing and hearing. They're wishing, waiting, and hoping that the country gets back to "normal" without the ugly mess of cleaning up the wreckage from years of ugly policies.
Within a brief window of opportunity, devious politicians haveanswered Trump's "necessary measures" with pure theatrics, using the "ugly mess" of cleanup as fodder to manipulate public opinion.
Fortunately for America, no politician in modern times roars back at "stupid" opinions – popular or not – like Trump.
"Right too soon" on illegal immigration, NATO, DEI, tariffs, Greenland, Panama Canal, Iran, Israel, Venezuela, transgenderism, election-rigging, etc., Trump understands, but is not ruled by, prevailing opinion.
He's not only making the incredibly hard decisions to tear things down but to build things up.
And it's working.
If the dogged determination we've seen over the past year continues for the next three, Trump will not only create an American golden age but, after nearly a century, be the model for how the West can free itself from mass "tyranny" and reverse its suicidal derangement.
Making hard decisions could be the subtle but radical shift that makes the West great again.