Recently there have been two headlines, which, I think, help illustrate the difference between the two Americas.

The first was the death of Fidel Castro, the inexplicably long-lived Cuban dictator whose rule transformed Cuba from the jewel of the Caribbean into a squalid outpost of the Soviet Union. Castro’s death at the age of 90 caused an outpouring of sympathy and support from some world leaders, who said things such as:

“At this time of Fidel Castro’s passing, we extend a hand of friendship to the Cuban people. We know that this moment fills Cubans – in Cuba and in the United States – with powerful emotions, recalling the countless ways in which Fidel Castro altered the course of individual lives, families, and of the Cuban nation. History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him.”

-U.S. President Barack Obama

and

“While a controversial figure, both Mr. Castro’s supporters and detractors recognized his tremendous dedication and love for the Cuban people who had a deep and lasting affection for ‘el Comandante.’”

-Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

and

““I express my sentiments of sorrow to Your Excellency and other family members of the deceased dignitary, as well as to the people of this beloved nation. At the same time, I offer prayers to the Lord for his rest and I entrust the whole Cuban people to the maternal intercession of our Lady of the Charity of El Cobre, patroness of that country.”

-Pope Francis

Contrast these statements with those of, say, U.S. President-Elect Donald Trump:

“Today, the world marks the passing of a brutal dictator who oppressed his own people for nearly six decades. Fidel Castro’s legacy is one of firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights.

“While Cuba remains a totalitarian island, it is my hope that today marks a move away from the horrors endured for too long, and toward a future in which the wonderful Cuban people finally live in the freedom they so richly deserve.”

Or Sen. Marco Rubio’s response (himself of Cuban descent) to Pres. Obama’s statement:

“What I called ‘pathetic’ is not mentioning whatsoever in that statement the reality that there are thousands upon thousands of people who suffered brutally under the Castro regime.

“He executed people; he jailed people for 20 to 30 years. The Florida Straits – there are thousands of people who lost their lives fleeing his dictatorship, and not to acknowledge any of that in the statement, I felt was pathetic, absolutely.”

You see the difference? One side either says nothing of substance or openly praises the man whose rule drove twenty-percent of his nation to risk death to escape it. The other side bluntly states the fact that he was a murdering thug who turned his country into a slave camp. You might call this the respect due to the dead, except that the same people who refuse to condemn Castro now didn’t condemn him in life either. It’s as if his crimes simply don’t matter, because he was the right kind of dictator. He said the right things, held the right positions, and did what the right people think should be done. He gave ‘free’ medical care: it doesn’t matter what kind of care, it was free, so he’s progressive and, hence, good. He’s on the ‘correct’ side, so we just don’t have to mention the thousands of people he murdered, imprisoned, and drove into exile. We can pretend that his rule, somehow, was a good thing for Cuba, because it would be very convenient for the right people if it were.

Now another headline: the knife attack at Ohio State University, in which a Somali man drove his car into a group of his fellow students and proceeded to attack them with a butcher knife until he was shot by a police officer. For days after the attack, the media insisted that his motive for doing so was ‘unknown.’ Now, I could understand caution, and I would applaud it if it were also applied in any other context, but the fact of the matter is that while most of the media has no problem crying ‘racism’ whenever a police officer shoots a black man (regardless of either the circumstances or the race of the offending officer), they have a very hard time crying ‘terrorism’ even when it is very clear that that’s what has happened.

From the very beginning, the Ohio attack looked exactly like what it turned out to be: another one of literally hundreds of Islamic terror attacks that have taken place this year throughout the world. The man apparently preceded his attack with anti-American rants on Facebook, and the MO fits with similar attacks around the world: general, brutal, and using anything and everything to hand (compare the men who drove a truck through the crowds in Nice earlier this year, or the Orlando nightclub shooting: the goal in each case seems to simply be to hurt and kill as many people as possible). Despite the media’s insistence that they ‘had yet to determine a motive,’ the motive, to most people, seemed obvious within the first few hours after the attack: the same motive we’ve seen time and time again for the past few years, in places like Paris or London or Brussels.

But you see, if Islamic terrorism is an actual, immediate threat, that would be damaging to the principle of open borders, multiculturalism, and (above all) ‘diversity.’ So it is expedient that we downplay Islam as a factor; we don’t know the motive. Now that we know it, we can just say he’s just a ‘lone wolf’ and not really a terrorist (how the idea that anyone might become radicalized and start hacking up his classmates with a butcher knife is more comforting than the idea of organized terrorism I’ll leave you to decide). If people got to thinking that maybe a significant number of Muslims actually hate the West and want to destroy it, not through propaganda, but through violence, then it might be that the people who elected Donald Trump or voted for Brexit have a point and we should be a lot more cautious who we let into the country. It might even mean that there’s something wrong with the very idea of ‘diversity,’ which is unthinkable.

I’ve said before that political correctness means the idea that being a good person requires you to ignore any reality that is inconvenient to a person of the correct type. So, you must ignore Castro’s crimes because he was a leftist dictator who was a thorn in America’s side for about three-quarters of a century. You must ignore or excuse the crimes of Muslim terrorists and make no provisos to defend against them or even acknowledge their existence because Muslims are ‘the other’ (that is: they are not of the hated West) and so deserve the courtesy of lying, or at least equivocating for their sakes (“well, we don’t really know the motive, and anyway he’s not really a terrorist”).

But the other half of the country, the other America, is sick of these lies and equivocations. They’re sick of people who constantly run them down and insult them while making excuses for murderers and tyrants. They’re sick of being told to bury their heads in the sand lest they offend the people who are seeking to destroy their civilization.

That’s a major reason why Donald Trump won: because, while he may be a liar, he doesn’t tell that kind of lie. He doesn’t lie because he thinks lying in the right way about the right people makes him a good person. That doesn’t mean he’s trustworthy, but it does mean he isn’t a member of the cult-like ideology that controls so much of our country and which has wrought such disaster in the last few decades. He may lie, but he won’t try to tell us that our enemies are really our victims, and that makes him far safer than either Obama or Hilary.

The two Americas can be described as the one that loves America and the great western heritage it is heir to and the one that hates them both like poison. To the latter, any enemy of the west is a friend of theirs (because they don’t realize that their ideas could only exist in a civilization like the west): whether a communist dictator or a Muslim terrorist. Their crimes are less important than the fact that they are ‘the other’ and hence, by nature, good.

The first America, the one that loves her, is the one that elected Donald Trump and which will, God willing, eventually triumph. Trump’s a repulsive person and hardly a desirable leader, but the important thing is that his election marks a serious upset to the ideology of well-meaning lies that has so dominated the west. The contrast of Trump’s and Obama’s reactions to Castro’s death is revealing: one won’t say anything against one of the most brutal dictators of the western hemisphere, the other bluntly calls the man for what he was. People are seeing truth and lies side by side and can judge for themselves which they prefer.