It is hard to predict or appreciate the historical significance of a time you are living in.
Normally it is... this particular one, however, seems to be easy, at least in the sense that we know a lot of rotten applecarts are due for an upset, and Donald Trump shows all the signs of a fellow that God had a talk with.
In “sanctified imagination” I would envision it something like this.
God: “You’re going to be my instrument to deliver America, Donald.” Donald: “Who, me?” God: “Yes, you. Here’s how.”
“He was with a rich man in His death.” — Isaiah 53:9b
dunno bout that. I’m supremely confident that the french knew they were engaging in historically massive events. I’m equally confident the we knew we were dealing with an epochal event when the berlin wall fell. in fact, I dare say I could rattle off a hundred history changing events in which the people involved knew that they were changing history.
although I will certainly agree with your point to the extent that BHO absolutely thought he was going to be an historically transcendent figure when he was elected — and couldn’t have been proven more completely wrong.
but that argues more In favor of my point than against it.
Precisely. The best you can do is "something fundamental changed, let's see if it goes anywhere." Sometimes it doesn't.
This might. I get the same strange sense of urgency I felt in 1989 - "something is happening here, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?" Two years later, no Soviet Union, no Iron Curtain, nothing remained of what looked like a more or less permanent bipolar world. Now that was a paradigm shift!
The Left in the United States has never had to pay the price of confronting the bitter fruits of its own excesses, and that has led to this wild careening through extreme positions in terms of New Racism, attempted smashing of sexual mores, and an academic canon so anti-American and pervasive that it has successfully avoided serious challenge. If that is what has changed with the latest Presidential election, then yes, we may be in the midst of something very interesting. And that, I think, explains the insensate fury of the smug, overconfident Left since 8 November. They're not only not accustomed to losing, they're accustomed to setting the very terms of victory themselves and that having been snatched back appears to be more alarming than the loss itself.
Fun times - I won't go so far as "beginning of the end," but like Churchill, it may be the end of the beginning.