Watching Tuesday night’s presidential debate was painful. Not because Donald Trump’s performance wasn’t perfect — nobody’s ever is. I won the senior debating prize at the Yale Political Union, but I couldn’t have done any better than Trump in those circumstances. I don’t think William F. Buckley or Ronald Reagan would have stood a fair chance against a congenital, shameless liar and two “moderators” who constantly deflected or falsely “fact-checked” his truthful statements, never challenging Kamala Harris as she gaslit, blathered, and perjured.

Just to pick the most macabre example: She claimed that no Democrats support late-term abortions — when her own handpicked running mate stripped children who survive the knife and accidentally get born of any legal protections, and abortion through birth is legal in many blue states, including Tim Walz’s Minnesota. If someone’s willing to lie about killing viable babies, what isn’t she ready to lie about?

But there was no challenge from the “moderators.” They are both part of the Machine. I’ve written about it before, the vast complex of power, money, and social control that our elites have assembled against us, in the context of election fraud. Corrupt officials control our voting computers, and when their cheating is so blatant that we can prove it, their captive judges refuse to examine the evidence, claiming that neither voters nor other states such as Texas, nor even the cheated candidate himself (Donald Trump) have “standing” to object. And they try to disbar or imprison attorneys such as Sidney Powell, David Clements, John Eastman, and Rudy Giuliani for representing their clients’ interests.

Street Militias Above the Law

The Machine launches violent riots in cities across the country, refuses to protect the public (as Tim Walz refused in Minnesota), bails out the looters (as Harris herself did in 2020) then persecutes citizens who dare to defend themselves from the Democrats’ street militias, such as Kyle Rittenhouse and Jake Gardner (RIP). Then, as those rioters sue police departments for daring to try to restrain them and win fat settlements, the Machine seeks multiyear prison terms for peaceful election integrity protestors of January 6.

The Machine recruits violent, uneducated Third World economic migrants as fake “refugees” and dumps them by the tens of thousands on helpless “red” cities and counties. Then, when local residents complain about all the household pets and ducks in the park and bald eagles the migrants are killing and eating, the Machine “fact-checks” those incidents into oblivion. As one wag on X observed, this is part of a boilerplate template of public opinion control:

The Left: “No one is eating people’s pets.”

Which means we’re 1 week away from:

“Why do you care that people are eating pets.”

3 weeks from:

“Why eating pets is a good thing.”

And 4 weeks from:

“Refusing to eat pets is white supremacy.”

— Nick Freitas (@NickJFreitas) September 11, 2024

The Machine let Trump’s security go so lax and flaccid that his head was almost blown off — and then buried the story, even attempting briefly to deny it had ever happened. When Trump was so crass as to mention his near-death experience in Tuesday’s debate, one of the ABC “moderators” interrupted him and changed the subject.

John Henry, a Steel Driving Man

So no, when I watched Donald Trump gallantly fight with one hand tied behind his back against three armed opponents, I wasn’t complaining about his thin skin or his rough edges. Instead I felt like I was watching a shorn and bound Samson in the Temple of Dagon, tormented by large groups of little men who were proud of their unfair advantage.

Even more, I thought of a classic American folk hero, the laborer John Henry — a free black steel driver renowned for his strength and skill. When the mine that employed him announced it would be replacing John with a newfangled machine (a steam drill), he swore that he’d beat it, and worked to his last ounce of strength:

Well John Henry, hammered in the mountain
He’d give a grunt, he’d give a groan every swing
The women folks from miles around, heard him and come down
To watch him make the coal-steel ring, Lord what a swinger

Just listen to the coal-steel ring
But the bad boys came up laughin’ at John Henry
Said, you full of vinegar now but you about through
We gonna get a steamdrill to do your share of drivin’
Then what’s all them muscles gonna do? Huh, John Henry?

Gonna take a little bit of vinegar out of you
John Henry said, “I feed for little brothers
And baby sisters’ walkin’ on her knees
Did the Lord say that machines, ought to take the place of livin’?
And what’s a substitute for bread and beans? I ain’t seen it

Do engines get rewarded for their steam?

The best version of this story might be the one sung by Johnny Cash:

Now that old story has a tragic end: John beat the machine, but literally worked himself to death in the process:

There was a big crowd of mourners at the church house
The section hands laid him in the sand

Trains go by on the rails, John Henry laid
They slow down and take off the hats, the men do
When they come to the place where John Henry’s laying resting his back
Some say, “Mornin’ steel-driver, you sure was a hammer-swinger”
Then they go on by pickin’ up a little speed

Clickity clack, clickity clack, clickity clack, clickity clack
Yonder lies a steel-drivin’ man Lord, Lord
Yonder lies a steel-drivin’ man
Yonder lies a steel-drivin’ man Lord Lord

Yonder lies a steel-drivin’ man
Yonder lies a steel-drivin’ man Lord, Lord
Yonder lies a steel-drivin’ man

Donald Trump has yet to lay down his hammer. Not when the Deep State falsely impeached him twice, or when the Machine stole the White House from the voters, and not when the bullet nearly took off his ear in July.

Pray for him and for our country. He won’t stop fighting now, not while he still draws breath. For all his human flaws, he fights for us, against the grinding, soulless juggernaut that wants to roll over America and leave it a flat, inhuman tyranny where Machines never hit any speedbumps. They just roll on and on.

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or coauthor of 10 books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. His newest book is No Second Amendment, No First.