Apart from fueling the continued obscene growth of the federal government, the latest omnibus spending bill out of Congress is sure to inject another boost of ire into the rebellion of discontented Americans:

While Congress made scant effort to protect average Americans from rampaging regulators, it hustled to include a provision requesting the Capitol Police to permit sledding on Capitol Hill. The “sled free or die” provision was a “bipartisan win,” according to The Washington Post. It is regrettable that there was little or no bipartisan interest in curbing federal power beyond spitting distance from the Capitol Dome.

In that regard, Conrad Black puts his finger on the reason for Donald Trump’s rise, and his trampling of received political wisdom:

… his rather iconoclastic techniques and his promises to effect radical change if elected — and even to be at the head of an angry movement of scores of millions of Americans who feel their country has been stolen and mismanaged and that there is no point merely to ejecting the incumbents — has a profound appeal: They have tried turning the rascals out many times in the last 30 years and they just get worse rascals. The liberal media establishment is frenzied in its animosity to Donald Trump, and their hysteria is becoming more vociferous and desperate as he utters clangorous violations of the normal parameters of political discourse. The echo chamber explodes, the commentariat foams at the mouth, but he seems to pay no penalty in the polls. I think there are two explanations for this: Donald doesn’t really say such outrageous things as his opponents spinningly impute to him; and vast sections of the population are more bitterly disappointed and angry at the deterioration of their country and the misinformation of the mainstream media than the subjects of that resentment can imagine.

With candidate Barack Obama, Americans ignored warning signs in the hope of a new direction, but it’s become clear that the Obama Narrative was just the man’s original lie, and it was merely the biggest lie that the people who are supposed to inform the public assisted in promoting, rather than revealing.  The jaw-dropping affronts to the rule of law, common sense, and the rights of the people have only escalated during these seven long years.

So, Americans sent the opposition party to Congress and… nothing.  No real opposition.  Well, when the system won’t work, the people have no reason to worry about breaking it.

The prominence of Donald Trump in his campaign for the presidency shows just how thorough the damage is, because (1) to the extent that his message is extreme, it ought to be easy to offer a moderated alternative, yet only Ted Cruz is occupying that space, and he was already there, and (2) as Black intimates, the public’s standard for Trump appears not to be whether they trust him but, rather, whether they trust him more than the politicians, journalists, academics, and judges whom they trust not at all.  Dangerous ground.

America’s ruling class very much need to begin reading the signs, because the noise from Europe is echoing just over the hill:

Police had to fire warning shots into the air when thousands of Dutch protestors stormed the site of a planned asylum centre, shortly to open for 1,500 refugees.

The demonstrators went on the rampage in the small town of Geldermalsen last night in the worst riot of its kind in the Netherlands since the refugee crisis began.

A planned discussion about the imminent arrival of the migrants, staged by the town council, was abandoned in the chaos as the mob outside tried to storm the building. Councillors were forced to flee out of rear exits into police vans.

Despite the best efforts of progressive educators, a sizable portion of Americans and other Westerners still believe that stuff about self governance.  If governments respond to their protests by removing their rights — as with gun control and the outlawing of speech that elites define as “bigotry” — the backlash will escalate quickly.