Ed Feser has a long and reasoned argument why, in some but not all circumstances, voting for Trump would be wrong. I’ll assume you have read it, and read all of it, and then spent a moment thinking about it. I agree with his points. But I think he missed a couple of things.
A reason to vote for Trump, instead of not voting at all, for voting for any Democrat can only be countenanced if the contract to sell your soul to the Devil has been witnessed by at least four Supreme Court Justices and notarized by your mother and all her sisters, and then you are still screwed, is that Trump—not the man, the idea of Trump—drives them insane. Let me explain.
The left starts out at Crazy. When it hears even rumors the Great March Off The Cliff might be slowed, the left descends into Madness. When it believes that the March might not only be slowed, but possibly, and only possibly, could take one, and only one, step back from the Cliff, it flies from Madness into Gibbering Apoplectic Blackness.
Remember the lunatics who took to the streets after Trump won in 2016 and wailed in the streets? What a performance! How they hersterically (there is no misspelling) shrieked “He is not my President!” How they ran in circles whimpering about the End of the World? All this was before Melania had the chance to change the sheets on the Whitehouse beds.
To the left, it didn’t make one whit of difference that Trump often governed to the left of Bill Clinton. Two words: covid panic. They swore they wouldn’t take the “Trump vax.” Then they swore you had better take the “Fauci ouchie”.
Because of panic on the left, Trump’s attempts to inject Reality were ruled, by some Regime judge somewhere, as “unconstitutional”. Or were quashed in the Regime’s uncooperative bureaucracy. Regime members, and especially celebrities (our leaders), acted like they were all walking around with nooses around their neck, and they daren’t close their eyes lest Trump sneak into their bedrooms at night and tighten the knots.
Neocons begged and pleaded for Trump to start bombing foreigners, any foreigners, and mostly he would not. Doubtless these fellows had to play Risk while throwing ketchup at each other to fulfill their bloodlust, but it wasn’t the same as real burning flesh. Trump had to go.
Then the Great Fortification of 2020 happened.
The left was sure they had removed the “existential threat” of Trump, a.k.a. “literally Hitler”. They had him arrested—how many times now?—and he is still facing the possibility of jail time.
Why? Ask that of a leftist and you’ll hear the horrors that await once Trump becomes “dictator on day one” of his new administration. That’s an answer, but not to the right question. We want to know why, given Trump’s past governance, which aligns with many of the beliefs and values of the left, except the part about bombing foreigners, they believe Trump will turn dictator and institute “fascism”.
Well, there is no rational answer to that. There is only fear and fantasy. But then we recall to replace Reality with Fantasy describes the left (blog/Substack).
Ed thinks the GOP can be salvaged, and that a Trump loss or bare victory will convince party leadership to stop their leftward lurching and be nice to Reality again.
I think the chance of this happening is the same as the chance of “conservatives” conserving anything. With the odd mogul and speed-bump, it’s been straight down the slippery slope since the Enlightenment convinced the elite, and then slowly the masses, of three gross falsehoods: secularism, utilitarianism, and egalitarianism (blog/Substack). This has been so obvious and for so long that by 1871 conservatives conserving anything was already a long-running joke—and nothing has been done to suck the humor out of it since.
Nothing can be, not when nearly everybody is beholden to false premises. We were lost the moment we decided on whether women could vote to kill their children. What did we think would happen? That they’d say no?
It is for the many examples like this that our side is fond of saying that we will not be voting ourselves out of our predicament. We might slow the rot from spreading, here and there, but the disease has metastasized and is incurable. Could we ever vote not to allow indiscriminate voting? The voting franchise only increases. What democracy ends well?
Don’t forget that many Republicans are Republicans only because they can’t get elected as Democrats in the area in which they live. These politicians see where the real power is, which is on the left, which has captured nearly every institution. That’s why these politicians have been ignoring the GOP’s platform. Ed is right that stop-women-from-killing-their-kids is gone from the party platform, and that Trump as leader is responsible. But win or lose, that item is not coming back. The GOP might be embarrassed by a Trump loss—a low chance given many are Never Trumpers—but it’s much more likely they will seek to change their voters rather than turn the platform right.
There is only the uniparty with a handful of the right embedded in the GOP. We could try to create a new party from that remnant, and make its platform into something resembling Reality. Maybe call it the Tea Party.
Oops.
The way this Regime ends is by failing to handle some crisis. Trump could be that crisis, or at least be one of the keys of its arrival. There is a large possibility that the left will react with open violence if Trump wins. Temper tantrums are one of their defining features. Violence of any sort or routine leftist overreaction is more likely to bring the GOP rightward than failing to elect a man most don’t want anyway.
Trump did one thing well enough, though imperfectly, and that was appointing non-fully woke SCOTUS justices. He still bowed to Equality and put a woman in the “Woman’s Seat.” But given the next four years could see at least two seats become vacant (besides other federal judgeships), wouldn’t we want him doing the appointing rather than the left, which would assuredly install DIE justices. Good justices could do more to end the demonic practice, like those installed by Tim Walz, of killing kids who have escaped the womb alive.
Then there is the open border. For unsound reasons the left wants it to remain open. That’s one promise they’ll keep. Trump very likely won’t keep his promise to deport those who got here illegally, but he might slow the onslaught.
There are many other policy questions that can be analyzed in similar fashion. But even more important is that a large, overwhelming Trump victory, even in the face of now-routine and sophisticated fortification, would send the GOP, and the Democrats, the message that they better at least be seen to be moving right. Trump is much more likely to change his mind, in the right direction, than the left is on women kill their children.
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Plus, the very worst people on earth despise him. Good enough for me.
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