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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All democracies fail.
Our Republic cannot be restored unless;
1) the Federal Income Tax is eliminated – it is the instrument of slavery wielded by the Leviathan. perhaps replace it with a consumer tax collected by States and remitted (responsibly) to Feds.
2) Term limits for Congress must be enacted to eliminate political careerism and the inevitable corruption by lobbyist and foreign governments
3) Universal suffrage must be eliminated – only a net tax paying man and wife should have one ballot to cast
None of these things will happen so our continued degeneration and inevitable failure are assured.
After the implosion and the likely violence and starvation who knows what will rise from the ashes?
Two more to add to Shawn’s list:
1) Return to having state legislators appoint Senators. Repeal that amendment,
2) Repeal the limit of 453 Representatives and return to the same ratio we had at the beginning. Lower their pay and pay for no staff.
1) Forbid money printing
2) Term limits for Congress must be enacted to eliminate political careerism and the inevitable corruption by lobbyist and foreign governments
Eliminating elected political careerism is useless when we still have bureaucratic political careerism through the vast civil service leviathan. In fact, it will make the deep state worse, as control will devolve further to embedded, unaccountable bureaucrats.
” 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? ”
That they would be influenced to vote “no”
1) by their men?
2) by men in general: men, generally more competitively disposed than women, could still determine the society’s moral standards?
3) that voting power is, and would remain, an epiphenomenon relative to deeper societal factors like ownership and debt ?
Pardon me if this question is too ignorant of Western history, it’s not my intention to make you a Sisyphus fof arguing, (…more than you already are. 🙂
Generally, I experience your posts as an oasis of good sense.
The guy who wrote the linked article is a Cuck extraordinaire. In his very first paragraph, he links to NRO, which is Cuckold Central.
Truth be told: I’d vote for a reincarnated GHW Bush, lying, vile pig he was, if it meant another Clarence Thomas.
I greatly respect Dr. Feser, and he is on point when discussing Trump’s change in rhetoric wrt the pro-life movement, as well as how this change is not necessary for victory.
The big mistake that I think he makes is to make this all about Trump. That is, the way that he frames it is that Trump must be opposed in order to bring the Republican party back to its pro-life roots. I think that Trump’s victory or loss is irrelevant on that point. It’s not like Donald Trump is the only person in the party who has backed off on supporting a complete ban on abortion. Remember: the republican establishment as well as the mainstream hailed Scott Brown’s victory as one of the greatest victories for the pro-life movement… despite Scott Brown supporting abortion being legal in all cases except partial birth abortion. That was back in 2010. Pundits like Hannity were talking about how Republicans should back off from banning abortion long before Trump said anything about it. In fact you saw establishment conservatives backing off from the instant that Roe v. Wade was overturned, since most of them never had any intention of doing anything effective against abortion in the first place, and only said otherwise since they thought Roe v. Wade would be impossible to overturn (thus making it a perpetual campaign point.)
And have we already forgotten the nomination of Mitt “I think abortion should be safe and legal” Romney? If the objection to that is “he transitioned to a pro-life position during his presidential run,” so did Donald Trump.
Furthermore, Dr. Feser didn’t really analyze what would happen if Trump LOST. His thesis is that if Trump wins by a huge margin that the Republicans will take this as a sign that pro-life and other traditionalist concerns can safely be abandoned. But suppose Trump loses. Will they take it as a sign that they should have fought for these concerns more fiercely? Many pundits already blame the lackluster performance in 2022 on being too closely associated with these concerns (rather than voter fraud, which should be blamed), so why would they not use the same explanation in a 2024 failure? Or if they do not do that, why would they not blame some new cause, like people thinking that Trump was “too mean”?
No, I can’t see any way that this election goes which changes how the republican establishment treats the pro-life movement. They’ve been treating it like trash for decades, and they will continue to do so. At least when it comes to Trump we can say that he DID make a major difference in his supreme court appointments. Even if you say something like “but his heart wasn’t really in it” the fact remains that he did it.
I like Feser, and there is plenty to lament about Trump. But to imagine it’s possible to fix the GOP???
Looks like Trump doesn’t only drive the left crazy!
If Trump loses (an assumed unfortified election), the GOP will certainly not swing around to being pro-life. They’ll triple down, concluding that Trumpy wasn’t progressive enough! “It’s the new reality on the ground!”, they’ll say, “But we’ll still fight to protect your guns and your speech, oh, and all those other shady things you want us to investigate since nineteen dickety-doo! Who else you got? We’re the lesser eeeeeevvvviiiillll…!”
Anyway, speaking of, some things are still too crazy for the EU, for now…
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/eu-disavows-attention-seeking-politician-thierry-breton-over-electoral-interference
Our best hope lies not in Republican’ts and Conservicucks, but in the hopes that the left schisms into the patient and the impatient and go to war with each other. And Trump’s winning existence is the best gift horse to get them to turn on each other! Eventually one or several rogues amongst them will F-up to our side’s benefit!
“Ed thinks … that a Trump loss or bare victory will convince …”
This Ed fellow is not very politically astute, is he? Voting to send a message is about as effective as ordering pizza with Chinese whispers.
The biggest problem I have with Dr. Feser’s essay is that he seems to believe that this will be the first time that the Republican party has betrayed their social conservative voters. The recent (i.e. at least the last 40 years) past has been nothing but the R’s betraying these voters; so much so that this was the main reason that Donald Trump became the nominee in 2016.
Another tactical reason for voting for Donald J Trump even if you live in any deep lavender state such as California or Massachusetts is that these states have adopted the National Popular Vote Compact. This is the idiotic idea that the all the electoral votes for the state will be decided by the national vote even if 90% of your state votes for the other guy.
Great analysis thanks.
Think surprises concerning Trump are coming …. including a growing living Faith, in the Living God.
And, please write the correct words … mothers are killing their children … for at the moment a child is conceived in
her womb, the woman becomes a mother and is a mother forever. And her child goes straight to Heaven. His or her life on earth is truly cut short, but he or she lives on with God, and I expect …. in our words …. spends much of Eternity praying for mom and dad.
God bless, C-Marie
Interesting post, and great comments. Thanks, all.
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