Election Reflections
Before I specifically address the state of our mongrel, kafkaesque presidential election I want to remind my readers of some facts: presidential elections have an indirect or negligible effect on most national trends and policy debates. It would benefit the Left far more to moderate their insane approaches to crime and immigration than it would to win this election. It would benefit the Right far more to take over some teachers’ colleges or some professional associations than it would to win this election. Most workable political solutions are local (or regional) in this country. If you want to effect positive change you should volunteer or mentor boys or participate in local advocacy or talk to your neighbors in an open and conciliatory matter. Unless you live in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin your presidential vote probably won’t matter (and even in those places it will only have a .002% chance of being decisive).
Sometimes losing an election is the best thing for a party. There are certain problems which are so intractable or require such a massive investment of time and labor that you would prefer their nadir be associated with your opposition. Presidential elections are never, by themselves, solutions to problems and it is only when there is a particularly politically skilled candidate with a generous mandate that there is a serious prospect of beneficial reform. Neither of the candidates in this election fit these criteria.
In 2020 I watched the Jan. 6th events (not an insurrection, but a gross and unseemly breakdown of public order and political convention) with shock and disgust. I had voted for Biden, unimpressed with Trump’s governing style and unaware of how feeble and captive Biden would end up being to the intelligentsia which now control the Democrat party. As I watched the angry and milling crowds and read Trump’s irresponsible tweets I was certain of only one thing: I would never vote for Trump.
This year I’m voting for Trump. I still remain convinced that his election is only the beginning of a grueling and uncertain project of national revival and I know that the institutional Left (non-profits and universities and federal agencies and banks and hedge funds and film studios) will not cooperate with him. They’ve made opposition to him a foundational principle of their very existence, as Republicans have adopted support for Trump as perhaps their most important unifying factor. What will happen in four years? I don’t think there’s any chance of an ‘end to democracy’ and I feel pretty sure that if Democrats felt that way they would have held a party primary, and Whitmer/Newsom/Harris and the other appendages of the pallid, managerial-elite blob creature would have run. They did not because they liked their prospects in 4 years better-not the behavior of nationally recognized political leaders in an era of crisis.
I don’t think Trump will have a successful candidacy (although unlike the Left I earnestly hope he does) but I also don’t think it matters. The issues in our country are either:
Supra-political - the deficit and foreign manipulation of our institutions and political corruption… issues that neither party are even seriously pretending to address
Cultural - beliefs about history and race and sex which were created by idealistic (or malevolent) midwits in government-subsidized institutions and then released, like cholera into the drinking water; these will have to be addressed organization by organization and person by person, and pulled out like weed
or
Regional and local - the best thing the federal government can do for these issues (and most of them fall into this category) is get out of the way and let the republican ideals of federalism and virtue and excellence-which still flourish around the country-repair the damage
For me the election is interesting mainly as a bellwether: how deep is the developing elite schism-the phenomenon of Leftist intolerance and academic delusion and Gaza-related controversy cleaving huge and important chunks off the voting bloc which used to call itself ‘liberal’? How irate is the working class with elite corruption and immigration ‘policies’ (two things which are intertwined)? How far has the trend of Hispanics and black voters abandoning the Democrats gone? These are the kinds of questions I am seeking information about.
Every day I check FiveThirtyEight.com and read election updates…
And it doesn’t look good for the Left. After a disastrous debate performance by Biden and a realization by another 1-2% of the country that our media is systemically and thoroughly dishonest, the party leadership intervened and appointed Kamala Harris as the new presidential candidate. This was a decision made in secret by the most powerful political operators in our country and was supported by contractors and hedge funds and the legacy media without the distraction or consultation of a messy ‘election’. Even the media narrative about ‘protecting democracy’ from Trump seems shamefaced and half-hearted under these conditions.
Harris raised a record amount of money in three months-which is not surprising since she has the most unanimous support from among the rich and powerful of probably any candidate in history. She experienced a brief bump of Democrat relief that Biden could now disappear entirely from national view (he’s still the President of course, but no one honestly believes that he’s actually fulfilling that role at this point) and has enjoyed a fawning and almost panicked media protection campaign… but it’s not working.
After +1 billion dollars in wealthy-person donations and a media apparatus in lockstep, she seems to be consistently polling lower than Trump in the places that matter… and the trends are swiftly inclining against her.
Perhaps there is something to this ‘democracy’ nonsense after all… 🤔
I conceptualize this presidential race as a race to the bottom, a contest to see who could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Like millions of other Americans I was angry on 1/6/20 and yet-after untold millions of generously supported and completely unknown foreign arrivals and punishing inflation and rising crime and manipulated data and academic malfeasance of epidemic proportions and an almost total collapse of quality across vast swathes of films and shows-I have been persuaded by the toxic and dysfunctional national narrative I have watched being crafted. I have been persuaded of the corruption and venality and mediocrity and lack of imagination at that helms of our most important institutions. When you see disastrous trends building you vote for the ‘change’ candidate, and (like in 2016) that choice is clear.
ANY Republican politician would have probably been more popular among the undecided than Trump. ANY politician who could remember their name and climb stairs would be the obviously preferred choice against Biden. ANY human with a trace of integrity and authenticity would have an advantage over Harris. It is as if our two party system selected the most bizarre and divisive and loathed candidates in this election, as if we’re in bizarro-world and the Democrats reacted to the selection of Trump (consistently the most disliked candidate in American history) by choosing their duds, in a poorly-thought out attempt at imitation.
It reveals to me-and I’m sure to many others-how intellectually bankrupt and frightened our ruling class is. They can do little other than mouth the same tired platitudes about ‘equity’ and ‘climate change’ and pray to their nothing god to save them from disaster, for just one or two more years! Choosing such a group of people to lead your nation and manage affairs is a guarantee of disaster.
Four years ago I thought that the disorder of the Trump administration would be a low point for America. After COVID and the BLM riots and the subsequent period I now see that much of the failure of Trump was really a symptom of America’s cowardly and mediocre institutions. All the Left had to do to seal Trump’s place in the halls of infamy was to not infest the country with crime and to not throw sand in the gears of our national economic engine and to keep some of their wilder theories in the university classroom and the cocktail party (where they began) and not try to indoctrinate the kids of suburban plumbers and US military personnel. As it happened these demands were simply a bridge too far for the managerial elite. They just couldn’t do it. Well then I can’t vote for them.
The Democratic Party is today like Wile E. Coyote suspended in midair just after he has run off the cliff and afraid to look down and accept his fate. Few in America are buying what they are selling anymore with their ridiculous open borders policies, their openly racist (against whites, Asians and men) identity politics, their acceptance of black criminal behavior, their coddling of the addicted and mentally unstable homeless, and their crazy beliefs related to transgender issues such as allowing men into women’s sports, locker rooms and prisons. They also support the mutilation of children in pursuit of the impossible.
Oh look, they are already falling.
On the other hand there’s the Republican Party. The mere fact of their following of the probability mentality unstable Trump is one clue of their deranged condition. I would add that their failure to acknowledge the reality of climate change, their antipathy towards vaccines and, of course, their belief that a single cell ( . ) is the equivalent of a 👶 is clearly disqualifying to me. I can’t vote for either party.