I Voted For . . .

. . . Donald Trump even though just a few days ago I wrote this about his handling of covid-19:

The President did what he often does.  The actual actions taken at his direction were often good or at least not bad, but they were accompanied by inconsistent statements, sloppy rhetoric, bad tone, goofy ramblings and stream of consciousness which is not what the public wants to hear at a time like this.  He sounded (and sounds) like a man not in control of himself. 

In 2019, in the midst of more turmoil I commented:

The latest kerfuffle over the Ukraine is also a self-generated disaster.  Getting Rudy Guiliani involved in anything at this point in his career shows poor judgment as does engaging in the phone call with the newly elected president of the Ukraine.

The actions referenced at the top, are of the same ilk.  He should never have suggested use of his resort for the G-7 meeting and it shows once again Trump's inability to separate his own personal interests from those of the office.

And the nature of his attack on Mattis is idiotic and typical Trumpian hyperbole.  It also reinforces the image (a correct one in my opinion) that he's a terrible guy to work for.  Irrational, prone to outbursts, not willing to read anything, and a guy who will turn on his subordinates rather than take any part of the blame for the things that go wrong.  He is not a stand up guy.

In a 2018 post on the President's Helsinki summit with Putin, I thought the meeting a bad idea, writing "I don't consider the president 'intellectually solvent and emotionally stable' "and, in its wake, commenting:

UPDATE:  Well, my worst fears were realized.  First, we had last night's disgraceful tweet blaming problems with Russian-American relations solely on the United States followed by Trump's awful performance at the press conference with Putin.  I'll end with this from the conservative blog Powerline:

Trump seems unable to handle that truth. All that matters to him is the absence of any suggestion that his 2016 victory was tainted. Thus, he puts his own ego ahead of the national interest in responding to a Russian assault on our democratic process. That’s disgusting.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE:  The President's course of action since the summit only compounds his problems.  His retraction of his controversial Helsinki statement, followed by his retraction of his retraction, followed by something I can't even figure out, along with his entertaining (however briefly) Putin's offer to trade interviews of US and Russians, and his seeming endorsement of Russia's second gas pipeline to Germany, after telling the Germans they were foolish to allow it, make him look foolish and inept.  I don't like the idea of the fall summit with Putin in DC, because when Trump is with Putin he acts like a star struck teenage girl. 

And during the 2016 campaign I referred to his "idiotic remarks" about a Federal judge in my post What Would Otter Do?

You can find more such comments in other posts including references to Trump's gullibility and susceptibility to conspiracy theories (my tricky way to get you to read more on my blog which also contains a lot of history, music, movies, baseball, and books).

If this election were a referendum on whether I like Donald Trump, my vote would be no.  But it's not.

So, how is it I'm voting for the guy?

Well, that's a long story and you may want to delve into my Your Future series for a more complete understanding than set forth below (which is already quite long enough!).

________________________________

During the first George W Bush administration, Karl Rove ran around with a slide deck describing his strategy for creating a Permanent Republican Majority.  I thought it silly not only because his strategy and tactics were wrong (as demonstrated by the failure of the Bush presidency) but, more importantly, because I believed American history taught us there is no such thing as a permanent majority for any party.  

I now think I may have been incorrect.

America and its institutions are deeply troubled.  The GOP collapsed due to ineptness, cowardice, corruption, incoherence, and finally, the betrayal of its base, all leading to Donald Trump.  The Democratic Party has moved Left so quickly my head is spinning, forsaking its traditions of freedom of speech and its commitment to due process and equal protection under the law, capped by the events since May, when Democratic mayors stepped aside to let their party's paramilitary wing destroy, burn, and loot at will in cities governed by Progressives for decades.  Both have proved inept in governance. Meanwhile, our non-governmental institutions have also been rotting away and lost public trust.  None of this will be cured by the outcome of this election, but my choice is based on what I think buys America the most time to see if it can come out of this tailspin and we can remain one people.

In the midst of these troubles, large segments of the Democratic Party have been working themselves into an hysterical frenzy in order to justify changing the rules under which we operate, not just politically, but as a society, in such a way as to ensure those who oppose them can never regain power.  You can better understand how fundamentally illiberal these doctrines are by reading my Your Future series and the twitter feeds and online presence of a host of traditional liberals/progressives who are raising the warnings about the Woke and current trends, not just in America, but across the Anglosphere.

These include Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein (Sanders supporters driven from Evergreen State College because of their belief in evolutionary biology and stand against racism), Bari Weiss (driven from the New York Times), Andrew Sullivan (driven from New York Magazine), Zaid Jilani, John McWhorter, Glenn Loury, Claire Lehman, Asra Nomani, Chloe Valdary, Inaya Folarin Iman, Peter Boghossian and Helen Pluckrose.

Though a number of them have backed away from taking the final step of voting for Trump (an issue I discuss in Do The Right Thing), James Lindsay, who has been shouting the longest and loudest about Critical Race Theory and the Woke, as well as a self-described progressive who supported and stumped for Obama and voted for Clinton, has endorsed Trump in view of how dangerous the situation has become.  You should read him on twitter and look at the materials at his website, New Discourses or indulge yourself in the entertaining explainers from the Woke Temple.

Put another way, however repellent Trump is, if you examine what he has actually done, nothing is irrevocable, nothing changes the basic rules under which we operate.  I haven't watched TV or cable news in many years or listened to talk radio, but I caught part of an interview with Tucker Carlson on CSPAN a year or so ago and what he said struck me as on point regarding Trump.  Tucker said Trump had done a service by raising many questions like; what is the purpose of NATO, is it still valid?, why do we have such a counterproductive trade policy with China?, why don't we have a sane immigration policy? and more, but that he was not the person to effectively make changes because of his inattention to detail, impulsiveness, unwillingness to learn the mechanics of government and inability to think deeply about solutions and strategy.

In contrast Democrats are moving quickly towards irrevocable change with growing hostility to free speech, and gaining control of so many institutions in our society from which they are rapidly purging dissenters, including liberals who aren't 100% on board with today's identity Progressives.

I've always been a process guy.  Keeping a society of 330 million people together, when we have so many different perspectives, viewpoints, and backgrounds is difficult.  It can only be done with respect and a large degree of tolerance for differences and with the understanding that if we follow neutral processes, we may lose a fight, but nothing is forever.  And yes, I realize no process is truly neutral but without the attempt to construct and adhere to them, however flawed, we are only left with raw power as the rule.  If those processes are destroyed or manipulated, only repression is left and, as we've seen this year, repression is already occurring and more is promised in a Democratic victory.

This was understood by those debating a new Constitution in 1787.  They had a problem to solve.  How to establish a more powerful federal government to replace that under the Articles of Confederation, yet not have it become too powerful.  The delegates knew their history.  They knew that all forms of government tended to degenerate over time.

Monarchy to absolutism.

Aristocracy to oligarchy.

Democracy to tyranny.

That is an observation that holds true even today while back then it prompted James Madison's famous observation in Federalist 51:

But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.  

How can government control itself?  And how can we avoid resolving disputes by killing each other in the streets?  That is what they, and we, seek to solve.

A Republic with strong democratic tendencies, an unprecedented historical combination on the scale of a populace of millions spread over hundreds of thousands of square miles, utilizing various checks and balances and separated powers was their solution.  Would we survive changes of power, without such a degree of existential terror created in the losers that civil unrest or war would result?  We passed that test in 1800 with the transfer of power between the Federalists and the Democrats, when John Adams quietly (and bitterly) got into his carriage and returned to Braintree.  We failed with the Civil War because slavery raised fundamental issues, beyond just those of the enslaved, that could not be resolved, creating irreconcilable differences with the Democratic Party, leading to its split and the election of Lincoln.  And speaking of the Civil War it is shocking to see Progressives adopt the arguments of secessionist and slaveholder John C Calhoun, with whom they agree on the interpretation of American history as well as their similar approach on dissent to the South' slave holding aristocrats, who saw any American institution that did not endorse slavery as a threat to them.

For the past 150 years we have managed to keep ourselves intact despite differences and build a successful, thriving country, a country of amazing diversity with a mix of races, ethnicity and religions amid a degree of personal freedom unlike anything seen before in history, though some today would like to pretend modern America is a hellhole of oppression and brutality.  Or, as Andrew Sullivan has observed:

And so our unprecedentedly multicultural, and multiracial democracy is now described as a mere front for “white supremacy"

The rhetorical trap of critical theory is that it has coopted the cause of inclusion and forced liberals onto the defensive.

Or, as James Lindsay, has said:

"[Critical Race Theory] is evil.  It plays on people’s best nature; it takes good people and twists them to its purpose." 

While the emergence of those with the "hellhole" position - Woke and the paramilitary wing of the Democratic Party (Antifa, BLM etc) this year, with Democratic politicians either actively supporting them or standing silently by, should make the stakes clear to all of us, this has been brewing for a decade as significant parts of the Democratic electorate have rationalized limits on free speech and religious conscience they don't agree with by simply classifying it as "hate speech".  I was a liberal Democrat, back when we believed in freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, due process and equality under the law.  I still believe in those principles which is why I am no longer a Democrat.  And it is discouraging to see that for many organizations and individuals those principles were merely tactics.

Today's identity Progressives/Woke bring the same analysis to American society as White Nationalists.  Both believe everything can be explained solely in terms of race.  Their only difference is who they think should be on top in the society.

And so much of what is going on is projection.

We hear that Trump is authoritarian, encourages violence, and a threat to our democracy.

But over the past few days we've heard of city governments and storeowners getting prepared for violence in the wake of the election?  Is it Trump supporters they fear?  No, it's the paramilitary wing of the Democratic Party.

And who is it that threatens others so they fear that anything they might say, or even if they follow on twitter the wrong person, might cause them the loss of their career, their job, their educational opportunities?  Again, it is the Left that is shutting people down because they merely disagree with them.

This isn't new:

For four years we heard about Russian collusion and Donald Trump and it is still treated as a fact by many.  Yet, we now know that not only was it a gigantic hoax, but that it was the Clinton campaign that was colluding with the Kremlin.  It is the Democratic Party and its media allies that have served as Putin's Poodles for four years, helping him fulfill his goal of creating chaos in America.

We heard in 2016 and again this year, that Trump would not accept the results of a democratic election process.  Yet it proved to be the Democrats in 2016 who would not do so, ginning up the Russia collusion hoax and, to an extent never seen in American politics, blocking routine nominations of Trump appointees in an effort to impede his efforts to govern.  And should Trump, to my surprise, win again, the Democrats will react even more poorly.  It is the Democratic Party that today is a threat to democracy.

In 2016 we kept hearing about how Trump would disrupt campaigns, yet it was Democrats who attempted to stop Trump rallies from occurring, not vice versa.  It was Democrats who beat up Trump supporters leaving his rallies, even as Democratic mayors directed local police to stand aside while those attacks occurred.

We were told immediately after the 2016 election that there would be a wave of hate unleashed by Trump supporters, but what we saw was a wave of fake hate crimes by Democrats.

We were told that after the inauguration, Trump's brown shirts would be roaming the streets violently attacking opponents.  Instead what we had were progressive college students attacking speakers they didn't like.  We had Bernie Brothers attempting mass murder of Republicans at a baseball practice and attacking Rand Paul, sending him to the hospital and requiring removal of part of a lung.  We've had GOP Congressional candidates driven off the road by Progressives and another candidate victim of an attempted stabbing.

Did you hear about what happened in December 2016?  A guy in Alabama saw a woman delivery driver for FedEx.  He thought she was Hillary Clinton so he walked up and shot her in the back of the head.  You didn't?  That's because it never happened.  What did happen in December 2016 was a guy in Ithaca, NY shot a FedEx driver in the back of the head because he thought he was Donald Trump.  The story was buried (I only came across it by accident).  Let's be honest - we all know that if this had happened the way I first told it, we'd have seen months of coverage focused on how Trump's rhetoric inspired violence and the need for more gun control.  Instead, nothing.

One of Donald Trump's many flaws has contributed to this and played into the hands of his enemies.  He does, at time, sound like an authoritarian or maybe it's best described as a wannabe authoritarian.  For instance, during Covid he made ridiculous statements about actions he might take in response - actions that would have been outside his constitutional authority.  He then backed off precisely because he does not have the authority.  There has been a massive disconnect between his rhetoric and his actions (and that's on him, and one of the reasons for my dislike), while the media and Democratic Party attempt to cover up the massive evidence that the real authoritarian risk is on the Left

Do I think the majority of Democratic voters embrace the Woke and its authoritarian ethos?  No, and the polling data backs that up with support for the Woke strongest among wealthier, higher educated Whites (notice that in 2020, as in 2016, the political contributions of Wall Street, the hedge funds, and tech oligarchs are running more than 20 to 1 in support of Democrats) but off in other White demographics, Blacks and Hispanics.  But history teaches us, we do not need a majority to carry the day.  A well-funded, highly motivated and politically savvy minority often carries the day as it currently is with today's Democrats.

Do I think Joe Biden understands what he is saying when claiming America is systemically racist?  No, he thinks he's making a general statement against racism.  But the people around him do, as do the thousands of political appointees who will fill his administration.  While I persist in believing there are still Democrats in Congress who are wary of the Woke and oppose suppression of speech, feeling that after the election "those people" can be managed I think they underestimate the whirlwind they have unleashed and their ability to control and channel it.

I mentioned that what we have seen break into the open this year - rioting and looting in major cities, conducted with the approval of Democratic mayors in cities governed by Progressives for decades (and why are these cities such hellholes of racism?), while other Democratic politicians stayed silent; the purging of people, including many traditional liberals, for merely failing to agree to every part of the Woke party line, again while mainline Democrats remain silent, didn't start in 2020.

The doctrines of Critical Race Theory have been gestating in the academy for a long time.  As they reached maturity, they began to infiltrate K-12 education, and the growth of social media provided a further breeding ground, until it finally erupted like the creature in Alien, bursting out of John Hurt's chest, ravenous, insatiable and destroying everything in its wake.

Years ago, reading about CRT and other loony fads of academic theology, my reaction was that no one could really take it seriously and once students got out in the real world their views would change.  I was wrong.  CRT justifies suppression of any viewpoint and any person that does not accept it completely.  It is not about having dialogue.  You are either in or out.  It corrupts everything it comes in contact with.

For all the talk in the media and by Progressives about power and privilege they are just blowing smoke; they are telling you things that just ain't so (I explain how they do the trick in A Closed Ecosystem).

Colin Kapernick can hate America, celebrate the murdering, homophobic thugs Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, score multi-million dollar deals with Nike and Disney and have Netflix make a series based on his life (while never having to be hit by 300 pound linemen again), while a nurse at an academic hospital in Massachusetts gets fired for writing that all patients matter at her hospital.  You tell me who has the power and privilege.

You tell me who has the power and privilege when so many of our institutions seem to have fallen under the sway of the Woke; academia, publishing, news media, social media, high tech, foundations, government bureaucracies, K-12 education, with most other institutions either on board or too intimidated to fight back.

It is the potential of this institutional capture combined with the likely capture of the entire Federal government that poses such a danger.  We spoke earlier about authoritarianism.  The better terms for the Woke, CRT, and its supporters in the Democratic Party are totalitarian and fascist (I use here the definition of fascism used by Benito Mussolini, "Everything inside the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state").  It is totalitarian because it makes no distinction between the public and the private; better action, speech, and thoughts.  

During my working career I hired, promoted, mentored a lot of people (and occasionally let others go).  It never occurred to me that their political views should have anything to do with any of those decisions.  I hired people of different races, genders, ethnicity, religions and, again, it never occurred to me that those factors should have anything to do with my decisions.  That no longer seems to be the case in many places and, if so, I simply do not see how we can sustain ourselves as one people, except through suppression and force.

When I was in college in the late 60s and early 70s, the expression "the personal is political" became popular with radicals before it faded away.  I thought it terrible then and to now see it rise from the grave decades later with far more backing than it had is to see the worst of our past resurrected.

Voting for Donald Trump and GOP candidates will not guarantee we can avoid the worst over the long-term but it, at least prevents three institutions, the Presidency and Executive Branch, the Senate, and the Supreme Court, from falling to the radicals who want to change the very rules of our society.  Whether Trump and the GOP can make good use of that time I cannot say.

The downsides are that if Trump wins, which I do not expect, we will face near-insurrection by his opponents and continued obstruction by Democrats in Congress.  In that respect it will be worse than what we saw in his first term.

We also have Trump himself.  Four more years of his rhetoric and his exhausting 24/7 reality show.

The other risk is that, somewhat to my surprise, he has not made any catastrophic policy moves so far, particularly in foreign policy.  With Trump however, past performance is no guarantee of what the future hold

And if Biden wins and the Democrats control the Senate? I know some Progressives who are very anti-Woke are supporting Biden on the theory that he and the other grandees of the party can keep the crazies in check.  I hope they are correct, but I doubt it.  This is not the Joe Biden of twenty years ago; he's merely a figurehead.  The Executive Branch will go fully Woke, and Trump's outstanding Executive Order blocking training that promotes racial stereotyping and scapegoating will be repealed.  There may be enough Democratic senators willing to block court-packing but beyond that I expect not much favorable in turning around the trend within the party towards radicalism and intolerance.  Moreover, a Democrat vicotry will encourage the social media and other high tech companies to do what they've been itching to do, but constrained so far by the possibility of the GOP still controlling parts of the government, and that is much broader censorship of non-Progressive views on its platform.  You will also see far more sweeping purges of heretics in academia and the corporate world.

What I am confident of is this.  If Trump loses, a lot of people who voted against him because they just can't stand the guy, but who really did not understand what today's Democratic Party is like, are really going to regret it.

__________________________________

There is a positive policy case to be made for Trump.  The President continually complicates his situation and repels people he could potentially persuade because of the frequent disconnect between his rhetoric and his actions.  He sounds authoritarian at times and I don't think he has any particular reverence or knowledge of the Constitution, separation of powers, or how the regulatory or legal process works which makes it easy for his opponents to caricature him though his actions have been consistently within those constraints (the opposite being true of Progressives).

Foreign Policy

No new foreign entanglements or wars!

The Middle East.  The "experts" have been consistently wrong and Trump right.  We were told moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem (as long required under U.S. law, but long ignored by prior Presidents) would spark riots in the street and end the peace process.  It did not.  We were told Arab nations would never normalize relations with Israel without a peace agreement with the Palestinians.  They were wrong.

We were told Trump's peace efforts would be fruitless and naming Jared Kushner as his envoy was idiotic (and I joined them in that opinion!).  They (and I) were wrong.  Bahrain and the UAE have normalized relations with Israel (which would never have occurred without an approving nod from Saudi Arabia), more recently joined by Sudan, with more Arab nations to come.

We were told that ordering the killing Solemaini would spark a wider war with Iran.  They were wrong.  It is that action, more than any other that played to Trump's instincts for short, sharp, and powerful responses rather than engage in the tit-for-tat preferred by our foreign policy elite, a policy that tends to prolong conflict and leave the initiative with our enemies.

A more confrontational China policy and strengthening relations with India.

Ironically, despite Trump's rhetoric, a tougher policy on Russia.

Raising legitimate questions about the purpose of NATO and who should bare the financial burden. 

Successfully renegotiating NAFTA.

Domestic Policy

Appointment of judges who reject the doctrine of Living Constitutionalism which would reduce the Courts to just another legislative branch enacting its policy preferences (with a tip of the hat to "Cocaine" Mitch McConnell for his work).  I explain the importance of this in A Misunderstanding or Projection?

The recent actions to ban training using racial stereotypes and scapegoating in the Federal bureaucracy, and by Federal contractors and grantees, while continuing to allow diversity training (you can read more on the details in my post Righteous Acts).

Tax reform, including eliminating local and state tax deductions which disproportionately benefit the wealthy (and which Democrats, despite their rhetoric, are trying desperately to repeal by holding up Covid relief as a bargaining chip).

Until Covid, a booming economy with record low unemployment rates for Black and Hispanics.  A couple of years ago, I decided to start following the official White House twitter feed as well as Trump's personal feed.  I've had to take breaks a few times when Trump goes on one of his insane twitter binges and I can't take it anymore, but what surprised me is the amount of positive White House activity that most media refuses to cover, including how much of it is around Black Americans and how large a presence they have at White House events, a reality very much counter to the Progressive media narrative.

Incremental progress on healthcare in terms of availability and cost.

The biggest failure is that Trump simply does not care about the long-term fiscal stability of the United States and our budget and spending problems have accelerated.  Unfortunately, the reality is the Democrats don't care, and even most of the Republicans who claimed to care really didn't and sighed with relief when it was not important to Trump so they don't even have to pretend anymore.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

One final consideration.  I've written extensively on the Russian collusion hoax, explaining how, when the allegations were first raised, I thought there might be something to them because of Trump's reckless and stupid statements about Putin and Russia during the 2016 campaign.  Over the past four years I've read 10,000 pages of reports, transcripts, court proceedings, warrant applications, text messages etc to determine for myself what was going on - I do not rely on anything from Left wing outfits like the New York Times or WaPo or from Right outlets like Breitbart and Gateway Pundit.  My views changed.

The reality is stunning.  This is the greatest political scandal of my lifetime and possibly in American history.  Think about how Watergate would have played out if the Times and Post had been on Nixon's side and that is what you have here.  You can read my entire Russia Collusion series or this summing up (Election Tampering) from April to understand my conclusions.  And since April much new information has come to light so the situation is even worse than I thought, which I scarcely thought possible.  

It was the Clinton campaign that colluded with the Russians and worked to insert this disinformation into the media and the FBI during the campaign and then, to undermine the new Trump administration and explain away its embarrassing defeat, further propagated this nonsense with the cooperation of elements in the Justice Department and intelligence community hostile to Trump and with the full assistance of much of the media.

If Trump loses and the ongoing investigations are curtailed by the Biden administration, which I fully expect, the full story will not be revealed and miscreants will go unpunished.  The lesson for Americans will be you can act with impunity if you are on the side of the Democrats.  A lesson we will remember.