Note: This appeared in the Life, Under Construction Newsletter on November 4, 2024. For subscription information, please click on the button below.
Become a subscriber!‘Twas the Day Before Election Day
“Lastday, Capricorn 29s. Year of the City: 2274. Carousel begins.”
— Logan’s Run, 1976
In the immortal words of that great political philosopher Carmine Lupertazzi Jr, we’re at the precipice of an enormous crossroad. Despite the near-empty, almost comical, nature of the late presidential campaign, the country is offered a rather stark choice.
On the one side, we have a maniac who fetishizes political violence and doesn’t see a reason for any limits of his appetites, political and personal.
On the other side, we have an experienced, but somewhat inarticulate, patriotic-sounding candidate promising to at least continue supporting our alliances abroad while respecting the Constitution at home. It’s a stark choice.
On the one side, former President Donald Trump is promising to use the military against his domestic opponents, “the enemy within,” and for mass deportations of illegal immigrants that (in his own words) “will be bloody.” He is also proposing changing the laws concerning birthright citizenship and even bringing back the Alien Enemies Act.
Trump’s foreign policy consists of abandoning our allies in Europe, exiting NATO, letting Russia win in Ukraine, and making nice-nice with the worst dictators in the world. Trump will destroy our trade relations with disastrous tariffs that will be passed along as a tax on every consumer in America. Trump’s tariffs will also add to inflation and cause supply chain disruptions.
At home. Trump is still the president that caused the Insurrection on January 6, 2021. He promises to pardon the people convicted of assaulting the Capitol police and invading the Capitol to try to force Congress to overturn the 2020 presidential election. We’re learning more about the former president’s role (and Sen. Ron Johnson’s role) in the fake elector scheme. Trump still faces criminal charges for his fraudulent attempts to overturn the election.
He also remains an adjudicated rapist and faces accusations from several other women. There are questions about Trump’s age and mental fitness. Just this last week, his campaign insulted African Americans and Puerto Ricans at a rally in New York, his vice presidential candidate made fun of Vice President Kamala Harris’ race, and another speaker called her the anti-Christ.
Trump himself used part of an interview to fantasize about guns (“nine barrels”) being pointed at former Rep. Liz Cheney, a conservative critic of Trump, and then in Milwaukee Trump simulated oral sex with a faulty microphone.
Did I mention that Robert F. Kennedy Jr is going to be placed in charge of the nation’s health, and we can expect to see reduced vaccinations and the federal government opposing fluoridation of water? Polio, smallpox, and rotten teeth, just in time for a possible bird flu outbreak.
Oh, yes, the former president is also a fascist, according to his former chief of staff, has no respect for the military, and has threatened the First Amendment rights of news agencies he doesn’t like. On Sunday, the former president joked that while he was behind bullet-proof glass, someone shooting at him would have to shoot through the “fake news” media in attendance. On other occasions, Trump has referred to the media as “enemies of the people.”
But Trump is pro-life, right? No, he isn’t. He removed the pro-life plank from the Republican Party platform, has flip-flopped on a number of exceptions, and has said he will not sign a nation-wide ban on abortion. Abortions actually went up during Trump’s four years, and it’s probably not too mean to ask how many he personally paid for.
All the while, Trump has run one of the most corrupt campaigns in recent memory, using campaign funds for his legal bills while fleecing his supporters for everything from watches to Bibles that do not benefit the campaign but benefit Trump personally.
I expect that I will oppose Harris on just about every domestic issue, from raising taxes to spending plans to trying to get Congress to pass a legalize abortion bill (which probably won’t pass). However, Harris has made it a point to reach out to disaffected Republicans. She supports a strong military and a prominent role for the United States in foreign affairs, and she won’t be leading a mob storming the Capitol in four years.
On Friday, Republican strategist Bill McCoshen said on WTMJ-AM that Cheney wasn’t a conservative, that she went “crazy” (his word), and that he did not know any conservatives that were voting for Harris. He also said he almost had to pull over his car when he heard Charlie Sykes say that he was still a conservative that was backing Harris.
I sent McCoshen an email correcting his little story, that he did know of a conservative voting for Harris: me. I also sent him an article written by William F. Buckley in 2000 which directly criticized Trump and other potential demagogues.
Buckley concluded:
There is always rivalry, and there is always a search for means of exploiting the means of advancing one’s own position. In other ages, one paid court to the king. Now we pay court to the people. In the final analysis, just as the king might look down with terminal disdain upon a courtier whose hypocrisy repelled him, so we have no substitute for relying on the voter to exercise a quiet veto when it becomes more necessary to discourage cynical demagogy, than to advance free health for the kids. That can come later, in another venue; the resistance to a corrupting demagogy should take first priority.
Is this the statement of a madman, or the statement of a liberal Democrat? No. It’s the words of a conservative. When one is confronted with a threat to the very foundation to the country, the patriot does what he can, even if the marginal tax rate will be higher than it was just four years ago.
Yes, there will be another election four years from now. But in what kind of America will it take place?
