What People Look Like Trying to Discriminate Between the Lesser of Two Evils

Don’t Do This

For everyone who was intrigued by my blog post arguing why you shouldn’t condescend to pick the “lesser of two evils,” and instead exercise your moral courage not to vote— “Civic duty” be damned—you might enjoy this debate here.

Just watch the asses Bill Maher and Megyn Kelly make of themselves at the bottom of this post, from a disinterested neoliberal standpoint. Neither Maher nor Kelly is stupid. For the average person without the intellectual acumen or the literacy to read The Economist I would consider them actually some of the more enlightened liberal and conservative pundits out there.

They both make good points which are good only as far as they go—and that as far as it goes the infractions of the other guy make an effective case to vote for your guy. Maher recycles the hysterical cliche that Trump is a threat to democracy citing the Capitol riot.

As I have said many times though I hardly consider Donald Trump a threat to democracy, I do think that his moral responsibility for the riot at least utterly disqualifies his candidacy. Therefore since I agree with Maher that the case for Trump stops with that disgusting riot, I am in complete agreement with him for moral reasons, as a strict matter of principle. I think the founding fathers would agree with me that even if some of Trump’s policies were good, like energy, immigration, China, no man who would attempt to halt the peaceful transfer of power or even joke about it or entertain the notion that the vice president could refuse to certify the presidential election, deserves to be anywhere near the White House. But I will say that because I deplore Trump’s character as a man anyway, that’s the principal reason I could never vote for him if January 6th never happened. Or, even if I loved his foreign policy, for example, I still don’t think I could countenance ever casting a vote for him. Perhaps to some of my more pro-Trump readers it strikes you as superficial, but Trump is too coarse, vulgar, misinformed, uneducated and frankly speaking uncivilized for me. Since 2016 I have particularly detested him for his misogyny and narcissism. I might as well add, I’m not even sure I could get past his spray tan alone to contemplate voting for him if he were half as politically experienced as he is.

However, Megyn Kelly makes a fair point too. She rebuffs Maher’s hysterical democracy concerns with her conviction that under Biden (and one can’t rule out Harris if Biden dies or something) women could be forced to share locker rooms with men. She points out that millions of illegal immigrants have come into the country since Biden scrapped Trump’s Remain in Mexico policy, in many cases committing violent crimes, though the subtext for me is the trafficking of deadly fentanyl that has poisoned hundreds of thousands of people. I think Kelly makes a strong argument as a mom and a sensible person who would vote with her pocketbook, that the average person who wants to live in a normal country that controls its borders, without men in women’s sports etc. doesn’t have the academic/media-elite luxury of fretting over Trump’s threats to “democracy.”

However, for myself Trump’s disrespect of constitutional norms doesn’t give Biden a pass for his abject failure as a president insofar as I don’t perceive whatever presentiment of danger on Trump’s end could possibly excuse Biden’s deficits, inflationary pandemic spending, student loan bailouts, open borders, appeasement of America’s enemies from Russia to Iran and arms embargoes on America’s most important allies. None but the most hysterical mind would let all Biden’s ignominy and irresponsibility go because she thinks Trump of all people is a serious threat to republican self-government in America. Because “democracy” is (probably) going to be fine, it’s wrong to let Biden off the hook if only for his own extra-constitutional excesses and even facilitating his son’s enrichment of the Biden family. I would argue that even if Trump did pose a serious threat to democracy, it would seem odd to say that voting for Biden of all people would be helping democracy. Not just because he’s less of a quasi-authoritarian than Trump. Come on. Don’t kill yourself. Don’t vote for Biden even if you can’t stand Trump as I cannot.

But, that being said Biden’s perhaps even impeachable failures starting with Afghanistan, and hopefully ending with the Israel embargo, don’t give Trump’s walking all over the Constitution on January 6th a free pass either. That Donald Trump is a bad man should be reason enough not to vote for him. If you’re one of those Trumpers who says you just like his policies, his policies weren’t even that great. Trump is not a small government conservative. He is not a conservative. He is a pro-welfare, pro-union big government amoral Nixon Republican. Trump’s successes were only remarkable for not being as bad as you would have expected. His first term was mediocre from a conservative standpoint. He is far far from the Eisenhower, Reagan, Bush Nikki Haley Republican America really needs right now who I imagine would reduce the debt by stabilizing entitlements and boosting defense spending massively, confronting Iran, and containing Russia and China. Whatever Trump did get done wasn’t without the forceful persuasion of his establishment cabinet which he will not have in his second term. Many people who liked his first term underestimate that.

My point though is that there is no excuse to vote for Biden or Trump. Just watch the denial and self-delusion of some of the more enlightened pundits in the video at the end of this missive, and you will get what I mean.

On that note, Happy Memorial Day.

PS

If you take the time to think of the men who died fighting for our freedoms, I hope you think of the Republicans who couldn’t pass an aid bill to Ukraine and the progressive Democrats who are basically cheerleaders for Hamas. Not even a hundred years after World War 2, we still can’t identify a Hitler when we see one (Putin), and we can’t call out antisemitism when ivy league kids are telling Jews to “go back to Poland.”

What would the soldiers who died fighting for our freedoms think of this?

— Jay