Why Trump is our best option
Our foreign policy over the last couple of decades has wrecked the lives of millions and millions of people in the Middle East. It has reduced country after country to anarchy in the bad sense: starvation, lawlessness, civil war. And surprise: all of this chaos enriches American corporations that sell weapons and "security" to foreign governments.
There are many important issues dividing the American electorate: SSM, gun control, abortion law, etc., etc. I don't wish to downplay the significance of the debates on these topics, except to note that every one of them, on a global scale, pales in significance to the moral necessity that we stop destroying the lives of millions and millions of people in the Middle East.
And it is clear to me that Hillary Clinton will eagerly continue to pursue the policies that create this destruction: indeed, she was the prime architect of some of the past destruction.
Donald Trump is not my ideal candidate for president: I would like to resurrect Dwight Eisenhower and vote for him, if I could. I agree that Trump is a wildcard, and we don't really know what he will do once in office. But we do know that Clinton is the bought candidate of the merchants of death, and gambling that Trump is not so beholden to them is not really much of a gamble at all.
Let us put aside our differences on who is entitled to poop in what bathroom, and defeat the military-industrial complex's attempt to profit off of creating continual chaos in other countries!
There are many important issues dividing the American electorate: SSM, gun control, abortion law, etc., etc. I don't wish to downplay the significance of the debates on these topics, except to note that every one of them, on a global scale, pales in significance to the moral necessity that we stop destroying the lives of millions and millions of people in the Middle East.
And it is clear to me that Hillary Clinton will eagerly continue to pursue the policies that create this destruction: indeed, she was the prime architect of some of the past destruction.
Donald Trump is not my ideal candidate for president: I would like to resurrect Dwight Eisenhower and vote for him, if I could. I agree that Trump is a wildcard, and we don't really know what he will do once in office. But we do know that Clinton is the bought candidate of the merchants of death, and gambling that Trump is not so beholden to them is not really much of a gamble at all.
Let us put aside our differences on who is entitled to poop in what bathroom, and defeat the military-industrial complex's attempt to profit off of creating continual chaos in other countries!
The problem with the whole idea of what you consider a distraction issue or not is that it could be an important issue for you but trivial for very many.
ReplyDeleteMany people consider abortion a distraction issue, whereas I imagine it is something very serious for you.
Imagine if your post were to say, "Let us put aside our differences on whether women can end their pregnancies or not, and defeat the military-industrial complex's attempt to profit off of creating continual chaos in other countries!"
Prateek, that IS what I'm saying!
DeletePrime architect? Relative to Bush and Cheney or to all those who preceded her? Continuity I expect. Declare war, doubtful. Nuclear proliferation may be a far greater danger of Trump though.
ReplyDelete"I would like to resurrect Dwight Eisenhower and vote for him, if I could."
ReplyDeleteDuring your years as a libertarian, could you have imagined yourself saying this? Before then?
Absolutely! And I have had a prominent libertarian at lunch with me say exactly this: "How I long for Dwight Eisenhower!"
DeleteThis is pretty much the way I have seen Trump's campaign too. The Trump Bargain is basically that we all agree to put aside our differences on those sorts of issues, however substantial or insubstantial we may feel that they are, and just all stubbornly stick our thumbs in the eyes of the people making everybody miserable -- the SJWs, the warmongers, the gay-nazis, the constant race-whiners, open-borders crazies, etc. Regardless of how we feel about the substantive issue, we agree not to be jerks about it to people who are not jerks to us -- and to not put up with people who seem to feel the need to impose themselves.
ReplyDeleteI find the bargain appealing, too. We're all just tired of it. People need a break. They want somebody to defend them from the obnoxious people who just won't leave us alone.
And like everybody is saying, Trump's so-called obnoxiousness is really just a reflection of the people opposed to him. They've pretty much made his campaign for him. They're having to lie in the bed they've made for themselves. He'd be nowhere without their outrageous behavior.
The sad thing is that the response will probably be to mess the bed even more. And I wonder how that is going to go...
Yes, Trump is a huge gamble: we really don't know what he will be like in office, since all of his stances are marketing positions.
DeleteBut if we can just please please stop wrecking the lives of millions of people around the world, I am willing to take any gamble that holds out the possibility that might be so.
This realization was the clincher for me a few months ago (liked the anti-immigration and anti-globalism from the beginning). A couple further points in his favor:
ReplyDelete- regarding his unpredictability, if you look at the whole body of his rhetoric, such as it is, it seems to me that most of the belligerence is in the service of increasing his unpredictability in the eyes of our enemies foreign and domestic, and that is not a bad move; I agree with you that this may be a serious miscalculation and there is a small chance he is nuts, which brings me to my second point
- if he is nuts and tries to start wars and nuke people for making fun of his hair, it could raise congress critters from their multi-decade dereliction of duty to check the executive branch, which would be a wholly salutary outcome