Four years ago I wrote The Prussian Hopes for Trump, laying out the case why I thought that Donald Trump was the only moral choice in that election. That places me with the moral responsibility this time around to explain why Biden is the moral choice.
Why I supported Trump the last time around
I’ve detailed my disillusionment with Trump at length in “Was I wrong about Donald Trump?” Spoiler: Yes. Simply put, I thought, based on what I had read of people I trust like Scott Adams & Scott Alexander that Trump’s vulgarity and narcissism was at least to some extent an act and that he was more calculating and intelligent than he appeared (not difficult). I thought he genuinely saw himself as a strong nationalist, a can-do person who would have the sense to handle the political mud-wrestling while leaving the technical bits to highly competent technocrats (“the best people” as he kept saying).
However, all of this was overshadowed by one consideration: the Clintonian taste for enabling genocide. I banged on about this at length, and found, to my horror, that no one was particularly interested in the way that Clinton One unleashed the Rwandan Genocide, or Clinton Two meant that the main legacy of America’s first black president was the Slave Market. The pro-Trump – or, more accurately, anti-Clinton – energy was created by the clear understanding that an entire corrupt political and media establishment was running flack for her.
A Clinton Two presidency was simply not morally acceptable. It would have meant that the murdered of Rwanda didn’t matter. That the atrocity of al-Shifa didn’t matter. That the rape of Juanita Broaddrick didn’t matter. That the slave markets didn’t matter. That the Yazidi didn’t matter. It was unconscionable.
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
Not least because of the very real possibility that Clinton Two would have unleashed something similar. So I took the view that, while a lot of people would have had lives that were worse because of Trump, they would still have lives. They would be alive at the end of four years and that counted.
Now it’s Trump who is unacceptable
Even four years ago while explaining my reasoning to people, I found myself saying that “I would not be saying this if Trump was running against anyone else, not even the senile old fool Joe Biden”. Well, that time has come round at last.
For a long time, as one ghastliness after another came out of the White House, I thought Trump still passed this, one would think, slightly low barrier.
Then came the surrender to the Taliban in Afghanistan and the sell-out of the Kurds in Iraq. Let’s get real here: had Obama done this, he would have been pulled from a burning White House. Trump’s betrayals disqualify him from being taken seriously for a second term.
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
Joe Biden may be a senile old fool, but he isn’t a monster like the Clintons. You can’t lay anything like this at his feet.
Counterargument: But isn’t the Left, like, utterly awful?
Well, yes. I’ve laid out my case – or, rather, a part of my case for that – in “The Death of Atheism”, one of the things that I am still very happy to have written. There’s is so much wrong with the modern Western left, that I think the only hope for the future – not of America, or the West, but of the World – is in its total collapse.
We can start the process by throwing a Biden into the works.
Simply put: the Left isn’t going to get any less awful if Trump wins again. It will go completely ballistic. The way that wokeism and nihilism have spread is under the cover of anti-Trumpism, “How can you expect us to behave well when Trump is in office?”.
If Biden wins, however, as outlined ably by Robert Tracinski (good writer, read his stuff, now) this will trigger a civil war within the Left, between the Wokie/Antifa kooks on one hand, and the more mainstream establishment on the other. It has a strong chance of utterly discrediting the worst of the left by showing them that it was the moderates who tossed out the hated Trump.
More importantly, this will discredit the know-nothing chauvenist forces of Trumpism on the Right. I said that the only hope for the future is the fall of the Left and the triumph of the Right. But it needs to be the right Right. I has to be a Right that understands decency, and civilization, and internationalism, and can play the long game. To quote myself:
After twelve years, I’ve come to the gloomy conclusion that, rather than seeking non-existent common ground with the western left, the best hope is to try to sell the resurgent nationalist right on the values of secularism and internationalism
These forces on the Right – and they are real – have been losing ground every since Trump got in.
Believe me, I like pissing off the Left as much as the next guy, but it cannot take precedence over forging alliances and building unity, both at home and abroad.
(to give Trump credit for the one thing he has done very well: he has placed the American Right in a position where they can form deep bonds with our brother and sister Infidels in India. That will be of the highest importance in the years to come).
What good, exactly, do you think will come out of another four years of Trump? Anything significant that one might have hoped from him – say, the Muslim ban – he has proven singularly incapable of doing over the last four years. Another four years of Trump may poison the Western Right beyond recall. Not to mention that his presence is acting as high octane fuel for the worst forces on the Western left.
And, oh yes, don’t think that that isn’t true for the US Deep State. Yes, the US Deep State is real; just go ask Nelson Mandela, Patrice Lumumba, or god-knows-how-many-other victims of the American national intelligence establishment if you doubt me. Or go read Christopher Hitchens’ essay on the CIA, The State within the State, or Matt Taibbi:
My discomfort in the last few years, first with Russiagate and now with Ukrainegate and impeachment, stems from the belief that the people pushing hardest for Trump’s early removal are more dangerous than Trump. Many Americans don’t see this because they’re not used to waking up in a country where you’re not sure who the president will be by nightfall. They don’t understand that this predicament is worse than having a bad president
[…]Trump’s tinpot Twitter threats and cancellation of White House privileges for dolts like Jim Acosta also don’t begin to compare to the danger posed by Facebook, Google, and Twitter – under pressure from the Senate – organizing with groups like the Atlantic Council to fight “fake news” in the name of preventing the “foment of discord.”
If Trump is voted out by a dissapointed electorate, rather than forced out by the corrupt intelligence establishment, there is a chance to put these forces back in their box. Not least because the media will suddenly take these sorts of antics seriously and not brush them off with “They don’t count because they’re against a bad person”.
Anyway, that’s why I am hoping for Biden. It’s a freaking depressing situation to be in, but then, it was at least as depressing four years ago when I found I had to come out for Trump as being the only credible anti-slavery candidate.
