Thoughts Aloud

One frequently encounters the sentiment that people get the government they deserve. This is usually found in the context that those suffering tyranny in foreign lands, should rise up and overthrow their rulers. I must admit that I have in the past been persuaded by this logic, especially during debate over the notion that we somehow have a moral obligation, to go abroad seeking dragons to slay, on behalf of oppressed people.

I am pretty clear in my assessment that we have no such obligation; but is it even true that oppressed slaves deserve their masters, for lack of will to depose them, violently if necessary?

In a comment section here the other day, CT referring to Hillary said:

It boils down to CHARACTER … who has it and who does not.

I am not talking about CHARACTER of the candidates I am talking about character of the American voter who clearly is about to get exactly what they deserve.

From my increasingly anarchistic perspective, I was tempted to quip that this would be their just deserts, for legitimizing the oligarch’s Kabuki dance by voting at all, regardless of the winner of their sham election. The “Deep State” could care less who wins an election; because normally they control both candidates. The jury is still out; but this is the first time in at least a generation that this may not be true.

I have just finished reading probably the most important essay of this political season, which concluded with:

The election of 2016 is a test—in my view, the final test—of whether there is any virtù left in what used to be the core of the American nation. If they cannot rouse themselves simply to vote for the first candidate in a generation who pledges to advance their interests, and to vote against the one who openly boasts that she will do the opposite (a million more Syrians, anyone?), then they are doomed. They may not deserve the fate that will befall them, but they will suffer it regardless.

The pseudonymous author was referring, of course, to the #NeverTrump faction of the conservative intelligentsia, which he repeatedly excoriates with the delicious metaphor, of comparing them to the Washington Generals. Some may not recall that name of the always losing team, which traveled with the Harlem Globe Trotters, and was paid well to provide a hapless foil, for their entertaining shenanigans.

Actually, the author is a master of metaphor, as he began his profound essay with:

2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die. You may die anyway. You—or the leader of your party—may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane. There are no guarantees.

Except one: if you don’t try, death is certain. To compound the metaphor: a Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto. With Trump, at least you can spin the cylinder and take your chances.

Two more rather thought-provoking metaphors; no? In between are the best arguments for disenchanted conservatives to swallow their hurt feelings, and get out the vote for Trump, that I have seen anywhere. E.g.:

One of the paradoxes—there are so many—of conservative thought over the last decade at least is the unwillingness even to entertain the possibility that America and the West are on a trajectory toward something very bad. On the one hand, conservatives routinely present a litany of ills plaguing the body politic. Illegitimacy. Crime. Massive, expensive, intrusive, out-of-control government. Politically correct McCarthyism. Ever-higher taxes and ever-deteriorating services and infrastructure. Inability to win wars against tribal, sub-Third-World foes. A disastrously awful educational system that churns out kids who don’t know anything and, at the primary and secondary levels, can’t (or won’t) discipline disruptive punks, and at the higher levels saddles students with six figure debts for the privilege. And so on and drearily on. Like that portion of the mass where the priest asks for your private intentions, fill in any dismal fact about American decline that you want and I’ll stipulate it.

Conservatives spend at least several hundred million dollars a year on think-tanks, magazines, conferences, fellowships, and such, complaining about this, that, the other, and everything. And yet these same conservatives are, at root, keepers of the status quo. Oh, sure, they want some things to change. They want their pet ideas adopted—tax deductions for having more babies and the like. Many of them are even good ideas. But are any of them truly fundamental? Do they get to the heart of our problems?

Any serious thinker would have to say, “NO.” Then, consider this devastating logic:

If conservatives are right about the importance of virtue, morality, religious faith, stability, character and so on in the individual; if they are right about sexual morality or what came to be termed “family values”; if they are right about the importance of education to inculcate good character and to teach the fundamentals that have defined knowledge in the West for millennia; if they are right about societal norms and public order; if they are right about the centrality of initiative, enterprise, industry, and thrift to a sound economy and a healthy society; if they are right about the soul-sapping effects of paternalistic Big Government and its cannibalization of civil society and religious institutions; if they are right about the necessity of a strong defense and prudent statesmanship in the international sphere—if they are right about the importance of all this to national health and even survival, then they must believe—mustn’t they?—that we are headed off a cliff.

But it’s quite obvious that conservatives don’t believe any such thing, that they feel no such sense of urgency, of an immediate necessity to change course and avoid the cliff…

While reading this essay, it occurred to me that my lifelong metamorphosis from a Truman democrat, to a Reagan conservative, to a Harry Browne libertarian, to an Ayn Rand objectivist, and now to a Murray Rothbard anarchist, all stemmed from the frustration that my traditional American culture, inculcated while growing up in the halcyon ’40s & ’50s, was consistently losing ground to the Far Left Multicultural Progressives, in the political arena.

If there were still such a thing as a Truman or Scoop Jackson Democrat, I might still be one. Had the Reagan Revolution persisted, I might still be a Republican, and reasonably content with the notion of democracy. It was the feckless politicians themselves, who caused me to explore deeper into political philosophy, to the point that I now challenge the very necessity of a state, and its wannabe rulers. As I have explained elsewhere, the only way I can think of to overthrow their tyranny, without another bloody revolution, is to stop voting for the lesser of two evils, which only legitimizes the bastards.

Thus, I have vowed to never vote again. Yet, the logic of this essay is very persuasive. Voting for Trump just might delay Armageddon long enough to come up with a better plan for the future of our posterity. If I didn’t live in California, where only Democratic votes count, I might just have to break my vow and vote for Trump. If I did, it would probably be this essay that changed my mind. It is that good, so naturally I highly recommend that you go read it. 😉 â—„Daveâ–º

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