Two Old Tales for Tax Week

 

Here in tax week and apropos of nothing really, I recalled a couple of stories about citizen’s interactions with our nation’s public servants. The first was told to me twenty five or more years ago by a man who was old then and is probably long since dead now. I don’t recall his name, and so I’ll call him Smith. One day years before he told me the story, Smith and his wife were being rudely threatened and insulted in their home by a nasty IRS agent wearing a green sports jacket. At one point the agent turned to Smith and said “do your realize I can throw you in jail?”. Being something of a hard head, Smith replied “do you realize I can blow your brains out?”. The agent then left in a hurry. Smith then picked up the phone, called the local IRS office, and warned them that there was a man in a green sports jacket going around town impersonating an IRS agent and threatening people. According to Smith that was the end of affair, and he never heard any more from the IRS.

The second was told me over thirty years ago by a colleague named Bob. Bob lived out in the country in the plains of west Texas. He enjoyed guns and shooting and decided it would be fun to become gun dealer. He filed his application with the ATF, and eventually an agent named Chauncey showed up to interview him. He took Chauncey out to the small out building behind his house which he intended to use as his store. Bob had applied for an ordinary license to deal in sporting and personal arms, but somehow in the bureaucracy his application had been coded as one for a license to deal in weapons of war. When Chauncey asked Bob what he would be doing with a license to sell such weapons, Bob, instead of explaining the error, decided to have a little fun. He stepped outside and pointed to the flat plains around him and said “well I guess I’m not going to be selling them to the communists in the hills”. That was a mistake. Chauncey was not amused, but eventually the error was corrected, and Bod got his license.

I believe Bob’s story. It sounded just like him. I’m more skeptical of Mr. Smith’s tale, but both are interesting yarns.

Deciding How to Vote

 

I  usually have voted for Republicans for president. I have never voted for a Democrat. The closest I came to doing so was in 1976 when I almost voted for Carter but finally decided on Ford. I voted for the Libertarian candidate the first time I was eligible to vote (John Hospers as a write in in 1972) and in both of the last two elections, three votes I am still proud of given the other choice of Nixon, McGovern, Trump, Clinton, and Biden.

Once it became clear that Trump would be the Republican candidate, I thought about breaking my streak and voting for Biden, bad as he is, because Trump is so extraordinarily bad. I surely did not want to, but it seemed to be the right thing to do. I knew I believed the country would be better off if Trump lost. Then Biden decided to turn on Israel in its war against Hamas, and that, on top of all the rest that is wrong with him, brought me to my senses. I plan to sit out the presidential election, vote for the Libertarian, or write in Nikki Haley or Liz Cheney. I still think Biden is less bad than Trump and should defeat him, but I cannot vote for him. Sometimes the lesser evil is just too rough, and this year is one of those times.

Biden and Israel

 

As a matter of humanity and human sympathy the killing of seven innocent civilians in a mistaken attack by the Israeli armed forces was horrible. As a factor in deciding whether and how much the United States should side with Israel in its war against Hamas’s savages, it is irrelevant. Informed people know that horrible mistakes happen in war. (I have read that some GIs in World War II began calling the Ninth Air Force the American Luftwaffe after some of its mistaken attacks on American positions.) They also know there inevitably will be civilians killed in wars where civilians are present and especially in a war where the “fighters” on one side have made it a policy to hide among civilians. According to reports from experts, the Israeli armed forces have made extraordinary efforts to minimize casualties among civilians. That is all, and probably even more than, a reasonable person can request of them. In this war Israel is right and should win, and Hamas is wrong and should be destroyed.

Biden began well by siding unequivocally with Israel at the start of the war. Lately he and people in his administration began equivocating in an effort to appease voters in the pro-Hamas left. Now there are stories in the news suggesting that they may be moving away from supporting Israel. That would be a repugnant betrayal of not only a trusting ally but of the cause and values of liberal civilization. If they do not care about that, they should consider that it also could be a political mistake. Neither Biden nor Trump is an attractive candidate. Foreign policy has been one important point in Biden’s favor – especially given his generally good job on Ukraine and the fear that Trump might abandon Ukraine. If Biden turns against Israel, it could cause people to see him as being no more trustworthy on foreign policy than Trump and as throwing in again with the left, making a formerly fairly easy choice between him and Trump less so. It would me. Sitting this one out or a protest vote for the Libertarian might look pretty good. Sometimes the lesser evil is just too rough.

A Time for Hobson's Choosing

 

I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this. I had hoped Republican voters would come to their senses and nominate DeSantis or Haley. I had hoped Smith would get a conviction in one of his cases against Trump. I had hoped Biden would move toward the center, or the Democrats, fearing defeat, would replace him on their ticket with a moderate. None of it happened, and so here we are. Unless something very unusual happens, if they both stay alive for the next eight months, it will be Trump versus Biden in November.

Biden is a bad president. He is a dishonest, lying, unprincipled party hack and scoundrel, as his record over several decades makes obvious. He shows evidence of being in some stage of at least intermittent dementia. His administration has been mainly a leftist one. He and his administration are in bed with some really bad people on the green left and the bigoted DEI left, and recently have become more sympathetic toward the pro-Hamas left. If Biden is reelected and gets some of the things he wants, people’s lives would be worse. Electric power would become less reliable, and it would become harder or impossible to buy the car or appliances one would like. The problems coming from the immigration of too many poor and unskilled people into a welfare state would get worse. Higher taxes and more regulations would make the country poorer than it would be otherwise. Increased spending by the government would add more to the dangerously high federal debt. The nanny state would become more intrusive and obnoxious, and the IRS, the EPA, the FBI, and the rest of the gang more nearly unrestrained.

Then there is Donald Trump, a man who should never be considered for any public office in the United States. He is an arrogant, vulgar, bullying, graceless, power mad ignoramus, and he doesn’t hide the fact. From December 14^th 2000 to January 6^th ,2001, he functioned as an enemy of the republic, conspiring and attempting to overthrow the government and remain in power illegally and unconstitutionally. The rally and riot of January 6^th had no other purpose. His order to Pence to change the results of the election was by itself an attempted coup. In 2022 he called in writing for overturning the Constitution and returning him to power immediately. He has made it plain recently that the only thing he regrets about the coup is that if failed. He is erratic to the point of instability, and apparently incapable of strategic thought beyond superficial transactional considerations. His vice president has refused to support him for another term. Other serious and decent people who worked with him in his first administration have warned that he is dangerously unfit to serve. It is possible he would abandon Ukraine to Putin, effectively abandon NATO, and throw away much of our victory in the cold war. His vile demagoguery takes the country’s already low level of civility in politics lower. He has demanded full immunity from any crimes he might want to commit when back in office (including murdering political opponents according to his lawyers). He shows no sense of being or wanting to be bound by laws or the Constitution.

In 2016 P. J. O’Rourke argued for supporting Hillary Clinton on the grounds that, while she was wrong about almost everything, she was wrong within the ordinary boundaries of American politics, while Trump might do something really crazy and destructive. That summarizes the case for supporting Biden for those of us not  Democrats or leftists. The case for supporting Trump is that the plans and policies of the Republicans generally are less bad than those of the Democrats, and the hope that Trump would mainly follow those and be restrained from doing anything really crazy and destructive, likely producing a better outcome for the country than we would get with Biden.

It is truly a Hobson’s choice, and I can see good reasons for people deciding either way. There are serious people I respect who have picked Biden and others who have picked Trump. My choice based on what I know now is that the less bad choice is to elect Biden and work for Republican majorities in both houses to mitigate the damage he would do. But it is not a choice a person can be comfortable with.