Strange at the Bulwark

 

Despite the claims of being committed to defending liberal democracy without tribal loyalties or partisan prejudices, for a long time the work of the Bulwark mainly has been shilling for the Democrats. Lately its writers have gone well beyond that to something pretty nearly Manichean.

Today there was a silly piece on the site condemning libertarians for the sin of “bothsideism” (that is, accurately recognizing that there are threats to liberty from both Republicans and Democrats) and not automatically throwing in with the Dems as all right thinking people should.

Other writers at the Bulwark have been equating voting for Trump to favoring authoritarianism, fascism or, lately, actual Hitlerism, and seeing it as evidence of something frightening and “dark” in the people who will do it. This of course is nuts. Millions of people will vote for Trump despite not liking him or even disliking him, because they see him as less bad than the leftist alternative. And among the ones who do like him, I would guess that the number of them wanting a right wing authoritarian state is smaller than the number of Democrat voters wanting a Marxist one.

It is all a little strange. It’s a political campaign, for gosh sake, not Armageddon. Maybe part of what is going on at the Bulwark is just panic over the increasing likelihood that Trump will win. It surely is not good for the country. I think either Trump or Harris would be a bad president, but I do not plan to anathematize people who vote for either of them. We are all still Americans, and the partisan fanatics and tribalists at the Bulwark should stop seeing half of us as children of darkness. Besides, it makes them sound a whole lot like Trump at his craziest and nastiest.

How I Will Vote

 

I dislike Donald Trump. I have never voted for him in either a primary or a general election. I have written some very harsh things about him, and I still believe them. I wanted the senate to convict him after the second impeachment in 2021. I wanted the Republicans to move on from him after he left office in disgrace. I wanted Jack Smith to convict him of one of his crimes. I wanted DeSantis or Haley to defeat him for the Republican nomination. I wanted the Democrats to replace Biden as their nominee with a moderate rather than a leftist. I still wish any of those things had happened.

But none of them did. So now we get to choose between Trump and Harris as to which would be the lesser evil (which is a different question from which of them is the less bad human being or the lesser fool). The choice is not an obvious one, but I think it is likely that the country would be better off and suffer less with a Trump administration than a Harris one.

There are issues on which each of them is better or less bad than the other. However, on the important issues of national defense, illegal immigration, personal freedom, the economy, and siding with Israel and civilization and against Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and barbarism, Trump and the Republicans are better than Harris and the Democrats. A Trump administration would be likely to be harder on our enemies and to move America’s armed forces away from spending time and effort on various irrelevant or even harmful leftist fads and causes and make them more nearly fully directed toward the crucial mission of deterring and, if necessary, defeating the country’s enemies. Trump would try to  restrict illegal immigration, while Harris probably would keep things much as they are now. On personal freedom, Trump and the Republicans would be likely to restrain federal bureaucrats, cut at least some regulations, and generally make Americans a little freer to live their lives as they like, while Harris and the Democrats would be likely to do the opposite. (Some point to abortion as an exception to this, but as a practical matter, abortion is moot at the federal level. The filibuster is not going away, and there will not be sixty votes in the senate for new laws restricting abortion. The issue will stay with the states.) Trump has some bad economic schemes, but overall, Harris’s are worse. Finally, the Republicans mainly are clear that in the present conflict Israel is right and should win decisively, and its enemies are wrong and should lose disastrously. Too many Democrats including Harris are “nuanced” or worse on that.

While both want to do things I think are seriously wrong, Trump would have the federal bureaucracy, the intelligence agencies, and  the traditional media working against him as he tried to do some of the bad things he  wants to do, while Harris would have the same people working with and for her as she tried to do some of the bad things she  wants to do. Because of that she probably is more capable of doing harm than he is.

So I will vote for Trump. I don’t like it. I am displeased with the stupid voters in Republican primaries for putting me and the country in this predicament. But I’ll do it. It won’t be fun, but I’ll do it.

Finishing the Job

 

The Israeli armed forces have begun a land campaign on Lebanon against Hezbollah. This war and their continuing war against Hamas in Gaza are conflicts of civilization against savagery and barbarism. Americans should be unequivocally for Israel in this war and against the savages. I would guess most of us are. However, our government is not. In Gaza the Biden administration has advocated consistently for an end to the fighting that would leave Hamas surviving as a functional organization, an outcome which would be a strategic victory for Hamas and Iran. In Lebanon it has pushed for restraint and diplomacy at a time when Israel seems to be in a good position to eradicate the menace of Hezbollah, a diplomatic outcome which would deprive Israel of a needed victory and leave Hezbollah in place, dangerous, and functioning. Here at home Biden and Harris have treated pro- Hamas, antisemitic, anti-civilization leftist as very fine people, and officials have appeared less concerned about attacks on and threats against American Jews than about conservative parents getting uppity at school board meetings.

The whole thing is disgraceful, and, for Harris, disqualifying. I hope the Israelis ignore our officials and get the job done fully and decisively both for themselves and the rest of us.