U.S. Election Notes

In about three weeks, the United States of America — a formerly awe-inspiring name which now has about as much real world resonance as “the British Crown” — will elect its next president. As has been the case for a number of elections, the mainstream options fall into the “Could it get any worse?” category, while the non-mainstream options, such as they are (and they barely are), appear to be actively responding, “Yes, it could.”

To summarize the dilemma facing the American public: If you support Kamala Harris in order to stop Donald Trump, you have lost your reason. If you support Trump in order to stop Harris, you have lost your hope for humanity. More generally, if you vote Harris, you are apparently sanguine about a future of totalitarianism; if you vote Trump, you are apparently ignorant of the history of totalitarianism.

The core of Trump’s voting base is comprised of most of the same millions who, when Barack Obama vowed to “fundamentally transform” America, or when he espoused the progressive taxation principle of “spreading the wealth around,” rejected all Democrat-friendly media’s efforts to dismiss these statements as mere rhetorical flourishes, but insisted that Obama be taken at his word and judged on the deeply anti-American implications of his rhetoric. Interesting (read “sadly predictable”) then, that these same millions continue, for the third consecutive presidential election, to take exactly the opposite position toward Trump’s overtly anti-American statements, illiberal promises of executive fiat, divisive tribal warfare rhetoric, protectionist taxation instincts, open admiration for tyrants and demagogues, and equally open disdain for his own country’s consitutional processes and electoral laws. “He doesn’t mean it that way,” they incessantly insist, to themselves and to everyone else. How does he mean it, then? And are these people willing to concede, in the name of consistency, that Obama didn’t mean it either? (He did; and Trump does.)


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