Whatever Happens, Happens
I am not caught up in this year’s U.S. election season. Some readers, I suspect, probably assume I say that sort of thing merely to express disdain or disgust for the individuals at the forefront of the events, or for the media’s coverage of same. No; I really do not have any particular interest in the election. Which team wins is of no consequence to me, for it is of no consequence to much of anything — or certainly not anything I would care enough about for that concern to stoke my interest in this election’s result.
The U.S. national debt will continue to grow to increasingly incomprehensible heights regardless of who wins. The U.S. Constitution will continue to be a long-forgotten and practically irrelevant relic regardless of who wins. The U.S. federal government will continue to develop power and reach that no federal government ever had, anywhere, prior to the twentieth century, and that no semi-legitimate national government should ever have. American education (i.e., the rearing of children) will continue to be managed and overseen in all its essential elements by progressive paternalists of the left and right.
The United States has ceased to represent any force for freedom or good in the world. It represents only wealth and military might, and is doing an increasingly middling job of at least the first of those. (And wealth and arms are of no positive value whatsoever apart from governing principles that would employ these instruments to some beneficial effect.) The last U.S. election that mattered at all, as far as I am concerned, was held in 2012, and the fatally wrong side won. From then on, and certainly here in 2020, U.S. presidential elections are mere clown shows, mass entertainment of a piece with all American popular entertainment today: crass, repetitive, vulgar, weak, stupid, and brashly — one might almost say monumentally — unimportant.
Hence, I do not care who wins this fake news election contest, because I know that, contrary to the usual hokum from both tribes, the stakes this year could not be lower. The election would matter only if one or both plausible candidates embodied some sort of hope for reversing the collapse of liberty and rationality on this planet. Even to entertain such a thought in relation to the current candidates is laughable. Neither they nor the party establishment machine by which they are utterly controlled offer anything but more intellectual and moral deterioration, more unprincipled tribalism, and more tangible tyranny.
I have no predictions, no pros and cons, no rooting interest, and most of all no hope for this election. If you have any, then enjoy the party and deal with the inevitable hangover later; for my part, I will respectfully remain disinterested to the point of complete boredom. The issues I care about — freedom, reason, education, civility — are way off the table this year. And they will remain off the table for as far into the future as my eyes can see.
