tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post12832684252652274..comments2024-03-22T17:35:52.045-04:00Comments on Extra Thoughts: The one gleam of silver liningLydia McGrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-51679004946831271882016-05-07T09:58:50.943-04:002016-05-07T09:58:50.943-04:00We can't build a viable new party in this shor...<i>We can't build a viable new party in this short of a time. And there are a lot of nuts in the Constitution Party. If I vote for their candidate (which I have done before and might do again), it will be purely as a protest vote.</i> <br /><br />Lydia, I don't mean "in this short a time" before the general election. By "running out of time" I mean voting in such a way as to prepare the ground for better politics in 5, 10 or even 20 years - that kind of time frame. If we have degenerated to the point where in Hilary's or her successor's term of office we lose democracy outright (or even keep the outer form, but lose the substance, like the Senate in Imperial Rome under Tiberius), then there will be no plausible prospect of political improvement to be realized by voting (for example) for a third party candidate. That wouldn't as such deny the moral value of doing so anyway, but it would change the prudential value of such a vote. <br /><br /><i>What we have to do is tend not just our own souls but the souls of those around us as best we can. Indeed, I think that strengthening the spines of people on the fence who are otherwise going to be bullied into voting for Trump is part of that good work.</i> <br /><br />One of the ways we need to be tending souls is declaring the possibility that in this nation, God may indeed call large numbers of us to suffer greatly from the state, either the soft "martyrdom" of oppression, of lost jobs, of ill treatment and ghettoization, or the harder road of outright prison and (for some) death. <i>There may be no road out of this, except for the road through the long night of tyranny, despotism, and decades of official state-led hatred of us, until the sufferings of the elect are sufficient to call down the graces necessary for a political and social change.</i> People who are intellectually and emotionally (and spiritually) prepared for this prospect are more likely to be ready to vote against both Trump and Hilary even though that vote is "meaningless" in political impact. Tonyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07159134209092031897noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-55884158001326198062016-05-06T16:03:08.383-04:002016-05-06T16:03:08.383-04:00I too am a #NeverTrump advocate now who voted a st...I too am a #NeverTrump advocate now who voted a straight R ticket for as long as I've been able to vote. I voted for both McCain and Romney, although when I voted for Romney I felt quite strongly that I was holding my nose as I did it. (I feel a sort of freedom but also a lot of fear and apprehension about this.) You are so very right that something profound has changed now, and #NeverTrump is the indicator of that. There are so many of us out there who aren't going to vote for either of the two major candidates "for the first time" and that is huge.Justinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09369314650729072277noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-37664555270887434432016-05-06T14:53:19.366-04:002016-05-06T14:53:19.366-04:00I'm a #NeverTrump guy who did vote for McCain ...I'm a #NeverTrump guy who did vote for McCain and Romney in 2008 and 2012 in order to stop Obama and the Libs. <br /><br />Not this year. I de-registered from the GOP the day after the Indiana primaries and became a political Independent. I can no longer stomach being a member of the Stupid Party.<br /><br />FYI, thanks for pointing out that #NeverTrump is the silver lining. No one else articulated that as you have. It's a very small remnant, and a very thin silver lining. <br /><br />There's honor and glory in fighting for Lost Causes. ;-)Truth Unites... and Divideshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08891402278361538353noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-61449795774274449292016-05-05T11:45:56.235-04:002016-05-05T11:45:56.235-04:00Exactly. In fact, the issue of Israel scarcely sur...Exactly. In fact, the issue of Israel scarcely surfaced at all in this primary campaign--one way or another. (Unless one counts the insane anti-semitism of some of the Trump-bots, going well beyond even the usual blinkered anti-Israel focus of the paleocons. But _those_ Trump-bots would never have voted for Cruz anyway.) And generally being anti-Israel would be far more of a liability among Republican voters than an asset, just as a purely strategic matter. It says more about the commentator than about the actualities of the campaign to think of that Arab event with Cruz, which occurred before the primary campaign even began, as decisive in any way, shape, or form. As witness the fact that Rand Paul, beloved of the paleocons, got nowhere in his primary campaign. Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-62087523013807616592016-05-05T11:41:32.677-04:002016-05-05T11:41:32.677-04:00Was that event particularly well-known among the g...Was that event particularly well-known among the general electorate? I think you over-estimate its importance. Cruz had a number of handicaps he could not overcome (not least his evangelical mannerisms -- speech cadence, vocabulary, and long-windedness) which are something of a turn-off to people outside that culture, both non-religious and other-religious. Also his highly technologized campaign was based on some false premises: for example, it now seems clear that the number of evangelical voters is greatly inflated by those who "self-identify" in that group, but who don't actually worship regularly or maintain active attachment to that culture -- they broke for Trump, despite his publicly proclaimed personal and professional immorality and his transparently phony attempts to claim a Christian identity. Who knew? I have heard a number of different interpretations of Cruz's "stand with the Jews" moment, both pro and anti, but it has hardly net with the scrutiny of many of his other campaign strategies or incidents. I'm sure the post-mortems will be revealing, but I'd be surprised if many of them focus on that particular speech.Winefredhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13596483777238338710noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-3886222349503595412016-05-05T11:06:53.897-04:002016-05-05T11:06:53.897-04:00Thanks for this post Lydia.
This will be the firs...Thanks for this post Lydia.<br /><br />This will be the first election in my adult life that I refuse to vote for one of the main Presidential candidates of either party. I used to believe in the truth of Error 1 (and I guess as a corollary Error 2) and so dutifully pulled the level every four years for 'my candidate.' It feels good to realize that the Republican party is not always the best vehicle for conservative policy goals and that sometimes it makes sense to simply acknowledge that their are no good options and refuse to vote for a bad or evil choice.Jeffrey S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/10411126704920184190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-58945048773469162522016-05-05T10:41:22.570-04:002016-05-05T10:41:22.570-04:00Peter, exactly. Partisan politics becomes an end i...Peter, exactly. Partisan politics becomes an end in itself. I had a friend argue to me recently that we must vote for Trump because in doing so we are voting for "the Republican party" which is better than the Democrat party. Now, this is a _real_ reductio. Sure, the Republican _platform_ is better than the Dem platform. But what we put in office is a _person_, and he is in no way bound to govern according to the Republican platform. By this friend's logic, we should vote for Darth Vader or Cthulhu if he has an R after his name because we would be voting not for the candidate but for the party! <br /><br />It's like a kind of madness or blindness for people who are really committed to it. They literally can't see how blindly they are committed to pure partisan politics. I am waiting for supposedly non-partisan organizations like the National Right to Life Committee to endorse Trump for president! Mark my words: It will happen. Yet they pride themselves on being non-partisan and committed only to policy! Which means that anybody who lies and says, "I'm pro-life," even while _simultaneously_ praising Planned Parenthood, can probably get their endorsement. (I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think I'm wrong.) <br /><br />I so much hope that more and more people's eyes are open to the wrongness of this perspective. If so, the Trump candidacy will have done that tiny bit of good amidst all the bad.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-90387195752603371422016-05-05T10:01:16.987-04:002016-05-05T10:01:16.987-04:00Hello Lydia,
As someone who once argued for the ve...Hello Lydia,<br />As someone who once argued for the veracity of Error 1, I believe you hit the nail on the head. I didn't switch my views on Error 1 overnight, nor did I switch due to Trump. However, Trump definitely clarifies this for many people (at least who I talk with on my Facebook page).<br /><br />One of the points I've been making for those who have been saying that no matter how much they dislike Trump it's time to "hold our nose" and vote for him, is: If you would vote for a man who held three positions on abortion within 24 hours last month, who openly bragged about the numerous affairs he had and how avoiding an STD was his own personal Vietnam, who has trouble staying married to the same woman, who has donated to Hillary Clinton, who has admitted to bribing government officials for personal gain, who uses his Twitter feed like a fifth-grader bully, who is anti-2nd Amendment and pro-Big Government--if you can vote for THAT MAN, then who *wouldn't* you vote for? If Hillary held a press conference today and said, "Americans, I have realized that this whole time I should really be a Republican and not a Democrat. I'm not going to change a single position I hold, but now I've got an R after my name" then are you going to be standing there saying, "As much as I despise her, we have to make sure Sanders doesn't get the White House"?<br /><br />Sadly, I believe there may still be a sizable chunk of the Republican field who would say "we have to vote for the lesser of two evils" even then. Ultimately, that shows me that these people do not care about policy. All their religious views, moral views, and ethical views are subservient to politics, so they've exposed who their true god is.Peter Pikehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11792036365040378473noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-34915004716931792942016-05-05T01:28:40.549-04:002016-05-05T01:28:40.549-04:00"Error 1: It is an a priori truth that there ..."Error 1: It is an a priori truth that there is always a "lesser evil" in American politics."<br /><br />I once took part in a discussion where it was proposed that it was imperative to vote for a lesser Hitler, that is, a Hitler that proposed to kill off a few millions fewer people, against the real Hitler.<br /><br />Nobody would appreciate my argument that one should never VOTE for somebody proposing to kill people wholesale. It would be moral moral to pick up arms to oppose the proposed genocide, be it little one. <br /><br />Gyanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09941686166886986037noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-77636518329854872682016-05-04T23:17:39.441-04:002016-05-04T23:17:39.441-04:00Tony, at this point I believe that probably nothin...Tony, at this point I believe that probably nothing is "useful" in terms of this upcoming election. Hillary is going to win. And if she didn't, Trump would, which would if possible be even worse *for conservatives*, because they would be corrupting themselves defending him (at least some of them would). <br /><br />We can't build a viable new party in this short of a time. And there are a lot of nuts in the Constitution Party. If I vote for their candidate (which I have done before and might do again), it will be purely as a protest vote.<br /><br />What we have to do is tend not just our own souls but the souls of those around us as best we can. Indeed, I think that strengthening the spines of people on the fence who are otherwise going to be bullied into voting for Trump is part of that good work.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-36599055773483991102016-05-04T23:14:52.949-04:002016-05-04T23:14:52.949-04:00Nah, I don't think that was "the turning ...Nah, I don't think that was "the turning point." And Cruz was right. We will never see eye to eye on that, as you of course know well. *I* think he smoked out the cra-cra (as the kids say nowadays) among our Arab brethren. It's unfortunate that that craziness is there, but there it is. Had it not been, he would have gotten nothing worse than puzzled looks at his dragging in the subject. As it was, he discovered what he feared was there. Maybe it would have been smoother and more politic just to back out of the speaking engagement altogether once he started to have doubts about its sponsors. But in any event, that was away back when (in terms of the race as a whole), and that didn't make some big difference. As so often, Thom, I believe you overestimate the importance of the paleoconservatives and their particular preoccupations in the Republican party as a whole. They are a minority, not only in the nation, but in the party. They did not turn the tide against Cruz. Trump came in and sucked all the oxygen out of the room.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-17620712092180516082016-05-04T22:13:36.067-04:002016-05-04T22:13:36.067-04:00Sometimes it is good to remember how we got where ...Sometimes it is good to remember how we got where we are.<br /><br />I have not voted for a GOP candidate for President since Reagan. I hoped this year would be different. The establishment was insisting on running a Bush again for President. Old news that was going no where. I thought we had two good candidates running, Senators Paul and Cruz. <br /><br />Donald Trump was making noise about running. Nothing new there; Trump is a tireless self promoter. I thought he would run an economic nationalist, populist campaign, ala Ross Perot. He would use this to promote himself and his brand name. <br /><br />I was optimistic. We had two good candidates, and a couple of other good options in the bullpen. I believed either Senator Paul or Cruz was sure to emerge as the leading conservative voice. Either man was capable of leading us past the libertarian, 'Christian right', neo-conservative, paleo-conservative divide. I thought that either Senator Paul or Cruz would successfully bridge the divides and end up being the nominee.<br /><br />All of that changed, when Senator Cruz went to a meeting designed to show support for Arab Christians. In his remarks Senator Cruz made himself odious to paleo-conservatives, and many libertarians. Senator Cruz was booed off the stage for telling Middle East Christians and their supporters that "if you will not stand with Israel and the Jews; then I will not stand with you."<br /><br />Senator Cruz emerged from that meeting the favorite of neo-conservatives and the 'Christian right.' <br /><br />Paleo-conservatives turned to Donald Trump and his populist message of nationalism, and protectionism in droves. Mr. Trump, ever the self promoter, knew how to play to this new found support. So much for conservative unity; the opportunist won.<br /><br />That was, I believe, the turning support that led to Mr. Trump's victory.<br /><br />So where do we go from here? We act in a principled way. We do not identify with the forces of evil. We do not burn bridges. We only act in a way that is a positive witness to what we believe and stand for. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09916898831687452265noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-51828683719096720572016-05-04T21:47:30.570-04:002016-05-04T21:47:30.570-04:00To my mind, this is an important development. I ha...<i>To my mind, this is an important development. I have never considered the stranglehold of the two-party system in the United States to be a politically healthy thing. We need to mix it up a little. We need more options. And conscience can help a lot in that mixing up process. </i> <br /><br />I agree. I have been saying we need more parties for quite some time. The stranglehold the two parties have is indeed deadening consciences in a terrible and nation-destroying way. They create an unnatural condition for a democracy, I think, in that they seem to kill the hope (and chance) of building something up by starting small and increasing over years and decades. You can't build a viable party that way if you can't get ANY of your candidates elected in a 2-party lockout. Like you, I welcome the starkness of the evil choices here before us, for this one sliver of silver - precisely because it may get people out of the 2-party rut and consider something inherently more healthy for our nation. <br /><br />All that said, I worry about the possibility that it is now too little, too late. It's one thing to invest 2 hours in a 2-hour project of building a lamp for the night hours, starting 2 hours before darkness falls. It's another thing to start it 2 minutes before darkness falls: at that point maybe you should just locate your flashlight and forget about the lamp. Is voting for the Constitution Party, in a long-range project that might conceivably bear fruit in 20 or 30 years if we last that long, and getting a tyrant like a Hilary, sort of like having neither your lamp nor your flashlight when the night arrives? Have we <i>already</i> left it too late for that to be useful?Tonyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07159134209092031897noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-12355097423445804672016-05-04T21:47:18.194-04:002016-05-04T21:47:18.194-04:00Error 1: It is an a priori truth that there is alw...<i>Error 1: It is an a priori truth that there is always a "lesser evil" in American politics.</i> <br /><br /><i>And again and again, they answered, in essence, "Wrong. There shouldn't be a line. There is no line. There is always a lesser evil. You always have to find out what it is and vote for that.</i> <br /><br />I think I would analyze it slightly differently. With regard to Error 1: there is, in a <i>different</i> sense, a truth in there, that there is always a lesser evil. Not in the sense they mean, though. <br /><br />In every situation in which you must act, there is a moral choice. Even if one of the choices is to "not do X nor do Y", that's a choice. There is ALWAYS a moral option. If, therefore, all options before you are going to yield unsavory results, then you <i>have to</i> choose something unsavory in order to make a moral choice, to do the moral thing. In that situation, <i>after discarding the choices that are of inherently disordered acts</i>, you would choose the remaining choice that offers the most good, or the least evil (not moral evil), or the happiest combination of the two. This <i>just is</i> the proper, normative way of bringing morality to choice. <br /><br />But the foolish ones you speak of foolishly mistake "you have to make a moral choice between evils" as being logically and morally equal to "you have to VOTE FOR the least evil of the two major candidates." And there is really little or no justification for such an illogical mistake. The morality of choosing the "lesser evil" always includes "do nothing overt". Because that IS always one of the choices before you. It <i>may</i> not be a moral choice, in certain circumstances, but it is always an option among the choices to be weighed. <br /><br />In addition, because there are other candidates besides the two major ones, there are other options even among "vote for someone" choices than "vote for one of the two major party candidates". To ignore those additional options in deciding what is moral is a clear mistake. There are some who have not <i>ignored</i> that option, they have rather decided that voting for one of the other candidates is NEVER one of the "least evil" votes, usually for reasons of expediency: it "won't achieve anything", which they take as meaning it is "imprudent". But it can't <i>really</i> "not achieve anything", because it inherently increases the vote total for a third or fourth candidate. That's not nothing. It may be very little, but God sometimes makes much of very little, like the widow's mite. But...Tonyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07159134209092031897noreply@blogger.com