Fellow Everyman writer Vincent Weaver recently articulated some insightful reflections of political apathy regarding the current presidential contest, announcing his rejection of incumbent Vice President Harris, while being disinclined to support former President Trump. I am deeply sympathetic with his view and have on occasion been drawn to prioritizing my principles in casting my somewhat trivial vote. From 1976 to 1988, I repeatedly cast my ballot for the office of the president in favor of the major party candidate who was considered to be most concerned with maintaining our national defense as compared to the other candidate.
While not strictly a single-issue citizen, I considered national security to be foremost among all other issues, as both my parents had escaped the Soviet Union with their families – my father’s almost a century ago, and my mother’s about five years later (just less than three years before Stalin’s Holodomor). By and large, my perspective entailed a distrust of Democrat politicians who seemed to dismiss both Soviet military aggression, and its explicit intent to neuter our country, which the Russians viewed as standing in the way of their goals of global domination via conquest, espionage and propaganda.
This led to me having a rather jaded view of political leaders due to my surmise of the electorate as being fundamentally ignorant of our vulnerability to leftist tyranny. This can be illustrated by a quote from the “The Omega Glory” episode from Star Trek, where Dr McCoy warns Mr. Spock, “I’ve found that evil usually triumphs – unless good is very, very careful.” Following the Soviet Union’s demise, national security managed to remain an important concern, albeit downgraded to one of several.
Given the media’s fixation on peccadillo embarrassments involving the candidates, this focus on the trivialities end up drowning out the differences between their respective strategies for governance. We’re not afforded the luxury of deciding between the Archangel Gabriel and Satan, never minding that each would probably lack eligibility under the fourteen year residency requirement (or would they…?). Instead, we must choose between the “lesser of two weevils” which was Captain Aubrey’s jovial pun from the film Master and Commander.
Although religious conservatives have been disappointed by the Republican 2024 platform’s erosion of national legal recognition of protection for the unborn, I believe conservatives should understand that this position unfortunately reflects the overall attitude of a large portion of the citizenry, as ratified by the comment on an open forum on this site. While the failing of one broad coalition to redress our fundamental grievances remains a legitimate cause, we also should be aware of the contrast with the other main coalition which openly displays hostility towards humanity (particularly smaller humans).
Pre-industrial Americans didn’t view children as more desirable simply based on moral imperatives – additional hands on the farm or ranch were actually quite valuable. And even if the citizenry (never mind the invading migrants) are expressing greater selfishness than prior generations (a presumably valid assumption), all the more reason the imperative arises to alter cultural values and precepts to become more welcoming to children.
Most people eschew self-sacrifice, despite being prone to applauding the suffering of others for similar causes. Decades ago, the pro-life movement focused its attention on late-term abortions – because viable fetuses appear more recognizably human (and thus less “conceptual”) than zygotes, despite sharing the same genetics. Affecting a change for extending wholesale compassion might take generations, and perhaps could help us to avert demographic collapse. Otherwise, precipitous changes have the potential to get very ugly.
Realistically, we are all well aware that third party candidates statistically have no chance to achieve victory – partly as a consequence of our separation of powers – except for an exceedingly narrow exception. In this election cycle, it would require,
(1) neither nominee attains 270 electoral votes,
(2) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. prevails in Nebraska’s second district, and
(3) under the Twelfth Amendment he persuades Republican congressional delegations to select him (despite being as “pro-choice” as other Democrats) over the former president.
So then, the main question is should an Everyman reader prefer the “historic” Harris, or possibly the “populist” Trump? Well, aside from the Brandon administration’s lawfare against political critics and expansion of censorship, its astonishingly inept foreign policy aligns China, Russia, Iran and North Korea against us and threatens a nuclear confrontation across the continents. This gross malpractice constitutes a suicidal repudiation of Kissinger’s Triangular diplomacy that served to reduce threats of mutual destruction during the delicate negotiations that were used to extract our military presence from Indochina.
While Foggy Bottom flits its attention between Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, and Taiwan, it ignores rising tensions in the Sahel, cholera in Sudan, violent unrest in Syria and civil war in Myanmar. In the meantime, we can only surmise who is in charge of the country, and/or soon will be assuming the cackler emerges victorious in November. In that event, the regent behind the throne will remain unaccountable, while America’s social cohesion further disintegrates under the threat of Antifa mobs and the Sinaloa cartel.
Although economic prosperity might not seem a proper motivation for improving the national character, I suspect American temperament presumes an opportunity to conduct one’s affairs as one ought. That task becomes more difficult in the face of pointless obstacles imposed by indifferent incompetence or deliberate malice on the part of the elite. The left’s demand for “eco-fascist” energy starvation by its insistence on “renewable” solar and wind sources will continue to impoverish our citizenry, as I expect it was clandestinely intended from the beginning. One could say, Trump offers “a choice, not an ec(h)o” (with apologies to Phyllis Schlafly).
Recall James 2:15-16 admonishing “if a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them ‘go in peace, keep warm and eat well,’ but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it?” The economy deteriorated after Trump’s first term recovery under Brandon’s numerous regulatory impositions. Lifting such burdens by party replacement will hopefully serve to benefit almost all of us, whereas further patronizing tech oligarchs by keeping the White House under woke rainbow control will maintain the current opportunity depression. In short, we patriots should cast our votes after being informed by our individual conscience. For the record, I can share that mine rests more on apprehension than on aspiration.
Photo Credit- West Virginia Register