My response to Dennis Prager
Those memes of Donald Trump in a Nazi uniform about to push a button that will gas Bernie Sanders or of Ben Shapiro (above) dressed as a concentration camp inmate at “Camp Trump” were posted on the internet by Trump’s supporters, not his opponents. Spend any time at all on Twitter with them and you’ll come to realize the kind of people he attracts.
As bad as Hillary would doubtless be, I fail to see a single one of the issues Mr. Prager mentions on which we can rely on Trump to act any differently than she would. He changes his positions as often as it's to his advantage to change them, and in whatever direction. Less than a year ago he was for amnesty, pro-choice, and favored a single-payer compulsory national health care system. Only a few months ago he held up his radical pro-choice sister as an example of the kind of people he’d appoint to the Supreme Court. He has no principles as we understand the term. His positions are whatever might be advantageous to Donald Trump at the moment. Donald Trump is his only cause. Several psychiatrists have written to warn that he seems to be a classic case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and warning us about the dangers of giving such person power. Could you sleep at night knowing that the man whose finger was on the button flew into an abusive rage whenever somebody criticized him, and habitually threatens people who disagree with him with the powers of retaliation he would have at his disposal if he is elected? Shouldn’t we expect the President of the United States at the very least to have greater emotional maturity than a third grader?
This is a dangerous man. We must not let our distaste for Hillary blind us to the strong possibility that Donald Trump might actually be worse. There are some elections in which the phrase “lesser of two evils” has no meaning because both options are so evil that choose either is unthinkable. No, Mr. Prager, we did not side with Stalin against Hitler because he was the lesser evil; in fact, at least in terms of his total number of victims, Stalin was almost certainly the greater evil of the two. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, circumstances put us on Stalin's side in spite of ourselves. One simply does not choose voluntarily so side with Joseph Stalin! But I do agree that in that analogy Trump is Stalin- the greater evil. If Hillary is elected in 2016, a conservative will be elected in 2020. If Trump is elected, it may be a generation before that happens.
Either of these people would be a one-term president, Hillary because of her age, her personal abrasiveness and the fact that only twice in our history has either party won four straight presidential elections, and Trump because he’s both crazy and incompetent and would enrage those who follow him now by his failure to follow through on his promises. The question is who we want to elect in 2020. If Trump wins- unlikely as I believe that to be- it will be a liberal Democrat, and it may be a generation before another Republican is elected. Worse, the Republican party will be captive to a movement that is opposed to everything it has historically stood for. That is why in view of Trump’s nomination, I no longer consider myself a Republican, and wish for Mr. Kristol’s New Federalist Party, or whatever it’s called, not simply a short future as a lifeboat for real Republicans, but permanent status as a conservative party which excludes the racists, anti-Semites and neo-fascists who have turned the party of Lincoln and Reagan into the party of Trump.
It will be decades before the GOP can invoke Lincoln or Reagan again with a straight face. I’d rather be an independent than to share a party which has shown itself capable of nominating the man. There are elections in which both candidates are so evil that the question of who is the lesser is meaningless. And one becomes morally an accomplice of any evil when one knowingly votes for it.
This, I believe, is one of them.
Comments