Moving day for this blog: July 1

After 21 years here at Blogspot, Watersblogged is moving. As of July 1, the URL of this blog will be robertwaters.wordpress.com.

Blogger is intuitive, and for a guy who is more interested in content than in web geekery, that was compelling. But the options here are limited. The deciding factor was the decision by Feedburner, the Blogger utility that supplies the add-ons, to eliminate the option to subscribe by email was the deciding factor. Most of my subscribers subscribe by email. The rigamarole involved in integrating MailChimp or some similar service into Blogger pretty much eliminated the advantage of Blogger being more straightforward and more intuitive.

Moving a blog is a hassle, especially after 21 years. It won't be a smooth transition. There's a learning curve with WordPress, and it's going to take a while for me to figure things out. There may be an interruption in emails from Watersblogged. I'm hoping to just download my Feedburner subscriptions, but it may be more complicated than that. Please check in at robertwaters.wordpress.com if you notice a lapse- which, I acknowledge, might be difficult since I haven't been blogging much of late.

It's been a great run. I started this blog in  2000 after the networks used a flawed new system for projecting states to declare Al Gore in effect the winner early enough to suppress the Bush vote in Florida and elsewhere, throwing the popular vote to Gore and casting the result into doubt., 

I continued through my support of President Bush during his re-election campaign against John Kerry, and of John McCain, one of the finest men nominated by either party in my lifetime, and of Mitt Romney. Their competence and integrity stand in such sharp contrast to Donald Trump. I made the mistake of supporting the Second Gulf War and am still angered by the malicious chorus of "Bush lied!" when he acted based on the best information available to him, including the unanimous opinion of every Western intelligence service. But it was a mistake and a tragic one.

Then came the takeover of the Republican Party by an incompetent, mentally unstable authoritarian and conspiracy theorist, Donald Trump. He won the White House by an electoral fluke. Tens of thousands of Americans died unnecessarily because Trump allied himself with the virus. He spread massive and catastrophic misinformation and distrust of the medical experts. Trump set the Republican Party on an ugly course of malice, prejudice, and egotism that I believe has ruined it for all time as a serious option for sensible people. He alienated our allies and weakened America's position in the world. Trump subordinated  America's interests to those of Russia and placing his own ego above every other consideration. He couldn't stand being a "loser," so he lied about the result of last year's election.

He joined Jefferson Davis in becoming the only president ever to lead an insurrection against the American government and constitution, egging on a mob to assault the Capitol in an attempt to prevent the votes of the Electoral College from being counted and his defeat being made official. And incredibly, thirty to forty percent of the American people believe him, as they've uncritically accepted all his other transparent and even murderous lies.

Donald Trump is beyond question the most unfit president we've ever had and the worst.  It will take us decades to recover from the disaster of his four years in a position for which he was wholly and radically unsuited.

In 2016, this blog and I were firmly in the corner of Ey van McMullin, the former CIA officer and advisor to the House Republican caucus who answered the call of history and gave decent conservatives somebody to vote for other than Trump and Hillary Clinton. The effort was doomed from the outset, but I have never been as proud of any vote I've ever cast in my life as I am of my vote for Evan.

Then came COVID, the incredible support of Trump by so many American Christians (primarily based on his court appointments and professed opposition to abortion), and the revelation of how shallow and transparent the "pro-life" sentiment of so many of them actually was. They believed and supported his misinformation and outright lies about the pandemic. They brazenly valued the economy above the lives of their fellow Americans. They resisted obvious, common-sense public health precautions like lockdowns, wearing masks in public, and social distancing. And now, many not only refuse to be vaccinated but try to convince others not to be. Thanks to the availability of vaccines facilitated by the election of a competent new president, we stand on the brink of herd immunity. I'm forced to wonder how many more unnecessary deaths will we see because of the ignorance, prejudice, and misinformation let loose by an incompetent and mentally unstable president.

The Republican Party is dead as a serious political party. Our democracy can't survive without a viable second party, a center-right party, to provide sane opposition to the Democrats. It will probably be many years before the Republican Party completes its death spiral and a successor can be born. In the meantime, this blog and I will continue to speak out for the principles the Republican Party once stood for, Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower and, yes, Ronald Reagan.

Whether that means staying in the political wilderness as independents or becoming "Red Dog Democrats" in practice, if not, in fact, a great many of us are still trying to work out. But there's no escaping the fact that a great deal has changed in the last 21 years.

Pro-life, indeed!

I've made plenty of mistakes during the past 21 years besides supporting the Gulf War. Like many others, I bought into the lie that abortion could be dealt with by political means when the real battle must be in the hearts and minds of the large majority of Americans whose attitude toward abortion is more permissive than my own. We now have a pro-life super-majority on the Supreme Court. Roe v. Wade is not going to be overturned by that majority. It may be modified to some extent. But the real battle is a battle of ideas and human hearts, not of laws and political power. They will follow in due course when the true struggle has been won. 

My beliefs about abortion have not changed. But I will no longer allow them to override Christian charity and basic humanity in other areas when deciding how to vote. And I will no longer put the cart before the horse.

I opposed same-sex marriage. I continue to believe not only as a religious matter but as a matter of history and common sense that the purpose of marriage is the begetting and raising of children. Gay and lesbian couples can do the second, but they cannot do the first without outside help. Marriage has been vastly weakened by changing sexual mores. I continue to fear that separating marriage from a large part of its rationale may further undermine it. But I have given too little attention to the right of gay and lesbian couples to have their relationships treated with dignity and respect.

And I make no apologies for having voted for Joe Biden last November. I had no alternative. Neither did any other American who was thinking straight and who valued our most basic American values. Donald Trump had to be beaten, and the imperative continues to defeat the monstrous, anti-democratic thing he has made of the Republican Party. I passionately disagree with Mr. Biden about many things. But he is a decent and reasonable man. The same cannot be said of his opponents either on the right or the left.

Yes, I'm in a different place than I was 21 years ago. So are we all. After thinking matters over, I've decided to leave this blog up and not import its content to WordPress. I'll start over fresh there. It's time for a fresh start. 

I haven't changed, really. But the nation has. The party for whose success I once worked has. It's time for a fresh start in many ways. The battle continues, but it has evolved. New issues have arisen; old alliances have fallen apart, and new ones have taken their place. I expect American politics to remain in a state of flux for a long time, possibly for the rest of my life.

But I believe that God is in control. His purposes will prevail. Our role is the one Lincoln outlined in his Second Inaugural Address:

With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds... to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations

...and leave the rest to Him.

See you over at robertelartwaters.com.