Mea Culpa -- and By MEa, I Mean YOUa

 

 

Friends, I naturally have a lot of deep thoughts to share about the outcome of this election.  Of course, the counting isn't over yet, and not all the results are known.  It now looks like we won't make a clean sweep of the vulnerable Senate seats, but we should scoop up a few, and that's a cheerful thought!

I do have two cogitations to share off the bat, and here's the first: Republicans, conservatives, and Trumpers ought to be circumspect about claiming that Trump's win represents victory in the culture wars or the complete repudiation of wokeism, socialism, identity politics, lawfare, and the like.  Yes, the ideological excesses of the Democrats have helped to produce their humiliation, in the short term, but, if we're to be honest, none of this would have happened if inflation hadn't spiked to 9%, the numbers of border crossers hadn't surged, and certain types of violent crime hadn't proliferated.  These developments are partly due to Democratic ineptitude, sure, but they're also due to bad fortune.  We can't be certain that the economy will be strong under Trump, because no president has total, or even predominant, control over the economy.  The reverse side of this realization, however, is that Biden and Harris weren't personally responsible for everything that went wrong in the last four years.  They got the blame, though, as one would expect.  My point is that practical, pocketbook issues drove most swing voters to support Trump -- not fundamental enthusiasm for DJT or conservatism, per se.  The pendulum has swung our way, for now, but it could easily swing back in favor of progressivism.  We shouldn't kid ourselves about that.  Thus, Trump needs to perform better in office in his second term than he did in his first.  He needs to deliver results, and he needs to circumvent the vehement efforts of Democrats and the Deep State to kneecap him before he even takes office.  The challenges should not be minimized.

My second brainstorm is this: I've been shocked by how many of my fellow Republicans and conservatives, in the lead-up to this election, expected to lose, because they expected the Democrats and their allies to cheat.  Now, as I've discussed on countless occasions, our election system is vulnerable to certain types of fraud.  What there has never been any significant evidence of, however, is fraud in the counting of votes by election officials.  Donald Trump claimed, at times, that this was the determining factor in the 2020 election.  It was convenient for him to make this claim, and it was also convenient for his supporters to believe it at the time (and since).  The problem is that it has never been a claim with a strong evidentiary basis.  In fact, Trump is still telling us, with a straight face, that he has reams of "papers" that prove massive fraud, and, when we see them, we'll be mightily impressed.  Well, I'm not impressed, because, if we haven't seen this evidence by now, it doesn't exist.  Sure, there are suspicious things that happen at some boards of elections, and there may even be a certain amount of malfeasance, but as an explanation for Trump's defeat in 2020 it doesn't hold water.  It never did.  The math doesn't add up.  Trump was behind in the polls leading up to the election...and he lost.  In fact, he lost more narrowly than expected, but he still lost.  Whether every vote cast was actually cast by the relevant voter is a separate issue, but here too we have insufficient evidence to overturn an election, so there's not much point in bellyaching about it.

Fast forward to 2024, and many conservatives, Republicans, and Trumpers were still obsessed with fraud.  Many, according to polls, had low confidence in the administration of the upcoming election.  A shocking number expected it to be stolen.  This wasn't just a counterfactual conceit, however -- it was arguably self-defeating.  Why would anyone bother to participate in an election when the outcome is predetermined by cheating?  It makes no sense.  Luckily, enough of these fraud-fixated Republicans showed up to vote anyway -- apparently, reaching a level of comfort with cognitive dissonance that I've never possessed -- and Trump won regardless.  Thank heavens!!!  This doesn't change the fact that far too many conservatives, Republicans, and Trumpers fell in the first place for what was essentially a hoax.  For shame!

The relevance here is that, for any of you who went into the 2024 election expecting to be cheated out of a rightful victory by treacherous Democrats and their fellow travelers, you were wrong!  You were factually incorrect, and you were and are morally culpable for impugning the integrity and the patriotism of election officials of both parties, and sometimes of neither party.  You told, in many cases, your friends and family members that these Deep State rogues would surely swindle you, and the country, and they didn't.  The vast majority of them never had any such intention, let alone the means to carry it out.  So my view is that conservatives, Republicans, and Trumpers should start out the Second Age of Trump right: with humility, honesty, and self-abasement.  If you are guilty of any of the sins I've outlined here, admit them to yourself, and apologize for them to anyone whom you may have offended by your intemperate remarks.  Signal to your friends, family members, and neighbors on the other side of the aisle that you have a sense of decency, and that you're not going to vilify, libel, and abuse them in the same way that, all too often, they have vilified, libeled, and abused us.  Be the better man, in short, and resolve to tell the truth and admit when you're wrong, and when you may have wronged others.  It's the Christian thing to do, surely.

Food for thought!