Close window | View original article
Tomorrow, America goes to the polls - and hopefully, not too many voters will be people who have no right or business being here in the first place.
There may be some dithering souls who will enter the voting booth still unsure whom to select. After two years of increasingly combative campaigning, though, there can't be very many people mentally able to vote who have yet to form an opinion.
And what opinions there have been! This election has torn asunder the usual alignments of party, religion, class, and even race in a way we've never before seen. For the first time, Scragged has seen vitriolic crossfire from conservatives of different perspectives excoriating each other for lack of allegiance to principles, to pragmatism, and above all, to reality itself.
Which makes this a somewhat Quixotic effort, but we have to give it one last try: explaining, yet again, why your humble correspondent truly believes that all who love their country need to swallow their objections - their well-founded, well-reasoned, and often understated objections - and vote for Donald Trump.
Let's start by destroying a few strawmen just to get them out of the way.
Do we believe that Trump is America's saviour, Lincoln reborn? Absolutely not: he is profoundly flawed and troubled both as a candidate and as a human being.
Are we expecting that a President Trump can unite America and lead us back to our former glory? Alas, no: Trump's America will be more divided by fury than ever before, and even if Trump's policies could set us on the road to recovery, it will be a very long and difficult road that cannot be traveled in a mere eight years, much less four. After all, it took at least half a century to get where we are, and really, most of our problems can be traced back a century to the Progressive Era. Rome wasn't built in a day, nor destroyed in a day, and America certainly can't be repaired quickly either even if we were all cooperating.
Which, of course, we aren't. The plain fact is, Americans collectively are more divided politically than ever before in our past - and yes, that includes the Civil War. 1860s Americans may have been shooting at each other over the question of slavery, but as Lincoln observed, "Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God."
That isn't even remotely true of modern America. Indeed, modern America is enormously more diverse than Europe was in 1860 - we even speak more different languages. This complete fragmentation of culture, religion, language, political predilection, and everything else simply can't be fixed without millions of people truly changing their most fundamental beliefs. That isn't accomplished by politicians but by preachers, and we aren't holding our breath for that.
Do we imagine Trump to be the kernel of a great President, a great leader, or a great example? Hardly; he wasn't any of those as a candidate, and if he grows that much in office it will be a term for the record books.
This brings us to what people assume to be our reason for a Trump vote: our touchingly naive belief in his faithfulness to his promises. To that we have just two words: B.S.
Of course Trump is a liar just like any other politician. Of course he will change his tune, tack before the changing winds. He will even flip-flop with gay abandon and possibly with Machiavellian glee.
But even the most flip-floppy politician usually keeps some of their promises. Mr. Trump's promises have, mostly, been of such power and strength that even half measures will make a profound difference.
Suppose Mr. Trump fails to deport every last illegal immigrant, but only half of them. Wouldn't that, by itself, be a stunning sea-change?
How about if he builds the wall but can't actually make Mexico pay for it? Money well spent!
We don't seriously expect Mr. Trump to pull out of every bad trade deal or out of NATO. That's not the point: merely making the threat, and making it seem serious, will get better results all 'round. That is the kind of negotiating where The Donald's real estate experience stands him in good stead.
Will all our middle-class jobs come roaring back? Of course not - but some may very well.
Then, there are some promises that are so important, and so essential to his supporters, that any waffling would cause a revolution. Mr. Trump has climbed way too far out on the limb of the Supreme Court for him to dare betraying us; his appointees have to come from his promised list, or one very much like it, or he will be howled out of office by an enraged mob.
Is a Trump presidency going to save the country? Even in the best possible case, where Donald Trump does what no politician in living memory has even attempted to do and actually keeps all his promises, can he indeed "make America great again" as it was and was meant to be?
In a word: no.
But he buys us time. A President Trump means one thing and one alone: We get another chance in four years, which we can put to good use if we care enough.
Yes, Mr. Trump is a bombastic vulgarian, an undisciplined boor, a boastful blowhard, and a lecherous libertine. He is unfit to be your pastor, your role model, possibly even your child's teacher.
Fortunately, he's not running for any of those offices.
As a friend of ours opined, America is dying of a terminal cancer, and Donald Trump is chemotherapy. He may very well kill us off entirely, but we're dying anyway, so it's worth taking the risk that he might kill the cancer before we're quite done in.
This is the possibility - not the certainly, not even the probability, but the mere hope - that drives us to support Mr. Trump tomorrow.
In contrast, a President Hillary would mean the permanent end, not of American conservatism - American conservatism is pretty much dead already - but the final elimination even of any hope of its ever being revived.
Hillary has specifically promised to appoint anti-Constitution judges who don't believe in either the First or Second Amendments and are squishy at best on the Fourth. She plainly opposes any personal right to keep and bear arms; she doesn't believe you should have the right to freely practice your religion if it conflicts with the preferences of homosexuals; and she's entirely comfortable with using the full power of government to, shall we say, discourage you from using your right to free speech.
Her judges will, without doubt, feel the same, and they'll be in place for decades.
But judges, and even Presidents, can be impeached! No, they can't - not if they're Democrats.
Because the greatest, most terminal, permanently devastating change that Hillary and Tim Kaine have promised to bring about in their first hundred days, is the legalization of all illegal immigrants.
Obviously, that will simply encourage more illegal arrivals, but let's forget that and simply go with the ones we've got now. For many decades, immigrants have overwhelmingly voted for Democrats even as their communities and futures are destroyed by Democrat policies, much like America's longsuffering blacks.
By adding at least twelve million illegals to the voting rolls - we believe many more - Hillary has the opportunity to increase the Democrat vote by somewhere around ten percentage points, plus or minus a few.
Remember Mitt Romney's 47% of people who depend on government and will always vote for more of it? What chance will we have when that number is 57%?
Electorally: none whatsoever. And that's a situation that, by definition, can only end one of two ways.
The first, and most likely, is in single-party tyranny, the fabled boot crushing a human face forever. With no possibility of losing, why would any Democrat politician care what the people think? We're already well on the way: we do still technically have two major parties, and yet if Wikileaks has proved anything, it's that neither of our parties gives two hoots for anybody who doesn't deliver them cash by the truckload.
Our Founders envisioned another alternative: an independent armed citizenry taking back their rights by force. That is why we have a Second Amendment, and why Hillary and the left hate it so.
Modern Americans are made of less stern stuff than the men who made this nation; it's hard to imagine our neighbors giving up their Playstations and Playboys for a winter at Valley Forge. But let's imagine that somehow they did.
By definition, that means a civil war. If history proves anything, it's that wars never, ever, end up how you expect - regardless of whether you win or lose. Either way, it would certainly mean an America unlike anything we have known and loved.
Hillary does not care about you, your vote, or your country; she only wants the office and the power that comes with it. Perhaps regrettably, she won't be stopped by Jill Stein, Evan McMullin, or anyone else whose name isn't Donald Trump.
And if she and her armies of leftist socialists aren't blocked now - today - then there will never again be another chance to do so. Oh, elections will come and go, but they'll be meaningless, as votes for the Left will always and forever be reliably there, dead or alive.
It is unappetizing and unAmerican for us to try to take away any American's right to make up their own mind for whom to vote. We have, however, every right to attempt to persuade you by whatever means we can, be it emotion, logic, evidence, history, or anything short of a bludgeon.
And tomorrow, we'll all find out if it worked. May God have mercy on us all.