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What is the steelman for voting for Trump in the primaries?
He's not a true outsider anymore. He's not an unknown quantity. We know his temperament. We know his governance style. What does he provide over Desantis/Haley/Ramaswamy? He didn't build the wall the first time, why would he do it now?
I have some ideas, but they're all terrible once you think about them for ten seconds. I am willing to believe that the median voter is unable to think clearly for ten seconds before being hijacked by monkey-brain, but I'd like to make sure I'm not missing something obvious.
1. Personal Loyalty: This is close to the Richard Hanania theory. Personal loyalty would make sense if Trump was loyal in turn to his supporters, but he isn't. How many of his lawyers have gone to jail? How many orange-blooded Trump fans lost their jobs or got arrested for believing in him too hard on January 6? He could have pardoned these people, but he didn't. Orange Man good because Orange Man good.
2. Perceived Injustice: Yes, Trump has been treated unfairly by the media and the Washington establishment. Lots of people have been. I can understand why this would be seen as a necessary condition (e.g. "nobody liked by the 'elites' could ever be a good president"), but why would this be a sufficient condition? Surely electability and general competence matter more than an extra standard-deviation worth of grievances against the media.
3. Hatred: I'm not talking about "Hate™". I'm talking about a genuine desire to see one's political enemies suffer. It's not even clear to me that Trump would be better at this than other Republican candidates, but I feel I would be missing something if I didn't put it on the list.
I'll probably vote for him this fall.
Why? Because I don't think Haley or DeSantis will stop my side from losing. At best, they will work within the bounds set by the the deep state machine, at worst they will throw their base under the bus to ingratiate themselves with the elite like so many Republicans do.
Trump is all the bad things his haters (and some of his supporters!) say he is. And if he gets elected, it's likely that not much will change since he's unpredictable and the swamp has a lot of inertia and defense mechanisms. However, IMO there are two main differences from 2016.
First, the GOP has become way more Trumpist. There is a movement in the GOP personally loyal to Trump, something he didn't have when he was just a meme president. They follow Trump because they believe American political system is corrupt and that they are not represented by anyone else in either political party. So they are probably willing to go further smashing norms and seizing power than any other candidate's loyalists.
Second, and maybe most importantly, I think Trump is probably big mad after the last 8 years. This time it's personal. I think Trump probably cares somewhat about America, the working class, freedom, apple pies etc. but vastly more than any of those things what Trump really cares about is validating his MASSIVE EGO. And the elites and deep state have spent the last EIGHT YEARS poking it with a thousand sharp little sticks. He's also now being threatened with prison. If he gets elected, I think there's a real chance he will do everything to punish the people he perceives as his personal enemies, the vast majority of whom are people that I detest for completely different reasons, and may also try to harm their political power and maybe even do something crazy and cause a constitutional crisis, all out of SPITE because of his severely affronted ego. Those are all things that I think are great, because TBH at this point I hate what America has become, I hate the GAE, I hate the progressive religion, I hate the apathy towards the decay of societal institutions, I hate the prioritization of aliens over citizens, and if it all gets burned down there's at least a chance something better will arise and my children won't have to raise their children in an enclave in the hinterlands to prevent their corruption and alienation.
Electing Trump in 2016 was throwing a rock through the window of Deep State. Electing Trump in 2024 is throwing a Molotov cocktail through the window of Deep State. Yeah, it might get put out quickly, or might even fail to ignite, but it also might land on a pile of newspapers and books. Voting for Haley or DeSantis is knocking on the door and threatening to write a sternly-worded letter to the HOA.
EDIT: @gorge sums it up pretty well
So, a bit off-topic, but DAE feel like it's time to get building enclaves in the hinterlands? I wonder if anyone's studied how this has gone in South Africa and what we might learn.
I think it's hard to do before shit starts hitting the fan unless you want to live among a lot of oddballs and not a few simply deranged people.
My compromise is to live in a place where I fit in well (e.g. am not a cultural/religious/ethnic minority) and forge ties with my neighbors. When coronavirus had just broken out, before we knew how lethal it was, I lived with my family in an apartment complex where everyone was pretty much anonymous. I remember an eerie feeling that if things really went sidewise, I'd be living around a bunch of people who I didn't know from Adam. How would they behave when the cops stopped showing up? When there wasn't enough food to go around? Ever since I've been determined to live only in neighborhoods where I felt I'd be able to rely on neighbors at least somewhat in times of crisis.
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Orania is probably the best test case in South Africa, if you're curious
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Not the person to whom you are responding, but, as a parent sympathetic to what he said, that's already priced in. The question is not if the fire is coming, but when and how. Better sooner, I'd say, for many reasons -- not least that right now I'm around to protect them, which will not be so true in a few decades. Cynically kicking the can down the road is not a loving action, as it only generates a future which is even harder to survive. Though I suppose it might be done out of a sense of (imo, misplaced) hope that things might get better on their own.
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If you're taking issue with "it all gets burned down" then allow me to clarify that I don't actually mean that every government/elite institution will be ground to dust leaving us in a state of anarchy, and maybe I also need to clarify that no I don't wish for a literal continent-spanning inferno that will physically burn the entirety of the United States to ash. I mean that the political system that perpetuates our current ruling class will be so severely damaged that something else will grow up in its place. I think there are a lot of steps between "constitutional crisis" to "children getting killed in front of their parents." You seem to think otherwise though, so could you fill in the gaps for me?
Still pretty vague. So you think that we'll have Vietnam or Yugoslavia in the U.S.? I think it will take a lot more than just political turmoil to do that. We would need to lose a defensive war, or have a Great Depression level economic catastrophe, or get hit with a massive EMP burst, some black swan event that makes people truly desperate, before Americans resort to killing fellow Americans, regardless of how ruthless their leader is.
Maybe you could give some recent historical examples of mass slaughter in a wealthy first world country caused by political unrest. I can't think of any.
Sure, I guess. "Bloodshed" is doing a lot of work here. You don't seem interested in explaining your belief that a political crisis in the U.S. is likely to lead to the mass slaughter of American children, so I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.
EDIT: Looks like it was wise to stop engaging.
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That doesn't sound equivalent to "the political system that perpetuates our current ruling class will be so severely damaged..." to me.
The Communist Block had a collapse of the system that perpetuated it's ruling elites. I think I heard some Western experts were predicting a descent into civil war, but and even though some countries ended up a lot worse than others, there was a remarkable lack of all-consuming fires that torch society.
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I'm not sure if this is how it will pan out, but the logic of it is pretty simple: the elites might rather set the country ablaze, than give up their power.
I have trouble with the details on this. How would they set the country ablaze? The most likely scenario I could think of would be a repeat of the Summer of Floyd, where a pretext is used to stir up mob violence and the police are ordered to stand down. But that only works in the left-leaning cities, so that wouldn't hurt the right very much. I think if the fed gov went crazy the states would probably pick up the slack. Southern states have a lot of armed and trained men who would probably be happy to volunteer in the Alabama State Militia, especially for the purpose of keeping the libs out.
Also, getting back to the original topic, I'm planning to live in a rural part of the U.S. with high social cohesion where I share the same cultural and religious background as the vast majority of the local population. This makes it even less likely for my family to be affected by any federal meltdown. The community is strong enough that it will continue operating largely unscathed and perhaps even better with fewer hostile regulations.
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I think of this often.
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