On Being Confused
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” H. L. Mencken
Like many Americans of Conservative political persuasion, I remain confused and disheartened by the recent election results. Perhaps shocked is a better description.
It was a crushing defeat. Notice there are no riots and no “mostly peaceful” arson incidents. Strange the difference, huh?
Election results continue to pour in, and commentaries are flowing at flood levels. Sorting through it all is like doing the forensic work of a bomb squad. A lot of destruction and few hard clues. Much of this election makes no sense.
Assuming the election was honest (that is quite a leap; just look at the dirty tricks in Alaska), the most persuasive explanation I have heard is that the American people have been “hurting” under this economy, largely due to war-induced high gasoline, diesel, and grocery prices.
In reality, though, gasoline prices are already down substantially. It didn’t matter.
Early clues suggest Trump voters did not show up. The other side did. Why? And because they did not show up, what did they think would happen?
Even though their 401k is at record highs, interest rates are historically moderate, the borders are finally under control, violent crime has plummeted, unemployment is extremely low, poverty rates are at all-time lows, and GDP growth is in excess of 3% (far better than any other major industrial nation), these two metrics of gas and groceries were their measuring stick and overrode poor GOP messaging.
This was apparently true even though inflation reached 9% under the preceding Administration of just a few years ago and gas prices in adjusted dollars were even higher. History, even very recent history, did not matter.
These two items were purportedly caused by an “unnecessary war” with Iran. Forgotten is the fact that Democrats just a few years ago shut the entire world economy down, disrupted supply chains, and increased the money supply 40% in just a two-year period. How was Donald Trump part of that? He has increased petroleum production.
As we have written before, high oil prices don’t “cause” inflation; they redirect purchasing. Only an increase in money and credit can cause a persistent and widespread rise in prices. To be fair, though, Trump did little on the deficit but did attack widespread fraud.
But Donald Trump, they say, seemed tone-deaf to consumers’ plight and spent far too much time talking about getting the Nobel Prize, fighting over a ballroom, and repairing reflecting pools.
And they are right; he did. His blarney and blustering had grown annoying. Some of his friends and family members have been grifters.
In short, “Trump fatigue” set in with full measure, and the public decided the best way to correct the problem was to elect Muslim terrorists and communists. Huh?
Trump fatigue would have solved itself in just two years. Was this kept a secret?
Donald Trump has always been a confusing mess of personal bluster but often sound policy. If one watched policy, you got one message. If one listened only to the bluster, you got another message.
What is strange is that the American people just two years ago thunderously elected him, knowing his personality well over three full election cycles. I mean, you just discovered he can be irritating?
But through all that bluster, he delivered on a lengthy number of promises that he had made, almost always against tremendous, and often illegal and subversive, opposition. They even tried to kill him several times. His personal courage under both lawfare and gunfire has been remarkable. Doesn’t that count as a personality trait? No, think of the reflecting pool.
Never mind, gas prices are too high. Let’s vote for socialism to cure the problem.
As to the war, the President contends that Iran was about to get the atomic bomb and the means to deliver warheads to Europe, our Gulf allies, Diego Garcia, and soon, America. He tried to dissuade them through negotiations and felt a limited air campaign was the best solution. No boots on the ground and no nation-building. Casualties have been on the order of what Biden lost at one gate during the disastrous retreat from Afghanistan. And Bill Clinton bombed Serbia for 77 days, without Congressional approval. And he hit civilian targets like bridges, power plants, and TV stations.
Yes, the Iran war has cost money, but so far, about one-fourth of the war in Ukraine, which the Democrats fully support. The diesel shortage is largely because both sides in that war are hitting their respective refineries in a war that started under Obama and Biden.
We can understand after intelligence failures before in Vietnam, with WMD in Iraq, and the lies surrounding COVID, why the public would mistrust intelligence assessments. But what if Trump is correct, and he in fact sacrificed his own popularity to do what he felt was critically necessary for national security? Have we reached the point where ALL intelligence is untrustworthy?
Doing what is best for the country, even if it is politically damaging, used to be called statesmanship. Never mind, think of the reflecting pool.
We think Trump erred in turning the bombing on and off, and expecting negotiations to work. Had he wrapped the war up by May, the election may have been quite different. His bluster about the war is “over,” and statements about obliterating their civilization, not only did not work; losing focus may well have lost the election.
We really don’t know the full story, do we? But apparently the American public knew the war was all a fraud, and likely caused by the Jews, or at least so said the Democrats and Tucker Carlson. The Jews have been talking to Donald Trump.
Yet they can hold that idea in their heads with notions of “no kings.” Donald Trump, you see, listens to no one and goes his own way, acting like a king, impervious to advice and members of his political party. Except, he is under the influence of the nefarious Jews? Jews that still vote 67% for Democrats. How does any of that make sense?
A better case can be made that he wasn’t listening to Israel; rather, he listened to Gulf “allies” like Qatar (who gave him a 747) and kept delaying really putting Iran on its knees.
If Trump is a unique character, acting always on his own hunches and ego, how likely is it that he has fallen under the influence of a people who make up two-tenths of one percent of the world’s population? As we said, maybe he was listening to oil-rich sheikdoms.
We likely won’t know for sure until historians get a good look at the documents, but the public had already formed a negative impression.
Maybe he thought hitting Iran was necessary to do, even if it interrupted other elements of his political agenda? How many Americans are as familiar with the intelligence assessments as they are with the call “from the River to the Sea”?
In brief, we may have just witnessed the biggest political snit, a fit of uninformed and confused anger, ever seen in American politics.
But while it is easy to join Mencken in condescension to the “common man”, what about some of our own informed Conservative political elites?
National Review and the Wall Street Journal have never really supported Trump’s form of nationalist, populist Conservatism. We get that. They say they support “free trade”, when actually, they have been supporting “managed trade”, a series of political agreements that treated American industry and workers unfairly.
They also produced a Conservatism that has conserved very little, because it was always in retreat. Tired of losing, Republicans chose a fighting conservative with extreme personality quirks. What was the alternative?
They also did not support America First foreign policy, but preferred America’s traditional post-war subservience to the needs of the “international community.” Fine, we can have that debate. But we live in a binary political system. You either support the Democrat or the Republican.
Ronald Reagan used to say that if you could agree 80%, that was about as good as it gets. But former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan demands 100% and seems unfamiliar with Reagan’s philosophy on the need for political compromise. On every issue, she goes after Trump, as does the general editorial page.
Well, now they have gotten what they wanted; Trump is wounded badly, the Republican Party is a wreck, and Left-Wing Democrats are taking over. Out will go gun rights, school choice, deregulation, controlled borders, a strong defense, and back will come DEI, over taxation, over regulation, no cash bail, union domination, the UN, the World Court, defunding the police, gender confusion, anti-white racism, green new deals, millionaires’ taxes, abolition of prisons, reparations for slavery, modern monetary theory, and rapid and destructive inflation.
Worried about the budget deficit? Forget any hope of a corrective course. The Democrats have no sense of money and propose vast new spending programs even as debt to GDP exceeds the level of World War II.
Instead, now the Journal has run multiple editorials noting that this election is no mandate for Democrats. How could it be with Democratic popularity at 29% and multiple conservative state initiatives passing? For them, like the “common man,” they thought opposition to Trump would not lead to a Democratic victory? Intellectuals can have emotional snits as well, and they unfortunately last much longer.
Now they warn Democrats not to overreach? With this most radical class of Democrats ever elected, the WSJ expects them not to overreach? That is what radicals do; they overreach. That is why they are called radicals.
The Journal almost reads like pleading: please don’t crush school choice and free enterprise because we opposed Trump too! Do you think that will dissuade this crop of radical Democrats? Did they, too, forget the consequences of a Democratic landslide?
To be fair, though, the WSJ mostly supported the Iran War, which is both ironic and confusing.
In short, our elite conservative leaders seemed as narrowly focused on personality quirks as Trump himself is. While they criticize him without mercy for his foibles about White House ballrooms, reflecting pools, and his abrasive “style,” they too lost sight of the agenda Democrats would bring if they won.
It still boiled down to a binary choice. The “never Trump” movement did not advance the cause of liberty but undermined a Conservative government because it did not pass all their litmus tests for managed trade and internationalism. And it did so mostly out of stylistic and personal pique.
So, if they look in the reflecting pool, what they might see find are elitists who got left behind by the MAGA movement that took over the Republican Party in legitimate and highly contested primary and general elections. They had a binary choice to support the more Conservative of the two parties, and they themselves were hung up on Trump’s personality quirks and lost the big picture of preserving liberty.
And as for “independents,” who often play a crucial swing role, we wonder about their state of mind, too. Being independent means thinking critically for yourself, and not just going with one party or another. But without a political party, you chose the one with the most collectivist, anti-Semitic, tribal, racist, and violent tendencies. We are reminded of the old axiom about those who claim they are “moderate” and cling to the “middle of the road.”
The only thing you find in the middle of the road is a yellow line or a dead skunk.
You had a choice of two parties, two divergent philosophies, and you chose the current crop of radical Democrats. So much for your vaunted moderation and thoughtfulness. And you indirectly chose this extreme path because you too were hung up on Trump’s personality quirks.
Never Trump Conservatives stayed home, and Trump supporters stayed home, and Independents went Democrat, or so it seems.
The trouble is, now we will all suffer, and whether the country can recover remains an open question.
-Neland Nobel
Neland ‘Neil’ Nobel was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, and moved to Arizona in 1961. He attended ASU and earned a B.A. and an M.A. in history, with a specialty in economic and military history. He graduated Summa Cum Laude and received a Richard M. Weaver Fellowship from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. He spent the next 45 years in the financial services industry, ending his career with a 25-year run with UBS as a portfolio manager and Certified Financial Planner. In retirement, he remains active, having founded the Prickly Pear in 2020 and continuing to contribute content. In his spare time, he is a certified firearms instructor and runs a hiking club and two shooting clubs. He is married with three children and three grandchildren.
