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Why I Will Never Abandon Trump
Lately there’s been a lot of talk among pundits on what it would take for Trump’s base to abandon him. For me, the answer is: nothing. I feel I must support Trump, regardless of what he does, because I fear what would happen if he got impeached. That’s not to say I don’t criticize Trump from time to time. But said criticism has no bearing on my generic support for him.
Ever since World War II, American elites have tried to build this narrative that democracy is about impersonal public policy, not power/status competition between groups. If you believe that policy is all that matters, than of course there won’t be any consequences to impeaching Trump, certainly not for his base. He’ll just be replaced by Pence, and things will go on mostly as they have before.
This is completely absurd. Trump’s base is socially vulnerable, much more so than I think any of us want to admit. Impeaching Trump would be a complete disaster. At the very least we would see a rash of suicides. The discrimination working-class white people face could intensify, especially in employment. The nihilism that’s been growing in the middle and upper middle classes for 50 years could start to spiral out of control. And that’s before we get to the rioting which, let’s be honest, would be intense.
If you don’t believe me, just look at what happened to Christians after the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. Liberals went on a judicial jihad to persecute them. The status of Christians fell so low that the courts actually ruled that Trump’s travel ban’s prioritization of religious minorities was unconstitutional. Yes, Christians are dying en masse in Middle Eastern countries, but apparently we can’t do anything about it because, well, the First Amendment prohibits it. Go figure.
Elite coups have consequences. Politics is not a dispassionate fight over public policy, but a struggle between groups. The consequences of impeaching Trump would be just too dire for me to abandon my generic support for the man, and I don’t think there’s anything Trump could that would change that.
Published in General
“William Jefferson Clinton was impeached on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice today by a divided House of Representatives, which recommended virtually along party lines that the Senate remove the nation’s 42d President from office.” NYT 1999
He stayed in office. Nobody put him on the street.
Always enjoy reading your prospective, Joseph. Unfortunately, my fear is that the persecution is coming whether or not Trump’s presidency ends prematurely.
President Trump earned our loyalty.
He saved us from Hillary.
The people voted for Prop 8 in California. The elites did not like this and judges overruled it. Eventually people will lose confidence in voting and it will get very ugly.
The Senate didn’t follow through, did it? I’m talking about the scenario where it does.
I am not backing Trump because I don’t want him to get impeached. (I certainly do not.)
I am backing Trump because he is Making America Great Again, and also because he is getting more Conservative every day. He is seeing from the inside how bad the Left really is for America and I truly believe he is fighting for the Right.
I am surprised why the riots haven’t started yet then if everything is so darn terrible. Where are the people upturning cars because of the coup by the darned and all too powerful. In fact if its really been that bad (nihilism from the accursed establishment for 50 long years!) for so long why hasn’t the rebellion began?
Surely if trump is such a savior and the Republic is dead (and under assault by the next election) why not make trump Emperor?
Because rioting by white people is considered deeply embarrassing and unacceptable. And, I think, because most people want to believe that American democracy works, and securing rights by violent tactics is unnecessary.
As for nihilism, I’d suggest you look at what happened to black people over that time period, and how elites dealt with it. Or examine the rhetoric over college (you have to go! Even if your employers have to work twice as hard to retrain you!). Or immigration (cheap labor for everybody! We’ll all be rich!).
There are plenty of things that Trump could do which would earn him removal of support.
What is so disturbing to me about this post is the fact that Mr. Eagar seems quite eager to pledge his undying support to a man who has done nothing to engender that type of support.
Let me say that again: Donald Trump has done nothing to earn anybody’s undying support. Nor has any politician or organization, for that matter.
I am not invested in Trump, therefore I am separated emotionally from his candidacy and unlikely victory and I am trying to assess this situation with a modicum of equanimity. Any good thing we get from this situation is the equivalent of finding a winning lottery ticket on the sidewalk.
When good things happen I am happy, but when bad things happen that needs to be addressed.
If I had told you two years ago that our side would be infested with people who casually justify (as a random example) the campaign of a major party’s candidate seeking to use intelligence from a foreign power to defeat their domestic political enemies, I can guarantee that nobody here would have thought that was either laudable or acceptable. Justifications under the heading of “But they did it too!” is nothing more than brokering of sin.
Under the same heading, Hillary Clinton’s meetings with high-level Ukrainian officials and Barack Obama’s not-so-sly words to Dmitry Medvedev (which brought shrieks of outrage from us on the Right) are just as wrong. Wrong is Wrong, no matter who engages in it.
The right was correctly outraged at Bill Clinton’s lying under oath about having sex with an intern. He lied to the American people, suborned perjury, obstructed justice and acted (generally) in a fashion unbecoming of a President.
The Trumps lied about meeting with Russian officials. Bald-faced. They LIED. Now, was a crime committed? No. Was the Constitution suborned and some grotesque act of subversion committed? I don’t think so. But… do you see what happened here? All of the preceding is a nothing more than a Clintonian evasion about how “there was no controlling legal authority” or no technical violation of laws occurred.
I’m disgusted at the fact that we have people who will engage in this sort of obfuscation and deveighlement on our side in the name of what could turn out to be an incredibly Pyrrhic victory. How many more such victories can we afford?
You Hate Trump. Got it.
You’ll Never be a Trumper. Got it.
If you were a Prosecutor, you’d find some law he might have broken and prosecute Trump. Got it.
What I don’t get is, why are you here, repeating this over and over? Here on Ricochet. What do you WANT?
That’s neither here nor there. If I do, so what? Does this address the underlying issue? No. It’s just a fallacious counterattack.
I have cheered Trump for various things. I’ll never be a “Trumper” in the same way I’ll never be a “Ryanite” or a “McConnellist.”
That’s not possible because Trump is President and can’t be indicted. He can only be impeached.
Do you seriously see nothing wrong with what Trump has done in any sphere? If so, I’m truly sorry. People are a collection of good and bad things, and they have to be considered on balance. This is as conservative a principle as I can imagine. I’m trying very hard to make a fair assessment of Trump through the lens of Conservatism as I know it.
Would you concede – even just for the sake of argument – that it’s possible Trump has not acted appropriately in a variety of ways and that his behavior has consequences for which we will all pay a price?
If not, just confess that you are irredeemably Trumpophilic. That’s OK – but a sensible person wouldn’t expect the rest of us to adhere to that line or go somewhere else.
So to be clear, I don’t defend every last thing Trump does. It just doesn’t make a difference to me. I’m not going to put my own perceived moral rectitude above the lives of tens of millions of people who, let’s not forget, feel so persecuted their suicide rate is shooting up.
Well parsed and argued exhaustively, but what do you WANT?
If they’re so depressed already that they will literally kill themselves on the basis of the outcome of elections, they need psychological help, not politicians.
I want you to walk this back or condition this appropriately then.
White people have rioted. Occupy Wall Street for example. It was against those big bad and terrible elites.
But more importantly and directly contradictory to your assertion of some elite conspiracy the American people have decided for the Republic to die. Those Democrats who were elected into office and passed Minimum Wage Laws, Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, ACA, Jim Crow, Racial Quotas, and the like (which aside from the ACA was done before immigration was opened up in the mid 1960s) were elected by the American people. No elite had to force the American people, they did it on their own and they voted for programs to benefit themselves at the cost of other Americans. Pretty greedy and selfish.
As for immigration that was only relaxedby the mid 1960s after 40 years of considerable restriction. In fact immigration is at the same level (percentage wise) as it was back in the early 1900s. The nation did not die then, I doubt immigration will end it now (immigration only occurs after major economic decline and the world economy is on the rise again, so immigration will lower as it continues to grow).
Why do I have to constantly see people pledging loyalty to trump, asking for patience with trump, or complaining about how National Review should pledge partisan loyalty to trump in its coverage? It gets boring. Besides what do they want? Everyone else to agree with them? For everyone else to pledge loyalty? Because if so its not gonna happen.
Given such it would appear as if a number of individuals on Ricochet believe trump was on the precipice of defeat anyways. Surely not, after all I was repeatedly reminded during the primaries and general campaign to believe only trump could save us from hillary, that only he could defeat the media, and only trump could fix the nation. If trump was truly the one for all those things I don’t understand the constant need to reaffirm him (and the individuals’ support for him) and to criticize the motives of his critics here on Ricochet.
I am sure that if trump was all those things then he will survive the criticism he receives from some individuals on Ricochet or National Review (after all that loser Jonah Goldberg has no pants).
I want the President to do what he promised to do re: Supreme Court Justices (Status: Accomplished. Thank goodness.)
I want the President to do what he promised when he said that he was the master negotiator and dealmaker-in-chief. (Status: Incomplete. The President doesn’t seem to understand how these things work, but there’s still time.)
I want the President to shut up about worthless media types which has the effect of derailing any momentum his legislative agenda can gather. (Status: Abject failure. Every single tweet about the media would be better aimed at Chuck Schumer and vulnerable Democrats like Joe Manchin. Everything else is a waste of time.)
I want the President to generally adhere to conservative principles in governance and messaging – I know, I know… fat chance.
Never say never, I think. If it is ever proven that Trump is guilty of a criminal act (“high crimes and misdeamenors” if you will), it would be time to jump ship.
Where is your crystal ball that has read through the minds of all those people (and discerned that their livelihood is literally linked to the fate of trump)?
And it should be noted that nowhere will you see me saying something along the lines of “Impeach Trump! Russia, Russia, Russia!” which I think is mostly nonsense.
The alleged collusion business is evidence of the fact that the President’s team was open to making a deal with foreign providers of dirt. OK… so, why lie about it for months, only to do an about-face later?
I don’t like to be lied to about stuff that we would correctly take the hide off our political opponents for. “They do it” for me is not a justification. Where are our standards?
Repbublicans in Congress need to get their stuff together as well. Repealing Obamacare and then coming back for more later is something that they ran on and it’s a promise they need to deliver.
Do you happen to have any sources on this causality, or is it your own interpretation? Sounds like something someone should write a book about.
I mean, is the suicide rate literally going up because of “persecution,” or is it more by other means (poor job prospects, low social capital, widespread drug use)?
It seems counterintuitive that some nebulous feeling that society hates you is the deciding factor in choosing to end one’s life, unless people are feeling first-hand hatred directed towards them, but that’s why it’s ripe for a book if it’s true.
Right, because we all know that elections never, ever have consequences. . .
It’s my own interpretation, and also experience. It does really suck. A lot of white Millennial men were de facto locked out of the job market during the last recession. I always found it amusing that my first real job was at a German company, where I was hired by an Asian man. There’s something about white upper middle class culture that’s become absolutely toxic for a lot of people.
I mean, come on. The Democrats consolidated the shaky Obama coalition by scapegoating white men for eight years. How could that not bleed into the treatment of young or low-status white males in the labor force?
My annual income increased by 50% during Obama’s term. I bought a home, got married and increased my net worth by many times while Obama was in office.
Perhaps I’m super-duper exceptional in how I swam against this obvious rip-current, but I am forced to ask: If I can do this, what’s the matter with these millennial whiners?
I’m trying to figure out the bolded statement above. To whom is “white upper middle-class culture” toxic? In what way is it toxic? How is this related to these millennials and their alleged travails?
Has this changed since trump was elected?
If you’re part of the white upper middle class it’s unlikely you’re going to experience the kind of prejudice Joseph claims exists. He’s talking specifically about “low class” whites. That term means different things to different people, but I feel I can be fairly confident that you’re not part of it.
To the extent that class exists, it seems to me that it is composed primarily of sets of habits that are learned. And because we like being with people who act and think like we do, there tends to be a natural self-sorting which goes on that physically separates people.
If what Joseph is complaining about is “lower class whites” possessing low social capital; coming from broken homes with high rates of drug abuse, alcoholism and unemployment I understand. But this is where I think the disconnect comes in.
Perhaps there are some of the above issues that can be appropriately laid at the feet of those social dysfunctions. What I’m hearing is almost a complaint about nominally “educated” people being unable to get ahead. Well, if you start out your life behind the 8-ball with $50,000 of student loans and a degree that is useless (or worse, actively damaging) to your career prospects, it’s no wonder people can’t get ahead.
In neither case does Trump’s election represent a means by which these things can be fixed. The impetus for fixing these things must come from within.
Not everyone is committed to Trump or opposed to him. They are waiting to see if his Presidency helps or hurts their lives, helps or hurts America. It is great we don’t have Hillary, however the new grading scale is absolute, not relative to Hillary.
There was Proposition 187.
California Democrats seem to practice a coin-flip philosophy called, “Heads, we win. Tails, you lose.”
I know it’s difficult for those of you who didn’t have to suffer through > 5 years of unemployment getting started in your careers to understand (I so love it when older generations whine about how it took a whole year or, gasp!, two to get started), but not every white male who sat in his parent’s basement for most of his 20s spent his time playing video games. Some of us invested in our skillset and education to the point that six months into my last job I was doing original research and filing a patent.
When I was 17 or 18 I realized I probably wouldn’t be able to graduate college for health reasons. I tried to make it work anyway (I didn’t drop out entirely until I was 23 or 24, I think), but I also hatched an alternative plan. I chose to go into software engineering, the least credentialed profession, and I spent most of my twenties building an impressive portfolio of (mostly unpaid) work. My stuff is used by hundreds of thousands of people all over the world.
So. People use my work to make a living all over the world. And for most of my twenties I couldn’t get any job, at all (except maybe for manual labor, which I couldn’t do because of my health). I was totally dependent on my parents; I couldn’t live in climates that worked for my health because they didn’t. This went on year. . .after. . .year.
The last recession saw a lot of vicious resource competition. The winners then went on to scapegoat the losers for all that is wrong with America, all while making any criticism of the behavior of white upper-middle-class people taboo (because, don’t you know, when affluent white people bully poor ones and the poor ones complain, what it really means is poor people are racist).