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There’s No Going Back – Ever
We can never go back to the “good old days.” That was a thought that occurred to me today, and I realized how that fact—and I believe it is a fact—defines not only how we see the world, but how we see our political reality. It colors how we see those who agree with us, and those who vehemently disagree with us. I also realized that all the Trump/Never Trump arguments are not really about Trump at all. The people who get stuck on either side of that conflict are struggling with something else entirely. And realizing that truth, with honesty and sincerity, might actually bridge the seemingly insurmountable polarization that has plagued this country, particularly the Conservatives, for years.
Think about it. There is no denying that life today is vastly different from the life we experienced, say, 20 years ago. And many people have a predisposition to living lives that are relatively predictable, familiar, and consistent. When they have occurrences that disrupt that predictability, they can feel beleaguered—life has turned upside down and has let them down in a way, so that they become confused, stressed, and even angry at the new and unanticipated outcomes. They feel betrayed and disappointed, and once they wrestle down these reactions, they are ready to go to war. They can decide to fight for what they once anticipated for their lives, demand that life return to some kind of normalcy, and rebel against those who think they should be prepared to go in a new direction. Even if that direction has some merit, they will reject it because it is not the life that they expected or desired.
I propose to you that this mindset evolves from that sense of life’s betrayal, and Donald Trump has become the scapegoat for those who reject Trump and life’s demands.
Before you reject my proposal, let me describe those who are on the other side of this chasm.
Many of us do prefer to have predictable lives, for one reason or another, but we have learned that life doesn’t acquiesce to our expectations. The best planning in the world can be victim to life’s vagaries, and no matter how strenuously we’ve worked to correct course, life seems determined to design its own path. We learn, either as a child, or sometimes not until we are adults, that rejecting life’s whims doesn’t always work—it smiles at us, even laughs sometimes, at our foolish beliefs that we have the power to change its course. Eventually, we learn how to ride the rapids, tolerate the roller coasters, and even swim with the sharks. Over time we begin to learn how to balance the usual patterns of our lives with the unforeseen events that meet us. If we are wise, we learn that the changes we encounter can even be enjoyable and rewarding, stretch us beyond our understanding or our limitations and expand our possibilities. The patterns we follow allow us to grab hold of the familiar so that we can take a breath and find our footing, but also free us to try something new and creative, ripe with potential.
I propose to you that this mindset characterizes the people, whether reluctantly or with vigor, who support Donald Trump.
* * * *
How can these descriptions of these two groups of folks be helpful? For those of us who hope that one day the disruption among Conservatives can be mended, these factors are important and valuable to understand:
The Trump/Never Trump conflict is much deeper and primal than a fight over one man.
For those who reject Trump-
- This conflict has to do with the loss and dread that comes with losing the past, either the past of our imagination or the past that truly existed. (In many respects, it doesn’t matter if it’s real or not—we are wedded to it.)
- It is more comforting to hold onto our memories than to have the uncertainty of creating new ones.
- They confuse “preferences,” such as decorum and good manners, with “values” such as truth and integrity, and struggle with having to compromise either type.
- It’s so much easier to create a scapegoat, than to find a way to work with the reality of “what is,” rather than to insist on “what should be.”
For those who accept (however fully or reluctantly) Trump—
- For our own peace of mind, we benefit from reminding ourselves of the depth of the rejection of Trump by others and what it represents.
- We can find a way to talk about Conservative values and what they mean to us, and see if the people we support can live those values, and to what degree.
- We can remember that both sides of this disagreement can be determined to win over the other side, denigrate those who disagree with us, or simply “make them wrong.”
- Remember that the differences in beliefs are often not “values based”; they are also not fact-based but opinion based. We can accept, therefore, that we are unlikely to change the minds of those who prefer to fight to maintain the past rather than suffer through creating a new future.
For me, I have some empathy for those who desperately hold on to the past. I understood, and at one time even preferred, that outlook on life. It is the outlook with which I was raised.
But I also realized that it limited my own growth and creativity. It was an insular way to live, protecting me from considering other ways to live. It was, in fact, frightening to contemplate new directions and new ideas. Along the way, however, I encountered ideas that challenged me to explore, and people who supported my thinking about other pursuits. I enjoyed the ups and (some of) the downs that greeted me. Not everyone who resists moving forward, however, will be able to do so.
But I hope and pray they will.
Because there is no going back—ever.
Published in Politics
I probably qualify as a Never-Trumper because I did not vote for Trump in either 2016 or 2020 and would not vote for Trump if he were a candidate in 2024. I should also point out that I didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden in 2016 and 2020 and will not vote for a Democrat for any political office.
Often times people will use the term “globalist” to characterize the views of some of the Never-Trumpers. That term, “globalist,” is interestng.
Back in 1984, when I was 18 years old and registered to vote for the first time, I registered as a Republican and a few months later voted for Ronald Reagan, the main reason being that I agreed with Reagan and the Republicans on the issues of national security/foreign policy. Communism was spreading around the globe and Reagan took what one could call a “globalist” view towards resisting the spread of communism.
Reagan asked Congress for aid to El Salvador, a nation under attack by Castro-backed communist insurgents. Reagan also supported aid to Afghans resisting Soviet conquest of Afghanistan. Reagan supported putting nuclear missiles in Europe. Reagan didn’t often commit American troops into military conflict. The only case of this, I think, was Lebanon and that ended in disaster. But Reagan didn’t take the attitude that “if it doesn’t directly impact us here in America, who cares?”
No. Reagan’s concern was global, not merely national. I think Reagan was right then and his views remain correct today, even as global circumstances have changed, with the Soviet Union having collapsed and other global changes having taken place.
Reagan thought of America as the good guy and the Soviet Union as the bad guy. So, I didn’t like it when Trump responded to a question by Bill O’Reilly about Putin by saying, “We’re not so innocent either.” Sure, I get the point, that America isn’t completely innocent of wrongdoing. But I usually expected the answer that Trump gave from someone on the far Left, not someone who is attempting to win the GOP presidential nomination.
So, while I have not become a democrat, I am not a fan of Donald Trump. Trump seems not to support military aid to Ukraine as Ukraine struggles to defeat Putin’s invasion. Many Republicans in Congress also refused to support aid to Ukraine.
I will not vote for anyone running for public office who doesn’t support aid to Ukraine. It’s an important issue for me. Still, that doesn’t make me eager to vote for a Democrat, something I have only done once in my life and that was back when I was 18 and the office was state senator. That’s it. That is the extent of my support for the Democrats.
Trump donated lots of money towards candidates that I vigorously opposed, ranging from Harry Reid in Nevada to Anthony Weiner in New York. I know the excuse. Trump had to donate to all those Democrats because Trump was a businessman. But there are lots of businessmen who would never donate one penny to a Democrat if their entire fortune depended on it.
I agree with Trump supporters in that Trump did adopt many conservative positions and stuck to them while in office. I get that.
I understand that there is no going back ever. I will vote for Republicans like my US Senator from Indiana, Todd Young, who voted for aid to Ukraine, while not voting for Mike Braun, Indiana’s other US Senator, who voted against aid to Ukraine.
I realize that “my side” isn’t always going to win. There is no going back ever.
I would highlight every word you write, Chris. Beautifully said. I remember when my husband left a secure job at the power plant and went to college for his degree, his father, who was a tool-and-die maker, was baffled. He simply couldn’t understand why he would leave that security behind. My husband and I made the best choices for us, not without struggle, but we were both independent consultants and relished our freedom. We live a blessed life. Thanks so much for your comments.
So very true, VTK. And it’s a tragedy.
How sad that we have lost the meaning of these words in our time. Thanks, She.
I don’t know if you fully believe this, HW. You list positives about Trump, but it isn’t always how many you list, but how important they are. It also matters how detrimental the negatives are. Everything must not only be listed, but weighted. Also, I don’t have to like a candidate. I care about what he does. I am a big proponent of propriety, but when it comes to the president, I have to take in the whole picture. That includes the overall impact of giving Progressives power by putting them in office, or the impact of not voting at all.
I’d like to think I’m a person who has strong values and high expectations of an officeholder, whether I’m talking about Trump or someone else.
Back in 1991, I saw Donald Trump on Jay Leno’s show. Trump talked a bit of politics with Leno and I disagreed with Trump.
Again, there is a divide between those who take a “globalist” perspective on foreign policy and national security and people like Trump, who seem unable to think beyond one’s nose.
I admit that I didn’t vote for John McCain either, while also not voting for Obama, in 2008. But in all of the other presidential elections (1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2012), it was an easy call for me to vote for the GOP candidate.
These days, with some Republicans calling Zelensky a thug and many refusing to support aid to Ukraine, I am no longer an automatic vote for the GOP. These days I am going to do a bit more digging into the biography of GOP candidates before voting for them.
I agree that we don’t have to like a candidate to vote for that candidate. But if someone like Trump can’t get it right on an issue like Ukraine, sorry, he just can’t get my vote, even if I have to leave my ballot blank.
[Nevermind]
@heavywater, I don’t consider you a “Never Trumper” in the way that I (and others) often criticize their thinking. To me an NT is someone who actively supports a Democrat to prevent Trump from being elected. Withholding one’s vote has an impact, but far less a one than casting it for the opposition. One can be disappointed that someone didn’t cast a vote for Trump in circumstances (and with consequences) with which we now are living, but fury is reserved for those that foolishly empowered Biden and his host while claiming it was to “restore” America.
Reports are now coming out how Biden actively scuttled a peace deal in the making in Ukraine. I am having real trouble believing that Trump with his China containment strategies, de-escalating tensions with North Korea and the Abraham Accords was somehow an international relations troglodyte.
I’m not saying that Trump got everything wrong regarding foreign policy. It’s just that when Bill O’Reilly asked Trump about Putin killing journalists, Trump’s response wasn’t “I support freedom of speech and freedom of the press. So, I condemn Putin for killing journalists and other Russians who criticize his regime.” Trump’s response was, “Well, we aren’t so innocent either.”
I’m just saying that this is the sort of thing I expect to hear from people on the pro-Castro left, not people who are running for the GOP nomination.
Everyone has their limit, I think. Back in 1990, David Duke was running for the US Senate in Louisiana against the incumbent Democrat. Republicans had struggled to win US Senate races in Louisiana and would have liked to have won that US Senate race. But once David Duke won the Republican nomination for US Senate, most prominent Republicans endorses the Democrat.
Now, I don’t think that Donald Trump is David Duke. I only present the David Duke case to suggest that everyone has a line that they will not cross, even if a Democrat being elected or re-elected could be the consequence.
Trump presented way too many red flags for me to be able to support him in 2016, even though I wanted to vote for a Republican candidate for president. If a Republican had randomly been selected out of a hat to be the GOP nominee, I probably would have voted for that person. It’s just that with Trump, I couldn’t vote for him. Same in 2020.
Why do Republican primary voters nominate people like Roy Moore, who then manages to lose a Senate race in deep red Alabama? Why do Republican primary voters nominate people like Lt. Colonel Oliver North (in 1994 for the Virginia US Senate race)?
Sometimes Republican primary voters seem determined to nominate people who are overtly offensive to a majority of voters and then complain after they lose that they were sold out or cheated when it was really just a case of nominating an offensive candidate.
Well, OK, then.
Counterpoint: We are going back. The GOP House leadership under a hypothetical Republican majority would be the same old Bush-Republicans.
Sounds like the same old Republican Party to me.
The same old Republican party was the party that I voted for, campaigned for and donated to for decades.
Now, it seems, people want to throw it out the window and expect me to continue to support it because it retains the same “Republican” label?
It sounds like “The New Coke” I remember from the 1980s.
Thanks, Susan, I got on a bit of a tear. Liberal Arts college, if there’s a question, I assume it requires an essay. ;-)
They are trying to go back. I fear that they will fail.
But are they same group? Are they standing for the same principles, or are we finding out that they are actually supporting progressive ideas, in fact, in many respects were with the Progressives? If you view the free course on Congress offered online by Hillsdale College, you will discover that the Republicans were not so righteous as we would like to think. It was revealing.
The same old Republican Party that campaigned as “conservative,” and waved the flag while selling American jobs to China. The same old Republican Party that campaigned on “border security,” then not only did nothing about it, but actively sabotaged efforts to do it. The same old Republican Party that campaign-promised to fight for the middle class, then voted for bills to increase the numbers of cheap foreign workers to take middle class jobs. The same old Republican Party that campaigned on “fiscal responsibility,” then bloated Federal spending under Bush and signed off on budget deals with Obama that funded Democrat priorities with even more money than Obama asked for. The Republican Party that promised to repeal Obamacare. We all know how that worked out.
A Republican Party that… even with majorities in the House and Senate, and a Republican president… failed to advance any conservative agenda apart from tax cuts.
Yes, that is indeed the party you voted for, campaigned for, and donated to for decades.
What he says . . .
Possibly useful for this discussion: An opposition viewpoint. Quillette asked the question, “Should the GOP continue to embrace populism?” and published two very different answers. Read the first one for a summary of some views which I think very few us us here would agree with, but are very widespread, including in influential circles. Link.
I supported the North American Free Trade Agreement and so did the GOP. I supported the Iraq war and so did the GOP. I supported cuts in personal income tax rates and so did the GOP.
If the GOP becomes a party that no longer supports my views, then I won’t be able to support it anymore. That doesn’t mean that I will find the Democrat party acceptable either.
The argument against populism lost me immediately with this paragraph.
So, despite the ample evidence to the contrary, he is discounting the idea that society is rigged by the wealthy and powerful for their own benefit.
Regarding support for the GOP: with few exceptions, any Republican officeholder or candidate is much more favorable to free speech than any Democrat officeholder or candidate. And if we lose free speech, we lose everything.
Also: one can donate to individual candidates. Pick the ones you like, research who actually has a chance of winning (useful resource here), and contribute what you can afford.
If the Democrats hold both the House and Senate in this election, then things are going to be very bad and quite possibly unrecoverable. This is a time for sober realism.
If the GOP gains control over the US House of Representatives, will the GOP cut off any additional aid to Ukraine as Ukraine attempts to push the Russian invaders out of its territory?
I am not sure I would go that far. I think they are a legitimate brand of Republican and maybe even of Conservatism. They just have a fundamentally different view on America’s role in the world and the benefits of globalism. At least that is my charitable reading of them. This is a strain in the Republican party that is currently overrepresented in Washington and especially in Leadership.
It’s unlikely.
Here’s my perspective on the left vs right (where this view exists).
The Left: when they argue that America is guilty of bad things, they are condemning it and think the entire structure of America needs replacing, from constitution to dominant demographic. If men cause wars, women need to be the rulers. If whites owned slaves, they need to be enslaved. If White men closed America’s borders to Jews in the Holocaust, then white men need to be destroyed and removed from all power.
If the constitution allowed it to happen, then it needs to be destroyed.
The Right: when the right criticizes our country for our mistakes, it is to point out how we have failed to live up to our own ideals. It isn’t meant to inspire a destruction of those ideals, but a recommitment to them. It is animated by a similar Christian spirit that if we struggle with these things, then maybe we need to focus on our own inability to commit to these ideals before acting on condemnation of another country’s failures to live up to ideals that they don’t embrace.
***
This requires discernment beyond plain words to have these perspectives on right vs left or how to draw the conclusion that Trump is not doing what the left is doing. I’m fine if you draw a different conclusion, but I hope you can see why others would have a different response to this beyond tribalism or confirmation bias.
To me, the fact Obama imprisoned journalists is a bigger deal than Putin doing it. Russia has no commitment to free speech. We do. And the fact we did it says something is wrong here in America. The fact we elected Biden in what looks like a landslide screams something is wrong at home. And it is a legitimate position to desire putting aside being global police when corruption and failure to live up to our own ideals is thriving on the home front. There is a reason airliners tell you to put your own gas mask on before helping others – because you can be no help if you are dead.
We need to take some time fixing what is wrong at home. And I think Trump knew that – not in an I hate America way, but in a We Can Be Better way.
Reagan’s foreign/national security policy was global in scope. Reagan supported aiding El Salvador against Soviet backed forces and supported the Afghans against the Soviet backed regime in Afghanistan.
If that’s globalism, I supported globalism back then and I support globalism now.
Reagan supported the North American Free Trade Agreement. The Republicans in Congress voted for NAFTA when Bill Clinton was president. I supported trade back then and I support trade now.
If the GOP no longer holds the same views that it once held, then I and others will not be motivated to support the GOP as consistently as we once did.
Why? Look at those countries today.
The Soviet Union collapsed, Eastern Europe became free and representative. Nearly all of Central and South America is now free and representative (with Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua as exceptions).
And they are corrupt hell holes run by human trafficking and drug cartels that you go to under strict advisement that you could be kidnapped or murdered by the locals and no one will help you.
Many Americans vacation and some even retire in Latin America. I guarantee you that few people want to retire in Cuba or North Korea.
Lots of people risked their lives trying to escape East Berlin to get to West Berlin. But few people did the opposite.
Globalism has been successful. There are more free and representative governments now then there were at the end of World War II.