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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
They won’t have to. Ukraine will be decided with a negotiated settlement in the lame duck session. Europe is going to freeze to death this winter. That will force a compromise and a peace arrangement. It will be worse for Ukraine than what the deserve and will give Russia more than they should get, but that is the way of the world.
It didn’t have to be this way and probably wouldn’t have if Trump had won in 2020. We could have supplied Europe with the oil and gas they needed to stave off the winter and that probably would have made the sanctions bite harder. Assuming Putin had even invaded in the first place. That having been said I don’t think that Sweden and Finland would have joined NATO if Trump was still president.
Point of this is to say that campaign rhetoric isn’t everything. Defending America’s sovereignty and position in the world is a complex thing with a lot of moving parts. Exactly one president in my lifetime has been a master at it and he still made significant mistakes that had ramifications decades after his time in office. In the end I think Trump was too isolationist for my taste on foreign policy; however, he had decent instincts and left America in a stronger position than he found it in. Biden has managed to put us in a much weaker position than we have ever been in before. Also the US hasn’t been very good on the Ukraine issue under his watch. It is true that he is fire hosing money into Ukraine; however, he could have provided them with more support sooner and we would be looking at the bad situation we currently have.
Remember, Trump said at the time that Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February that Putin’s move was “savvy” and “genius.”
Sorry. Not voting for Trump. Not supporting Tucker Carlson. Not supporting Colonel Douglas MacGregor.
Trumps tombstone will likely read “He said a lot of Stuff [to use the CoC version]” There is a difference be rhetoric and policy. I prefer solid policy over rhetoric. Point is that Trump in trying to be an isolationist made America and the World safer. Biden in trying to be an interventionist has objectively made the world a worse place, weakened America, and is stumbling the world towards a world war.
You know why they can? Because a few very narrow locations maintain tight control so it can happen. Tourist areas are tightly controlled.
Wandering to far outside those boundaries, though? Not recommended. It’s not even recommended to stray to far from cruise destinations and approved clients.
But what if Trump’s rhetoric gives you a hint as to what his policy might be? Maybe if Trump is elected president in 2024, Trump will cut off aid to Ukraine as Ukraine resists Putin’s attempted conquest of Ukraine.
Is Trump as crazy as he sounds? Very likely, he is.
One reason why Putin might have decided to invade Ukraine was because Putin figured that America had become isolationist, not globalist like Reagan. Putin might have calculated that America was too obsessed with debates over CRT, abortion and transgenderism to involve itself with a conflict between Ukraine and Russia.
Biden is at fault because Biden, acting as an isolationist would have acted, withdrew from Afghanistan, showing indifference to what happens outside America’s borders.
Think of how the America First folks in 1940 opposed American aid to the United Kingdom when the UK was attacked by Nazi Germany.
Isolationism is short-sighted. It’s good that while Biden got Afghanistan terribly wrong, he is supporting military aid to Ukraine.
I don’t think that is a good definition of Globalism. Globalism is the subornation of the Nation State to Global structures of power. It certainly isn’t free trade and it definitely isn’t the spreading of free and representative governments. I don’t really think you are advocating for Globalism. I think you are advocating against isolationism and perhaps for a certain old style internationalist system.
I think the divide is simpler than many propose: NeverTrump fundamentally identifies with, fetishizes, or likes modern Democrat voters, while they are simultaneously repelled by, or disdainful toward, Republican voters.
The former were comfortable with a Republican party whose leadership did not reflect the norms and values of the conservative base, and habitually sacrificed (or never seriously supported) the priorities of the base in favor of the Republican donor class. The cultural Marxist takeover of the academic and cultural institutions resulted in a combination of indoctrination and social pressures that led to a radical shift toward the cultural Left by the higher-income, accredited classes that were once the power-base of that faction of the GOP, leading to them having to either shift to the Left themselves (especially in regards to social and cultural taboos) in order to be considered even marginally tolerable by their friends, neighbors, and families, or else accept that they would henceforth be regarded as ‘deplorables’ alongside the demonized Republican base, and would need to abandon their (largely subconscious) biases against the ‘vulgar’ Republicans they viewed as embarrassing rubes in order to oppose the Left.
My point is that Americans do sometimes decide to retire in Latin American countries (except for Cuba, Venezuela) while hardly any American choose to retire in North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela.
People from Eastern Europe, when it was controlled by the Soviet Union, did try to escape to Eastern Europe.
When I was in college I met someone who was my age who was from Romania. One day he climbed into a truck that was headed for Italy, without the driver knowing about it, and fled his family and friends in Romania.
Italy is far from perfect. But it wasn’t a communist dictatorship like Romania was.
The Republican party used to be interested in freedom and representative government or their lack all over the world. Many in the Republican party still do care about such things. Is that globalist? If so, I am a globalist.
When Trump hints that he supports Putin’s invasion of Ukraine by calling it “savvy” and “genius,” there is no way I will vote for him.
But it doesn’t matter right? All of these elections are rigged, right?
Take America’s alliance with Japan or America’s alliance with Australia. You say that this isn’t globalism? Okay. Should we call this internationalism? If so, I am an internationalist. I supported allowing Finland and Sweden to join NATO.
Trump did seem to oppose aid to Ukraine as Ukraine struggled to eject Putin’s military from Ukraine. If Trump and some members of the GOP get an important national security issue wrong, I am not obligated to pretend that they have it right.
When the Russians seized Crimea, Barry sent blankets and MREs.
The Donald upgraded that to M2 sniper rifles and Javelins.
The Russians jumped when Barry was fundamentally transforming the United States of America. They sat on their haunches when Trump was sending mean tweets and weapons systems. They jumped again after Brandon fell upstairs — three times.
Maybe Trump’s foreign policy chops will improve. I doubt it, but it is better than anything Captain Oblivious or any of the other Democrats will come up with.
I think things are already unrecoverable.
I doubt it. Trump actually was the first president to authorize lethal aid for Ukraine after 2014. Despite Trump’s perhaps friendly rhetoric to Putin he did actually authorize a strike on Russian Military “contractors” in Syria. Then casually disclosed it to Xi over desert. Point is he said a lot of stuff and then acted very differently from his rhetoric.
Doubtful. He was very successful for a long time. He made some seemingly crazy moves in a foreign policy space; however, being objective they worked out. Also almost all of them worked out. That argues that it wasn’t dumb luck. It could have been the people around him rather than the man himself, but he gets credit and the blame. That is part of the deal.
Perhaps, however he didn’t for four years under Trump and did after Biden pulled out of Afghanistan. I think VDH had it right. Trump had reestablished deterrence, after Obama lost it. Biden has lost deterrence. Once deterrence was lost the Russian invasion of Ukraine was inevitable.
More importantly he lost deterrence.
Agreed and stipulated, but that isn’t really the model Trump used in his 4 years. Although I will grant you that was the rhetoric.
After being shamed into it. I am sorry he doesn’t get much credit in my book. He has slow walked the entire time and if he weren’t so pig headed about energy policy we would be in a better strategic position. He is giving them enough aid to bleed the Russians and not enough necessarily to win. Only the fact that the Russian military is in worse shape than everyone imagined is contributing to the success the Ukrainians are having.
Remember when the Globalists told us that making China a “most-favored” trading partner would not only be good for the American middle class, but would also make China more free and democratic?
Entire comment extremely well stated!
So, maybe all of Trump’s “America First” talk is just rhetoric designed to fool some people into thinking that he isn’t a globalist, or, um an internationalist?
The reality is that people often do pay attention to what presidents and potential presidential candidates say.
When the US Congress voted about 40 billion dollars of aid to Ukraine, Trump criticized the vote. Among my 2 Republican US Senators, one voted for aid to Ukraine (Todd Young) and one voted against (Mike Braun).
Guess which one of these US Senators I will be voting for? Braun isn’t up for re-election until 2024, but I might remember how he voted on an important issue.
I am not trying to convince anyone here to vote for Biden. I didn’t vote for Biden in 2020. But Biden did request this aid for Ukraine package that was passed by Congress while Trump criticized it.
If you want “neo-cons” like me to vote Republican for president, maybe its best to nominate people who don’t call Putin “savvy” and “genius” as Putin invades Ukraine. I’ve voted for more Republican candidates in my life time than most people. It’s not hard for someone with an R next to their name to get my vote. But people like Trump, Margorie Taylor Green, Tucker Carlson and Colonel Douglas MacGregor ain’t going to get my vote.
I prefer the “old” GOP much better.
Very insightful, lowtech. So I suspect that the Republican’s popularity with the middle class would also drive away the Republican elites as well. What do you think?
This is where all this talk about America First, isolationism and globalism seems not to clarify things much.
Some are praising Trump for being the first president to provide military aid to Ukraine after 2014. But then when Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, months later Congress voted to massively increase aid to Ukraine and Trump criticized Congress for this.
If we are going to praise Trump for being the first to provide military aid to Ukraine after 2014, why isn’t it kosher to criticize Trump for opposing aid to Ukraine after Putin ordered the full blown invasion?
How is supporting one aid to Ukraine package “America First” and opposing another aid to Ukraine package also “America First?”
Why not just admit that Trump was wrong to oppose aid to Ukraine earlier this year? Even better, if you want neo-cons like me to vote for the Republican presidential candidate in 2024, maybe it’s best not to nominate someone who called Putin “savvy” and a “genius.”
If Trump is elected in 2024, it’s entirely possible that Trump would cut Ukraine off. With Trump it’s unpredictable. He’s pro-abortion one year, pro-life the next. Donating to Harry Reid one year, running for president as a Republican the next.
This isn’t an endorsement of Biden by any means. I’m just hoping the GOP nominates a candidate other than Trump in 2024. Pick someone’s name out of a hat. This isn’t hard.
The “old” Neocon GOP started a land war in Asia on false premises; spent two trillion dollars and squandered thousands of young lives over twenty years, achieved nothing, and left the Taliban back in power with billions of dollars worth of American armaments. (“Biden did that last thing.” Only because the Neocons started a war and didn’t finish it.)
The “old” GOP decided we ought to have unregulated mass immigration across open borders because American workers “just can’t cut it” (Marco Rubio’s chief-of-staff), because illegal immigrants were “fertile” (Jeb Bush), because they didn’t want their children performing menial labor (Dick Cheney).
The “old” GOP claimed to be fiscally responsible, while doubling the national debt and nearly doubling domestic spending under the Bush Administration.
The “old” GOP made Communist China a “most favored” trading partner and gutted the American working class.
The “old” GOP thought it was distasteful and ungentlemanly to fight against the left’s Culture War; and now Democrats are proclaiming they want “a drag queen in every classroom,” because it’s a “blessing of liberty,” and you can lose your job if you oppose the sexual mutilation of children.
That’s the “old” GOP … the party of failure, debt, cowardice, and betrayal.
I would call it internationalism as opposed to globalism. I agree you are an internationalist at least your arguments would put you in that camp by my lights. I too support Finland and Sweden joining NATO. I am more an internationalist than an isolationist in temperament, although not to the degree you seem to be.
No he was the first US president to authorize lethal aid to Ukraine. He sold them Javelins and other Manpads, which is why they had them to stop the Russian’s initial push in February. You can dislike the man all you want; however, don’t distort his record, it weakens your other arguments. Ukraine was still fighting the Russians after 2014. Obama and Biden gave them only nonlethal support. Trump sold them Javelins. He didn’t extend them the kind of lend-lease credit that they received after the invasion; however, no one to my recollection was calling for it back then also it would have been escalatory in an unhelpful way.
I pray you are wrong and fear you maybe right.
Trump loaded America up on a lot of debt also.
By the way, I support legal immigration but I oppose illegal immigration. I think we should enact an immigration policy similar to that of Canada and Australia, where work skills are given more weight.
During the 2016 election year, the Republican legislature in North Carolina passed a bathroom bill that would override the bathroom bill passed in the Democrat heavy city of Charlotte. This NC bathroom bill would have retained the policy of letting only women into women’s bathrooms.
Many businesses threatened to boycott North Carolina. Trump responded by criticizing the North Carolina legislature for protecting women against the radical transgender lobby.
Thing are recoverable. Heck, if the people of Eastern Europe could overcome their communist enslavers, clearly we Americans can overcome Biden, Pelosi and Schumer. But only if we offer the voters a candidate a bit more articulate than Trump.
How’s this for an idea? How about we nominate a candidate for president in 2024 who has not bragged about having affairs with married women and/or sleeping with a porn star? Sound good?
It’s one thing to care. I think we all do. It’s another to send men into battle for deployment after deployment, risking or suffering loss of limb and death in futile efforts to – I honestly don’t know what exactly you and your political allies are trying to do.
Casually spending other American’s lives, and squandering our treasure ,our capability for responding to real threats, and our image internationally. All this whilst ignoring threats and needs here at home. This doesn’t make any sense. You guys are living in your glory days of the 1980’s. The world is very different now.
I could be a globalist if not for the arrogance and incompetence, and only if there was considerably more effort and attention to our pressing problems within our own borders.
But looking back (and I was all for the Bush wars at the time and defended them vigorously) it was much more wrong than right, and was either ineffective or counterproductive. I was wrong, and I believe you are wrong now.
Globalism is more what Raxxalan says here:
Pointing fingers at Trump doesn’t excuse the atrocious record of Bush-Republicanism.
I would rather have a president that bangs porn stars than one that sells us out to China, keeps the mass immigration floodgates opened, and lets the left run amuck because fighting back “is not who we are.”
I have more respect for porn stars than I have for all but a few members of Congress. When porn actors are getting pegged on-screen, at least they don’t call it “bipartisanship.”
Thank you. That is also an elegant argument against internationalism which I tend to favor; however, I am given pause on it by the points you raise.
They had the West to help support them. We won’t. The current democratic leadership which is old an feeble won’t be what we are working against. As with most revolutions the ones who start it aren’t the ones who come to power afterward. It will be someone much more ruthless than these people.
Also the Communist kill a lot of people while they are in power, so yes maybe it turns out well in the end but their could be an ocean of blood between now and then.
As long as we nominate someone willing to fight and turn the tide back against the left I don’t much care how he conducts his private life. I am hiring someone to be a sleazy politician not the pastor at my church.
Yeah, let’s just call him a stupid poopy-head the way Democrats talk. Trump is not saying Putin is good, right or in any way virtuous.
Maybe he’s seen too many James Bond movies where the hero compliments the villain on his dastardly schemes and abilities. A healthy respect for your adversaries’ intelligence is crucial in war and diplomacy. But good leaders should know this. Further, it can figuratively disarm your opponent. It gives an entree into discussions. Then you can negotiate and actually get something to take away. That’s what leaders are supposed to do.
Have you ever seen a gangster movie? The Godfather for example, or Breaking Bad or any number of stories involving shady and despicable mob bosses. Do you ever see a drug lord ever consider even talking to someone who does not show respect. Not deference, respect. Unless you are in a position to crush such an enemy (and be willing to do it) you are advised to show respect and avoid publicly shaming him.
We’ve had this argument before. Somehow Neo-cons would rather virtue-signal about how terrible and despicable Putin, or Khomeni, or Kim Jong Il (there are more, endless actually) is than make some progress in agreements and treaties that will help ordinary people’s lives.
These people are gangsters who can’t be shamed any further, so playing the piety game of Americans superior virtue is exactly the wrong approach.
So much this. Democrats made Putin into the caricature they needed for domestic political purposes; as they do. Trump was realistic about Putin, and Kim Jong-Un for that matter, because (unlike Neocons) he genuinely wanted progress. He didn’t just want to create a version of an enemy so the voters would rally around him.
You’re welcome, and I confess I looked it up.
My point was those countries aren’t the panacea you were trying to make them out to be.