You Got to Serve Somebody, Right?

Trigger warning.  This is an angry political rant.

The parade of conservative leaders lining up to wag their tails for junkyard dog Trump while wolfing down their bowls of crow continues to grow.  If the proles and the outer party know what’s good for them they’ll do likewise.  At least that’s the message I’m getting.  Now that the big mouths of the R party have succumbed to Stockholm syndrome in this hostage situation we call an election it’s time for all of us to drink from the river of madness.

The conservative movement continues to plagiarize the Democrats’ playbook, prioritizing fear over vision, beating the drum for an emergency savior rather than a chief executive and a first among equals.  It’s the same old calculation that took a break while us normal people enjoyed eight years of Ronald Regan before returning to the “We’re all doomed, DOOMED unless you vote for our approved candidate!” business as usual. This year’s bogey-person is, finally, Hillary Clinton and the apocalyptic stakes could not be higher.  Defeat Hillary at all costs or else.  But at what cost and “or else” what?  Or else she’ll appoint judges who open the floodgates of slaughter against babies?  She’ll configure the court to mandate the delusions of the gay lobby in place of biological, social and moral reality?  She’ll stifle opposition?  The Senate will offer free rides for her judicial nominees no matter which party is in control?  Where have you been living for the past sixty years?

Speaking of judicial nominees, the lifeblood of the Trump or Else movement, do we really need to analyze the composition of the court and track down the “conservative” appointees who have aided in the demolition of the Constitution? Doesn’t it tell you something that chief executives way more conservative than Trump even pretends to be have, knowingly or unknowingly, placed ticking change agents on the court?  And you’re looking to Trump to miraculously restrain the tide of left-wing judicial activism?

But… but… must defeat left!  AAHHH!!!

Fine.  I’m down with that.  Defeating the left is in fact critical to the survival of what remains of our way of life, so by all means let’s do whatever it takes.  Hitler defeated the left.  He went after the Communists like he meant it.  Radical Islam is way good at defeating opposing ideologies; they’re pros who know what they’re about and will stop at nothing.  And they don’t like Secretary Clinton any more than we do, so they have that going for them.  Maybe Trump should reconsider his short-sighted antagonism of these potential allies in the struggle against the progressives.  Maybe we should throw in with them to defeat the left.  After all, the enemy of my enemy is my friend so let’s recruit all the “not left” helpers we can get our hands on.  I think Aryan Nation is probably available for phone banks and leaflet distribution.  That’s sarcasm, by the way.  Just thought I’d better let you know.

The idea that defeating Hillary Clinton somehow equates with defeating the left is like saying Imperial Japan could’ve defeated the Allies by shooting down the Enola Gay.  Media conservatives are begging us to stick our fingers in dikes that crumbled long ago.  That’s right, conservatives.  The contamination of progressivism has been at work for a hundred years.  A hundred years.  The Woodrow Wilson years.  That’s how long we’ve been answering left-wing invective against our founding principles with polite argument and hand-wringing accommodation while the enemies of the Republic have been busy dynamiting our foundations.  The reason they’ve been successful is that they have a vision.  They have a mission.  They have a plan.  Their emphasis is revolutionary, not reactionary.  They have done the hard work of identifying the weaknesses of their opponents and they pound those weak spots relentlessly.  Remember that “two steps forward, one step back” thing?  It works.  They can afford to lose elections without losing much ground.  We have cleverly maneuvered ourselves into desperately hoping that a man who never claimed to be on our side will save our movement for us.

Here’s even more irony, and, so help me, it’s the only positive thing I have to say about Trump.  He doesn’t cower.  He says the most asinine things in political history and if you don’t like it you know where you can go.  It’s all theater and smoke and mirrors and contradictory and illogical BUT his supporters eat it up.  Know why?  It’s because they’re that sick of YOU.  They’re that sick of seeing their “leaders” getting slapped around and asking for more.  The feckless GOP has managed to inspire greater hatred for itself among its members than for the opposition.

Will you think about that for a minute?  A man who proudly displays the morals of an alley cat and possesses the political acumen of Happy the Clown is preferred over experienced, successful governors and senators.   The GOP, despite its best efforts, is teaming with intelligent, qualified leaders and even a statesman or two.  This election was supposed to be the Republican Party’s bi-week.  It was supposed to be our rest stop, when we could sit under a shady tree and watch the opposition collapse under its own weight of corruption and ineptitude.  But it won’t be because the party of Lincoln has squandered our trust too many times and kicked and screamed because we don’t like Jeb and they don’t like Cruz.  So we get Trump.  You’re welcome.

Such idiocy does not deserve to be rewarded.  It deserves to fail, brilliantly and to the humiliating applause of the tyrants it pretends to oppose.

But America does not deserve to fail.  America does not deserve the ignominious fate lusted after by one party and bungled into by the other.

America deserves the best efforts of the finest political minds.  America needs and deserves the guidance of sound moral thinking and civic sanity.  It deserves the kind of hard work and long range vision that its opponents have been using against it for decades.  America deserves the inspiration of leaders like Washington and Lincoln, not the cynical tribalism of gangsters like Clinton or conceited buffoons like Trump.

Get it through your head.  If Trump and Clinton survive their conventions to compete in the general election America loses.  Period.  We go further left, further ridiculous and deeper into tyranny.  It’s long past time to look beyond polls, talking heads and lists of goodies promised by our preferred gang leader.  It’s time for the conservative movement to get their eyes off of Fox News, the sham of the 2016 election and, yes, the GOP as it is currently constituted, with its suicidal open primaries and fatal attraction for good old boy “moderates,”  the great swallowers of leftist assumptions. It’s long past time to clarify our vision, stop hyperventilating over things not going our way and plan our strategy for the long war ahead.  That’s what serious people do.  That’s what your country deserves.