My journey from "never Trump" to Trump voter

What a long, strange trip it's been.

Angry young man, circa 1975. Yeah, I protested Vietnam and racism, along with many others. But I regarded those as problems to be addressed in a great country—the best in the world. I’ve never thought otherwise.

Saturday’s video rant, How Alvin Bragg turned me into a Trump voter, is, after just two days, one of the most popular features on Howlin’. It hit a nerve, and in looking around both on Substack and elsewhere, it’s easy to see that I’m not alone. It appears to me that progressives, in pursuing a shamelessly political prosecution of a presidential candidate that they aren’t sure they can beat at the ballot box, have finally gone a bridge too far.

Not content to wield control of most of the media, academia, business, and the federal bureaucracy in foisting their unpopular values on the rest of us, progressives had to take the one person with the juice to stand up to them off the board—by hook or by crook. When hook appeared to be faltering, crook it was.

And why not? Progressives have been putting points on the board for decades. Even when they lose elections, they still win because, as noted above, they largely control many of the institutions in society. With that, they have succeeded in advancing the myth that gender identity supersedes sex, that climate change poses an existential threat greater than nuclear war, that “the science” means what they say that it means, that free speech with which they disagree is dangerous, that the majority of western values that have brought about unprecedented prosperity for humanity since the Enlightenment—scholarship, evidence, merit, work ethic, competition, and equality of opportunities—are inherently evil, and they’ve engineered wokeness into a compulsory secular religion.

With that many RBIs, why not just keep swinging and run up the score? There’s no skunk rule in politics.

But I think that the most unlikely person in the world to put a stop to this, Trump, just might, simply by having been found guilty of 34 felonies in what many see as a bogus political prosecution. Though I’ve never liked Donald Trump and probably never will, I think that he might be, in the fullness of time, the person most responsible for ending the social madness (and stranglehold over institutions) that progressives have wrought.

In a society where men now compete in women’s sports, “expertise” is partisan, children are “socially transitioned” behind their parents’ backs, criminality is rewarded with “restorative justice," there is almost no official curiosity about where a plague that killed millions and ruined economies actually came from, and “Queers for Palestine” is a thing outside of a Saturday Night Live skit, how much worse can someone like Trump possibly make anything? It’s a remarkably low bar.

So, to all of you who reached out after Saturday’s rant to see if I meant it, yes, I did. I wouldn’t have spent the time to make the video if I did not. Trump, with all of his very real drawbacks, is, in my view, less of a threat to this country than woke progressivism, the censorship industrial complex, mendacious “experts,” phony scholars, open borders, soft on crime policies, and weirdos who want to counsel my kids about sexual matters behind my back in school. There’s no way that Trump is likely to let me down, because there’s almost no way that he can.

We’ve been gaslighted for the past eight years. A media that knew better but didn't care because they detested Trump propelled the myth that Russian collusion elected Trump in the first place. Then, the second time around, that Joe Biden was a decent man who would bring some normalcy to the office of the president and govern from the middle. All of that was a lie. The Steele Dossier and Russian collusion were fabrications spread by numerous useful idiots. The relative unfitness of Trump for office is a whopper along the same lines.

Biden is at least as much of a douche canoe as Trump. Don’t trust either around your daughter? Check. Questionable financial deals? Check. Serial liars? Check. Do anything to perpetuate their time in office? Check. Brag, boast, and preen? Check. The last person you’d want to share a foxhole with? Check.

The only major differences that I see between the two anymore are that Biden pretends to be things that he is not, i.e., honest, principled, smart, politically moderate, and fair-minded, while Trump wears his preening and obnoxious nature on his sleeve. As out of shape as Trump is, I’m pretty sure that he could toss Biden across the National Mall. And one more thing: Trump is a one-man wrecking crew for the excesses of progressivism. Though both are loathsome, at least Trump has that going for him. That’s enough for me.

So yes, I’m now very likely a Trump voter. The only reason I use “very likely” as a caveat is that it’s a long time between now and November. Maybe the clouds will part one day between now and then, and some higher power will smite both of our only two current choices and give us one more chance to do better before they send us all to the land of heat and sulphurous odor.

But barring that, I’m supporting Trump. Not because I love him, but because he’s clearly the least terrible choice.

Truth be known, I’ve felt roughly that way in every election since I was old enough to vote, but just with more conviction this time. I don’t generally love any politician. I just try to figure out who’s the least likely to really screw things up every time I go to the polls. It’s too depressing to get into what kind of lowlife politicians generally are.

You think JFK was a stellar human being? He might have been a good president for the times, but he was sorely lacking in good morals. POTUS has generally been a rogues gallery, with a few notable exceptions. I’m over waiting for white knights.

When I was young, like a lot of other young people, I protested the Vietnam war and racism. I protested the war because it was obvious that we were not in it to win, and that struck me as a tragic waste of life. Because racism was a real issue back then and it disgusted me, I protested it. But at no time did I ever think that the solution to anything that vexed us was to turn our back on western values or our founding ideals. America was the best, albeit imperfect, country in the world.

I still feel that way. And I think that I’m closer to Trump on this than I am to Biden.

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, and arranging and playing music. Follow him on Twitter @MartinHackworth, on Facebook at facebook.com/martin.hackworth, and on Substack at martinhackworthsubstack.com.