The centrist case for Trump
Give social justice warriors, government regulators, and bureaucrats an inch, and they'll take a mile. Right now, I'm more worried about them disregarding the Constitution than I am about Trump.
Last week, I came across a repost by Elon Musk on X that encapsulates what I, and I daresay many of you, see as the rapid escape of progressives from reality to the land out where the buses don’t run.
These days, it’s not possible to disagree with progressives about nearly anything without being labeled as “MAGA,” a bigot, a conspiracy theorist, or a member of the far right—a neat trick that absolves them, with a clear conscience, of any responsibility for considering arguments you have that might challenge theirs. It’s my way or the highway with the far left and their enablers in academia and the government. And anyone who doesn’t see the righteousness of their crusades concerning DEI, climate change, issues surrounding LGBTQIA2S+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, and two-spirit), restorative justice, colonialism and it’s stepchild, oppression, is irredeemably immoral and intellectually on the wrong side of the fence. If the left could get away with re-education camps, I’d have already earned a lifetime sentence. You and I would have a lot to talk about in the joint.
I’ve worn out keys on my laptop by repetitively typing my standard disclaimer concerning my political opinions, but every time I leave it out, someone jumps down my throat. So, once more into the breach. I’m a lifetime centrist and independent voter. I’ve supported and voted for candidates from both major parties and a few independents along the way.
As a career centrist, I now find myself in a strange new world. For many of my erstwhile associates, I’ve gone full MAGA. That is, of course, untrue. I despise Trump. But I will likely vote for the SOB as the least awful choice. It’s not my changing that got me here. It’s the landscape moving beneath my feet. The only thing that I deem more of a threat to America than Trump these days are woke progressives. It’s a helluva thing.
Why a centrist? Well, I was never completely down with the left because of their desire to ignore the plain text of the Second Amendment and their constant whining about social justice in what turns out to be the fairest country in the world. I could never get on board with the right because of their belief that nothing is wrong with America that can’t be cured by cramming Christianity down everyone’s throat.
Neither side has demonstrated much discipline when it comes to ignoring the parts of our constitution that they find inconvenient. It’s a toss-up when it comes to which side’s constitutional hypocrisy is worse. Both sides embrace things that look a lot like totalitarianism when it suits them. My disgust over that issue alone goes to 11.
That being the case, I generally disapprove of the far right just as much as I do the far left. I think both groups have a fair number of selfish, angry, and irrational followers who forget that they are living in a free country with hundreds of millions of others who enjoy the same freedoms but have different ideas about how to exercise them.
That’s the enduring price of freedom. It's not just toting a rifle through a rice paddy; it's accepting that not everyone uses their freedom in ways that you might deem wise. That's the deal. Unless what others are doing is against the law in their exercise of freedom, not approving of it is just too bad for you. In a free society, there has to be some acknowledgement of this and tolerance for it. Without give-and-take, freedom is merely an illusion convenient for perpetuating a peaceful system of haves and have-nots without it seeming like totalitarianism, which, sans freedom, it is.
“When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man. The important thing is moral choice.” A Clockwork Orange.
In fairness, none of this means that either the far left or the far right aren’t capable of occasionally being right about something. I’ve had to apologize to many of my more conservative friends about a thing or two since COVID four years ago (more on that tomorrow on Science Friday). And if it seems like I pick on the far left more than the far right, it’s only because the left currently runs much of the show. Even when the left loses elections, they still maintain a grip on power through academia and the government bureaucracy. When the right loses elections, it’s all over except for the slow walk and the sad singing.
For the umpteenth time, I loathe and despise both of our choices in the 2024 presidential election. Biden is a lifetime pol who’s a crook, a fool, a braggart, a serial liar, and demonstrably too old and unfit for the job. Trump is much the same, minus the “lifetime pol,” but plus immoral charlatan. Trump’s age issues aren't as advanced as Biden's, but they are beginning to show. Both cause my skin to crawl.
It's not overly difficult to understand how the Dems foisted Biden on us—he was widely perceived as the safest anyone-but-Trump choice in a party increasingly dominated by crazy progressives, the kind of people who drive a Senator out of their party by following her into a restroom to harass her.
It's Trump that baffles me. The Republicans have a deep bench full of people up for the job, most prominently Ron DeSantis. With DeSantis and Hailey at the top of the GOP ticket, the race is over on the last night of the convention. With Trump, it's going to be needlessly close.
Nonetheless, I, as of now, intend to vote for Trump. It's close, but he's the least awful of the two (three, if you count RFK Junior) choices. I intend to lay out my thinking behind this decision and make a centrist case for Trump, albeit strictly as the lesser of two evils.
Look, there are only two choices. One may either stay home or figure out which lever to pull while holding their nose at their polling place. That's it. The election is less than five months away; all of the candidates stink; America is in trouble; and help is not on the way. It's going to be either Trump or Biden. And though both are perhaps equally unfortunate, they are nonetheless quite discernible in terms of outcome.
I was explaining to my kids today the juggling act that goes into making family decisions and how they rarely come down to clearly delineated, simple, binary choices. Which grocery store should we visit? Well, distance, inventory, price, cleanliness, and crowding all matter. Maybe the place five minutes away is expensive with a poor selection of goods, which makes it worth our while to drive a bit further to a nicer store most of the time. It’s a balancing act among several competing factors.
I view the Biden/Trump choice the same way. I'm going to look at the upcoming election with about as much uncontrollable emotion as a granite boulder and figure out who, in totality, is more likely to articulate the policies I’d like to see and who will screw things up the least.
Let's just go down the list, shall we?
DEI: Biden is an acolyte of this nonsensical, postmodern, Marxist bullshit that the left has pursued with religious zeal in a thinly veiled attack on Western values. Biden is, for instance, attempting to turn Title IX on its ear to appease transgender activists at the expense of women, parents, and pretty much everyone who’s not crazy.
Trump, OTOH, is the DEI antichrist. Advantage: Trump.
Immigration: I’m unambiguously for orderly legal immigration. It’s one of the things, IMO, that makes America great. At this point, I would gladly trade the whiny assholes who populate many universities, much of the federal bureaucracy, and blue cities for people willing to walk 4000 miles to get here for a chance at a better life. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Yeah, baby. Welcome to America!
But the process needs to be fair. One shouldn’t be able to game the system by breaking the law and then counting on lefty NGO's to make the bad thing that you did just go away. I know scientists from all over the world who’d like to be here but wait years for a chance, while economic migrants, few of whom are fleeing actual political persecution, just walk across the southern border in a blatant violation of our laws and claim political asylum.
I’m for bringing everyone to America who wants to contribute to the enrichment of the American dream, including some economic migrants and those fleeing persecution. But the way that we are allowing this to happen now is upside down. This has become such a serious problem under Biden’s mismanagement that even his advisors are beginning to counsel crackdowns ahead of the fall campaign.
Trump, OTOH, is a hawk on this issue who won’t be dissuaded by nasty-grams from progressive immigration activists Advantage: Trump.
The Economy: Really? Advantage: Trump.
Oversight of federal agencies, federal spending, court appointments, and reigning in the bureaucracy: This one is closer in my mind than you might think. I was doing work in DC for a right-of-center organization during the heady (for us) days of the Trump administration. It was all auspicious beginnings, then nada. Trump showed little interest in actual governing, much preferring to sign executive orders, bully members of the legislative and judicial branches for sport, and then go play golf rather than involve himself in the intricacies of legislation.
Biden, OTOH, is supposed to be the master of working everything with a coin slot and dispenser inside the beltway. Which makes his ineptness in the position that he’s pursued for decades all the more alarming.
With Trump, I think that we get SCOTUS judges who thoughtfully interpret the law rather than usurping the authority of the legislative branch by making it (see today’s Moore decision), federal judges who are appointed on merit rather than ideology, and agency heads who both know their size and can read the constitution. Advantage: Trump.
Crime, quality of life, and other domestic issues: Biden and the left are out of their depth with their various experiments in socialism running amok. Trump, for all of his buffoonery, personal avarice, and disrespect for accountability, is more of a law-and-order guy than Biden, would be less inclined to socially transition my kids from one “gender” to another behind my back, and seems to understand how much most of the country hates the onerous hand of the federal government in their affairs. As Ronald Reagan said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” Advantage: Trump.
Standing up for American ideals on the international stage: This one is tough. With Trump, the problem is his embrace of murderous assholes like Putin and Kim Jong Un. Ukraine, a cause near to me, will suffer under Trump, but Israel will benefit. Trump is tougher on China than Biden, and he is capable of actually standing, unassisted, on an international stage without incident. Advantage: It’s a wash.
Adherence to the norms and conventions of the Office of the President of the United States: This one’s easy. Advantage: Biden.
Leadership potential. Who you’d rather follow into troubled waters or a foxhole: Another no-brainer. Advantage: Neither.
Threat to democracy: Both Trump and Biden head parties that want to weaponize the judiciary for their own ends. The Democrats succeeded in convicting Trump over stupors and vapors—something I believe they will soon rue. Both Trump and Biden ignore inconvenient parts of the Constitution and the rule of law when it vexes them. Trump just whines more about it. Advantage: Neither.
Wisdom: Now I’m just being plumb silly. Advantage: Neither.
By my scoring, that’s 5-1 for Trump with 4 washes. So, putting aside disgust, as much as I despise the SOB, I’m going to have to vote for him simply because Biden is a worse choice for me. I can barely believe where we are. But here we are, for sure.
Other recent features on Howlin that may provide useful background with regard to the evolution of my thinking on this issue:
My journey from "never Trump" to Trump voter
How Alvin Bragg turned me into a Trump voter
Wokeism is the world's newest religion
Trump, partisan politics and bicycles
The conceit of modern progressivism
Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right...
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.
As Wall Street Journal op-ed columnist Kimberley Strassel put it ahead of 2020, there are two types of Trump voters: Trump fans, who would still vote for him if he changed his registration to Democrat, and moderates and conservatives who mumble to themselves while casting their ballot, "I can't believe the Democrats are making me vote for this SOB again."
While I usually agree with most of your writing, there is no way to convince me to vote for a convicted sex offender AND a convicted felon. None of those offenses were as bad as his refusal to concede the election he lost and then he started an insurrection to violently retake the highest office in the land. I believe in the Constitution, something Trump can't honest claim. Trump is for Trump, no one else. He is a con man, pure and simple, and I find it hard to believe that you can be conned by this putrid example of humanity. His cabinet was a revolving door and most people that associated with him are either under investigation, convicted felons (that were pardoned by the current felon), or people that loathe him and will never vote for him. The people that know him the best hate him the most.
When he was first elected, I compared him to the Mule in the Foundation Trilogy. Please tell me how I am wrong.