Having campaigned against Trump (and Hillary) as a Libertarian presidential candidate in 2016, you can imagine it’s been quite a sea change in my thinking on Trump. How I do I justify it? Former friends and colleagues have been scratching their heads, wondering what’s wrong with me, tweeting their disappointment with me into the ether, or just flinging the usual grifter label around and refusing to engage with me on the issues. Cowards.
But support Trump I do. And I will vote for him this fall, and encourage others to do so as well. When explaining to a liberal what the value in supporting Trump may be, I started with the pandemic; the rank authoritarianism, medical tyranny, and petty tyrannies of politicians and health officials whose edicts were either rightfully ignored or narratives debunked so quickly that it was a daily exercise in how the emperor wore no clothes. Matter of fact, I used that fable as the perfect example of how Trump supporters saw Trump as the boy who pointed out the hypocrisies of those in power, when no one else in power at his level had the courage to do so. Was Trump a hypocrite in this in some ways? Absolutely, but as Dave Chappelle correctly identified, it’s different when someone who games the gamed system tells the rest of us marks that the game is indeed rigged. An honest liar, as Chappelle says.
“But Trump says horrible mean things, He ridicules people. I don’t want my child to look at him as an example,” was the next point they raised. Firstly, it’s probably unwise for children to look up to politicians in almost any capacity, but that is a weak argument for liberals. My response to that idea was perhaps a bit of whataboutism, being that I explained how Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals cemented the idea of ridicule as a weapon in politics, and that Trump is only using their playbook against them that they created, and beating them at their own game. Fair is fair, and words are only words, after all; it’s the policies that matter at the end of the day, and I’ve got a list a half mile long of Trump’s accomplishments from his first time that I don’t mind trotting out for anyone who wants a copy.
Ridicule is an important tool to keep tyrants in check. Making fun of the president was an actual crime at one point in this country, that’s how dangerous tyrants know it can be. If Saturday Night Live was still funny and did biting satire, people would still watch the show, and it would be relevant. But it’s not, because Saturday Night Live can’t be as funny as Donald Trump. The Left is too self-conscious and neurotic to be funny anymore. Trump’s lampoons of the Left and his opponents on the right hit home because they’re funny, and some of it’s even true! No leftist would hold back a biting, stinging satire or insult if it meant they could strike a blow and garner attention for themselves. It’s not just that the left can’t meme, it’s that the Left can’t craft a funny insult. “We should cancel the election,” Trump joked in a recent speech, then immediately clarified he was kidding since “some people can’t take a joke anymore.” I thought it was funny. But I don’t have a stick up my…well, you know.
I finished the conversation by simply saying that plenty of men would rather have their sons grow to be Donald Trump than to be the average “male” you’d pick up off the streets of San Francisco, and it’s true. Other than your average beta male liberal father, real men are going to prefer their son to be a real estate mogul celebrity turned president to yet another soy boy from San Francuckistan.
For those former DeSantis stans who aren’t following his example by endorsing Trump, it takes a little more convincing as to why it’s a good idea to vote for him. My buddy John Burk suffers from Trump Derangement syndrome level 6/10, and even he was honest when I interviewed him about the fact he thinks the American economy would fare better under Trump than Biden. Burk served our country honorably as a member of our military, and understands that while our mutual political talk show-based businesses might be faring well, the average person living in Cole County, MO, where I live, doesn’t make anywhere near what podcasters like us do. Knowing that conservative and libertarian media outlets do better when their representatives are out of power so they have something to bitch at, wouldn’t the true grifter actually be in favor of keeping Biden in the White House? Business would be better for us, but bad for our fellow conservatives. As Burk well knows, sometimes we have to make personal sacrifices so our communities can be better served. Thank you for your service, John.
Donald Trump is a multi-tool, a Swiss army knife of politics, if you will. For the standard right-winger, he’s a torch, a hammer, and a knife. The torch is obvious. Trump sets leftist’s hair on fire at the mere mention of his name. People who are easily triggered are easily controlled, or at least diverted from whatever insane task they’ve set themselves on to undo the American republic. As for the knife part, Trump’s actual list of policy accomplishments cuts like a knife to those who want to claim he didn’t get anything done, or he failed at enacting his agenda. That’s not true, since his list of policy accomplishments would make the average constitutional conservative or libertarian green with envy that they weren’t the ones who did it. And as for a hammer, that should be obvious: Trump crushes his enemies. Can’t you hear the lamentations of their women? Trump is a powerful tool for those who would wield him effectively. You don’t have to like him, but you have to understand and respect his utility in these, the dark times… before the empire.
It wasn’t all liberals and communists out in San Fran, matter of fact. I seemed to draw right wingers to me like moths to flame, since once people found out what I do they started speaking in hushed tones about their Trump support as well. One fine fellow handed me a “Trumer” beer and muttered sotto voce “it’s just missing the P.” Well, if there are people like that even in the black heart of the liberal nation, then there must be hope for Trump this fall. I hope these arguments will be useful to you for your liberal friends and for your reluctant conservative allies. They’ve served me well so far against my naive libertarian brethren, of whom many have also told me privately that they voted for me in 2016, but they’ll vote Trump in 2024.
