It’s interesting to reflect on how much has changed over the past four years. This video comments on the ways my view of things have changed directly, but the process of making it was also clarifying on shifts in my own attitude. It reminded me that two years ago, right after her upset victory, I wrote half a script about AOC I never produced. In introducing her, I wrote in a joke about my inability to pronounce her name. It’s a small thing, but I don’t find that “joke” funny anymore.
It feels like the period since late 2016 has just flown by, as a never-ending flood of chaos. But it has been four years. I have changed. We have changed. The country has changed. In addition to the arguments I make in this video, that may be one of the best reasons to support Biden. He could finally give us a moment to pause, collect our breath, and reckon with what we have done to ourselves.
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Video Transcript after the jump…
Hey there. Trump supporters still exist. But when I talk with them, they rarely try to defend Trump. Instead they point out that the crazy left is on a rampage, and like him or not Trump is the only thing standing in the way. I actually agree with half of that. Over the past 4 years the United States has seen the most sweeping move leftward since the 1960s. But Conservatives are missing the most important thing about this cultural transformation. President Trump isn’t standing in the way of America’s leftward lurch. He’s responsible for it.
Take me as an example. I have always described myself as a conservative. I was raised on Ronald Reagan, and I was a big supporter of Republican policies in my early 20s. That faded over the course of the disastrous Bush years, but as I got less and less comfortable with Fox News idiocy, I could tell myself it was because conservatives had drifted away from Reagan’s true legacy. I was certainly never an Obama supporter. Trump’s election has convinced me that the era of Reagan is truly dead and buried. Conservatives like to pretend that the unique disgustingness that is Trump’s personality and governing style is somehow a distinct thing from conservative principles. It’s not. Trump is a Republican President, sitting in the same position as Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan. Trump is the complete discrediting of everything I was raised to believe about modern US politics. I am now looking to read a good book on FDR and the new deal, and am contemplating a video series in favor of bringing back unions.
If that’s what Trump’s presidency has done to an over educated white suburbanite like myself, what do you think it did to the more left leaning people in our great cities? We know actually. Socialism friendly New York City congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the new woman to hate on Fox News. If it wasn’t for Donald Trump, AOC would still be a bartender.
AOC’s upset victory over an establishment Democrat in 2018 was 100% the product of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Joe Crowley was a powerful, senior member of Congress who was good at funneling benefits back to his district. But with the inexplicable crisis of one of New York City’s worst people ending up as President, that clearly wasn’t going to work anymore. This was a crisis, so New York voters took a chance on socialism, and a charismatic bartender with a well produced campaign video. Trump Derangement Syndrome is rational. Trump’s election and governing style is a national embarrassment and a constant crisis, and the Democratic party is reacting. After spending 40 years presenting themselves as nicer Republicans, the Democrats really are turning left. Donald Trump did that.
A common argument on the right is that Trump’s excesses are a response to the Left’s excesses. You see “this is how you got Trump” on Twitter a lot, most often claiming that Democrats were unfairly mean to Mitt Romney in the 2012 election. While I have quibbles with a lot of the specific arguments, I understand the general principle, and I think it makes sense. Now reverse it. Maybe transgender bathrooms are the reason we got Trump. But Trump is the reason we got Me Too. Trump is the reason Black Lives Matter is a mainstream organization. Trump is the reason we basically had a universal basic income for a few months this year. Trump is the reason our cities are burning, statues are falling, and people are now regularly dying at protests. Thanks to Trump, Washington, DC might finally become a state next year, ending the Republican advantage in Congress for a decade or more.
Trump is the cause of these things and the only way they will slow down is if we elect Biden. Do you really think the Me Too movement would have happened if Hillary Clinton was President, with Bill Clinton in the white house? Biden hasn’t even been elected yet, and he’s already ended the believe women no matter what era. Four years ago Black Lives Matter was a fringe movement, now it ranks up there with Keaunu Reeves and the US military in public opinion polling. You think that would have happened if Marco Rubio or Scott Walker was president? Hell no, we needed Trump’s George Wallace rhetoric and politicization of the country’s police forces to make that happen.
I support both of these movements, and I am grateful to Trump for giving them such great victories. But I am also still pretty conservative by temperament, and I see that both these movements can be taken to excess. Under a Biden administration we can all calm down and fix criminal justice and the workplace. After another four years of Trump, as a straight white male in my 40s I will probably end up having to pay reparations and go live in a reeducation camp or something.
Trump has completely destroyed the Republican party’s reputation for basic competence and decency with his calamitous mishandling of the Coronavirus crisis. Thanks to Trump’s public health failure, our finances are ruined, and millions upon millions remain unemployed. Because Trump turned masks into a culture war issue we are now looking down the barrel of one of the grimmest winters in our nation’s history. Do you really think that would have happened under President Mike Pence? I saw that debate. Sure, he lies like any other politician, but he’s calm and boring. He would have listened to experts and he would have totally won coronavirus. If Trump had been removed in February the country would be in vastly better shape, and the Republicans would probably be cruising toward their first popular vote victory in 16 years right now.
If Donald Trump somehow wins in 2020, it will be against the will of an even larger majority of the American people than it was in 2016. The completely justified rage that that would produce would truly drive this country insane. The past four years have yielded a few conservative judges that are just as susceptible to the political and cultural left wing Tsunami that Donald Trump is building as anyone else is. The only truly conservative vote this November is for Joe Biden.