One of our subscribers was curious to know, and so was I. So here goes:
I’d be very curious to hear why those who aren’t US citizens would vote as they indicate above. Would you let me know in the comments?
I’m also curious to know whether there’s anything I could say that would change your mind. (Let’s assume common sense here: I’m sure you’d change your mind if I proved to you that Kamala Harris is a shape-shifting alien who will harvest our organs and sell them on the intergalactic black market. But let’s rule out scenarios like that.)
If you answered “somewhat” or “very” likely, what kind of information or argument would change your mind?
If you answered “not a chance,” but you think someone else could change your mind, what kind of information or argument would be involved?
If you answered “not a chance,” and you believe no one could change your mind, why is this?
This seems an appropriate place to quote Bill Kristol... in fact, his new commentary is sufficiently brief that rather that quote snippets I will just copy&paste it in its entirety.
Their Ugliest Foot Forward
by William Kristol
It was quite the hate fest the Trump campaign put on last night at Madison Square Garden.
Some “comedian,” selected and vetted by the Trump campaign, warmed up the crowd: “There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.” Just to make sure people didn’t miss the point, he also crudely mocked Latino Americans in general, and “joked” about black Americans carving watermelons instead of pumpkins this Halloween.
Some talk radio guy—selected and vetted by the Trump campaign—called former secretary of state Hillary Clinton “a sick son of a bitch” and Democrats “a bunch of degenerates. Lowlifes. Jew-haters and lowlifes. Every one of ‘em.”
Some man grasping and waving a cross screamed from the stage: “Kamala Harris is the devil! She is the Antichrist!” (Again: This was a speaker selected and vetted by the Trump campaign.)
Not to be outdone by these nobodies, top Trump aide Stephen Miller worked himself up into a pitch of nativist frenzy: “America is for Americans and Americans only.” (What a minor nation in world history we would have been had this been our policy for the last couple of centuries! Somewhere backstage, Elon Musk and Melania Trump waited for their turn to speak.)
In addition, Miller said of the assassination attempt against Trump: “They also tried to take his life.” The unspecified “they”: always a favorite of demagogic conspiracists. Miller wasn’t the only speaker to adopt this construct.
Leading Trumpist thinker Tucker Carlson weighed in later, explaining there was no way “a Samoan Malaysian low-IQ” candidate like Kamala Harris could win 85 million votes. (That’s about the number of votes Harris is likely to get, which—in the event she wins—Carlson and the Trump campaign will spend the next two months insisting was impossible as they try to overturn the results.)
Trump himself didn’t shy away from demagogic incitement, especially as you’d expect against dark-skinned immigrants. “A lot of people are coming from the Congo prisons,” he declared on stage. But he was also happy to attack Americans of any color or national origin who oppose his campaign: “They are indeed the enemy from within,” and “the most sinister and corrupt forces on earth.”
This was the grand finale of the Trump campaign, personally insisted upon by him, paid for and produced by his campaign. This wasn’t Trump appearing at an event sponsored by a wacky local party or a goofy affiliated group, where the crazed speakers were locally produced farm-to-table types. This was 100 percent Grade-A Trumpism. _This is what they wanted people to see._
Last night, at Madison Square Garden, they presented to us Donald Trump’s vision for America.
But Madison Square Garden also evokes another vision for America. On May 8, 1970, Knicks center Willis Reed, suffering from a torn thigh muscle and not expected to be able to play in the NBA championship series’ decisive seventh game, hobbled onto the court as his teammates warmed up. Reed started the game, made the Knicks’ first two field goals, and inspired the crowd and his teammates, who proceeded to defeat the Lakers and secure the underdog Knicks the championship.
Willis Reed was a black man from Louisiana who’d attended Grambling, the famed historically black college. His teammates included Bill Bradley, a Princeton and Oxford-educated Midwestern banker’s son; Dave DeBusschere, a Catholic kid from Detroit; and Walt Frazier, who learned basketball on a dirt playground at his all-black segregated Atlanta school. The Knicks coach was Red Holzman, born on New York’s Lower East Side in 1920, the son of Jewish immigrants from Romania and Russia. That America is the America some of us see when we think of Madison Square Garden.
It is therefore tempting to avert our eyes from the ugly spectacle that was imposed on us at the Garden last night. But looking away won’t cut it. The only way to get beyond Trumpism is to defeat it.
Not a US citizen, but if I were, I would door-knock, phone-bank and vote for Harris. The choice is a binary one, and Trump is unacceptable in every way. I’m dismayed to read the comments of self-described single-issue voters who defend their vote for Trump on the basis of their hatred of “woke” politics (or is it really aesthetics?), or their fear for the fate of Israel, or their concern about immigration, or what have you.
The Democratic Party, for all its weaknesses, promotes and works toward a liberal, open and inclusive world, one in which the maximum number of people can actualize their potential within a rules-based order—the only way to achieve peace and prosperity. I apologize if that sounds pat, like propaganda—it’s shorthand, but I doubt anyone wants to read a 3000 word essay in the comment section.
I am more hawkish with respect to foreign policy than the typical left of center voter—including in my own country—and I’m concerned that dovish forces might predominate in a Harris administration, extending the conflict in the Middle East, although in fairness I don’t recall any American administration having a magic wand on that front. On the other hand, the world is more likely to survive a few years of wishful American foreign policy than the stupid, bellicose, self-serving, isolationist, anti-institutionalist, America-first, war-criminal cheerleading actions promised by Trump and his band of weirdos, enablers and sociopaths. Strong words, yes, but tell me Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, Kash Patel et al are quality people.
The US had four years of Trump. As I recall they were ugly years marked by chaos, cruelty, nepotism, destructiveness and mass death. Yes, mass death. Remember Covid? Oh and rank stupidity. Oops, I almost forgot paranoia and lies.
And chief among the sociopaths and criminals was Trump himself. It would be madness, a tragic, unforgivable self-inflicted wound, to make him President again.