Squirrel-Hair and the crackup on the Right

I wish I could juxtapose these links / excerpts side by side. That's how they really should be displayed, for maximum conveyance of the cognitive dissonance they exemplify.

But, like so much in this fallen world, the ideal is not an option.

So we'll start with the guy I'm more inclined to agree with, Erick Ericsson.:

Since February, I have been warning both that Trump could not beat Hillary Clinton in November and that there is no way that I -- or many conservatives of faith -- could actually support him. There is no grand and elaborate conspiracy of pollsters in America. Trump has only been ahead in nine polls since January and the majority of those are Rasmussen polls, which are not worth the paper they are printed on.

The warnings have all fallen on deaf ears. The GOP had one job this year and that was to beat Hillary Clinton. I believe they have failed at that task and have not only failed, but they have put a Clinton donor in charge of their own party.
I have done my bit to sound the alarm, raise the red flag, and point out the now near certain future of a Clinton administration. There have been at least a half dozen elected Republicans who took the stage in Cleveland this past week who have privately, personally told me they agree that Trump will lose. Others, like Tom Cotton, have not told me this, but are already beginning to woo the South Carolina, Iowa, and New Hampshire delegations -- already campaigning for 2020 because they too know Clinton is going to win.

He has paid a real price for speaking out. Not just some comment-thread dissing.

It is no easy thing to see what is coming and have the party ignore you, friends reject you, and others assail you. Advertisers of my show have been targeted for harassment with some stepping back. Listeners and readers email me on a daily basis to say they are done with me. People have shown up on my doorstep at my home and at my office. Random strangers have berated me in public in front of my kids that I am ruining my kids' future.

If we're going to give the benefit of the doubt to those who have harassed him so aggressively, I guess at least the most noble-minded of them are so impassioned about the stakes that they have to go to such lengths. In that spirit, we shall give Ace a hearing on the matter:

All choices have consequences. By supporting Trump, I am responsible for the consequences of a Trump victory -- and those consequences could indeed be dire.

But a childish morally-unserious fantasy has infected the #NeverTrump not-so-intellgentsia, that they can agitate for Hillary Clinton -- by relentlessly disparaging Trump -- and somehow, they are not responsible for the consequences of the Hillary presidency they are bucking for.

They've dreamed up this self-pleasing, responsibility-evading dreamscape in which those who plump for Trump are responsible for the outcomes of a Trump presidency, but, for no explanation thusfar discoverable, they are not responsible for the outcomes of the Hillary presidency they're agitating for.

I tried to explain to them that there is no such thing as a consequence-free choice -- all choices have consequences, both on the upside and the downside -- and both the upside and downswide consequences must be considered by any adult, intellectually-serious person in making his choice.

But they like this idea that, like little children, they are free to gambol and play in the fields and this does not even perturb the leading edge of a butterfly's wing, and so they just keep teling me "No you're wrong" without saying why I'm wrong.

Which, seriously, is a rather important part of any argument beginning with the words "You're wrong."

I ask people: When you knocked Obama in 2012, and wrote posts and comments noting his flaws, did you think you were doing nothing to improve Mitt Romney's chances of winning the presidency?

If so-- why the fuck did you bother?

Of course, this is silly; everyone knows that when one buys ads attacking a candidate, one is helping that candidate's opponent win.

The #NeverTrumpers are filling their blogs, magazines, and Twitter timelines with nonstop political advertising (free) against Trump, and maintain, just because they say so and because it pleases them to think so, this does exactly nothing to help Hillary, and they are therefore not responsibe for her election.

Or let me put it this way: I am not hoping for Trump to get into some serious international snafu by supporting him. Yet I know that is a very real possibility if he's president.

Should this happen, I can't just say "But I didn't want trump to screw up so badly."

People would say -- no, but you knew the risks in supporting him, and you supported him anyway; you are therefore morally responsible for this.

Yet the #NeverTrumpers claim that the obvious, inescapable outcome of their position -- that Hillary Clinton will be the president -- is not their responsibility, just because they didn't intend that as a pirmary matter.

No, but they were completely aware it was the natural and inevitable consequence of their position.

So why would a Trump supporter be responsible for a foreign policy catastrophe he didn't even know for a fact would happen, when a #NeverTrumper claims to be innocent of the Hillary Presidency they know beyond a shadow of any doubt is the direct and inescapable consequence of the NeverTrump posiition?

They're responsible for it. They don't want to be, but they are.

I don't particularly want to be on the hook for a Trump presidency, but, being a morally serious person who has not yet delegated my thinking to the Twitter Hivemind, I recognize that by taking the action of lending him my support, I am responsible for the conseqyences of that act.

Why do the childish #NeverTrumpers mewl that they, alone in the universe, are not responsiblee for the consequences of their own choices?

I understand the #NeverTrump impulse. I've expressed it myself. After Trump's boorish, vulgar, half-insane attack on Cruz's wife, I announced "I'm done" with Trump and vowed to never vote for him.

I understand #NeverTrump, emotionally. I think there's merit in the position.

However, we have difficult choices to make. And difficult choices should be treated as what they are -- difficult, hard choices requiring moral seriousness and rigorous cost-benefit analysis.

They should not be made --artificially and falsely -- into easy-breezy decisions where one just says "I will do everything I can to make sure Trump is defeated, and I shall never give a thought to the prospect of a Hillary presidency, and I should never allow my shoulders to feel the burden of the consequences of the choice I am making."

Real men -- and tough-minded women -- do not go fleeing tough choices by simply hallucinating an "Officer Dimes, please come and save me" miracle solution.

Either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton will be president in November.

If you think Hillary would be a better president -- or if Trump is so repulsive to you you cannot support him even if you think Hillary would be worse -- fine. I respect your opinion.

We all have different brains. We all have different priorities.

But what I must insist you cannot do -- what i will not permit you to do -- is fantasize that while a Trump supporter is resonsible for the gaffes and disasters of a President Trump, you are somehow innocent of the purges and witchhunts of a President Hillary.

Trump supporters will own the consequences of a Trump presidency -- and Hillary supporters, both those who declare it proudly and those who wish it secretly -- own the consequences of a Hillary presidency.

Adults accept the consequences of their choices.

Only children run from them, or cross their fingers behind their backs and claim that's a charm insulating them from the consequences of their choices.

Some decisions are hard. They should be respected as being hard.

Every time I'm tempted to see it Ace's way, though, I think about the photo of the Clintons and Trumps at Squirel-Hair's wedding, about S-H telling Greta Van Susteren in 2012 that he thought Hillionaire was doing a terrific job as Secretary of State, about his donations to their foundation and campaigns, about his bragging to Howard Stern about his sexual adventures, about his name in gold-plated letters on his jet, about his lame attempt to separate Planned Parenthood's abortion business from its other functions, such as they are, about the jitters his foreign-policy pronouncements give NATO, about his vulgar and thuggish use of Twitter.

I'm still praying about what to do that first Tuesday in November, but I can tell you this: you'll see no signs for that chunk of dog vomit in my yard, nor bumper stickers for him on our cars.

Maybe my position is something like this: If you have to vote for him, at least acknowledge - publicly - that he is a very bad man.