Why post-America can't have nice things - today's edition

 Perhaps you've seen the Very Stable Genius's statement on the passing of Colin Powell. It's a microcosm of everything the VSG is about:

"Wonderful to see Colin Powell, who made big mistakes on Iraq and famously, so-called weapons of mass destruction, be treated in death so beautifully by the Fake News Media," Trump said in a statement released Tuesday morning. "Hope that happens to me someday. He was a classic RINO, if even that, always being the first to attack other Republicans. He made plenty of mistakes, but anyway, may he rest in peace!"

This little item also appeared on the radar screen yesterday:

Nearly one year after the 2020 presidential election, a majority of Americans (58 - 35 percent) say they do not want to see Donald Trump run for president in 2024, according to a Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pea-ack) University national poll of adults released today. Democrats say 94 - 4 percent and independents say 58 - 35 percent that they do not want to see Trump run. 

Republicans, however, say 78 - 16 percent that they do want to see Trump run for president in 2024, compared to 66 - 30 percent in May. 

This is what actual conservatives are up against. Yes, we have Principles First. Yes, we have Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney and Ben Sasse. Yes, we sanity-based outlets like The Dispatch, National Review, and Commentary. (We sort of have The Bulwark, I guess, but it's a rather wobbly participant in the search for a way forward, given as it is to expressions of fondness for policies that are anything but conservative.)

But even more Republicans now than in May want to see this charlatan, this six-year-old in a geriatric body, re-elected. 

Do I need to burnish my anti-Left bona fides before closing out here, just to circumvent any accusations of squishiness? I don't know. A scroll of LITD archives going back to this site's founding makes it pretty clear I have no use for collectivism, redistributionism, identity politics, climate alarmism or Great Reset-style utopian fantasies. I'm well aware that the Democratic Party is as useless to the cause of Western renewal as the GOP, that its freak-show and pillager wings work in tandem to make the unrecognizability of our nation irreversible.

That's why I say, once again, save that binary-choice argument for somebody who thinks we have any kind of shot at a decent future within that framework.