Red lines and low bars: Observations on the determination of the worst pair of nominees in American history

 The events of this week have done at least one good thing.  We are no longer being told to pretend that the parties are holding presidential nomination contests.  We are no longer being told to pretend not to know things that we know.  Well, actually, there are people telling us to pretend not to know things that we know, but I shall not address that particular set of points this morning.  Instead, I shall address the now universally acknowledged fact that the 2024 presidential election will be a rematch between Joseph R. Biden and Donald J. Trump.

Well, nearly universally acknowledged.  There are some conspiracy theorists who claim that there is some secret plot, hatched within the bowels of a pizzeria/Satanic temple, to replace Biden with a different lizard person, or some such, but oy.  At least those who pretend to live in the real world moved from pretending that there were ongoing contests to acknowledging the final determination this week.  So there's that.  Of course, that means that we are presented with the worst choice in American history.  Each candidate, each party has crossed a red line, and the opposing party has failed to meet the low bar necessary to earn a vote given the red line crossed by its opposite number.  I will almost certainly cast a write-in vote this year, which until recently, I thought unthinkable.  What will I write?  Liz Cheney?  Since write-in votes are merely symbolic protests, why not go for some real symbolism?  Marcus Aurelius, Cato The Younger, George Washington, Abe Lincoln, someone really cool.  This year, though?  Wow.

The concept of a red line in politics will be most familiar in modern discourse for the empty threat.  When Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons on his own population, he crossed what then-President Barack Obama had called a "red line," which as it turned out, meant nothing.  How many people has Bashar al-Assad killed?  Our best estimate is about 300,000; brown-skinned Muslims, no less, making them the most precious people in all of history by leftist reckoning.  Well, almost.  I mean, the subcategory, "Palestinian," is several orders of magnitude more precious than any other, but also, Assad isn't Jewish.  He's Muslim too.  Thus, leftists can't make a proper villain out of him.  His body count is an order of magnitude greater than in Gaza, and he's the aggressor rather than the defender, so by any real moral reckoning, he is a true monster, but today's leftists don't even know it happened, and while Obama called his use of chemical weapons a "red line," that meant nothing, sorry, can't be bothered, Assad can keep killing as many brown-skinned Muslims as he wants because he's not Jewish.  Fuck off and die, not our problem, call me if a Jew tries to defend himself, or worse yet, herself, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Anyway, Obama called Assad's use of chemical weapons on his own people a "red line," and when Assad crossed that red line, Obama panicked because he had no plan.  What should he have done?  I'm moving towards the position that Obama should have taken him down.  Not to set up a Western-friendly government, because there is no culture of democracy or classical liberalism there, so that cannot work, but when there is a mass-murdering monster, kill the monster.  If a new monster takes his place, kill that monster too.  Stand in the breach, defend the innocent from monsters.  The hero kills the monster, and there are few monsters on Earth worse than Bashar al-Assad.  Contemplate 300,000, not in self-defense, but in aggression.

A red line is a line that simply cannot be crossed.  If the invocation of the phrase, "red line," is an empty threat, it is meaningless.  Both parties, both nominees have crossed such egregious red lines at this point, that I can vote for neither, and I cannot vote for either party down-ticket.

Donald J. Trump's unfitness for office was clear in 2016, and even more terrifying now.  In 2016, he was a pathological liar, a business fraud, a man who bragged about his ability to get away with sexual assault, a man who obviously knew nothing about politics or policy, who did not care, who reveled in racism and sexism, and generally speaking, sought the lowest lows one could find.  I spent his first term trying to explain to my fellow political scientists, though, that he was not actually the worst president ever.  Until COVID, but I'll get to that.  The title of worst-ever needed to be reserved for someone on the level of James Buchanan, and most Americans are simply not sufficiently historically literate to understand how bad Buchanan was, how his horrendous performance led to the Civil War, and what that meant.  James Buchanan was bad, and my fellow political scientists were too blinded my emotionalism to keep that perspective even when they knew who Buchanan was.  To be sure, Trump gets under my skin (call me a triggered classical liberal), but at some point, you need to pull back and look at the facts.

The facts-- again, pre-COVID-- were as follows.  The genius of the American political system, and limited government in particular, is that it limits the damage that can be inflicted by a shitty person, even the worst person on Earth, and nobody on Earth has less virtue than Trump.  So, the economy thrived because capitalism is awesome, and Trump's dumbass schemes were mostly stymied by civil servants and semi-sane appointments.  Of course, he won't make that not-mistake again.

The thing about a president is that he mostly matters in times of crisis.  He's like the driver of a self-driving car.  As long as there are no real challenges, you're fine, but if a sticky wicket appears, you want someone awake, sober and competent rather than a drunken idiot prone to road-rage.

Trump, to is credit, is supposedly a teetotaler, but he doesn't have enough brain cells to spare, and the man is insane.  He got through three years with remarkably good luck before a crisis.  The problem was that in March of 2020, the country faced a major crisis in the form of a pandemic, and Trump's approach to everything is to try to lie his way out of it, which does not, in fact, work with a virus.  I joked that he might try to bluster his way out of it by giving the virus a nickname, but we live in the land of Poe's law, so that's literally what he did.  Kung-flu.  Holy shit, he did that.  He tried to solve a pandemic with a racist nickname for the virus.  It would be funny if we didn't have a death toll over a million Americans.

Managing a pandemic is hard, and retrospectively, the country made a lot of mistakes, some in good faith, and some in bad faith, but Trump's approach was to try to lie his way through it, and that was the beginning of the end.  Then, of course, he lied about the 2020 election, we got January 6, and... holy fuck.

The absolute core of democracy is that we abide by election results and accept the peaceful transfer of power, not that we lie about election results and try to steal the election by force.

That's about as big of a red line as there is.  Prison-level red line?  Jack Smith won't be able to get the case to trial before the election, in all likelihood, and even if he could, I will note several things.  First, he is bringing charges under conspiracy law.  Perhaps you do not remember, or never read the Muller Report in detail, but you may recall "The Trump Tower Meeting," in which Don Jr. and several others met with a Russian spy on the promise of campaign dirt on Hillary Clinton.  Why did that not constitute a violation of conspiracy law?  Conspiracy law does not work the same way as, for example, homicide.  You cannot commit murder and say that you did not know that it was illegal, but conspiracy law is different.  In order to violate conspiracy law, you have to know that the scheme is illegal.  In other words, stupidity is a defense, which was basically what Muller said about Don Jr.  He could never convince a jury that Don Jr. was smart enough to know that it was illegal to accept dirt from a Russian spy, because Don Jr. is so obviously a moron.

And really, if we're honest, isn't he?

See the problem?  Trump, too, is a moron, and that really is a legal defense in conspiracy law.  Probability of a conviction here?  Zero, even if Smith could get this thing to trial, which he probably cannot.

That said, does Trump belong in prison?  For plenty of offenses.  Espionage Act violations, obstruction of justice, for starters.  Red lines.  Hard red lines.

It should be the easiest thing in the world for the Democrats to field a candidate against Trump.  All they need to do is field a candidate who has not crossed a red line.  That's it.  That's a very low bar.

They failed.  I am not talking about bad policy anymore.  I am not even talking about Biden's age-related issues, although he seemed OK during his State of the Union.  I am talking about red lines.  Bad policy is something like spending too much during a period of inflation.  Biden has taken a lot of hard-left turns, and those are bad policy.  A red line is something else.  Something so vile, so morally reprehensible that I simply cannot vote for you.  When facing a man who tried to end American democracy, what could possibly constitute a red line?

Here's a red line.  If you believe in killing the Jews, you are on the other side of a red line.  If you put into action a plan to kill the Jews, you are on the other side of a red line.

And a politician who sides with those on the wrong side of that red line has crossed the red line.

Genocide of the Jews.  Big, red line for me, Jew-boy, me.  It does not matter one whit to me whether the Jew-killin' comes from a large and well-organized army of blonde-haired, blue-eyed Northern Europeans, or, well, let's say someone more intersectional, with identity that appeals to the identitarian left with their postcolonialist ideology of anti-morality.  If you are committed to the genocide of the Jews, you are on the other side of a red line.  A real one.

Anyone who provides aid, comfort or assistance to those trying to commit the genocide of the Jews?  They, too, are on the other side of a red line.  Blonde haired and blue eyed, or leftist identity approved, it matters not at all.  Genocide of the Jews?  No.  That is where we part ways.

All you have to do to get my vote against Trump is a) commit to democracy and the peaceful transfer of power, and b) oppose the genocide of the Jews, and oppose unequivocally all those who support the genocide of the Jews.  You are not a "very fine person" if you support the genocide of the Jews.  This should not be a hard question, morally speaking.

There could be other red lines, like reintroducing slavery, but that does not seem to be on the table at the moment.  I make no predictions about the future.

Genocide of the Jews?  Alas, there are a lot of people in this world who not only believe in it, but act towards it.  If you are on their side, you are not on my side, and I am not on your side.  We are blood enemies.

These are the basic, bare bones facts.  Hamas's charter calls for the killing of the Jews.  It is not ambiguous.  Hamas is the elected government in Gaza, having won because if you look at what the people in Gaza believe about Jews, it is not merely past grievance and resentment nor opposition to West Bank settlements nor anything like that.  They hate Jews.  Not Israel, Jews.  The survey data are quite clear on this.  If you would like to critique ADL's methodology and assert that they overestimate anti-Semitism through some biased survey methodology, you have several problems.  First, the numbers look about right in Western nations, and second, how much of a bias would there have to be for a conclusion about the Arab world to be substantively different?

Take the survey data, take the beliefs, put them in the mouths of Germanic-sounding people with blonde hair and blue eyes, and you'll call them-- the people, not Hamas, mind you-- Nazis.  You will call them fascists, evil, terrible, the worst people in all of history, for what they say about Jews.  But you will only say this if the words come from blonde haired, blue-eyed Northern Europeans, speaking with Germanic accents.

Remember the Mel Gibson rant?  It was a drunken rant, and he got canceled for it, but it's just the start of what nearly everyone in the Arab world, most especially the Palestinian people believe, not about Israel, but Jews.  Question 10 in the ADL survey, and 78% of Palestinians agree with Mad Mel's drunken rant.  And, since they aren't supposed to drink alcohol, what's their excuse?  Tea a bit strong?  Too much garlic in the hummus?

Maybe they couldn't get a good night's sleep.  The screaming of the hostages being raped in the next room kept them awake.

Why did Gaza elect Hamas?  Why did more than 70% of the Palestinian people support the rape, torture and murder of over 1000 Israeli civilians on October 7?

They hate Jews, and they want to kill the Jews.  They raided a peace festival, of hippie children.  Kibbutzim.  And raped women to death, because they are Jews.  The Palestinian people celebrated, because nearly to a person, they believe that Jews secretly control all the banks in the world, and every other conspiracy theory you can name about Jews.  And they want to kill the Jews.  They want to kill the Jews so much that they believe in strapping on suicide bombs, because they will literally kill themselves if it means killing Jews

That last issue at least divides the Palestinians.  Islam, like every other Abrahamic religion, rejects suicide, and suicide bombing is definitionally suicide.  According to Pew's research across the Islamic world, there is overwhelming opposition to suicide bombing within the Islamic world.  Nearly everywhere.

The exception?  The Palestinians.  A slim plurality came out against suicide bombings, by a margin of 49% to 40%, but that 40% support was by far the outlier, so far outside everywhere else as to demonstrate, in conjunction with several other issues, why no Islamic country will accept Palestinian refugees.  They hate Palestinians.  They think that the Palestinians are, well, not the kind of people they want in their countries.  They look at Denmark's experience taking in Palestinian refugees, and the overwhelming rate at which the "refugees" wound up with criminal records, making them the reverse of immigrants here, who commit crimes at lower rates than native-born citizens.  They look at the Palestinians and see, well, not the kind of people they want to invite for dinner.  Why?  Because they think that suicide is vile and forbidden by their religion.  The only ones who think that suicide is OK?  The Palestinians, and then, it is OK only if it means they kill some Jews along the way.

That's how much they hate Jews.  They hate Jews so much that they will literally kill themselves, in violation of their own religion, just to kill some Jews.  They are outliers in the Islamic world.  This is not Islam.  This is so blatantly a violation of the Quran that the rest of the Islamic world hates the Palestinian people for how far out there they are.

They just hate the Jews even more, so they use the Palestinian people while refusing to take them in as refugees, and the rest of the world is too stupid to notice.  Technical term:  useful idiot.

Remember that I am not even a "Zionist."  I take the position of Musonius Rufus, and the other Stoics, that exile is no evil, so no one should have any attachment to land.

This is not about land.  It is about whether or not the Jews get to live.

During Biden's State of the Union speech, we saw a classic "everything before the 'but' is irrelevant" moment, demonstrating why I cannot vote for him.

Observe.

    Slavery is evil.

See?  When there is a full stop, it is boring and anodyne, and you kind of wonder why I might bother to type it.  If there is any controversy, it is why I feel it necessary to state it.  I should not have to state it.  It should be so obvious that I should not have to state it.  Now...

    Slavery is evil.  But...

See the difference?  Is there anything that might follow the ellipsis that wouldn't get the speaker canceled?  Everything before the 'but' is irrelevant.  Add the 'but' and you equivocate at best.  You add conditions, and the conditions are what matter to you, not the statement itself.  Whoever adds the 'but' negates that which comes before the 'but,' in moral terms because you cannot have moral clarity when you speak thusly.

    Rape is evil.  But...

See the problem?  I could keep going, but I should have demonstrated my point.  If you are making a clear moral statement, don't but it out of existence.

    Israel has a right to defend itself.  But...

The same principle applies.  Everything before the 'but' is irrelevant, and the 'but' is not added to the statement for any county other than Israel.  Israel has a right to defend itself.  Full stop, end of discussion.  Attack it, and it can reply with all of the force necessary, full stop, and if you try to add a 'but,' you are the enemy because you do not add that 'but' for any other country, and what makes this country different from all other countries?

The Jews.  Yes, it is about the Jews.  Israel was not attacked because of a dispute over West Bank settlements, nor even Gaza, having withdrawn from Gaza in 2005, and every claim about walls and borders is about one thing.  Those are defensive measures to stop exactly the kind of attack that just happened on October 7 because the Palestinian people believe in the genocide of the Jews, Hamas's charter states its genocidal intent, and all you need to do is listen to the people chanting 'gas the Jews' and related slogans to dispel any lie that this is about anything else.  I am done indulging the lies.  As Solzhenitsyn said, let the lie come into the world, but not through me.

Yes, they are trying to kill the Jews.  Ask them and they are happy to tell you that they want to kill the Jews.

What has Joseph R. Biden said?

He gave the obligatory statement about how Israel ostensibly has a right to defend itself.

But.

But, he claims that Israel's primary responsibility is to spare the Palestinians.  Who attacked them in the most vicious and literally genocidal way the Jews have seen since, yes, invoking Hitler here, Hitler.  He claimed that sparing the Palestinians cannot be a second priority.  Therefore, it is the first priority.

No.  A country attacked has a first priority of defending its people.

Scratch that, first and only.  You can begin to discuss other priorities only after the enemy is defeated.  The Palestinians are the enemy, full stop.  Defeat them.  Surrender, and then we can talk about so-called "humanitarian assistance."  Do not speak to me of "humanitarianism" after doing what you have done, and what you tell me that you celebrate.  Surrender.  That is the choice that must be posed to the Palestinians because of what they have done, which is the most disgustingly evil thing imaginable.

Literally raping girls to death.  At a peace festival.

And the left is on the rapist-murders' side because we live in Clown World.

Surrender or die.  No assistance, no aid, surrender or die, and stop trying to murder all the Jews.

By but-ing Israel's right of self-defense out of existence, and telling Israel to put the lives of those who demand the genocide of the Jews on equal footing, Biden negated the statement that Israel has a right of self-defense.

Here is your homework assignment, children.  Go through all of the wars in all of human history, and find me all of the examples of all of the countries that have been told that their first priority must be sparing the lives of the country that attacked them.  Let's even set aside the question of whether or not the attacking country's population uniformly believes in the extermination of the defending country's race/ethnicity/religion, and just ask the basic question of how many countries have ever been told to put the lives of the country that attacked them on equal footing with their own population.

I'll wait.

...

Granted, I am a political scientist, not an historian, but to my knowledge, the only country that has ever been told to do this is... Israel.  Does the world really value the lives of Palestinians?  See my previous comments about Arab countries refusing to take in Palestinian refugees.  Note, too, all of the deaths ignored in Yemen, Darfur, Syria, the Uyghurs... no, that's not it.

Jews just don't get to defend ourselves.

So I return to the point that there are a lot of people in the world who really do want to commit the genocide of the Jews.  Steps were taken on October 7.  Where does Joseph R. Biden stand on this?  Everything before the 'but' is irrelevant.  No support for Israel, aid and assistance for the genocidal attackers, and a demand that Israel prioritize the lives of the country that attacked it-- a demand not placed on any other country, ever-- ensuring as many more October 7's as they can manage.

Does Joseph R. Biden stand against the genocide of the Jews?  No.  He but'ed that stance out of existence.  He crossed a red line.  There are those in the world who seek the extermination of the Jews, and Joseph R. Biden tells the Jews to prioritize them.

No.

Do not prioritize them.  Stop them.  If they do not surrender, then their fate is their own fault.

The genocide of the Jews is a red line.  If you believe in it, you are on the wrong side of a red line.  If you fail to take a hard line on those who advocate the genocide of the Jews, then you are on the wrong side of a hard, red line.

And it should have been an easy one.  Adolph Hitler is the generic name we use for evil.  Right now, there really is a group actively working for the genocide of the Jews.  It is in their charter, they acted in pursuance of that goal, they are the elected government of Gaza, the people there supported the attack and believe the most atrocious things imaginable about the Jews, they say these things, openly, they literally kill themselves for the sake of killing Jews, people are chanting "gas the Jews" and similar slogans around the world, and Joseph R. Biden tells me to put the lives of those calling for my genocide, and acting towards it on equal footing, and stealing my tax dollars to give to them?

No.

All you have to do to get my vote is be better than Donald J. Trump.

Donald J. Trump is the most un-virtuous person on Earth, and he is actively working to destroy American democracy.  You know what he is not doing?  Giving my money to people who want to murder all the Jews during a war in which a bunch of psychopathic, genocidal maniacs try to murder as many Jews as possible in the most monstrous, inhuman ways imaginable.  Holy shit, how bad do you have to be to make this a contest?  Donald J. Trump is meeting with Viktor Orban, who destroyed Hungarian democracy, but you know what Orban isn't doing?  Trying to murder all the Jews.

How bad do you people have to be to make this a contest?  Every one of these people sickens me.

When each candidate crosses a red line, all the other has to do is meet the low bar of not crossing a different red line.  Donald J. Trump is trying to overthrow American democracy and install himself as an autocrat.  No.  Hard, red line.  Once you cut through the bullshit using the principle of "everything before the 'but' is irrelevant," and evaluate actions, Joseph R. Biden demands that Jews lay down and die, while directly, explicitly calling on Jews to prioritize the lives of those who believe in and work towards the genocide of the Jews.  No.  Hard, red line.  All Biden had to do was meet the low bar of standing firm on the principle of opposing the genocide of the Jews by not adding a 'but.'  He couldn't do it.  Not in today's Democratic Party.  All the Republicans had to do was meet the low bar of accepting the principle of abiding election results and not trying to overthrow democracy with force.  They cannot do that.

I feel ill for the loss of everything for which America once stood.

The Republican Party crossed the red line first, of course, and it has been depressing watching Biden get pulled so far left as to cross a red line.  The Democratic Party nauseates me, and really, if the GOP just dropped their autocracy fetish, I'd join the GOP at this point because the Dems have gone so crazy.  Biden resisted for a long time, but he just did not have the strength to resist.  So he crossed an uncrossable red line.  Right now, I see being a Jewish Democrat kind of like being a black Republican, circa 1972.  Once upon a time, it made sense in identity terms.  The Republicans were the party of abolition, and skin color does not necessarily determine your position on issues like taxation, so one may be cross-pressured anyway, but at a certain point (really, '64) the Democrats flipped on civil rights, so if you were outside the South, that historical party loyalty just ceased to make sense, particularly given Nixon's "Southern strategy" of race-baiting.  If you had voted Republican for a long time (obviously, that needed to be in the North anyway), one can understand vestigial loyalty and its stickiness, but at a certain point, you need to recognize a change.

Jews lean left, politically, for a variety of reasons, but the Democratic Party and what we may call the new left, or the identitarian left?  They hate Jews.  Jews really are starting to recognize that, and it is sinking in, with some discomfort.  Party ID is sticky.  It takes a while for a shift to occur, and Trump does not exactly make it easy for historically Democratic Jews to switch, but a coalition of Rashida Tlaib and Jews is about as unstable as a coalition of the Dixiecrats and African-Americans.  Tlaib is going to tell insane lies about us, and equate Jews with the former, but she is a psychopathic liar, and I don't care what she thinks or says.  No one should.  The point is that the coalition cannot endure because Tlaib and her faction advocate the genocide of the Jews.  Jews have no party.  The Democratic Party is as hostile to Jews right now as the Dixiecrats were to African-Americans.  Fine, I'm switching the time period and party, the point is the instability of the coalition and the absurdity of identifying with a party that hates you.

But here we are.  One autocrat, and one spineless coward who cannot stand up against those who seek the genocide of the Jews.

Both are so poisonous that it is difficult to calculate who is worse.  I am so sad for my country, that this is where we are.

Elektric Voodoo, "Cross That Line," from Telescope.