Coming Home to the Republican Party

I was twenty years old when I first voted for George W. Bush in the election of 2000. I haven’t voted since 2004. Once your fury tremors have subsided, read on to find out why and what I intend to do about it.

Bush wasn’t our best or worst president. While it’s fair to be critical of his tenure, it’s also fair to mention I wouldn’t have wanted to be president on 9/11. In 2004 I was happy he started a war of retribution against the Taliban in Afghanistan but furious he started a preemptive war in Iraq. I wasn’t all that happy voting for him against John Kerry. I was disillusioned with the Republican Party for their having gone overboard in their war on terror, using it to justify massive overreach while simultaneously losing sight of the capture or killing of Bin Laden. That’s America for you, though. Exaggerated overreactions only come second as a cultural marker to throwing piles money at problems.

I refrained from voting in 2008. My marriage was falling apart and I was caught up in the worries and cares which come along with that. Plus, I didn’t care much for John McCain, judging him to be a man of too severe a temperament to thoughtfully manage the job. I had also created lasting damage to my eyes vigorously rolling them at the idiocy on display from Sarah Palin. When Obama was elected, a hardcore republican friend approached me at church and fretfully asked “What are we gonna do now?”. I said I suppose we will go about our business, working our jobs, praying for our president, loving our spouses, and providing for our children. Kind of weird how doing those things leads things to work out just fine. By the time Obama was made a lame duck president by the wave of Tea Party Republicans in 2010, I had come to realize that most presidents are largely inconsequential in the life of a person who loves their neighbor, obeys the law, and works their vocation to the glory of God.

Ben Shapiro is my favorite conservative commentator. On top of being legally and politically brilliant, he’s not overbearingly partisan. He’s even-keeled when it comes to criticizing the bad behavior of both sides. Intellectual honesty being important to me because if you take “intellectual” out of that phrase, all you have left is “honesty” and if you don’t have honesty, you don’t have the truth. In other, shorter words, you’re a liar. Partisan pundits are liars because they refuse to denounce bad behavior of those on their side while vehemently condemning that of their opponents; a practice I find off-putting enough to vomit. Shapiro says the 2012 election broke the country. He states Obama saw his reelection as a mandate to move govern even more like a radical while race-baiting and scandalizing the police.

Again, I didn’t vote in 2012. I had just finished my second college degree and was a fledgling teacher being paid a measly $33,000/year at the age of 32 while struggling to raise four kids alone after about as bitter and weird a divorce as you can possibly imagine. The children had been abandoned by their selfish, narcissistic, adulterous, lesbian mother. To answer the prophet Isaiah: yes. A mother can forget her suckling child. And I was a teacher in an inner city school making $33,000/year. I had to deliver pizzas and Uber on the weekends while landscaping in the summer just to make it. For some reason the election that year wasn’t high on my priority list. A country as strong as ours can take a few hits from a mediocre president, and the man who tackles the day and its cares with verve and ethical thought can largely ignore who is sitting in a fancy chair in D.C.

Then along comes 2016. I was done with the GOP and voting at that point. I’m a moral conservative and a political liberal. I hold and fail high moral standards for myself on a daily basis but see no reason to intrude on the life of my fellow man if he isn’t harming my person, picking my pocket, or bearing false witness against me. So of course I couldn’t vote for Hillary. She and her ilk despise anyone who would impose their Christian morality but are would-be tyrants when it comes to forcing their secular ethics on others. But I absolutely abhorred Trump. I’m not alone in this. Some of my favorite conservatives didn’t vote for him in his first go-around. I don’t watch reality television as a hard and fast principal, but I knew him as a man who worships money; second only on the revolting scale to people who worship themselves. I saw Trump as the Republican answer to Clinton; a womanizer with no personal scruples and shameless sensibilities. But in more ways than that, he is the answer to Clinton. Slick Willy governed as a moderate democrat. Certainly his form of governance has been left in the dust by the modern democrats. He was tougher on crime than they ever would consider being, fiscally responsible, and presided over a strong economy. No democrat since Clinton has been tough on crime or presided over a strong economy.

Trump 2016-2019 was a rather pleasant surprise. He sounded like a radical in his rhetoric but knew how to make deals and spend wisely while simultaneously backing off and letting business owners and entrepreneurs do their thing. The world’s worst dictators and terrorists were kept in check during his four years. Plus, he eschewed the war-hawking of Bush-era neo-cons by avoiding wars and large-scale conflicts altogether. 2020 with COVID and the riots made for a disaster of a year but that is largely the fault of democrat politicians who seemed to see their position as one of ruling, not serving. Either way, I should have gotten to the election box or filled out a voter form. That’s the only election I avoided for which I will apologize.

So Sleepy Joe was elected. Joe Biden is the biggest disaster of a president since Jimmy Carter. Every definable attribute of our country and the world over which the office of the president has influence is demonstrably and empirically worse off under Biden. Carter was walloped by Ronald Reagan in 1979. If Trump had the charm and rhetorical wit of Reagan, I would say the election would already be in the bag. Carter had the good graces to build houses for poor people and do more for the country for many years following his presidency than he ever did while president. Biden has no such retirement waiting for him. He’s seventeen years younger than Carter and is serving more than forty years after Carter left office. He’s older than the democrat president who left office twenty-four years ago. It’s really weird saying things like that.

Democrats have their water carried by the mainstream media. So they don’t get pushback when they say something stupid or untruthful. When this happens, you don’t form any rhetorical calluses. When you don’t form any rhetorical calluses, you lose elections because the American people aren’t so stupid as all that, particularly independent voters. I consider myself an independent because I’m repulsed by enslaved partisan thinkers.

What’s irritating is partisan thinkers on the left refuse to acknowledge the disaster that is their guy. Sure enough, the same type of people on the right do the same thing. But their guy isn’t in office right now. Partisan thinkers are enslaved by affiliation and aren’t intellectually honest. I rejected this thinking long ago and found it to be emotionally liberating. You always know when you’re conversing with an enslaved thinker when they call you a name like “RINO” or some such nonsense which shows their allegiance to party supersedes allegiance to truth and sound moral action.

Which means when challenged by Biden’s age-related decline, incompetence, leftist radicalism, and corruption, partisan thinkers repeat trite lines like “He’s doing an amazing job” or “He’s the most accomplished president of my lifetime”. Partisan thinkers are stupid enough to think everyone else is as stupid as they are and they’d inadvertently and arbitrarily create voters for the other guy if they were to be intellectually honest and evenhanded in dissemination of valid criticism. They also say “This is the most important election in the history of our country”. I’m 44 years old and have heard that last one every election since Barbara Streisand and Alec Baldwin threatened to leave the country if Dubya was elected. All I can say in as sarcastic tone as possible is thank God the right guy was elected every time doomsayers said it was the most important election and our country wasn’t destroyed.

Intellectually honest thinkers on the left have the good graces to admit Biden’s shortcomings. For that and other reasons, Bill Maher is my favorite liberal commentator. He’s not as politically or legally brilliant as Shapiro but knows more than enough to be dangerous. He’s also much funnier than Shapiro. I’ve been watching him for years grow increasingly more frustrated with the crazies on the left. Just like Shapiro, he calls out bad behavior from those who agree with him politically instead of explaining it away, engaging in spin, or acting like there are mitigating factors. Classical liberals still believe in things like objective truth and empirically definable reality, so he’s let the leftist whack jobs have it on the regular.

But then came the gloating. When Trump was found guilty, Twitter was flooded with leftist gloating. I wanted to hear what Maher had to say. Sure, he made some jokes about it during his monologue but you can’t gauge a show host’s true feelings by the monologue. That’s the place for recognizable topics deftly exaggerated. Sure enough though, he joined the gloating and intellectual dishonesty in the panel discussion and not once mentioned the glaring issues with the Stormy Daniels case’s conviction. I can’t stand people who turn on a person for one trifling thing so overreacting is never on the table for me. I won’t stop watching, enjoying his show, laughing at his jokes, or praising him when he makes sense and is reasonable. I still like Maher but on this topic I am of the mind he’s way off.

I’m not a law student or expert. So when I wanted to learn about this case I turned to people who are. Ben Shapiro regularly broke down all of the norms, jurisdictions, and legal boundaries violated by this case during the month of May 2024. If you wish to see for yourself his podcast archive from that time is a wonderful resource. I’ve already stated he’s an intellectually honest commentator but because I believe in being thorough I wanted the opinion of someone on the other side. Mark Geragos fits that bill. Not only does he despise Trump personally, he’s going to represent Hunter Biden in an upcoming lawsuit filing. On his podcast and Adam Carolla’s he routinely broke down the norms, jurisdictions, and legal boundaries violated by this case. Geragos also appeared in a hilarious segment in which Piers Morgan asks an enslaved partisan thinker what Trump’s crime was and not getting a straight answer. Find that gem here. Adam Carolla hilariously posed a hypothetical in which Biden is tried by a jury selected from a deeply red county of Alabama by a judge who had regularly given to the republican party and whose daughter worked and raised money for the GOP and republicans disingenuously acting incredulous when the opposition remonstrated upon the occasion of a guilty verdict being returned.

There is no conclusion an intelligent and intellectually honest person must come to is the justice system was criminally and corruptively used as a plaything by powerful people on the left so they could victimize their political opponent. Being a conservative and an overall reasonable person of intelligence, I am free to reject the toxic and retarded identity politics of the left and say that yes, a straight, white billionaire man is able to be victimized. For I understand that the level of wealth, comfort, power, fame, and other pretty but trifling things people seek don’t mitigate the crime when someone hurts or steals from them.

Rejection of identity politics and adoption of Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative—paraphrased to read that a thing is always right or always wrong without extenuating circumstances or mitigating factors—keep modern life very simple. I am free to judge people as individuals and their actions singly as they come.

Someone who rejects the categorical imperative might say that Trump has made shady business deals or steamrolled lesser persons in the past and so things are coming back around to him. I would say that I’m completely disinterested in Karmic realignment with my fellow man and that a specious and fallacious criminal case so obviously propped up and formulated so as to have a pre-determined outcome in order to achieve a political end is always wrong, no matter the character and nature of the man at the center of it. Trump has had deals go south and been sued before he entered political life. Such is the norm for people who employ thousands, own billions of dollars’ worth in assets, and engage in thousands of deals throughout their life. I won’t categorically accept that all he’s done is rotten or that all he’s done is righteous. For you see, I’m a self-aware human being who has a small modicum of intelligence along. I also wholeheartedly reject partisan thinking and hero worship. He’s like the rest of us; some of what he does is good, some bad. We’re nuanced and complex, to put it another way.

A devotee of identity politics will say that a rich, white, heterosexual man can’t suffer unjustly in this unjust country set up to his advantage at all times. I would say just as he doesn’t take part in the righteous deeds of the men who look like him and abide in the same socioeconomic class, there is no collective guilt in any group. Each man sometimes bears the rewards of his good deeds and sometimes bears the consequences of his bad deeds. My faith makes it plain and simple I can’t even bear my own sin and need a savior to rescue me from it. I’m certainly not going to sit here and try to bear the sin of others. Uncomplicated, you see? Aforementioned devotee might retort that rich, straight, white men don’t suffer any consequences for their bad deeds in America. At that point I would say “You’re too stupid and chained to an ideology to properly debate. Please excuse me while I go stand…somewhere else”.

I watched Trump’s address of the press immediately following the verdict multiple times. He’s typically a loquacious man and never at a loss for words. On this occasion he was quite terse and visibly upset. I accepted that he was emotionally distraught at having a lie put on his name. I don’t think for one second he’ll see the inside of a jail for this. Democrats would be strategically foolish to mandate imprisonment. What’s more, he’s a rich man in his late 70’s. A non-violent or non-drug related felony conviction is a minor thing to a man in such a season of life. But the principle of being lied on is the bothersome aspect.

I believe one can reject all of the Bible except the ten commandments and reasonably expect a peaceful life. I believe a culture can encourage widespread adherence to the ten commandments and reasonably expect a peaceful civilization. Prager University talks about this quite often in their videos and other various intellectual properties. But when it comes to public life and a justice system, three of the commandments are the most important: 1. Thou shalt not kill (murder). 2. Thou shalt not steal. 3. Thou shalt not bear false witness. The other seven have to do with a man’s relationship to God, thought life, and emotional disciplines. These other three are all about externalities having to do with hurting one’s fellow man in some way. I can covet my neighbor’s wife, manservant, maidservant, ox, or ass without him being hurt by my thoughts or even ever knowing about it. But if I murder him, steal his oxen, rape his wife, and accuse his manservant of my crimes, I’ve hurt many people in many different ways.

If you look at the laws of this and other developed countries with a bent toward justice, you’ll see these three commandments at the root of the overwhelming majority of their laws. Many Christians have taken the one about bearing false witness to mean they should never lie. I agree, it’s wrong to lie. But I can lie to a person without hurting that person. It’s when I accuse a person of a heinous deed they didn’t do that I’ve hurt them, for I’ve opened them up to false retribution by a justice system intended to punish said heinous deed.

I vividly remember an example of bearing a false witness from my sixth grade in a local private Christian school. I and my siblings had switched schools at the start of my fifth grade. I was a chubby kid from a middle class family newly entering a small school of wealthy and athletic kids who had known each other since kindergarten. So I wasn’t the most popular kid and I foolishly chased popularity. My twin brother on the other hand matured at a younger age and couldn’t have cared less about popularity. He was happier than I for it. Before the bell rang to start the day we students were all in the back socializing and hanging our stuff in the lockers located at the back of the classroom. I saw one of the popular kids stealing a box of pens from my twin’s locker.

He was the son of the teacher so there was an added component of perceived favoritism. My brother cared nothing of the social order or playground retribution for tattling, so he went right to the authorities. When my brother told the teacher someone took his box of pens, she grew furious at my gentle brother once again being bullied by a class she had had many troubles with already. She came to the back where the kids were congregated and demanded an answer. Without missing a beat, her son told her I had stolen them. I was devastated. Here I was having a lie put on my name which I knew he had done. This all seemed like an elaborate plot by God and man to destroy any chance of happiness (more importantly popularity) I would ever have. With demonstrably less verve and force than the other boy had displayed, I told teacher I had actually seen him take the pens from my brother’s locker, and that this wasn’t the first instance of this boy picking on my twin. Happily for me, she believed me. The pens were found. She punished him in school and at home later on. I said “perceived favoritism” above because she was a discerning, fair woman and knew the character of the son she had on her hands.

Many years later I had lies put on my name in the bitter and horrific divorce I was subjected to. I won full custody, the house, the car, child support, and even the dog in the state of Michigan; a liberal no-fault divorce hellhole with an obvious slant towards women. So I must say that my experiences with false witness being born against me have typically worked out in the end. But it doesn’t lessen the hurt of the witness when you don’t know the outcome is going to be positive. I didn’t know of my ex-wife’s adultery until five months into the divorce. Neither did our family or friends. We were part of a very conservative, fundamental Baptist church. Divorce is a taboo to such folk. During those five months she covered her tracks by telling everyone in our social circles she was divorcing me because I was beating her and the children. To have such a lie put on my name by an adulterous wife is like being doubled over on the ground with pain stemming from a savage punch to the gut just to be viciously kicked in the teeth.

To put it mildly, I can empathize with former President Trump. The press conference with Biden’s creepy smile after the guilty verdict was pretty much the last straw. Watch that video here. Logically broken down, that smile can have no good reason to have happened. As he left the podium a journalist asked him if Trump was right to accuse him for this trial and conviction. She reiterated her question as he paused in his gait and asked for his thoughts. Either he’s deaf, a dotard of a crumbling old man who didn’t understand what was happening and quickly but inappropriately decided to smile, or he’s giving us a very strident and not-so-subtle hint that he’s going to do this and whatever else he damn well chooses to do while he’s in power. I like to default to benefit of the doubt but stridency is where I’m leaning. The ridiculous nonsense surrounding COVID, the obvious assassination of Jeffrey Epstein, and a long history of corruption and lies from a very unimpressive man currently residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave tip the scales of my mind in that direction.

And then the assassination attempt. If awful people oppose and are trying to kill you, you’re doing something right. The dictatorial leaders of China, Russia, and all Iran oppose another Trump presidency. The dictatorial leaders of China, Russia, and Iran are arguably the three worst people on the planet, especially when you factor in their outsized capacity for imposing suffering on others, which they are so readily available to do at any given moment. Lost in the shuffle of Thomas Crooks’ attempt on Trump’s life and the crazy news cycle that has been July and early August 2024 was another attempt on his life by Iranian proxies. Since these three governments are allied and in league, it’s not a stretch of reality to presume they all knew about it.

Back to Crooks. Weak-minded people are all around us, doing as they’re told by those they worship, falling in line, wearing face diapers, getting a booster shots in the dozens at this point, parroting talking points with no logical filter or laundering mechanism to clean or reject them altogether, and stealing peace of mind from everyone else in an incessant manner. Democrat leaders and pundits are not personally responsible for the murderous attempt on Trump. But their rhetoric is easily construed as a call to action for one of these aforementioned weak-minded people, particularly if one is a deranged, miserable loner with no prospects or potential in life. Calling Trump “Hitler” and an “existential threat to democracy” creates a moral injunction wherein assassination is actually a righteous act in the mind of such a person. I am frankly surprised it took this long, and that there haven’t been more attempts. Maybe it’s because the overwhelming majority of guns are in the hands of legal and responsible gun owners, but that’s another discussion for another day.

I’m not a doomsayer or given to hyperbole. This country can survive another four years of this idiot or the other idiot who will finish his term if he passes or becomes mentally unfit after reelection (as seems likely). If he and successive power-hungry, corruptible men keep doing what he’s doing, the good ‘ol US of A will go the way of Venezuela and other erstwhile territorial gems that have fallen by the wayside as would-be dictators vampirically sink in their teeth. Contrary to what Trump has said himself, this is not the most important election in the history of our country because it isn’t the one that elected a man who freed the slaves and preserved a fragmented nation. We aren’t going to be taken over by China, Russia, Iran, or lesser enemies in the next four years, even though slow death by a thousand cuts is certainly on the table for discussion and debate. I don’t put my faith in a political party and I intend to work, love, and provide for my children as the top priorities of my temporal life all along the way. I don’t ever worry or fret about anything (maybe that part of me is just broken) because I see those actions as unproductive in my professional life and counterproductive to my peace of mind.

Furthermore, I don’t see it as my lot in life to fight the globalists. Many, if not most, republicans will disagree vehemently with me on this. But my faith’s guiding document provides a simple answer to this. The Antichrist will one day rule the world with heretofore unseen political and supernatural power. If we are living in the end times, there is nothing I can do to stop this man from achieving that goal. If we are not in the end times, I can vote responsibly, work hard, and prudently plan for a tomorrow that I don’t know with 100% surety is coming or not coming. For all that he can do wielding the power of the American president, Trump cannot stop the rolling of history into prophesied times. If my faith is not true, I have concluded it’s my moral duty to hold off radical and violent rhetoric and actions until the globalists have played their hand. You can call me a fool for such a reticent stand. I will endure that pejorative with as much grace and dignity as has been given me.

I also can’t believe Trump is a savior figure in that he will fix all that is wrong with our government. I also believe he doesn’t need to. His smart, moderate governance with a conservative bent was fantastically successful here and on the world stage before COVIVD blew it all up. A reprieve from blatantly avoidable economic and geopolitical issues would be the refreshing change I’m looking for in adding my vote to the fray. I raised my four children to understand that the government’s role in the life of a free man who abides by the law and refrains from hurting his neighbor can maintain at the level of a minimal annoyance. So I didn’t imprint on them the idea that voting is a moral imperative. Again, you can call me a fool. Some of my closest friends have already done so over the years. I just don’t see it expected of the redeemed sinner anywhere in the Bible to be politically active.

Remember all those years ago you started reading this essay and I said I was going to tell you what I intend to do about having not voted since 2004? Now is that time. My 23 year old son is married and out of the house. He’s never voted. I’ve implored him to vote for Trump. My 25 year old daughter is still living at home; entrance into adulthood being a steady but gradual path for an autistic person. She’s never voted. She’s already agreed to registering to vote and coming with me November 5th to vote for Trump. My 18 year old son is entering his senior year of high school. He’s further down on the autism spectrum than my daughter and adulthood is going to be an even more difficult climb for him. He’s getting a state ID, registering to vote, and coming with mem to vote for Trump as well. In a year, my baby will be 18 and we will see how things go politically after that. For now, I have done my part to add four votes to President Trump’s tally in 2024. I hope and pray that will satisfy those who would scold me for my inactivity over the years and the outcome will be good.

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