Trump is boring. The Left isn’t

I remember watching Donald Trump’s inauguration with a three conflicting thoughts

1: Oh my God, Donald-freakin-Trump is actually president. We have reached peak reality TV.

2: This is going to be interesting

3: This is going to be horrifying

To the first point, be honest, does saying “President Donald Trump”, regardless of your political party, STILL not feel a bit weird? Stay tuned for President Sean Hannity or President Samantha Bee, amirite?

No. No I am not right. God help us all if I am.

To the second, Trump’s victory symbolized, at least at the start, a real chance to shake things up. I don’t believe he was the one the RNC wanted, and bringing Reince Preibus aboard was a conciliatory gesture. It was new and exciting, we might be looking at something that cuts regulatory messes, and reducing redundancies in the government ( but what would it look like without them?). And we could be looking at a loosening of gun laws on the federal level, up to and including the death of the GCA and at least the NFA restriction on suppressors.

Yeah, that didn’t happen.

To the third, Trump is crazy. I know some of you think “crazy” is synonymous with “genius”, but no, he’s crazy, and there is evidence he doesn’t always know what he’s doing. Ben Shapiro once noted on the Joe Rogan podcast that even the campaign was a disaster internally.

And now, thinking about it, I’m left to realize just how boring this is. The only things that are interesting so far have come from the Left’s breathless search for a story as a stand-in for a platform, as we bounce between seeing Russia in every conceivable corner, to identity politics being, as Stacy Abrams once observed, is “who we are and how we won”.

The Left, actually, is the most interesting part of the Trump administration. The so-called “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and identity politics becoming a central tenet of the Democratic Party We have Antigua showing up, the media and some Democratic congresspeople encouraging violence against Trump supporters, we have the media and at least one state congressperson doxing political opponents and encouraging others to join in the fun and most interesting, we have one side of the aisle in particular placing “inclusiveness” as so central to their message that they will invite and try to satisfy irreconcilable interests.

Take feminism and transgenderism, a battle that should be raging in the athletic world is actually seeming to be avoided. As transgender women (biological men with all the inherent physical advantages that provides) run roughshod over biological women in everything from MMA to powerlifting to track and field, there seems to be little outcry from those who claim to be in favor of all women. Perhaps this is because all sects are subservient to the almighty “inclusiveness”, which would be acceptable in a vacuum. Unfortunately, this vacuum does not exist, Biology is not a relative science and the encroachment of men into women’s sports would, in a sane world, be aggravating.

While the Left is, on one side of the spectrum, “so open minded their brains are falling out”, the other side is just horrifying. Identity politics having made it mandatory that all must be viewed as part of their collective race or sex, and humor having been reduced to attacking “those other people”, those other people find themselves endlessly mocked and often physically attacked. Also, and I have no idea when this started, but the Left seems to be the ones so offended by everything that it’s a bit of a running joke. So we find the paradox where they are so inclusive that even inherently irreconcilable ideas are welcome, and so offended by everything that the former statement doesn’t seem possible.

And before we get to “well, you’re a white man”, please take the merits of my argument into account and tell me where I’m wrong. My race and gender do not influence objective fact.

 

Pro-choice on the defensive

One of the most fascinating things about the pro-government/anti-government divisions that dictate most of the discussion around today’s major topics is how the anti-government side is supposed to be held responsible for the things that go wrong, while the pro-government side lives under the illusion that with government whatever the issue is will be resolved to near perfection. For example, those in favor of gun rights must defend their stance with the knowledge that there is a downside to civilian owned firearms, that being the existence of evil in people. Those in favor of gun control have positioned themselves in such a way that saying their position has no downside. Historically, unarmed civilians have either lived relatively free or-most prominently- enslaved or executed. Those fighting against abortion have to be made to answer for a rather poor foster-care system, and the (statistically insignificant) amount of pregnancies resulting from rape or incest are used as an excuse to justify all abortions. Pro-choice people have given themselves an added disingenuous safety net, saying that since it cannot be scientifically determined once and for all when “life” begins, that it is reasonable to assume that life begins in the birth canal. Considering children can be born at 22 weeks, it seems more reasonable to assume that the child had elements of a living being before he or she arose from the womb.

On the matter of assisted suicide, it’s a more interesting conundrum. It’s a given where the pro-life movement stands, but now the pro-choice movement has to deal with the fact that someone is willingly choosing to end their life, and doctors are going to be allowed to help them. The irony here is in the pro-choice argument that the child shouldn’t be born because they might wind up in foster care and will suffer. The solution, therefore would seem to be eliminate the sufferer and not work to improve the system (funnily enough, foster care is a government operation).

I spent a bit of time considering if this is any better when the sufferer is already alive. As far as I can tell, it doesn’t. For in either case, to say it is better to eliminate the sufferer than the suffering is to say the foster system either can’t be or won’t be improved and that life does not ever get better.

As an aside, what kind of mindset is “Life is suffering, you should not partake” and how many of them are practicing what they preach? I’m not advocating their suicide. (At all. Under any circumstances and in no way, shape or form.) This is merely to demonstrate the inherent hypocrisy in the idea that suffering renders life invaluable. Some of you are facing difficult battles of your own as am I, and yet we persist on living. What I mean to say is where does this idea of deciding that someone can and it seems some would say should end their lives finds its limit? Do we start killing off autistic people the way Iceland has “cured” Down Syndrome (or perhaps we just need to ban vaccines, amirite, fellas?) What of older people who can’t work and thus can’t contribute to the system that is barely sustaining itself? Since we’ve already established that suffering makes life invaluable, how is being a non-contributor, a burden or a leech preferable?

But what I fail to understand is why this is even a debate. Outside of a terminal illness, should someone be allowed to commit suicide? No! Of course not! Where’s the logic in that? Every time a person chooses to take their lives, we hear the same rigamaroll about how it’s a tragedy and more needs to be done to support mental health and everything. Beyond that, there is not one person who has had someone commit suicide who doesn’t reflect on what they could’ve done or the warning signs they might have missed. But now it becomes a matter of “well, they want to do it, who are we to stop them”. Suicide is often so insidious and unexpected and therefore, if someone is making clear their intention to commit suicide, which rarely happens, why the hell are we now supposed to just take that as a sign to let it happen?

If I had to be charitable, I would say it is in pursuit of the whole “their body, their choice” thing, but I have to wonder what kind of person is so married to that concept as to be accepting of the death of someone. To willingly choose to let someone go.

Then I remember that mindset don’t seem to care if someone chooses to kill the kid in the womb. Life is suffering after all. Why should the kid have to partake?