Who “deserves” it?
I often see remarks such as that of commenter “Wendy Brown,” who writes (the first sentence in the comment is a quote from another comment in the thread):
“If Trump is the nominee, a large segment of the GOP and the independents won’t support him.”
Then they deserve Joe Biden and his open borders.
And if Trump is not the nominee, and a significant segment of his supporters in the GOP as well as some independents decide to not support the eventual GOP nominee, do they also “deserve Joe Biden and his open borders”?
One of the main troubles with this sort of sentiment is that “Joe Biden and his open borders” – or whatever a victorious Biden and the Democrats would do – isn’t just visited on the segment who voted for him. Such consequences are visited on the entire country.
So it always puzzles me when people write that sort of thing about “deserving.” It reminds me of being a child in school, when certain people in the class misbehaved and we all were made to stay after school in detention. I bristled at the idea of group punishment for the actions of a part of the group, and I would sit at my desk for the duration, silently seething.
As a country we are all carried along by whatever happens as a result of an election. As Obama once famously said, “elections have consequences.” Indeed they do, and with the parties far more polarized than they used to be, the consequences can be more and more dramatic and dire. Those on the right who nitpick about this and that, and refuse to vote for the nominee, are definitely enabling the election of the left. But although I don’t think we all “deserve” the consequences, we all experience them.
I am going to make simpler for all of you- it doesn’t matter who you nominate for the GOP ticket. Until Republicans find a way to deal with mail-in-voting, they are locked out of the White House, probably locked out of the Senate post 2024, and the House will follow as Democrats perfect the practice of vote making at the district level. Ten years ago, an incompetent administration like this one would have gotten leveled in the midterm elections leaving the GOP with a 30 seat majority at a minimum, yet all they could get was 5 as the Democrats use of mail-in-voting has spread like a cancer. We aren’t in remission, it is stage 4 right now.
“And if Trump is not the nominee, and a significant segment of his supporters in the GOP as well as some independents decide to not support the eventual GOP nominee, do they also “deserve Joe Biden and his open borders”?”
Yes.
But as a previous commenter noted, it really doesn’t matter. The democrats have the tools and have already demonstrated the will to just create how ever many “votes” they need to “defeat” whoever the eventual GOP nominee is. They likely will only need to turn the votes of two or three states, just like they did (in plain view for all to see) last time.
And the fact that we as a people have tolerated this means that we all deserve our fate.
A people always gets the government it deserves. That’s a law that’s just as immutable as gravity.
Sailorcurt:
I think you’re missing my point about whole groups “deserving” punishment. Whole groups get it, though.
Old saying: The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves
I think Clint said it best:
____________________________
Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.
–Clint Eastwood, “Unforgiven”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4pRe8ul7KQ
I find the whole “deserves” discussion unsatisfying. Reality is much more complicated than that.
The fix is in, I fear. The Democrats could run FDR and he would win. And the rabble bureau-rats would continue to destroy our country. I am terrified. My husband and I are trapped. And if things continue to decline, I do not know what we will do.
There was a LOT I liked about Trump, but I really think he should NOT run. There are too many “never Tumpers” who would turn a blind eye to the Demo-rat cheating just to make sure that “anyone but Trump” wins.
Unfortunately, DeSantis comes across as too much of a cold fish to stir much passion in people. I still think he’d do a great job.
Unfortunately, there are too many entranched bureaucrats, and stupid lefty judges to allow anything to be fixed. Why should an executive order be treated as if it were a duly enacted law, as passed by Congress. Repealing Executive Order 10988 would be a great start — but it has been around for sixty years, sooo… It will never go away as it SHOULD.
Our country is on a downhill slide from which I fear there is no recovery.
I still have my old friends on Facebook, and I find it hard to believe that they don’t care how porous borders the borders are and the effect it has on our society. The destruction of institutions that have brought us order: church, police, meritocracy. The sense that we are a people bound together by something common… All is being destroyed, and the people on the left DON’T CARE — they see it as a FEATURE and not a flaw.
I despair.
That would be “deserves”, not “deserve’s.” What is it with all these errant apostrophes?
Vindictive politics is awful.
Citizens in a true, Democratic Republic should know better than to use politics as a cudgel, or to wish ill on their fellow citizens when they don’t get their way at the ballot box.
Donald J. Trump is very vindictive (so is Joe Biden), and, unfortunately, Trump encourages vindictive behavior among his followers. It is a sad truism that many of Trump’s supporters will disengage from the political process and not vote if he does not win the primary or the general.
I think more Democrat voters are foolishly vindictive than Republican voters, but Democrat voters hold far more repulsion towards any Republican than they do towards all Democrats. So, even in situations where their own party stabs 10% – 20% in the back through a political hit on Bernie Sanders, 100% will still turn out and vote for the Dem candidate in order to keep the Republican from office.
Regarding GOP voters:
A significant percentage of Trump supporters are immature and childish and will refuse to vote for any other GOP candidate for President.
A significant percentage of GOP voters do not want DJT as the nominee (and many despise Trump), but most in this group will vote for DJT if he is the nominee.
A lot of independents who might vote for a GOP candidate will not vote for DJT.
Lee Also,
I know it seems bleak for the long term, but not all churches have been destroyed. If you are not in a good church, find one, while realizing that ” perfect” is not going to happen this side of Heaven. If you cannot find an acceptable one, start a group Bible Study.
The Black Democrat Mayor of Dallas has switched to Republican.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dallas-mayor-leaves-democratic-party-switches-to-gop-american-cities-need-republicans
I am glad I am old enough to have voted for Ronald Reagan. I do not expect I will have the pleasure of voting for a good candidate rather than against the more objectionable one again in my lifetime though who really knows. I am sure many who vote against Trump feel the same way but in a Trump v Biden rematch their opinion leaves me scratching my head, especially those who previously claimed some inclination to vote for Republican candidates.
I have also come to the conclusion over the years that a lot of people gave lip service to voting ‘for the person not the party’ but were really inclined to hope just enough other people voted for Republican candidates because they never intended to.
That would be “deserves”, not “deserve’s.” What is it with all these errant apostrophes?
Marisa:
Clint is replying to Gene Hackman’s line, “I don’t deserve this.”
As I read Clint, and others do too, he is saying, “[Deserve has] got nothing to do with it.”
I suppose one can go both ways.
The idea in school may have been to get the innocent to dislike the guilty and pressure them to behave. Clearly, that isn’t working on a national scale now.
Going through and deleting old emails, I noticed that a lot of people didn’t believe Biden would go as far as he has. Some were poorly informed and didn’t know what Joe was saying. Some may have liked Old Joe enough to dismiss what he was saying. Many others thought Congress would keep Joe in line. His more radical ideas would be rejected, they believed, and normality would result. All of them were wrong.
Voting for president is a gamble, and one of the factors is whether the new president would truly have a free hand. There may be something to be said for a multi-party system where people could vote for what they wanted in a more straightforward way.
huxley, I think your usage was correct.
Christopher B (5:26 pm) said: “I have also come to the conclusion over the years that a lot of people gave lip service to voting ‘for the person not the party’ but were really inclined to hope just enough other people voted for Republican candidates because they never intended to.”
It has long seemed to me that voting ‘for the person not the party’ is akin to
– perceiving one’s self as an independent-minded individual, and
– consequently, not wanting to identify with an established party,
at least in part because of the many knuckleheads belonging to that established party.
I sympathize somewhat. I bristle at being thought of as a Republican — please note that I will *not* under foreseeable circumstances, vote for *any* candidate of the Democrat party (or Green, or Socialist, you get the picture) — because I do not identify as what many of us regard as an establishment (or “swamp”) Republican.
Why? I simply do not identify as a go-along-to-get-along Republican; I believe I see some things for what they truly are, and go-along-to-get-along Republicans either do not see what I see or they do see but look the other way, I suppose to get along.
Then again, we on the right [I’ll identify that way, even though I have some differences with certain factions on the right] have got to form coalitions with establishment types if our objectives are ever going to come to fruition.
There are in our world prominent currents of sociopolitical thought, and specific ideas within a current tend to be held concurrently by shared ideals, principles, and goals. Is it practically self-contradictory to adhere to one idea without adhering to many/most of the ideas in that current?
I fancy myself both self-consistent and independent-minded. Is *that* pairing essentially self-contradictory, a dualism, given the dominance of the major (i.e., for me, right-leaning) current that carries me along?
Time to come to conclusions. Voting ‘for the person not the party’ is, then, either
– a sign of someone who has not thought through these prominent currents of thought, or
– has thought them through but will not align him/her/itself with either/any current.
Finally, is the latter a sign of deep, considered analytic thought, or is it in essence frivolous political dilettantism?
With all due respect, Ms. Neo, I believe your question misses the point of the Trump phenomenon.
The American people did not vote for open borders, or shipping our jobs off to China, or a malevolent EPA. The GOP establishment paid lip service to dealing the border, bringing jobs back to the US (to a lesser extent), and reducing regulations (albeit not the truly onerous ones). But they actually did absolutely nothing to correct any of the above. Trump promised to do something about them. And he actually did do something about them. Maybe not as much as we had hoped, but more than all the post-Reagan Republicans combined.
Trump kept his promise. No other Republican did. So, for that reason, his supporters will not transfer their support to other Republicans out of fear of being lied to and burned again.
This situation is not on Trump or his supporters. It is on the GOP establishment who lied to Republican supporters over the years. Therefore, the burden of swallowing their pride and supporting a candidate they don’t like in Trump is on them. And the blame for a Trump loss and its consequences falls on them as well.
Jon Baker — I know not all churches have been destroyed, but the left has effectively destroyed the greater influence of Christianity on our society as a whole. The effect had been to remove influences of Christianity and the Bible from the public sphere. It’s destroy many denominations: look what’s happening to Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Episcopal congregations across the country. In my old home town, what were once four fairly large congregations are just gone. Defunct. Poof. Empty buildings. The loss of the influence of going to church as a family has destroyed the institute of the family.
I listened to some idiot on NPR bemoan the lack of morality being taught, but in all of his suggestions, not one involved returning to church and learning the Bible.
Some of us still go. And there are people leaving the dying denominations for less morally relativistic and ambiguous ones. (And the faithful ones are, thank God, growing!)
But what concerns me is that our society as a whole has given up on church.
Jeff Cox:
It is quaint that an argument and the political situation can be reduced to President Trump and everyone else. Notably absent in your world is any responsibility of President Trump in preventing the catastrophe that was the 2020 election and the installation of the Brandon junta. The Executive has a lot of power in who he appoints and what priorities he sets, ensuring that the election was not “fortified” and getting played by Fauchi, Brix, and the Covid cabal (CDC, FDA, etc.) implies to me that President Trump was not effective in the most serious of the battles he faught.
But it is easier to lay blame on the GOP while ignoring the infinitely more malevolent leftist Democrats.
Lee Also:
There are alternatives to the progressive mainline denominations. Our congregation left the PCUSA (Presbyterian Church USA) about 15 years ago for the ECO (Presbyterian) affiliation. The PCUSA continues its slow death by progressive theology.
We are swimming against the tide of the dominant culture to be sure. But outreach and evangelism continues nonetheless. The Alpha program is one tool
that we have been using for 20 years https://alphausa.org/.
Jeff Cox:
This post is not about “the Trump phenomenon,” a topic I’ve written about elsewhere many many times and about which I have a very good grasp. This post is about the idea of group blame. It is also about what to do in the election of 2024 in order to fight the left whether Trump is the nominee or someone else is the nominee.
om,
You’re right. I did not discuss Trump’s role in preventing the catastrophe of the 2020 election. And you know why? For the same reason I did not discuss the last episode of Ahsoka. It’s irrelevant, as least as to why Trump’s supporters are so loyal. They care that he finally did what they had been clamoring to be done for so long.
As POTUS, Trump’s job was not to delve into the mechanics of voting. That is the job of the party organizations. What the Democrats did in Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Atlanta was nothing new; the Democrats had been doing exactly the same thing in Lake County, Indiana, for more than two decades. The Democrats passed those tactics on to their party organizations across the country. What did the Republicans do to counter it? Oh, right. Nothing.
For 20 years they did nothing. And that is Trump’s fault how?
Jeff Cox:
Ok. Carry on in your own world.
It is irrelevant that we have apparently deserved Brandon when we voted for President Trump. President Trump couldn’t muster the Executive agencies or motivate the State agencies to do anything effective leading up to the fortified election? Pathetic excuse Jeff.
The opposite of TDS is what Jeff Cox has.
“And the blame for a Trump loss and its consequences falls on
them as wellthose who don’t vote for him.”“And if Trump is not the nominee, and a significant segment of his supporters in the GOP as well as some independents decide to not support the eventual GOP nominee, do they also “deserve Joe Biden and his open borders”?”
Silly hypothetical. It is highly likely that Trump will be the nominee. Sure, I think that DeSantis would do a better job of governing. My question is rather how much of the blame for FJB and his disastrous Administration should fall on the GOPe and Never Trumpers, who actively tried to sabotage his election and Administration? And even more, the damage that another Biden Administration would do to this country?
What Jeff Cox said at 8:10 pm and his following comments. People just don’t get it.
Ms. Neo,
And my point is, in this case, you can’t separate the two. Put another way, the idea of “group blame” in the case of Trump can’t be considered in isolation from the reasons Trump was elected in the first place.
Whendy Brown:
Those “people” are in your mirror.
“Unfortunately, DeSantis comes across as too much of a cold fish to stir much passion in people. I still think he’d do a great job.” “It is highly likely that Trump will be the nominee. Sure, I think that DeSantis would do a better job of governing. ”
• Manager and Executive are two different roles.
• DeSantis will not be the first or last example of that point.
• Others may not evaluate DeSantis the same way some of us do – Distraction, Doctrine, Plan, Command Presence, etc. – but many have come to the same conclusion (see support).
• That does not mean that DeSantis can not end up being the Republican nominee – we will regret how that outcome was achieved (see ballot & lawfare efforts) – but even those of us who are willing to support the Republican nominee will not be enough for DeSantis to win the general election.
• DeSantis will go down in history as an example of a young politician that squandered his political future.
om,
You miss the point like an imperial stormtrooper misses the target. Let me put this in terms even you can understand:
The people who voted for Trump in the general, regardless of their motivations (is that too many syllables for you to process?), are not to blame for his not being in the White House. Those people who did not vote for Trump, especially those Republicans who did not vote for him, are indeed to blame.
Now, is that sufficiently clear, or do I have to get the crayons out for you?
In the military, when I was in, mass punishment was not allowed. That is, you didn’t punish a unit for the shortcomings of one or more individuals.
When a unit did not perform up to spec–this is not in a combat situation–then possibly there may be no passes this weekend, while you losers figure out how to do better next time.
But not because one or two misbehaved. It wouldn’t be analogous to Neo’s third grade.
However, there is a kind of gray area where it is presumed that there are internal mechanisms where responsible members can lean on the losers. Might work, might not. And the threat to the responsible majority of…no passes this weekend might be a motivation. Or, perhaps, there is some education. Guys need to go over the call for fire. Or land navigation. Can be done during quiet time, quick class on the subject by a guy who’s good at it.
So, if the nation “deserves” it, I suppose it would be a matter of blaming the Trump folks for not defeating anti-Trumpism in the general electorate. More discussion. Show up at meetings. Speak up. Watch the voting locations. While I wouldn’t like to think I “deserve” whatever happens, I might have contributed one more mite to the issue, to some profit.
Jeff Cox:
You must use crayons by default; President Trump did some very good things but screwed the pooch in 2020. Not just the election, the whole F’en year. He let the left set the rules and the narrative. George Floyd riots, Portland, Seattle, the totally ineffective response to election fortification. On his watch.
Got that? Clear enough?
I voted for him in 2020 and will vote for him in 2024 if that is the option. Nonetheless he didn’t beat Brandon in 2020.
om,
Evidently you spent 2020 watching MSNBC and believing it. I better get out the real thick toddler crayons for you.
In the wake of the riots, Donald Trump tried to declare Antifa and BLM terrorist groups. He got massive resistance from Democrats and little support from the Republican establishment.
In the wake of an unprecedented biological attack on the US by China, Trump listened to federal health officials, who were lying to him. He got similarly poor advice from Democrats. And little countering advice from the Republican establishment.
But 2020 is all Trump’s fault. Right.
BTW: Trump did win the 2020 POTUS election, absent the massive vote fraud in Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Atlanta. Which followed the Lake County, Indiana playbook page by page.