Electing Donald Trump is not going to end the Left's assault on our civilization

It's too entrenched, has built up too much momentum, and appeals too much to those who haven't thought very deeply about their freedom

Conservatives and Trumpists generally don’t have much use for each other. A fundamental tenet that they hold in common, though, is that leftism is a threat to the moral and intellectual foundations of the liberty enjoyed by Americans and citizens of any nation that has embraced, at least largely, the lineage of thought from which liberty-prioritizing institutions of government and civil society come.

There is a third category on the scene today as well. It’s generally referred to as the anti-anti-Trumpers, not exactly an elegant formulation, but one that works.

Trumpists are members in good standing of the cult. They really and truly admire the Very Stable Genius. “He fights” and all that. They’ll shamelessly shill for him in their journals, on their television and radio programs, and at White House press briefings. They continue to argue, in spite of four years of evidence that he brings complete incoherence, pettiness, vulgarity and no motivation higher than self-glorification to the presidency, that he represents some kind of conservatism that supplants what has been been commonly recognized by the use of that term for nearly a century.

But then there are the anti-anti-Trumpers, whose principal points of attempted persuasion of actual conservatives are the binary-choice argument which has been around since the summer of 2016, and the good-moves side of the ledger since Trump has been president.

That second point does indeed necessitate acknowledgement by actual conservatives. The judicial appointments have been exemplary. Economic activity is far less shackled by regulation than has been the case in decades. Support, whether driven by Trump’s well-known transactional motivation for anything, or something more sincere, for the right of the unborn to life, and for freedom for Christians to act according to their faith in the public square is a welcome development.

But in so many instances, his incoherence inclines him to sully his own case, poison his own well. Consider the way he’s "defended” his repeal of the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing act, enacted during the Obama era. The repeal is right and proper. FFHA is radical and socially damaging. It bases public policy on demographics, class and economics, as if we need any more policy driven by such considerations. It disempowers local governments. It’s central planning on steroids.

But how did Trump couch his defense of the repeal? By, in a manner consistent with his getting-a-good-deal worldview, citing the hit to property values that suburban dwellers suffer by the introduction of low-income housing, as well as an appeal to the “suburban housewife’s” fear of encroaching crime and drug activity. He played right into progressives’ hands, offering them the low-hanging fruit of a caricature of the real argument against FFHA. He made it sound like the heart of the matter was making sure no smelly lowlifes befoul suburbanites’ pristine enclaves of upright living.

Regarding the civil unrest that has kept the nation aflame this summer, he has made it clear that he doesn’t have the rhetorical chops to frame the matter properly. Because of his track record in discussing matters of race (“I assume there are good people on both sides,” an utterance so clumsy that it defies all attempts by Trumpists to split hairs and deny that he was giving white nationalists a pass), he’d be exactly the wrong person to make the case that screamingly needs to be made. Black Lives Matter is indeed a radical leftist organization. Its platforms include dismantling the “patriarchal” nuclear family and implementing reparations. Two of BLM’s founders, Patrice Cullors and Alicia Garza, are self-described “trained Marxists.” Antifa is likewise a radical movement. An articulate, knowlegeable president could spell out the opportunism behind the explosion of violence in the wake of the deaths of George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks and Jacob Blake. An articulate, knowlegeable president could point out that two of the three were loaded on hard drugs at the time they were resisting arrest and the other was drunk, and that all three had criminal histories of the most violent sort, while keeping the emphasis on their status as individual human beings whose behavior would be unacceptable whatever their color. But Trump has gone in for a by-golly-we’re-going-to-get-hooliganism-off-our-streets tone, even directing his attorney general to publish a list of “anarchist jurisdictions” (one of the Very Stable Genius’s more ripe self-coined terms) on the Department of Justice website, so that they can be pinpointed for denial of federal funding.

The point here is that he has no understanding of cultural history, of how deep the roots of the various leftist movements kicking in the door of Western civilization go. He can’t tell you a thing about the evolution of feminism, or mainstreaming of unorthodox sex lives, or racial militancy.

Again, he recently made a very good move by telling federal agencies to stop training in critical race theory and “white privilege.” But, again, his track record makes it easy for the Left to portray the move as a raw bid for racial power.

The permeation of our society by leftist assumptions is so complete on all levels that even if the Republican Party was in better shape and had a halfway grown-up presidential candidate, rolling back that permeation would be a Herculean task. City councils in Democrat-run cities defunding those police departments are only a fraction of the problem. Republican-majority city councils - and school boards and civic organizations such as chambers of commerce and education-focused coalitions - sit on their hands as progressives establish programs that intimidate those who see the whole enterprise for the fraud that it is into silence.

This is why those on the (Trumpist) right who try to paint the upcoming presidential election as another “Flight 193” situation, fraught with the direst of stakes, in which a poisoning of American society and culture that has been underway for over 50 years can be handily reversed by a pugnacious outsider are wasting their breath. In terms of the ongoing underlying flatlining of our country, it doesn’t matter which candidate is able to declare victory. Neither understands what’s really going on.

The rot will continue whether we have four more years of bombast and strongman antics or return to the “fundamental transformation” that was being pursued prior to that.

Trumpism is inadequate to the task of meeting the force of nature of which Joe Biden is the reluctantly chosen standard-bearer on the battlefield of ideas, principles and foundational values.

My advice? Just gird yourself, and find opportunities to point out what’s going on without jeopardizing your livelihood or social network. Looking to a hero to make it massively better in short order is a fool’s errand.