I am not obligated to pick a side

Neither of our choices is better than the other

I suppose there’s a remote chance that Super Tuesday could have a dampening effect on Bernie Sanders’s momentum. There will be fourteen states of varying sizes, demographic makeups and ideological mixes casting primary ballots. But consider that the Real Clear Politics averages for three of them, California, Texas and North Carolina, have Sanders comfortably out in front. He has a formidable lead in delegates. No one else is getting any traction, and the presumed favorite, Biden, is faltering, even getting signals that it’s time to consider dropping out.

So the likely prospect is that Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders will be facing off this November. I hav no doubt that various forces among Democrats are brainstorming various scenarios by which this is avoided. Republicans that had not yet succumbed to Trump’s Kool-Aid were kicking around various hail-Mary moves quite late in the proceedings in 2016. But as in the 2016, at least after a certain point, any such options involve a brokered convention, which would lay bare in stark relief the split between the party’s “establishment” and its populist groundswell for the Entirely New Kind of Candidate, which would spell rupture.

The question of how we got to this juncture invites all kinds of crank hot takes. The truth is that it has its roots in our entire civilization’s spiritual sickness. There is no hope that it can even begin to be politically ameliorated in this election cycle. If circumstances continue to unfold as seems likely, our choices will be equally grim.

“You can’t possibly really think that!” responds the Trumpist, citing the now-familiar litany of undeniably (for a conservative) good moves over the past three years: several excellent judicial appointments, deregulation, pulling out of the Paris climate accord and the JCPOA with Iran, moving the embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and support for the pro-life position.

There are two levels of a conservative’s response. One is the policy moves that are inconsistent with the theme connecting the above-mentioned moves: tariffs, which are blatant distortions of the free market, and, in the case of agriculture, have resulted in economic distress and resultant bailouts to address it, the pointless appeasement, in the form of two summits with Kim, of North Korea, the abandonment of northern Iraq’s Kurds, the breathing down the neck of America’s news media (which is, to be sure, mostly biased to the left, but, let us remember, free, per the Constitution, to operate as each outlet sees fit), and, of course, absolute personal loyalty to Trump as the most important qualification for any administration job, and the attempted ruin of anyone less than totally loyal.

Then there is the level of conduct and demeanor. Trumpists are sure that the bombast, pettiness and vindictiveness do not outweigh the good moves. Some take the whataboutist approach, citing the foul mouths of Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson. The huge difference is that those presidents kept their vulgar outbursts private.

No, it speaks volumes about what kind of man someone is when he struts onstage at the National Prayer Breakfast holding that day’s edition of USA Today, with its “Acquitted” headline, high above his head, and then proceeds to tell the keynote speaker who had just preceded him, namely Arthur Brooks, a man of immense depth and humanity, who had just spoken about the bigness it takes to love one’s enemies, that he disagrees with that message.

It speaks volumes about what kind of man someone is when he responds to John Kelly’s remarks about Alexander Vindman and North Korean policy by saying that he couldn’t terminate Kelly fast enough and that the latter had been in over his head as chief of staff. This is a pattern. No matter how policy-level any Trump critic keeps his comments, Trump has to go for personal evisceration in response.

He’s as cold as a human being comes. He has publicly said he doesn’t like dogs, that he doesn’t participate in the messier aspects of raising a child, that the criterion for whether he’d stay with his wife if she were disfigured in a car wreck was whether he breasts were affected. He told her he’d agree to her having a child if her figure quickly rebounded. He embarked on affairs with porn actress Stormy Daniels and Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal at a golf tournament in Tahoe while his current wife - his third - was home with his fifth child, then three months old.

He’s utterly lacking in depth. Several people who have been in close proximity to him had said he doesn’t read anything. He wouldn’t be able to answer the question, “What novelists, historians, or philosophers have most influenced you?”

Bernie Sanders, of course, has been a socialist his entire adult life. He stood onstage at a Sandinista rally in Managua in 1985, as the crowd chanted, “Here, there, everywhere, the Yankee will die.” He honeymooned in the Soviet Union in 1988. He wants to get directly to the endgames that other Democratic candidates propose incremental routes to, namely, Medicare for All and the Green New Deal.

This is our choice. Or maybe yours. Count me out.

I did not vote for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton in 2016, and it’s likely I’ll make a similar decision this year. I sleep well at night knowing the eternal record book shows I did not advance either form of national rot.

The decision to hold one’s nose, swallow hard and vote for Trump is often justified by the God-has-always-chosen-flawed-figures-to-carry-out-his-plan argument. King David is often cited. The difference is that history’s chosen flawed people exhibited contrition and then God used them. Trump has not given the slightest indication that he has let the first subatomic particle of humility into his heart. He maintains the position he had when he responded to an interviewer’s question about the need for forgiveness. He said he didn’t think he needed any. He’s a phony. He appeared at this year’s pro-life rally for the adulation factor. His spiritual advisor is a peddler of prosperity gospel.

I would here like to mention a troublesome phenomenon I’m seeing emerge on social media: the conservative who finds Trump unacceptable publicly, at this stage in the proceedings, proclaiming that he or she will vote for the Democrat.

Stop it.

One difference between Trump-era Republicans and modern-day Democrats is that the Democrats are entirely consistent. The collectivist theme that runs through the campaign rhetoric of each and all of them is not mitigated by any nods toward human freedom or acknowledgement of the divine architecture of this universe. These people are fiercely determined. They have an agenda to enact.

I’ve prayed about this and will continue to do so, but at this moment, I feel like I’m guided to not be a party to anything that furthers the encroachment of darkness upon our land.

Until post-Americans get serious about wanting to remember the birthright God has bequeathed to this country and cease handing its fate over to ridiculous, infantile charlatans - both of whom are well into their 70s, I’ll see myself out from the food fight and find a quiet place to pray.