Just can't

At this point, I'm still planning to stay home on Election Day

And now we draw near to one of those moments of decision at which the I-stand-on-an-ever-narrower-sliver-of terrain viewpoint that animates so many Precipice essays gets translated into action - or not.

i’ve expressed my intention to sit out the coming election on Facebook, and many have responded by imploring that I go to my polling place if only to vote on local offices such as county council and school board. The school board race in particular does indeed have implications for general cultural direction. And there are candidates with whom I’m solidly on board - from what I can tell.

Why do I qualify it thusly? Well, they - and I’m thinking of one in particular - live in my city and, in addition to espousing principles (think primacy of parental prerogative), have been comporting themselves with the dignity I expect (and rarely see) from candidates for any office. In a community no larger than ours, if they were nutcases, I think that would have come to light by now. But, I’m sorry, I need to know how they would answer the question, “Being a Republican, do you intend to support the party up and down the ballot, regardless of whether particular individuals think the last election was rigged, and even if Donald Trump is the presidential nominee in 2024?”

I insist on knowing, and since I can’t - these people are savvy enough not to spill those beans when they want the focus to be on issues related to the office they seek - I have to take a pass.

Now, a refutation of the idea that, say, the recent Reawaken America rally held in Manheim, Pennsylvania, is representative of the center of gravity of the GOP can be made. That was quite a sea of Kool-Aid those people were swimming in. But it’s flimsy in the same way that saying that the average Democrat is not an AOC tells us nothing about the locus of influence on the left.

But last month’s NatCon pow-wow was only a few degrees less non-conservative than the full-blown nutterism on display in Manheim. Speakers - up to and including sitting Florida governor Ron DeSantis - declared that it was time to employ the full coercive power of government to combat “wokeism.” (I personally hate that term, for reasons including its lack of specificity; I prefer to enumerate the identity politics militancy, climate alarmism and wealth redistribution that inform 2022 progressivism.)

At The Federalist, John Daniel Davidson acknowledges that the term “conservative” doesn’t fit neo-Trumpism. He’s a slick one, that Davidson. He says all the right things to appeal to citizens who may not avail themselves of think-tank papers and conference proceedings but have their barometers in working order. Progressivism is indeed poisoning our culture, our government, our civic institutions and our economics. But he concludes his piece by offering the same prescription as the NatCon speakers.

And what of those engaged-but-not-necessarily-immersed-in-the finer-points citizens who are disturbed by the progressive agenda? I wish I had better news, but the fact is that 61 percent of Republicans think the last election was rigged.

There is no ignoring the rot of the Republican Party. It has conflated the good, true and right principles of conservatism with a cult ethos, and done so with such thoroughness that average voters think they are and always have been inextricably bound.

So, no, I’m staying home November 8.

I can’t be an agent of perpetuation for either of the political impulses vying for control of our country.

This is not a to-hell-with-it-all position. It’s just that I have another type of work to do in the attempt to stave off post-America’s encounter with the edge of the cliff.