We Don't Need Another Hero
“Every hero becomes a bore at last.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The grown-ups are back in charge in Washington,” the Financial Times editorial board fawned in November 2020, cheering a return to “a restoration of the Washington policy establishment after the four-year rupture under Mr Trump — and a more or less explicit aim to reverse much of the Trump agenda.”
They weren’t alone. All corporate media, the military-industrial complex, the managerial class, and the entertainment regime made the same smug pronouncements. “Joe Biden’s Cabinet Picks Send a Clear Message: The Adults Are Back in Charge,” trumpeted Vogue magazine.
In June 2021, CNN reported on President Biden’s meeting with Vladimir Putin, “While Biden didn’t seek to fully explain what it was he came to do, the evidence was everywhere in his answers: Make clear that the traveling circus of the Trump presidency was over – and that the adults were back in charge.”
If Democrats are good at anything, it’s branding. Diversity! Experience! Maturity! Empathy! What a hero Biden would be, saving us from the dastardly fascist. Saving DEMOCRACY itself.
Of course reality set in quickly. Old Biden is just as incompetent, dishonest, and corrupt as his younger self. There is a reason Kamala Harris didn’t get any traction in the presidential primaries, even in her home state of California. The list of missteps, bad decisions, ineptitudes, and gaffes is too long. The Democrats didn’t even accomplish the things they dangle in front of their base every four years, with control of both houses of Congress. Where is Medicare for All? How did Putin feel emboldened to invade Ukraine after foreign policy heavyweight Biden met with him with, as CNN put it at the time, “Nuts and bolts. Pragmatism over pomp. Total frankness over Trumpism.”? Right on schedule, Trump was out of office for just a year when they switched the war machine back on.
Deceptive advertising only gets you so far. Not even the administration’s flying monkeys of late night TV, the dummies on The View, Rachel Maddow, Anderson Cooper, Joy Reid, Karine Jean Pierre, and the rest can spin incompetence and failure into gold forever. There is a captured Democratic base that loves being lied to. The rest of us have to decide between the people who are destroying the country, and the people the people destroying the country are trying to destroy.
Who do the Republicans have on offer to challenge not Biden—no one believes his adminstration is actually his—but the Democratic party machine?
Nationally, Donald Trump is polling 40 points ahead of the number two candidate Governor Ron DeSantis. DeSantis is about 7 points ahead of number three candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, with Nikki Haley polling a close fourth. While former vice president Mike Pence and former governor Chris Christie are both polling above 3%, it’s the top four that matter.
DeSantis is a competent governor. He’s not perfect, but he’s managed Florida very well. The state is thriving. I have some sympathy for him in this process, because I have a similarly introverted and often awkward personality type. Running for president is not the same as running for Congress or even governor. It’s hard to tell whether he is really in this because he wants to be, or because it was expected and a lot of money is behind him. If he were the nominee I wouldn’t be disappointed, but I don’t know that he is dynamic enough for this moment in history.
I rather like Vivek Ramaswamy, even though I see—as many have pointed out—that he is slick and has a very obvious strategy to curry favor with Trump’s base. Is that a bad thing? It’s an accurate calculation that no one can win who pisses off Trump’s base. Ramaswamy is also right about a lot things, especially his diagnosis of our cultural and societal ills. His solutions are bold and radical. Many conservatives, like Andrew Klavan, think his platform is ridiculous, but I’m not so sure. If we can create something, why can’t we undo it when it malfunctions? A lot of conservatives seem to think that once something comes into being it can never be undone. Maybe it’s my libertarian streak that finds Ramaswamy appealing. Even his changing political views aren’t as sinister as some think. I’ve changed my mind about so many things, and have had the same shift in opinion on Trump and J6. I’m more suspicious of people who stay “consistent” for decades, even in the face of new information.
Nikki Haley is a capable speaker and politician. She served in the South Carolina house, and was a successful governor. The UN ambassadorship seems to me a ceremonial position that sounds more important than it is. I disagree entirely with her views on foreign policy and she strikes me as a member of the Uniparty. Haley has made a lot of money from the weapons industry. Glenn Greenwald dedicated an episode of System Update to Haley’s career and it’s a must-watch. Lee Fang also published a piece on his Substack that I highly recommend. For me, she’s a no-go.
Why do these candidates matter at all, with Trump 40 points ahead? It remains to be seen. If the Uniparty—let’s be honest about it—is successful at having Trump removed from the ballot of even one large state, he cannot win. The Uniparty was embarrassed in 2016. There will be revenge for streaking in the middle of Hillary’s Superbowl. For putting the flow of insider money on hold for a few years. For pointing out their deep, cruel corruption. Power will be retained by any means necessary.
American politics has not been about substance for a long time. After Bush 45, Obama was the hero we needed. He was young, articulate, and inspirational. Remember “Yes we can!”? Remember “HOPE”? Remember the promise to shut down Guantanamo Bay detention camp? Remember the students performing marches and dances to celebrate a black president? But it was a trick. It was Charlie Brown and the football.
Presidential elections are a contest to see which head of the Hydra gets to wear the crown this time around. We all know it, but the human spirit is tough to break. Hopeful to the last, we believe someone will come who has the vision and the integrity and the will and the wisdom. We wait for a hero.
Trump taps into this. He is the anti-hero, who does the right things often for the wrong reasons. A rich guy who’s not too good to eat fast food, he comes across as an everyman. He is the Dirty Harry of politics. Most importantly, Trump is a middle finger to the establishment and that only comes along every few decades.
To his base, Trump is the hero we need. I’m not eager for another Trump term, even while I long for his policies to return. The border, inflation, fuel prices, crime, child mutilation, ending the war in Ukraine: these are vitally important to me. Reviving patriotism and merit, and instilling purpose and meaning are too, which I why I’m leaning Vivek. Those are literally some of his campaign lines.
Trump will be better for the country than any Democrat save maybe Robert Kennedy Jr., but the derangement and chaos that will result is a different kind of danger. The kind that ends badly, with an authoritarian coup to “save democracy.” Don’t put it past them. The left has smelled blood in the water. The Twitter files and other independent reporting revealed some of the underbelly and it’s a bad as my worst fears.
I want a hero. I want a George Washington for the 21st century. But every hero becomes a bore at last. We don’t really need a hero, we need an ideological revolution. Americans need to look in the mirror. We need to stop lying to ourselves that wind farms aren’t killing whales, that another billion dollars will solve homelessness, that we can encourage unchecked illegal immigration while treating migrants like hot potatoes and pawns for accusations of racism. We need to accept that voting for personality, or “experience”, or diversity, has given us a ruling class of truly bad and incompetent people, and vote accordingly.
“Did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism
Like some kind of congressman? (Tale as old as time)
It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me (I'm the problem, it's me)
At tea time, everybody agrees
I'll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror
It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero”~ Taylor Swift, “Anti-Hero”