In these columns, I’ve preferred to stay clear of the politics of the day. It’s been my experience that honest people do differ, and sometimes even over the most vital issues. I haven’t wanted to use “Dear Abbie” to acquire a single-outlook or solely partisan readership. After all, political preferences tend to be guided by the news sources a person consults. Which puts political opinions in a different category from the ones at stake in philosophical argument. There, at least ideally, the argument is over how to interpret the same body of evidence.
That said, the American election of the previous week was so very consequential that avoidance of the topic here would be simply evasive. So full disclosure:
I voted for the loser.
Among the people I respect and like – whether known to me personally or only through their books and articles – votes have gone to both sides. (My taste in my fallible fellow mortals is pretty ecumenical.)
Oddly, if I polled opposing groups of voters for their reasons, the reasons on both sides might be ones with which I’m in sympathy! Some of the Trump voters just didn’t want guys in women’s sports, jail cells and bathrooms. Personally, I don’t want ‘em in there either. Some Trump voters didn’t want irreversible sex change surgery plus hormone treatments performed on minors. As it happens, I’ve known two young people who committed suicide after undergoing sex change surgery – each discovering too late that the problem wasn’t that they’d been born in a body of the wrong sex. Rather, they’d been hastily and wrongly advised by supposed experts who held the latest and most fashionable views. I could go on, but you get the idea.
Although I think Harris deserves credit for putting up a fine fight in a difficult season, what most moved me to pull the lever for her was Trump himself. He’s the man I saw telling the mob – who’d invaded the Capital calling for the lynching of the Vice President – “I love you! This day will live forever!” As a candidate, he’s expressed admiration for a number of foreign dictators. He’s been convicted by a New York jury of defaming a woman whom he falsely denied raping. I’ve seen him use vile and degrading language about a woman reporter who questioned him in a way not different from the way she had questioned others before him. People who worked closely with him have deemed him a danger to the republic, even risking their careers by testifying under oath to that effect. His opinions about international relations and the economy seem impulsive and ill-informed.
While two thirds of Israelis polled have reason to believe that he’d be better for besieged Israel than his opponent (Trump’s Jewish daughter may prompt him to see the Jewish state as an extension of himself), I believe Israel would find a way to survive even under an ambivalent Democratic administration. Whereas an America friendly to dictators would soon become dangerous for Israel, Ukraine, and democracies everywhere.
Late note: I’ve just watched Bob Woodward, who’s interviewed him extensively, express the hope and belief that – with an eye on his place in history – Trump might still grow in office and pleasantly surprise those who now fear his return to office.
For me, the overriding consideration has been that Trump appears more likely to disrespect the rule of law than any previous president in American history. It’s one of the most consequential elections we’ve held since the founding of the republic. For us all,
the results are
still to be determined.
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