I saw my two choices for the Presidential election as voting for Trump, or not voting. Up until last week, I was still going back and forth between these two choices. Last Thursday, I finally made my decision.
My “gut reaction” was always to prefer Trump (or really any Republican) to Harris. I suspect that there is a large segment of the Democratic Party that hates white, male, heterosexuals. I suspect that this segment of the Democratic Party wants to see white people, or really any civilized people, dead. They support groups like Hamas in their efforts to remove Israelis “from the river to the sea”, which sounds like a call for ethnic cleansing and genocide. They support “Black Lives Matters” efforts to “defund the police”, so that innocent, civilized people can be murdered at will by criminals here in the US. They also support legal concepts that would excuse or justify the murder of white people by black people, such as the concept of “black rage“. There is also a good-sized segment of the Democratic Party that wants to see men impoverished (see feminism), and they want to make heterosexual people suffer. (See gender transitions for children, men in women’s sports, and women forced to change and use the bathroom with men who still have intact male genitalia.) I also don’t enjoy the verbal bullying that I see going on by Democrats. The attempt to ostracize or denigrate people who vote for Trump by Democrats just motivates me to vote for Trump. I don’t like boorish people who use argument from intimidation debate tactics, which is common amongst Democrats.
I think that the left is what I’d call “neo-Marxist”. Marxism views everything through the lens of class warfare, and violent revolution to depose the bourgeoisie. Neo-Marxism substitutes race, gender, or sexual orientation for class, and views whites (or men, or straight people) as the new bourgeoisie that needs to be killed off. This neo-Marxism often takes the form of Democrats calling Trump “fascist”. This is straight out of the Antifa playbook, where, if you aren’t a violent neo-Marxist, then you’re a Fascist. I’m tired of hearing the words “fascist” or “racist” in American political discourse. Kamila Harris’ adaptation of Antifa-language just made me want to vote for Trump.
I also think Kamala Harris is incompetent. She has never earned anything in her life. She failed the bar exam the first time. She slept with Willie Brown to get into politics. She became Vice President because Biden said he was going to pick a black woman. She didn’t win the Democratic Party primary, and was simply “installed” after Biden’s mental incompetence became apparent.
The only thing I really like about Trump is his call for replacing the Income Tax with tariffs. I don’t like this for trade protectionist reasons, but because it is a tax on consumption rather than on production. The people who pay a tariff would be people living in the US. When a government imposes a tariff on an imported good, the importer just raises the price of the good, and passes that on to domestic consumers. An income tax, on the other hand, is a tax you pay for your work -that is for producing goods and services. Taxes on production like the income tax discourage production. If you can earn $10 for the work that you do, but the government taxes you $5 for that work, then you only earn $5. At that level, you might find that the disutility of working is greater than any utility you gain from anther $5, so you may just choose not to work. If the government taxes you $5 on a $10 good you purchase, you might decide that you don’t really need it, but you’ve still got $10 in your pocket that you can spend on other goods or services, or invest in a business, or whatever. You haven’t been discouraged from producing goods and services. Ethically, I think taxing consumption is less bad than taxing production, because you aren’t being penalized for being productive when a consumption tax is imposed. With a tariff to fund government, American consumers can choose how much tax they pay by controlling their consumption. Basic imported foods and imported medical supplies could be exempted, and any shortfall on government funding could be covered by a national sales tax, especially on luxury goods. Even if we ultimately cannot do this because there would be insufficient revenue for government, Trump could appoint a commission to look into it, and at least start a national conversation about the merits of an alternative system of taxation.
What finalized my decision to vote for Trump was Leonard Peikoff’s video in support of him. I was still going back and forth in my mind about what to do. This tipped me in favor of a vote for Trump, which I did the morning after seeing the video on YouTube, through early voting in Texas. I respect Peikoff’s opinion enough to consider it. His essay on the issue also made some good points I had never been able to articulate myself. Peikoff notes in the essay that Trump can be emotionalist and make bad statements when he gets like that. These outbursts by Trump are usually in the face of what he perceives as an injustice. But, he does not advocate things that would systematically undermine our Constitutional Republic and its institutions, which Harris and the Democrats do. For instance, Harris calls for “packing” the Supreme Court with additional justices. She has also advocated ending the filibuster in the Senate. Admittedly, neither of these things are specifically in the Constitution, but they have become such ingrained traditions, that doing away with them just to achieve short-term policy goals would be a shock to the system, and would have potentially dangerous side-effects.
Does this mean I think Trump is great? No, just significantly better than Harris. My biggest misgiving about voting for Trump is abortion rights. I consider this to be an important issue. Trump has promised to veto legislation that would impose a national abortion ban. I could see his promise having some “weasel language”. Maybe a Republican Congress would put legislation on his desk that was “merely” a 15-month ban, and Trump will then sign it, claiming he is not breaking his promise? I don’t see the Republicans controlling enough of the Senate to get past a Democratic filibuster before the next midterms, so I’m not sure how likely this scenario is. I will certainly kick myself for trusting Trump if that happens, but I have weighed the risks of that versus the risks of a Harris presidency, and decided Harris is a greater threat.