Capitulation Nation
How lies keep having their way with us
Editor’s Note: Have a question about how to still the gnawing voices of doubt in your head? Don’t ask Matt. He hears those voices, too, and doubts he can help you. But if you have any other question for a sunny, can-do optimist who also happens to be an expert at faking expertise, the most essential tool in his toolkit, ask Matt at askmattlabash@gmail.com.
Dear Matt,
It’s only January, and the Republican primary already looks to be over. Donald Trump is obviously going to be the nominee. As a lifelong Republican, should I just give up and give in? Should I buy my MAGA romper, my Alina Habba swimsuit desk calendar, and resign myself to a life of retribution and soft authoritarianism?
Best,
Nimarata H.
Plenty already are basking in the warm orange glow. See Vivek “Has-Anyone-Seen-My-Kneepads” Ramasmarmy. Or Meatball DeSantis, who Trump nicknamed after a spherical, tomato-sauce-covered beef puck. As if that weren’t insult enough, Trump additionally ran ads suggesting that the man my pal Mike Murphy now calls “Ron DeSycophantis” eats pudding with his fingers, denigrated his wife, and intimated that DeSantis was a pedophile. Of course, Pudding Fingers did the only thing an honorable man of high moral caliber could do. The thing nearly all Republicans do these days. What Ted Cruz did after Trump called his wife ugly and suggested his dad killed JFK. He endorsed Donald Trump!
But you’re asking the wrong guy. I’m a hardcore holdout. I was writing Never-Trump hit pieces back in the go-go nineties when there was dew on the world, when America still looked like the Land of Promise instead of the Land of Dollar Stores populated by rageaholics with bad opioid habits, and when our worst presidential scandal involved getting a hummer from a plus-sized intern instead of trying to overthrow the country while getting your insubordinate vice president hanged. Also, that was back when Trump himself was a registered elitist, instead of a registered-Republican faux-populist (Trump has changed his voter registration affiliation five times, lest we forget.) “In many cases, I probably identify more as a Democrat,” Trump told Wolf Blitzer in the long ago place’n’time known as “2004.” That was before Trump, like all capable hustlers, saw his chance and took it.
Which is to say, Trump vs. Biden is a bad choice. But this is the choice we are being given. Which is also to say, they are the choices enough of us have made to inflict on the rest of us. So let’s stop blaming our leaders, and give some credit where credit is due for the rematch that pollsters keep telling us nobody actually wants: to the American primary voters who make bad choices. (Though in Biden’s case, technically, there was no choice, unless you count Dean Phillips, and nobody does.) Thanks for nothing, primary voters! Don’t take this the wrong way, but you blow. Not as hard as Tim Scott tried to blow Trump last night onstage in New Hampshire, but close.