On My Siblings’ Politics
In my latest column for AIER I explain why my three, dear siblings voted for Trump. A slice:
My siblings naturally think of themselves as adults. They despise politicians, celebrities, and journalists treating them as children who both need and crave parental coddling and discipline. Listening to my brothers and sister talk about Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Gavin Newsom, and “What’s the name of that b%&#h from Queens?” revealed to me that they react to much of what the modern state does as a sensible and responsible 22-year-old would react to an overbearing parent who refuses to stop treating him or her as a child, and who tries to purchase deference and docility from the 22-year-old by offering the person money.
Unlike some of our grandparents, my siblings are not a bit racist or homophobic. Nor, however, do they believe that because they are white – and two are male – they bear the original sin of being an oppressor. The presumption of each is that every able-bodied adult ought to be, and can be, responsible for himself or herself.
Identity politics is as foreign and loathsome to them as raw steak would be to a fawn.
Although we were all raised Roman Catholic, only one sibling regularly attends mass; the other two are indifferent to religion. The attitude of all is live and let live.
My siblings hate people in Washington, Baton Rouge, Nashville (my brothers now live in Tennessee), or Hollywood telling them how to think about other people or what pronouns are prescribed and proscribed. My siblings resent the supposition that they are incapable of taking care of themselves – that, because they aren’t in the top one or ten percent, they have been cheated either by the fates or by fat cats and, therefore, that they are entitled to money earned by others.
My siblings voted for Trump because Trump thumbs his noses at presumptuous elites. They are well-aware that Trump is an especially flawed human being, and they would react in horror if Trump were to attempt to grab a third term as president. My siblings have not the slightest itch to live under government by a strongman. Quite the opposite. They see Trump as protection from strongmen. You might disagree with my siblings’ assessment, but I’m here to tell you that it’s genuine.
At bottom, my siblings’ support for Trump isn’t an elevation of Trump but a rejection of progressivism – of arrogant and meddlesome elites, and of elite notions many of which my siblings believe to be (to quote one of my brothers) “looney-tooney.” When I proposed to them that their support for Trump over Harris is really a rejection of woke progressivism, each enthusiastically agreed, although each also said that he or she really hadn’t before thought of the matter in that way. They just instinctively find today’s progressivism to be deeply obnoxious. And who with any sense can blame them?
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