Objectively Silly

I love Objectivism. I love it the same way I do collectivism, in that it’s funny to watch it try to address the human condition. I recently read an article by the Objectivist thinker Robert Tracinski, and what struck me as funny was Tracinski’s tongue-in-cheek response to the idea that Objectivism as a political force is taking over, but nobody bothered to warn the Objectivists. This is essentially the essence of Objectivism, to be so blissfully hands-off on the reins of the country that someone has to inform you that you’re in charge.

Objectivists are interesting folks from a people-watching perspective. This recent uptick in the interest shown in Objectivism, even going so far as to say the incoming administration is larding the pantry with ‘acolytes’ of Ayn Rand, brings about a turn of phrase that always gives me the giggles, given the context of its use. ‘Acolytes’ gives a connotation of religiousness to something that has a long history of agnosticism if not outright atheism. This simply attests to the fact that anyone can be an evangelist and anything can be evangelized, it just depends on what you’re pushing. In this case, Objectivism seeks to sell liberty, freedom, etc. Robert Locke, in his 2005 essay, referred to libertarianism (the heir of Objectivism, smelling faintly of patchouli) as the “Marxism of the Right”. Personally, I don’t think it deserves that moniker, simply because while Marxism denies the soul of a man, Objectivism reveres the soul of a man to the point of deification. To paraphrase Moore, Marxism thought an economy could be run solely on altruism. Objectivism wants to try sheer avarice. For Marxism, the individual was the servant of economics. For Objectivism, the individual is the economy. This could account for our level of personal debt.

It’s interesting to note that like Marxism, its High Priest (or in this case, Priestess) had trouble holding down a paying gig. Marx limped from job to job, never being able to stay gainfully employed for very long, relying on the mercy of others for his survival. During this time, he wrote voluminously about other people owing him money. Rand, on the other hand, watched as her father’s business was seized by the Bolsheviks, then moved to America, and couldn’t keep a job as a screenwriter in an industry that gave us a sequel to Baby Geniuses. During that time, she wrote the Das Kapital of the right, Atlas Shrugged (along with The Fountainhead), which kept her from owing people money for a while. Oh, and she screwed around on her husband for about a decade with Nathaniel Branden, a younger, married man who eventually swapped both his lover and his wife in on a much younger model. ‘Objectivism’ as a term used in conversation often finds its way into the same sentence as ‘my first husband’.

You see, Objectivism seems to primarily be the philosophy of latching on to something better suited to you and having the utter freedom to do so with little care for what’s left in your wake. Whatever aids you in this process is obviously good, like a new wife, drugs, money, fewer constraints, and so on. Whatever hinders your path (alimony, paternity testing, taxes, sequels to Michael Moore movies, etc.) is obviously bad. If your old relationships are no longer of personal advantage to you, you shouldn’t feel the least compunction in ditching them in favor of something perkier, preferably in her early-to-mid-twenties. In the case of Rand, it looks like if you adhere to this idea long enough, you’re going to be Objective on the curb of your yard with half your stuff. Even Rand herself would be guilty of un-Objective behavior after she publicly disavowed Branden upon discovering he was keeping a younger woman on the side of both his relationship with Rand and his marriage to his wife Barbara. Objectivism likes the freedom, it’s not sure what to do about the consequences. Objectivism is the dorm-room philosophy of college students faced with the reality that Mom and Dad may make being successful look cool, but it’s a lot harder to do than they thought.

Freedom is a good thing, it certainly beats the alternative. Is there a case to be made that ‘too much’ freedom is bad for you? To paraphrase another champion of Randian thought, PJ O’Rourke, Objectivism (and its slightly addled child reeking of weed smoke, libertarianism) says you have the right to mix psilocybin mushrooms in your scotch and crank up Bachman Turner Overdrive on the roof of the garage until well past midnight as long as you’re the only one who’s going to pay for it at work in the morning. To further paraphrase O’Rourke, my right to be able to function at work in the morning says I can call the cops and have you hauled off to jail.  Freedom is thrilling, but more freedom now can equal less freedom later if you’re talking to your attorney through bulletproof glass.  Objectivism addresses the fun you can have while you’re stoned, it fails to address that people who are drunk or high are notoriously obnoxious annoyances.

Objectivism believes that every man, woman, and child is a free moral agent, and while this is true, it fails to acknowledge that men, women, and children think about that moral agency differently. Some men might think prostitution is awesome because it offers a relatively guilt-free way of experiencing sexual pleasure, at least until you give your spouse an antibiotic-resistant strain of chlamydia. However, few married mothers of two cast a ballot with the idea of, “hey, if I vote for this guy, I can sell my body to other men for money.” This is why Objectivism (and libertarianism) is comprised mostly of men. Likewise, Objectivism rather hilariously tends to treat children as smaller versions of fully grown adults, entirely capable of answering the difficult questions on things like child slavery. After watching the Libertarian Party Convention of 2016, I get a sense of where this came from. People who strip in public during a political debate probably think nothing of letting a kid be the one to decide if they want to sew polo shirts for nine cents a day. Women are nurturers of children. Objectivism seems to regard them like one would a trophy-winning pet, unusually smart for their size and age.

It shouldn’t surprise us that the Libertarian Party nominated our national Stoned Cousin Eddie and his weird coworker to take the White House in 2016. Gary Johnson managed to increase his percentage of the vote over three times what he received in 2012 (and this was after his running mate personally vouched for Hillary Clinton) to a blistering 3.2 percent. Between a guy who said Jewish bakers should be forced by court order to bake a cake in the shape of the front gates of Auschwitz and his running mate who called handguns a more threatening ‘weapon of mass destruction’ than the AR-15, the Libertarian Party ran the least libertarian campaign possible. And that gets to the last problem that Objectivism – and by proxy, libertarianism – has with gaining ascendency in political discourse. Effort spent to acquire political power over others is antithetical to Objectivism, so it shouldn’t be a shock to us that they are just so spectacularly bad at it.

I presume Objectivists think their rise to power should happen organically, like your yard being overtaken by a weed. “If only more people knew about us,” they tend to decry. The American electorate probably saw more of Gary Johnson than it ever had in this cycle and he still couldn’t crack the magic ‘5 percent’ rule. This means people stepped up to the ballot box and deliberately avoided libertarianism. Perhaps libertarians think that their brand of freedom should come from the guiding hand of the courts, imposed by law. A federal court forcing societal change seems like something that would manifest itself in a libertarian’s worst nightmare.

I would agree with Tracinski that the notion of Objectivism suddenly seizing power in the Trump Administration is laughable. I’m sure that many of the Cabinet appointments suggested thus far have probably read Rand at some point in their lives, but Trump’s repeated visits to bankruptcy court to get the government to shield his personal assets from his creditors is probably the least Objectivist act ever envisioned by Rand or anyone who ever thoroughly read her work. I’m fairly certain that the most likely commonality found between Rand and Trump would be their seriously messed-up ideas around sexual consent. However, Tracinski has a point in that an incoming administration that at least acknowledges individual freedoms can’t be a terrible thing, especially considering that the only individualism the previous occupants seemed to be interested in was making sure that misery was shared equally by any individual who happened to be paying insurance premiums.

Is there a place for laissez-faire Objectivism in conservatism? I should hope so. Moderating influences are terribly useful in crafting public policy. Objectivism can (and I posit, should) be the yin to the yang of overweening governance, cocksure in the righteousness of its cause. Too little freedom today means those that took that freedom might be convinced they could take more. But until Objectivism (and libertarianism) bids the anarchists in their midst a fond farewell and recognizes the limits of tolerance to human stupidity, it’s going to still be a curiosity found in the pages of ponderous writing.

Thank God That’s Over…

For the last three days, I have studiously avoided commenting on the results of the election.  Up to this point, I found politics interesting and fascinating from a “people watching” perspective, but ultimately, I realized a county precinct commissioner had more effect on my life than all eight years of the Obama Administration combined.  Now, my ambivalence has transformed to avoidance and revulsion.  I think we can all agree that this election has brought out qualities in us as Americans that we shouldn’t be very proud of.

How do I feel about this election?  I think that it’s over and I survived it.  I want a T-shirt that says that on it.  I will not be remembering this election with anything remotely resembling pride or fondness, because it cost me something personal and of deep significance.  I’ve noticed that on social media a number of people have stated they intend to “unfriend” anyone of a particular political stripe (who does this over an election?)  I had this happen to me in Real Life™, not Facebookland.  This election made me pay a deep, personal price, and ultimately one I had to be willing to pay, but the details of which are unimportant.

I have a lot of friends who voted for Trump and a lot who voted for Clinton, because (spoiler alert) I’m nice to people.  As a future minister of the word of God, I have to be even handed and treat people equally, no matter their point of view.  In the end, we are all subject to God’s word and no one person will be held accountable to an unfair degree, because unlike the world, God truly is fair to us all.  There are a lot of people who voted for Trump who are not racist, misogynist, xenophobic, or sexist.  Likewise, there are a lot of people who voted for Clinton who truly believe that there should be a system of justice that treats everyone equally, both the well-connected and the disadvantaged.  There are a lot of people who took a look at both candidates and found nothing noble in either one of them and voted for a third party.  That act doesn’t assign any more nobility to them than anyone else.

So, what do I intend to do?  Well, I intend to do exactly what I planned no matter who won.  I plan to pray for our new president.  I will pray that he will surround himself with people of good judgement and sound counsel.  I will pray for our nation, which I believe – despite our often glaring faults – is already the greatest the world has ever known, regardless of who occupies an office that is thousands of miles away from me.  I will pray for us to start remembering that there are more things we have in common than are different.

I will pray that this president is a success.  I found the sentiment that many people had during the Obama Administration of praying for his failure to be particularly nauseating and it hasn’t gotten more attractive with the election of Donald Trump.  That’s roughly akin to being in a bus loaded down with everything and everyone you love and care about and praying that the driver is drunk.

I will hold this president accountable, just as I did when previous occupants were in office.  When this president does things to bring honor to this nation, I will celebrate him.  If this president commits to a path of divisiveness and sectarianism, I will condemn those actions and actively campaign for a replacement.   This presidency will be watched like none other.  I suspect that I will not be alone in this regard.

I will abide by the results.  Because whether people like it or not, whether people choose to believe it or not, the governments we have are the ones God chooses to put in place.  That means that as much as Donald Trump was ordained by God to be the President of the United States, so was Barack Obama. 

“Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.” – Romans 13:1

“Honor all people, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king.” 1 Pt. 2:17

The Apostle Paul was a Roman citizen, and as such, he knew he had rights far above most.  He never hid from the governments of his day and he was eventually imprisoned and executed for preaching the word of God.  The Apostle Peter met the same end for the same reason.  It is our responsibility to obey the governments of our time inasmuch as those governments do not ask us to violate our conscience to God, even those that would plan to kill us.  Those governments have been put in place by God, and I believe those governments are there in order for us to learn a lesson.  The questions are:

a)       What lesson is it that God is trying to teach us?

b)      Did we learn it?

One of the more troubling things I saw was the feeling some had that Donald Trump was hand-picked by God Almighty to restore this nation to its Christian roots.  This is only partly true, because the same people forget that some of the leaders that God has chosen over the years represented judgement, not a reward.  The same God that appointed Trump appointed Nero.  The questions still remain, what lesson is it that God wants to teach us, and, are we humble enough to learn it?

Most of all, I plan to go on with my life.  We do this every four years for a reason.  One of the problems I saw in this election is that people went beyond being informed to being personally involved.  It was never meant to be so.  We were meant to have lives outside of elections, and I plan to live mine.

This is never more epitomized than during the destruction of the Judean nation in the book of Jeremiah.  Jeremiah spent years telling the nation of Judah that unless it returned to honoring God, it would be destroyed by invasion.  The Judeans never returned to worshipping God.  When the dust settled, the once-proud Hebrew nation was utterly destroyed, its capital sacked and burned, its people either enslaved in captivity or ruthlessly cut down.  They would get a letter from the one man who obeyed God and warned them this would all happen years before.

“This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:  “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce.  Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease.  Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” – Jeremiah 29: 4-7

Their nation reduced to utter ruin, their cities burned, their people enslaved, and Jeremiah’s advice to them?  Make a home.  Work for a living.  Get married and raise a family.  Live your lives as best you can.  And that should be the hallmark of what the American experience should be, lives of independence.

Now, I’m going to speak to those of you who have decided not to do any of this.  You know who you are.  You’re the ones flipping over police cars and torching businesses.  We need to have a word.  You need to knock this nonsense off.

I’m not talking about not protesting.  You live – still – in the greatest nation the world has ever known, one that has stated that it is the God-granted right of any red-blooded American to be able to walk into the public square and express his displeasure at anything he or she finds objectionable.  You may even be right about what’s making you so upset.  But the minute you pick up that brick to toss it through a window, or pick up that spray can to deface a wall, or light that gasoline-filled bottle to burn down something that doesn’t even belong to you, the righteousness of your cause vanishes into thin air.  The moment you commit that criminal act, you have proclaimed to the world, “this is why I deserved to lose.”

We live in a nation that allows for the peaceful transition of power.  Whether we are happy or horrified how this election turned out, let that be our legacy we leave.

“So They May Look Upon Your Example…”

Since Saturday of last week, the drumbeat of dissatisfaction within the Republican Party has been growing steadily louder.  The level of astigmatism in the Republican Party is nothing less than spectacular, they really need to see a physician about it.  No one could have foreseen a slightly fascist sociopath speaking on camera of his caddish treatment of women – which essentially amounted to sexual assault – it would seem.

There were varying reactions, attempts to explain it away or justify it, of varying degrees of patently ridiculous excuse-making.  They ranged from “it was ‘locker room talk’ from 11 years ago” (I don’t remember the guys I went to school with casually talking about sexual assault) to “women like a firm hand on the tiller” (I presume this came from men either recently divorced or about to experience their next one).   Or, even worse because this might have come from women, “all men talk like that when women aren’t around” (yeah, my minister talks like this all the time when we’re discussing who’s handling the communion table).

None of these excused an act that would cause one to need the services of urgent care if they were to try it on my wife.  I’m reduced to confusion as to why any man would excuse, much less defend, these comments.  Any married man or the father of a daughter should be demanding the Republican Party to withdraw all support for this candidate and allow the chips to fall where they may, whether that man was a Christian or not.  It would be better to lose an election with honor than to lose an election having completely destroyed your credibility on family and marriage policy.  You either lose the ability to affect legislation for four years or you lose it for four decades.  These guys obviously never played Risk.

And when I say ‘guys’, I mean, the men of the Republican Party.  Because in the last 48 hours, we’ve started seeing something interesting start to form, a revolt coming from the Double-X-Chromosome Wing of the Republican Party.   From the absolutely phenomenal tweet storm of conservative activist MaryBeth Glenn to the remarks of Christian author Beth Moore, the number of conservative women who are demanding accountability from conservative men is steadily increasing.

It shouldn’t shock us.  These men have forgotten the Scriptures that illustrate that women are often called to be the example of honor, integrity, and purity for men, to either encourage – or yes, even shame – them to be better people.   When Apostle Peter was writing about how women of God should conduct themselves, he knew there were going to be women out there who would follow the Gospel, even if their husbands didn’t.   So, he suggested that women simply live their lives as an example of purity and respect for God, behaving in a manner that suggests poise, wisdom, unflappable grace, and the resolve of a solid mountain (1 Pt. 3:1-7).  This conduct would serve as not just an example to strangers she would meet, but also to her own husband, who was busy living a life outside of God.

Why did Peter do this?  Because Peter was well aware of the tremendous power and influence a woman holds within her household.  There is no misery a man dreads more than discord within the home, because even after a hard day’s work…he still has to go home.

It’s not like women have changed much since that was written.  Or men, either.

Consider it this way, you’re a husband and you’ve done something absolutely and profoundly stupid.  Something you know your wife is going to object to in no uncertain terms.  Men would much rather have a wife who explodes with wrath than one who quietly registers her disappointment and internalizes her hurt and anger, because he will never know from one day to the next if his wife still thinks he is capable of leading or even capable of trust.  Worse, he’s going to have to live with a walking, talking example of what he should have done to begin with until he realizes his mistake and does whatever he has to do in order to remedy it.  Until he does that, he will never know if he’s been forgiven.  He will never know if she doubts or trusts him.  He may not care, but if that’s the case, his marriage isn’t going to be successful anyway.  Any man with a shred of self-respect or the slightest instinct of self-preservation is going to do whatever he has to do restore his wife’s confidence in him because his simple capacity to lead his home is now in question and the very people who should have rock-solid confidence in him are now in doubt.

That is happening to conservative men in the Republican Party as we speak.   The women of their ‘house’ have lost their confidence in the ability of the men to lead.  They haven’t been strident, they haven’t been crude, they’ve stood up and said, “you have forsaken us.”  For years, conservative women have leapt to the defense of men within their party when they have been unjustly accused of sexism and misogyny, and now they can’t.  For the sake of political expediency, conservative men have tossed the concerns and the dignity of the women who have stood by them to the side of the road.  I’ll make it up to you, honey, I swear.

I challenge them to look to the wisdom and example of the women around them before their ‘house’ loses all faith and confidence in them and decides to leave.

The Constitution Wasn’t Meant to Save Us

The Federalist published a very moving and eminently sensible piece this morning by Mark Signorelli with the catchy title, “If We Can’t Distinguish Between God & Satan, Society’s Going to Hell”.  The gist of it is that America prides itself on being a nation based on the rule of law, but of what benefit is that to say if your laws can’t properly distinguish between the very elementary concepts of good and evil?  Good laws give you things like statutes against violent crimes such as murder and rape, as well as consumer protections and fair tax laws.  Bad laws give you things like eminent domain, federal employment quotas that favor numbers over merit, and Roger Goodell as the NFL Commissioner.

Signorelli’s argument is very similar to the one that William Doherty used in his book Soul Searching: Why Psychotherapy Must Promote Moral Responsibility.  In the book, Doherty argues that modern psychotherapy has depended on the moral ‘scaffolding’ that a nation based on Judeo-Christian values would provide.  Therapists allowed the rest of the world’s behavior to dictate what was ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, while simply telling its patients to adjust themselves accordingly if they felt like it.  Doherty posed the question – rightly, I believe – “what happens when that scaffolding disappears?”

Signorelli paints a picture very much like by using the imagery of a father and son strolling through the woods and the son asks his father which trees bear fruit that is safe to eat and which are poisonous.  The father responds to the question with a shrug of his shoulders and says, “you’re on your own on that, son”, leaving the child to his own devices.  The boy, unprepared, is now confronted with the enormity of life’s choices with little, if any, direction from a person who is directly charged with teaching him.  One of three things await the son:  he will be extraordinarily lucky, he will choose badly and suffer for it, he will simply be paralyzed by his own fear and starve to death.

There is actually one fourth alternative that I suppose the indolent father in Signorelli’s example could pray for, provided he was willing to admit there is a God (chances are, the father isn’t that motivated if he isn’t bothering to keep his son from eating a poisonous plant).  The other ending to this story is that his son is smart enough to watch what everyone else is eating and taking note who happens to be falling over dead afterward.  We are treated daily to news stories of children making unwise choices because they lack discernment, beating, stabbing, or shooting their classmates with a gun they didn’t acquire by following the commandments of a nation dedicated to the rule of law.  Moral starvation and bad decisions steeped in a tea of parental neglect seem to be reigning supreme.

I understand Signorelli’s concern and I share it with him.  But, the sad truth of the matter is that mankind has always had trouble with the concept of right and wrong and needed guidance.  Not only that, in our deepest need for that direction, we’ve chosen to reject it.  In the nation of Judah’s darkest hour, despite his earnest pleadings to repentance, Jeremiah knew where the heart of the people lay.  “Man’s way is not in himself,” he wrote, knowing that it was man’s innate nature to reject sound counsel and simply follow his own heart (Jer. 10:23).  Never mind that it led to the abject destruction of the Jewish nation, the sacking of Jerusalem, and a decimated populace whose surviving members were kept in captivity as slaves by the Babylonian empire in 586 B.C.  In roughly seventy years, the Jewish Remnant would return to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, but the kingdom never regained the prominence or influence it held before and would be in a near-constant state of occupation by foreign powers.  So much for the wisdom of man.

Since that time, more than two millennia has passed to add to man’s wisdom and it doesn’t appear that it has done much good.  Sure, we’ve cured polio, but now we’re confused about what bathroom to use.  Jeremiah, it would seem, is just as right about man’s judgement (or the lack thereof) today as he was then.  This suggests that man is either stubborn or notoriously dim-witted.   Since that time, men like Signorelli and Doherty have been like the Woman of Wisdom found in Proverbs 8, calling out to their fellow man of the value found in wisdom.  You’d think by this time, the Woman of Wisdom would have just posted an ad on Craigslist.

By denying the evil found even in the mere imagery of Satan, mankind has again proved itself immune to wisdom.  Stupidity breeds bad laws.  A nation ruled entirely by law, but doesn’t bother to differentiate between good and evil, may as well be ruled by the information found in the Nutrition Facts label on a package of Twinkies.   A hardened atheist trying to lose weight who remarks “cupcakes are Satan” recognizes the evil of complex carbohydrates, if nothing else.  The nation of Judah couldn’t figure that out.  I doubt we’re any smarter.

Signorelli warns the reader, the Constitution cannot save us.  I argue that the Framers never really intended it to.  I will not enter Heaven by adhering to the Code of Federal Regulations or the Texas State Penal Code.  I might not even be a very good person, because either of those govern the bare minimum of expected human behavior and have since they were written.  Adultery makes you a horrible human being.  It doesn’t land you in prison.  There was a much stricter set of rules to follow, and many of the Framers of the Constitution wrote about them often.  I agree with Mr. Signorelli on this point: perhaps it’s time to revisit those rules, they’re a much stronger guiding light than the one we have now.

Consider This My ‘Manning Up’…

This morning, I was advised as a #NeverTrump voter that I should ‘man up’ about my support of Hillary Clinton by the Ace of Spades blog.  Funny, coming from a guy who maintains anonymity in his online presence.

I’ll gladly step up and be counted among those who choose not to follow the GOP down what is a clearly disastrous road of racial identity politics, trade protectionism, and ridiculously bad spray tans.  The populism represented in the Trump campaign represents the worst of American politics, a tea steeped in the hatred of Jews, Catholics, foreigners, and anyone else who won’t ‘bend their knee’ to the Crown Prince of Bankruptcy.  It’s little wonder that white nationalist groups like the Klan (as well as their Senate candidates) find so much in common with Trump.  If this is what represents conservatism, if this is what being a Republican means, then I’ll be glad to take a step in the other direction.

If we follow the logic of “if you are not supporting Trump, you are supporting Hillary by proxy”, that means that as long as I don’t support Hillary, by proxy, I am supporting Trump.  The reverse should be true.  I have absolutely no intention of voting for Hillary or Trump because in 2016, I am not without alternative options as a protest vote.

But, let’s get back to the accusation of #NeverTrump refuseniks claiming we have no influence over the process.  We really need you guys to make up your minds about us.  Either we are the most important voters in the GOP or we are insignificant and not needed to win the election.  Between the vitriol directed at us for refusing to support him and the derision you’re dishing out because you presume your numerical superiority over us should render us inert, it’s getting really difficult to determine why exactly you seem to be pissed off at us.  Pick a lane and stay in it if you intend to remain intellectually honest.  Otherwise, you’re wasting my time and yours.

Given that in a field of 16 candidates, Trump got the most votes in the history of GOP primary elections, it’s fair to deduce that people like myself are not as influential as we would have hoped.  Of course, Trump also received the most votes AGAINST a candidate in the history of GOP primary elections, they just happened to be distributed among 15 other people.  So, it would appear that his supporters are more influential than his detractors, for at least the time being.  I’m sure all these newcomers to the GOP are going to carry you through to a victory in November and then you are free to exercise all the retribution you like.  I’m sure the camps will be luxurious.

In the meantime, I encourage those who support Trump to enjoy the ride.  The stench of this campaign will not soon leave the GOP, it will likely affect the party for years to come as young voters see fewer and fewer reasons to be a part of it.  Barring a complete break from the politics of racialism and division, the party will continue to age, wither, and eventually, pass on.

Austin Gets Propositioned

I tell my wife often that the clearest evidence she has of my undying love was that she convinced me to move to Austin.  In August of 1999, I packed up and left a Fort Worth loft apartment in a building that was designated as a “historical landmark” and moved into a small wooden box off of First Street in South Austin.  I lasted until May of 2000 (after the tech bubble burst and the entire city went to Hell in an email attachment) when we packed up our small family and drove back in the general direction of DFW.

In the almost ten months I lived in Austin, Texas, I made two critical observations about Austin traffic.  First, everyone obeys speed limits.  In the Metroplex, those familiar black-and-white signs posting the maximum speed at which you are allowed to travel appear to merely be suggestions.  The other thing I noticed was that Austin hired only the most incompetent of city planners when it came to street layout.  There is, literally, no good way to get from anywhere to anywhere in the city of Austin.  Arlington was the only other place in the state I’d ever driven in which I felt like the traffic planners deserved the pillory.

No bad day I’d ever had in traffic in the Metroplex ever eclipsed trying to get out of Austin on a Friday afternoon.  There is a theory that the spread of Christianity was in part facilitated by the existence of the Roman Empire’s modern system of roads that connected all the major provinces to its capital city and to one another.  Had the Son of God been crucified in Austin, Christianity would’ve died in its cradle if it had depended on getting out of town on I-35.

So, it came as a complete shock to me when the voters of Austin chased thousands of jobs out of town by turning down Proposition 1, a ballot initiative that would have required employees of ridesharing companies like Uber and Lyft to submit to fingerprinting as a part of their background check for employment.  These were two companies with actual, real, innovative solutions to traffic problems in Austin and already running criminal history checks on its drivers.

Actually, it didn’t come as a shock to me.  I remain completely unsurprised that the city fathers (or mothers, or gender-fluid parents…) of Austin would require something that every licensed driver in Texas has to do when they finally reach the counter of their local DPS station.  The DPS just doesn’t take all ten anymore, only one.  The party of science has no problem using that one fingerprint to unlock an iPhone, but now seems to be laboring under the delusion that taking all ten wards off evil spirits when you get behind the wheel.

I was an avid mountain biker in DFW and heard that Austin was the Mecca of cycling in Texas, which made it pretty much the only thing I looked forward to when moving there aside from being married to someone way hotter than me.  I can say from personal experience I didn’t get to experience much of it because I considered getting around on a bicycle in Austin a somewhat playful form of suicide.  The people who needed the full fingerprinting were the suburbanite moms sipping an $8 latte while driving their ecologically-friendly minibus filled with children (some of whom had to be ridesharing) to an outing at Zilker Park or the absolutely dreadful Austin Zoo.  Seriously, the Austin Zoo has, like, dogs and cats and chickens.

Another thing that Proposition 1 prohibited was the practice of ridesharing drivers stopping in lanes of traffic to pick up their fare.  This blissfully breezes past all the other completely ordinary reasons Austinites suddenly slam on their brakes and cause traffic accidents, like trying to avoid an endangered salamander, fumbling with a facial piercing while driving to their part time gig at the yoga studio, or the seven-headed peyote goblin telling them there was a fissure in the road that led directly to reincarnation as a bat under the Congress Street Bridge.  That last one might lead to gainful employment for some, and we can’t have that.

A few years ago, I read an absolutely wonderful piece from Heather Wilhelm, a brilliant contributor to The Federalist and RealClearPolitics, describing the reactions of her peers when she attempted to determine their political loyalty by informing them she was moving to Texas.  Many of them breathed a sigh of relief when she specified that she was moving to Austin, Texas and they replied “oh, Austin’s wonderful, it’s not like the rest of the state”.  The implication being the rest of the state is some post-apocalyptic moonscape filled with shuffling zombies trudging their way through the plus-sized clothes racks of a WalMart.

In the spirit of that attitude, something else that didn’t surprise me this week was Chief Executive Magazine voting Texas the best state in America in which to do business for the twelfth year in a row.  This is largely due to the pro-business policies of our state that the city of Austin has benefitted from but now seems perfectly willing to spurn.  There is a reason the rest of Texas refers to Austin as “Leningrad-on-the-Lower-Colorado”.  Austin seems fine with simply being the address that everyone else sends their tax money to or the place that state academic competency tests go to die.  Notice that the rest of the state has no problem being known as the only place to add jobs during the Great Recession.

Austin will be forever known in Texas as the kid sister that cut her hair, came out of Brandeis with an ankle tattoo and a degree in gender studies, and generally exudes a faint odor of patchouli.  She lucked into being the capital and is still dining out on the presence of a legislative body that the rest of the state thinks has been dipped in leprosy.  Now she’s kicked out a boyfriend who had a job.  Typical kid sister.

They #NeverLearn

Like any cult, when the worshippers begin to near the realization that their grand scheme is collapsing faster than the Dallas Cowboys’ offense, they generally have one of two responses:

• Surrender peacefully to the authorities, or
• Start mixing up the Kool-Aid

It appears that the supporters of the titular frontrunner for the GOP nomination process are deciding on which flavor to use and furiously scrounging through the cabinets for a measuring cup.  At this point, the frontrunner’s support base is engaged in the curious game of blaming voters for being unimpressed by their candidate’s genital girth.

There’s more to it than making fun of his ridiculous little hands for the conservative refuseniks in the Republican Party.  For one thing, this is not about ‘party’, it’s about the beliefs we hold dear to us.  We could abandon those ideals and coalesce around the frontrunner in order to defeat Hillary Clinton, but we do so with the full knowledge that we do those beliefs a tremendous disservice.  We would no longer be fit to carry those ideals forward, having forsaken them merely for the ‘win’, not the winning ideas.  Supporting the frontrunner now is a tacit admission that conservatism doesn’t matter.

Conservatism is defined by the belief that every American is born with the ability to rise above their station, no matter their race, their religion, or their upbringing.  The frontrunner and his supporters wish to return to World War II-era internment camps, mass deportations, and immigration bans for anyone they find remotely troublesome or isn’t fabulously wealthy.  The GOP will be the party of a domestic American paramilitary police force that rivals the US Army in size and power.

Conservatism is defined by the belief that a strong US military that defends American interests at home and abroad.  The frontrunner and his supporters want to see Dresden-style “carpet bombing” of civilian population centers to break the will of those who support terrorists.  The GOP will be the party of genocidal military tactics.

Conservatism is defined by the belief that people should take responsibility for their own financial well-being and work to achieve a standard of living that allows you to afford a measure of health care that you personally wish to pay for.  The frontrunner likes the idea of the individual mandate, but he can’t seem to nail down any other specifics about what he’d change…but his poll numbers are absolutely awesome.  The GOP, after successfully pinning all of the shortcomings of Obamacare (and they are myriad) on the Democratic Party, will be the party that decided to throw more money at it like virgins down a volcano.

Conservatism is defined by reducing the tax burden on Americans and allowing them to keep more of what they earned with the eye toward reducing spending to prevent running up the debt.  The frontrunner blamed Gov. Scott Walker for not raising taxes in Wisconsin.  The GOP will be the party of increased confiscatory taxation after coming in third for the highest corporate tax rate in the world, behind Chad and the UAE.

Conservatism is the belief that men and women have an equal impact on our society, albeit in vastly different ways.  Conservatism has long sought to be a place where women can influence the conservative impulse for liberty and self-reliance as evidenced by their preternatural ability to know when a kid is on the sofa and cleaning their room will require an excavator.  In the past week, the frontrunner’s campaign manager was charged with misdemeanor battery of a female reporter, he then tweeted pictures of his closest competitor’s wife that implied her looks were a worse issue than her problems with depression, and then stated in an MSNBC interview that women should be punished for getting an abortion.  The GOP will be the party that alienated more than half of the US population.

We are left with one conclusion: the frontrunner for the GOP nomination is not a conservative.  He espouses no conservative beliefs, he is not interested in anything the GOP has to offer unless it can be completely and totally subservient to him, and feels no compunction about threatening retaliation on anyone not seen as being unequivocally enthusiastic at the prospect of his being the standard-bearer of the GOP.

If anyone is wondering why there seems to be such resistance to the frontrunner being the eventual nominee, it seems self-evident.  The frontrunner simply does not share what we believe is important and is actually a danger to any future progress for the cause of conservatism.  It isn’t petulance, Mr. Nolte, and characterizing it as such is only going to further resolve people against any form of unity.

Why I Am #NeverTrump

Jim Geraghty of the National Review penned a wonderful column this morning regarding the state of détente between the warring factions of the Republican Party.

Which is to say, there isn’t going to be any.

Rightly, Geraghty points out that years of attempting to dispel the notion that Republican Party was the party of racial bigotry and joyless cruelty to the elderly, fuzzy animals, and Ted Danson, the supporters of the GOP frontrunner have all but destroyed it.  The inestimable amount of effort will have been utterly and catastrophically ruined for the approval of a reality TV used car salesman in two-tone shoes.  Imagine laboring under the delusion that the political party you aligned with was a collection of people whose kindness was measured in teaching the art of self-reliance.

Imagine the group of people you felt you had the most in common with (namely preaching the Gospel of individualism and American optimism) were under constant, relentless assault.  Every day, they’re being told they are the scum of the earth, villainous terrorists who hold the future generations of Americans hostage, that we are the most evil people alive.

Now, imagine that you wake up one morning and it appears that it is all true.

The effort and enterprise of decades is gone, replaced by ill will, bad blood, and thousands of mind-searing Chris Christie memes.  The question Geraghty poses is this; how would you greet those who are responsible?

There is an incredible amount of blame being flung around like crap in a monkey cage.  Some blame the Obama Administration for eight years of adversarial rhetoric.  Others blame a tone-deaf Republican Party for having control of the purse strings for the last four years and only a slightly more orange hue of John Boehner to show for it.  This navel-gazing completely ignores the one thing that is indisputably true.

The current environment is the political equivalent of blaming a victim of catcalls from construction workers for wearing a short skirt.  Blaming Paul Ryan for the behavior of Donald Trump supporters lets the true culprits off the hook far too easily.  Just because you’re angry, it doesn’t give you free license to be an absolute moron.  My son is unhappy that I won’t let him play Grand Theft Auto, I’m not going to tolerate him being a sullen, infantile twit about it.

If Donald Trump is the nominee, Republican down-ballot candidates will begin to distance themselves from the standard-bearer of the party faster than the officemates of a health nut munching on broccoli in the staff breakroom.   We know something absolutely dreadful is about to happen, we don’t know when it will be, but we have enough of a sense of self-preservation to know we shouldn’t be there when it happens.  Trump supporters seem immune to the impulse of danger.

Solomon once warned his readers that the scars suffered by the harsh words of counsel from a friend are the marks of candor (Prov. 27:6).  Candor is called for, so let me offer some…

As long as campaign trail violence is the hallmark of your candidate’s efforts to get elected, there will be no unity.  As long as campaign staff are being arrested for manhandling the press, there will be no solidarity.   As long as white nationalism and a marked nonchalance to female voters is your calling card, you’re on your own.

If that means the destruction of the Republican Party, so be it.  There will be no ‘hugging it out’ as Geraghty opined.  The attendance in Cleveland will be small, loud, and comprised almost entirely of twitchy first husbands from a few thousand failed marriages.  And you will have earned this, you Trump supporters.  You’re the flight attendants on this nonstop trip into the veritable snow-capped mountain of people you’ve pissed off along the way.  If you’re wondering what the rest of us intend to do about it, our plan is to let you crash and then watch as the survivors proceed to eat other.

Coffee’s For Closers…

Remember watching the second Jurassic Park movie, when Jeff Goldblum is furtively looking into the foreboding arboreal deathtrap while his companions are marveling at the dinosaurs hulking past?  He murmurs to those around him; Oh, yeah…’oooh’, ‘aaaahhh’, that’s how it starts…then, later, there’s running and screaming…

This GOP primary season is starting to remind me of that.

The Republican party is definitely divided, there’s no question about that.  The only questions that remain to be answered are; ‘can the damage be repaired’, and ‘is that going to happen before November’.  I won’t claim to have the answers to either, but a positive answer to both of these problems posed to the GOP is looking increasingly less likely with every passing day.

Can the Damage Done to the Republican Party be Repaired?

It might be instructive to examine why the damage happened in the first place before attempting to heal wounds.  The rise of a blustering, narcissistic demagogue didn’t just happen overnight or by some unforeseen accident.  It was a culmination of years of neglect by the party to address the concerns of the people they served.  Trump’s rise to fame and popularity is directly proportional to the level of nativist populism he dishes up.  The people he most closely identifies with are disaffected white, blue-collar Americans who were left in the dust by the Great Recession after the Obama Administration rewarded America’s willingness to throw money down a hole with a jobless recovery.  Employers figured out how to do more with less people.  Every celebration of a falling unemployment rate was slightly tempered by the hangover of a falling participation rate in the labor pool.  It’s easy to achieve a low unemployment rate if people just give up looking for work.

Trump has swept in, appealing to the common American heritage he shares with them, preferably if they’re whiter than snow.  After flirting with a little xenophobia, he’s successfully managed to place the entire blame of a lost decade and a faltering job market on outside forces, calling upon the images of 9/11, Mexican narcoterrorism, and the occasional conspiracy theory.

Standing against him are Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and….who was that guy again?  These three are currently locked in a Sisiphyean struggle to the death over Florida and Ohio, attempting to hold back the forces of evil – or at least questionable taste in baseball caps – from overwhelming the party and making everyone wear synthetic fibers.  Along the way, their supporters take to social media to decry anyone who dares to compete in a primary other than their favored son.  Right now, the Rubio and Kasich camps are furiously trying to get Cruz supporters to abandon their support of him and vote for their candidate to prevent Trump from getting Florida and Ohio delegates.

 

It doesn’t help that they refer to anyone who isn’t going along with this masterful stroke of genius as ‘the enemy’.  I ask the Rubio and Cruz supporters; to what end?  Let’s say everyone goes along with you.  Both Rubio and Kasich stay in the race, convinced America really is turning a corner in their direction, buoyed by their newly formed foundation of support.   And let’s face it, you’ll be thinking the same thing and you will probably be telling Cruz supporters the exact same thing in the next state.

Here’s why that doesn’t work.  You’re trying to convince the supporters of the one candidate who took in more delegates on Super Tuesday than Trump that their guy is destined for failure and that they should instead back the guy who has won ONE STATE (Puerto Rico is not a state) or the one who hasn’t won any.  That’s not a winning marketing strategy, that’s a Mamet screenplay.

Let’s say that Cruz supporters play along with your cunning act of electoral dexterity.  Fast forward to the general election in November, and for the sake of argument, we’ll posit that Ted Cruz was the eventual victor of the primaries – far-fetched as it may seem to you.  Cruz and his supporters, having graciously allowed Kasich and Rubio their respective wins, now make their appeals to the voters in Florida and Ohio.

Cruz:      “Hey, (Florida/Ohio), vote for me!”

Voters:  “Why should we?  This is the first time we’ve ever seen you campaign here.”

Cruz:      “I, uh…was taking one for the team the last time.”

Yeah, that sounds like a winning proposition from someone who has the brass ones to be in the Oval Office, now doesn’t it?  I voted for Rubio here in Texas because he had the cojones to ridicule Trump when no one else would.  C.S. Lewis was once quoted as having said, “Above all, the devil cannot stand to be mocked.”  Rubio went after him with great gusto, and I appreciated it.  But, now his surrogates are furiously trying to unsell me on the notion of his presence in the general election later this year.

Earlier today, someone in the Cruz campaign apparently forwarded an email to the effect that Rubio was planning to drop out (never mind that CNN said it had direct sources inside the Rubio campaign that told them the same thing) and every Rubio supporter in the world took to Twitter to scream, “DIRTY TRICKS!!” in the general direction of the Cruz campaign.  The campaign said it was a staffer, not the candidate, who forwarded it, but that mollified nobody.  Never mind that Cruz has been the only candidate to actually fire someone in his campaign for pulling an actual dirty trick.  Trump’s campaign made the Nevada caucuses look like the Mafia set a dumpster on fire to cover up an execution-style murder and nobody’s done jack about it.   Cruz is the only candidate so far to take responsibility for his surrogates and is the only one who fired a communications director after he selectively edited a video of an interaction between Rubio and Cruz’s father in a hotel lobby.

Can the Damage Be Repaired by…say, November?

Today, I came across a blog post written on The Collision Blog (and if you haven’t read it, you need to) that was written in a heartfelt manner that bespoke of the honest concern the author feels for the future of the nation.  Ultimately, to me the post is steeped in self-defeat, if the future she predicts is as bleak as she suggests, the time give up is now before start self-immolating themselves in the streets.  Just forget about a Republican presidency, because under the conditions we have now, nobody is going to be happy.

It’s true.  There is no way a fractured party like the GOP can heal in time to elect one of their own in November.  Many will suggest that a brutal primary contest will be like a fire to steel, it will temper it in the flames, resulting in a stronger, tougher…oh, screw it.  I can’t do this.

We’re going to destroy our nominee before they ever get there.  It won’t be like a fire hardening steel, it’s going to be like a flu victim dying of pneumonia.  The immune system, knocked around by an unrelenting virus, will have no defenses when an opportunistic bacterium sets up an infection, killing the patient.  If you think the dirty tricks are happening now, you have no idea what the Democrats will do to preserve their gains under the Obama Administration.  Anyone who wins in this primary will be so battered, so toxic, so leprous, they will have no chance at victory.

This plays out three ways:

Rubio wins, the heavens part, a single white dove lands on his shoulder and the party will be urged to come together as one.  The Trump supporters would rather dip themselves in honey and roll around on a fire ant mound than vote for someone with an even remotely foreign-sounding surname….and isn’t white.  The minions of the Great Satan of the Senate will recoil from the emergence of the Sun, unable to approach a ballot box, they will stay home.  Hillary wins.

The Prince of Darkness wins, his servants of evil rejoice and command the party to heel or be damned to an eternity of proofreading his court summations.  Rubio supporters will wistfully yearn for their candidate, blaming his loss on the machinations of millions of Martina McBride and Toby Keith fans.  Trump supporters mount lawsuit after lawsuit to prove Cruz took his naturalization test at age five.  Hillary wins.

Trump wins, sweeping down as Moses to lead his army of Israelites – oh, wait, I better not say that around them – to their land flowing with milk and honey (well, Keystone Light and Red Lobster…) and $9000 iPhones.  The cherubim and seraphim of the Anointed One as well as the children of Lucifer, both preferring to pass razor blades through their collective urethrae to voting for someone who makes penis jokes during a presidential debate decide to stay home.  The Rubio supporters would because they’d rather die than have to listen to Ted Nugent play the national anthem at the national convention.  The Cruz supporters would simply because after being told they were the most repulsive people on the planet who didn’t deserve the right to vote for months on end, they decide to stay in character.  Hillary wins in a landslide.

Nobody’s winning this one.  Just accept a second Clinton Administration.  Hey, the last one was fun.  Maybe Bill will find someone hotter this time.

I Will Not Vote for Donald Trump

This week, the course of events in our nation’s election process has caused me to make a decision I have never before contemplated.  As a follower of Christ, as a human being, I cannot, I will not vote for the GOP nominee if that nominee is Donald J. Trump.  I would rather see Hillary Clinton win than endure what a Trump Administration would bring this once-proud nation.

Trump’s followers will likely brand me as a race traitor and ‘cuckservative’ for making this decision.  That is precisely the reason I could never follow him myself.  Anyone that would consider this the proper way of convincing me to vote for Trump are people I wouldn’t ordinarily speak to on the street, at least not voluntarily.  It is becoming increasingly obvious that Trump’s support base includes the most ignorant and repulsive of beings, the racial supremacist.  I cannot and will not align myself with the same lumpen, backwards souls that bombed churches in the Sixties.  I used to believe that racial hatred in America was restricted to those tiny, isolated pockets of intolerance out in the hinterlands, like Mississippi.

I was wrong.  It’s alive and well and using Norse mythology instead of George Wallace.

I could not look my children and grandchildren in the eyes with pride and say I voted for Trump.  The shame would be entirely too great a burden to bear.  My children will remember a Christian gentleman who believed that when Paul said in the fourth chapter of Galatians that the Gospel was indeed for all, that there were no “whites only” caveats.  You long for the days of ‘ethnic purity’?  Visit Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

Paul wrote in his first letter to the church in Corinth (that’s One Corinthians for Donald and the attendant fandom) that he wanted the members of the church to avoid those who would corrupt the Gospel with immorality (1 Cor. 5:9-11).  Paul made sure that the members of the church understood that he was speaking about fellow Christians, not unbelievers.  These were people who called themselves Christians, but led lives in contradiction to the teachings of Christ.  Unbelievers already lead lives outside of Christ.  Paul expected that and he told those early church members that the only way to avoid the sin of the world was to leave it.  Dying obviously wasn’t a solution.  We’re not a cult.

But notice what Paul said about those “brothers in Christ” who threatened the sanctity of the Gospel with their indifferent and capricious hearts, we’re to have nothing to do with them.   Think of it like being a parent.  We tolerate behavior in other people’s children that we would never put up with in our own.  Paul essentially tells us when people outside of a life in Christ are snorting coke off the stomach of a prostitute, it’s deplorable, but kind of expected.  Deal with it, it’s the world we’re talking about here.  When people who claim to be Christians are doing it, it’s a problem.  As a matter of fact, we’re not even to go so far as to sit down at the dinner table with them.

So, Donald, dinner is off.  Take the ex-wife, leave the cannoli.

This is a man who has stated publicly that he feels no compulsion to ask God for forgiveness, which suggests to me that Mr. Trump’s familiarity with the whole concept of Christianity is merely perfunctory.  The whole point of following Christ is seeking forgiveness, and I refuse to follow someone whose words don’t match up with his actions.  It’s like a vegan support group discovering one of their members holed up in a closet with a bacon cheeseburger, the ultimate betrayal of beliefs.  We as Christians recognize we screw up.  When we do, we ask God for forgiveness and do the best we can to avoid repeating the mistake.  You’d think “The Donald” would’ve figured this out after destroying marriage number one.

Which is why I cannot understand the position of Jerry Falwell, Jr. and Dr. Robert Jeffress.  These are two men who have dedicated their lives to leading others closer to God, not further away.   They have chosen to throw themselves in with a man who has never sought the forgiveness of God, believing that Trump had some sort of Saul-like conversion on the “road to Washington”.  I think these pastors have forgotten something in their fear, their faith in God, for one thing.  They are terrified that things could somehow get worse for Christians in America, so they employ the services of a profane bully who promises them safety.  They don’t want a president, they want a bodyguard.  He doesn’t have to be a nice person.  He doesn’t have to admit he’s made a mistake.

I saw the covers of Trump Magazine.  He couldn’t make money with a casino.  In Atlantic City.  He’s made mistakes.

These pastors have forgotten the crucial instructions from the very brother of Jesus about being in charge of the spiritual welfare of others.  Teachers will be judged more harshly for their actions, so be careful in being a teacher (James 3:1).  Jeffress and Falwell’s political support in the search for earthly power threatens the spiritual welfare of others when they see Christians supporting a politician who draws support from such luminaries as David Duke.  In their fear, they give those who already despise Christianity even more ammunition.  I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Max Lucado for breaking his silence on political matters and holding forth on the matter of decency.

So ignore the bankruptcies, forget his inclination to use the bureaucracy of the executive office as his personal hit squad.  Discount the fraud and deceit surrounding his personal business dealings.  Brush off the fact that he didn’t know what the nuclear triad was…on second thought, don’t brush that off, those damned things could kill us all and I have a sneaking suspicion that this is exactly how the movie The Day After started.  Screw being afraid of Ronald Reagan.  Do we really want this infantile man-child’s stubby little digits anywhere near ‘The Button’?

Donald J. Trump is a vain, vacuous, little man.  Besotted with conceit and enamored with self-promotion, Trump would use the Oval Office in the same manner he used all of his business dealings; as a personal ATM.  He’d be our “Baby Doc” Duvalier, but between his penchant for fraud and the flight of capital during his administration, we wouldn’t be able to afford to have the US Air Force send him and his Playboy cover wife to anyplace nice.  The damage this man would do to the nation would take decades to repair.  The GOP – and conservatism – as we know it in America would cease to exist.

I cannot vote for Hillary Clinton.  She destroyed the lives of her husband’s amorous conquests and seems to have a problem managing her smartphone.  I will likely write in a candidate of my choosing who may not even be a Republican.  So, if you’re working for the Republican Party and happen to be reading this, you are on notice.  My continued support is entirely based on what you do next.  In light of the fact that Trump was given three opportunities to denounce the KKK and David Duke on national television and wouldn’t, the front runner of your party is of no use to me, which means that by proxy, you are of no use to me.  If your candidate’s position is to accept the support of such people, then you accept the same support; get this through your head, the fecal material will hit the fan, you will be splattered, and it is going to stink.

The orthodoxy of racialism will so tinge the political influence of the Republican Party that it will be decades before you will be trusted with power again, if the party isn’t burned to the ground and the earth around it salted in the interim.  If that happens, it will have been deserved.  The GOP has the chance to come out and disavow support of Donald Trump if he is the nominee.  They can make the morally correct if politically painful decision to preserve conservatism.

Or they can be pages in a history book.