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The Low Pleasures Of A Trump Victory

Looking for the razor-wire silver lining in a GOP upset next week
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So, I’m not casting a vote in this year’s presidential election. I expect Hillary Clinton to win, and that will make me miserable and fearful about the future. If Donald Trump were to win, that would make me miserable and even more fearful about the future. But I gotta say, I liked the strongly anti-Trumpist Damon Linker’s column today about the pleasures he would find in a Trump victory. Excerpts:

2. Progressives would learn that “history” is not on their “side.” Progressives believe in … progress. It’s their ideological faith, held as deeply as any religious creed. “Which side of history are you on?” — that’s the rhetorical question progressives are always tempted to pose when some event or trend seems to belie their providential convictions, and that’s very much been the case with the rise of Donald Trump. With Barack Obama, they believe, or want to believe, that the arc of history bends toward justice (with justice defined in such a way that it perfectly conforms to progressive assumptions about morality and government). Since I don’t believe that history has “sides” — and think that those who do are often led by their faith to make foolish mistakes — I would enjoy seeing the presumption flouted by a Trump victory, much as I enjoyed watching the surprise outcome of the Brexit vote send progressives on both sides of the Atlantic into hysterics.

And:

4. Hubristic Democratic elites would be humiliated. The establishment of the Democratic Party rallied around and nominated a deeply flawed candidate this year — one who is highly likely to preside over an administration continually dogged, and ultimately consumed, by scandal. Imagine the post-1972 Nixon White House for four years (assuming, of course, that Clinton manages to avoid impeachment and/or indictment for that long). It’s a sign of how much I detest Trump that I’ve consistently favored her over him every single day since he won the nomination. But on this one day, in this one column, I will admit that a small part of me would love to see the Democrats go down to a painful, humiliating defeat next Tuesday as comeuppance for their dumbass decision to coronate a Clinton this year instead of fielding a candidate who could have wiped the floor with Trump.

Read the whole thing.

If Trump wins, on Wednesday morning I will wake up looking for something good, anything. The idea that the election results will have ruined the day of these horrible people, as well as this sad-sack sycophant, is … well, it’s better than nothing.

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