The American dream is dying. You can feel it. The sad trajectory solidified with the COVID bailouts that everyone with half a brain knew would lead to massive inflation, but it obviously began decades before that. There’s only so much debt spending a government can do before the wheels come off, and the sense that ours are a speed bump away from landing in the ditch is palpable. It’s just a matter of time before we’re Venezuela, and when that happens, the freedoms we and our forebears have enjoyed will be gone right along with what was left of the American dream.
How much time? It’s impossible to say. Though nothing can change the destination, certain policies could slow the train. At this point, that’s the best we can hope for. I’ll be 50 in a month. Selfishly, I’d love to see the ultimate end of our Republic and any shot ordinary people have at enjoying real freedom or being successful economically, delayed until I’m dead and gone. Maybe my children - all teenagers now - would have enough of a start to maybe somewhat withstand it. But a part of me knows deep down that it’s far more likely to come much sooner than any of us want.
By “any of us,” I’m excluding the doomers, of course. I never understood that mentality. Sure, the silver lining to hard times - really hard times - would be the rebirth of hard men and the end of the wokism we’ve all come to know and loathe. People trying to figure out where their next meal is coming from typically don’t have time for pronouns and purple hair, and if they think they do, they probably won’t last long. Life would be hard, but I’m not gonna lie; the absence of these nutjobs would ease the pain considerably.
But, as much as I’m preemptively thankful for those hard men who will hopefully emerge to rebuild civilization from the rubble it’s about to become, I’ll admit that I’m not one of them, not yet, anyway. Maybe I’ll adapt to the times, but right now, I like football, Netflix, and restaurant food just as much as the next couch potato, and I’m not keen on giving any of it up anytime soon. When the lights finally go out, I sincerely hope I’m either dead and gone or too old to know or care.
Oddly enough, that mentality leads me to root hard for Donald Trump to pull this one off against Kamala Harris. I know he won’t be able to fix everything or even come close. If he could, why didn’t he do it last time? The hard truth is that even if he did everything right and tried his hardest in every possible way, it can’t really be fixed. But I also know that his policies would lead to a lot more water being bailed out of this sinking ship than Democratic policies would, and maybe that would buy us some time.
So yeah, sadly, that’s pretty much the best we can hope for with a Trump victory in November—a delay of the inevitable. I wish I had better news, but you know I'm right as well as I do. Does that still make this the ‘mostest importantest election everrrr?’ Well, certainly, a case could be made that every election is more important than the preceding ones, but in terms of delaying the inevitable, I do think 2016 was much more important than 2020. That’s because Biden got to replace one liberal justice with another liberal while Trump got to hold serve once and replace two other liberals with, well, people not nearly as liberal. Since the courts are the primary vehicle to reign in leftist power grabs, I’d say that was a hugely historic, generational victory that’s hard to match. If I had to choose between the two, I’d still choose 2016.
We know what a 2024 win would look like. Even without Congress, Trump could at least turn down the seemingly endless immigration spigot that’s been relentlessly on the past four years. He would also have four years to reshape the courts again more favorably than Democrats would. If we don’t see a neutering of the regulatory agencies, at least things shouldn’t get more burdensome for businesses than they already are. If the House and Senate both somehow go GOP, much more could be accomplished if Republicans go ahead and nuke the filibuster like everyone knows Democrats will do when they have the chance. I mean, why not, right?
What would a loss look like? The end of the Republic? Maybe, but maybe not. Either way, it’s increasingly looking like Republicans might retake the Senate, even if they lose the House and the presidency. This would put a huge check on what Democrats could do. Of course, the Great Replacement (yes, that’s what I said because that’s exactly what this is) would continue unabated. Even if Thomas and Alito can hold out, the courts would still shift decisively left with eight straight years of Democratic appointments. The regulatory agencies would become unbearable, and our perilous economic situation would worsen.
However, while four more years of Democratic rule would almost certainly lead to another Depression, it would also probably usher in a non-Trump Republican president in 2028. If that Republican president is an effective unifier like Reagan was and had the right policies like Trump has largely had, perhaps the inevitable demise of the once-greatest country on the planet can be delayed until I’m too old to care.