LF: Why Donald Trump Is Merely the Lesser of Two Evils

When Trump’s presidential campaign first began, everyone was baffled by how quickly he rose in the polls and left every other contender in the dust. In retrospect, his success makes sense. Trump managed to resonate with voters who were tired of the establishment, and wanted anybody but Bush or Clinton.

They were tired of Ivy League pontificators, and were ready for a candidate who said whatever he wanted without any kind of filter. It was almost as if Trump stumbled upon a secret cheat code for winning elections. Say what you want in simple terms, no matter how brash or un-PC it may sound, and the people will notice you and respect you.

This has allowed him to wriggle out of every controversial statement he’s ever made while still coming out on top. However, he said something over the weekend that has many of his supporters and detractors wondering if he has gone too far.

Over the weekend, Donald Trump, as he is wont to do, made some news. While extolling the loyalty of his supporters, he mused, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”
He then blasted the “soft” support for other Republican contenders. “My people stay,” he said.

Try to imagine how narcissistic you would have to be to say something like that. That’s like something a mob boss would say. This is cartoon supervillian territory. Still, despite the fact that he just insulted his own supporters by saying they’re sheepish enough to vote for him even if he murders a stranger in broad daylight, I imagine he’ll walk away from this statement with more support. It’s happened countless times before, and this will be no exception.

And the reason why he’ll get away with it, is because he stands for something that makes it very easy for every day Americans to overlook the things he says. It doesn’t matter that he supports eminent domain, or that he would deliberately target the families of terrorist with military strikes, or that he has conveniently flip-flopped on many of his political stances. At the end of the day, the entrenched elite of the United States and the world have made it clear that they do not like him, and they’ll do everything in their power to keep him from winning.

He is standing against the establishment at a time when the establishment has never been so unpopular, and rightly so. There isn’t any doubt that the people running our society have run it into the ground, and they hold no real loyalties to America.

But Trump supporters need to realize that they’re making a Faustian bargain if they vote for this man. Sure, the establishment hates him and if elected, he may very well put the elites and the globalists in their place. But the guy is a statist through and through, who has consistently shown that his beliefs will change whenever it is convenient for him. Can you really trust him to execute the policies he has promised on the campaign trail? In that sense, he really isn’t that different from any other politician who has made it to the White House.

To me, Trump is looking more and more like a desperation candidate. He certainly has a solid core of loyal supporters, but it seems like the rest of his supporters are just willing to overlook his countless faults because he appears superior to the status quo. He is an “anything but the other guy” candidate. He has become the lesser of two evils, and the greater evil happens to be the elites that have run this country into the ground for generations.

So if you’re a Trump supporter you should ask yourself, when has voting for the lesser of two evils ever done this country any service in the past? Personally, every election I’ve witnessed in my lifetime has been between the lesser of two evils, and it has yet to produce anything fruitful. If anything, it has been devastating every single time. Are you really prepared to pull that same lever again?

Trump is an Ivy Leaguer himself, actually. University of Pennsylvania is Ivy League, is it not? He went to Wharton and did well.

I am a statist through and through also. It is the state's duty to provide an army, to provide courts, to provide social welfare, to keep the peace. Those things are expensive and they require taxation. God recognized that with his tithe, authority of judges, etc. The state is not an apparatus of the Devil. It is a necessity of peaceful human life. When the state exceeds its divine mandate and limitations, it can become quite evil. But the state itself is not evil when it does what God set out for states to do.

As far him changing his beliefs - he has been consistent about trade, about opposition to unprofitable foreign war, about illegal immigration, for decades. The only major issue on which he has changed his mind is abortion.

I am voting for REAL change. This guy is going to shut that Mexican border. He's talked about it for years, and if he gets power, he will. He's been CONSISTENT about something that elites DON'T WANT. So screaming that he's a flip-flopper/lesser of two evils looks to me like the desperate lies of people who don't want the border closed, as he has consistently and without flip- flopping stated.

He's opposed to unregulated and untaxed free trade. ANd has been for years. Me too.

WHAT flip-flopping? WHAT "lesser evil"? I see in Trump a bunch of positions that are positive goods, versus the standard Republican position and philosophy and actions which are all evil.

All I see with these desperate attacks on Trump are the attacks of people who want open borders, unrestricted trade with China, endless wars, and no restrictions on Muslim immigration, but who find that these shitty ideas no longer hold sway with the American people.

So they're going to lose everything, and they're resorting to screaming bald lies that PRETEND (for that's all it is: pretense) that Trump is just another lying Republican politician. If he were THAT, he wouldn't have the country aligning behind him.

No. He really IS different, and he's going to destroy a lot of entrenched interests that are bad for the middle class and working class. So electing him is no deal with the Devil. It's a positive choice of people like me to assert electoral power to elect a man who will use the full power of the executive to destroy our domestic enemies, wipe out 40, 50, 60 years of bad policy, and change things in a direction that will benefit us.

Open borders and "free" trade are a zero sum game. We've been at the losing end for decades. Now the people screaming most shrilly are going to be at the losing end. And that will be great.

You almost convinced me Trumpet has merit but a populist playing to the worst in human nature is a dangerous bet

Trump is not "playing to the worst in human nature", the Republican Establishment is.

Think about it. What is Trump really saying? You working people are my countrymen, and you're being driven downward into poverty because rich elites want to exploit cheap foreign labor, so they've left the door open, and imported things made by slaves in China.

OF COURSE free middle class people cannot compete with slaves and unprotected people.

Well, Trump thinks that our own countrymen should be able to get those jobs in their own country, that the immigration laws WE ALREADY HAVE get ENFORCED for a change, and that stuff made by slaves should not get to come into the country without having had the advantage of slavery taxed out of them.

He also thinks we shouldn't be going to wars of choice, and that if we DO go to war on somebody else's behalf, if they have things like oil, which they do, then they should damned well be PAYING FOR the service.

No. The reason we got here is because the Republicans were given a free ride to appeal to the worst in human greed, while the Democrats appealed to tribalism.

Offering to enforce the immigration laws, protect the country, stop engaging in foreign military adventures, and ensuring that everybody has health insurance without wrecking everything that works like Obamacare does - that is appealing to the BETTER parts of human nature, over against greedy special interests in the Republican and Democrat party who are the ones who have destroyed the country's well being in THEIR quest for power.

And because they are liars, and bullies, and accustomed to getting their way through manipulation, Trump replies by putting it right back in their faces. TRUMP is not the one appealing to the worst in human nature, the people who viciously attack him do. He replies with wit and strength, and people side with him, because they (rightly) judge that the people Donald hits BACK at are the ones who start these fights.

The whole rhetoric that Donald Trump and those who support him are some sort of low life proletarian mob is just more of the toxic lies that we have come to know and expect from Republicans and Democrats. Remember, THEY only serve the rich and the racist. The broad back of the country has been robbed BY them, and Trump is standing up for everybody else.

HE is the GOOD GUY here. Republican Establishment types are the corrupt lying shambling mounds of human feces.

AMEN! If the other candidates have the best interest of the citizens of this country, why have they not stood up for our interests? They have had the opportunity to do so in the past.

You know that should he be elected he will fall into line, the president isn't all powerful and he isn't carrying the party with him so enforcing any mandate becomes difficult as BO found out. Politicians do what is expedient all else waits so he can be obstructionist by refusing to sign legislation but he cannot create new law

BO socialized medicine in the USA. He packed the courts. He left the borders open. He is outlawing guns. The Republicans oppose him on everything, but he has had his way on practically everything.

The Right wing snarls and howls, but they have not prevented him from imposing his will.

Presidents can rule without Congress. Obama is proving that. W proved it. They just have to be willing to be uber-aggressive and impose their rule through regulatory agencies and executive orders. It is very difficult to stop that, as we have seen.

Same reason Bloomberg did. Rich and independent, a man who knows he's good at running things, who sees things going to hell in a handbasket, and who decides to step forward to lead and fix things, because he can and he knows it.

Trump is good at making money out of real estate and playing to a TV audience with limited words. Not much need for these skills as president. Has it been shown he can be inclusive rather than divisive

Yes. By his steady rise in the polls. More, and more, and more, and more people hear, listen, and like. That's uniting people. Democrats too. Some of them will vote for him. They won't vote for anybody else. The Republicans and Democrats are divisive. Trump is putting together a new majority, uniting people who never thought they'd be on the same side before.

What does that show other than more suckers are listening to him or the questions have changed. The polls are a sample only they are not reality

With Trump, you don't have to hate him at this point. He hasn't been doing a dirty on you and your country from a position of political power for the past 20 or 30 years.

You could decide to not be so hostile to him, because then when he wins you don't have to preprogram youself now into a position of hating the leadership for the next 8 years.

Coming from Austrialian socialist he is not to be given a chance. Trump stands for everything he deplores.

1. I am not a socialist 2. Trump presents extreme views 3. I don't object to border protection or a rational immigration policy 4. People don't amass large sums of money without being ruthless, international diplomacy requires a differnt approach

Enforcing existing immigration law is not an extreme view. Deciding to ignore law because we don't like it is.

Focusing on Islam as THE major security issue is no different from focusing on Naziism, Communism or rabid racism as a major security issue.

World terror is a Muslim undertaking, because of particular ideological claims of that belief set. We were very careful about letting in Communist radicals during the Cold War, and we need to be careful about letting in Muslims during the War on Terror, because we don't currently have focused questioning techniques aimed at rooting out Islamist radicals. Extremism is pretending there is no specifically Muslim threat. Of course there is, and it's extreme - extreme nonsense and extreme foolishness - to suggest there isn't.

Opposing the particular policy abortion called Obamacare is not extreme. It's sensible.

It has been so for fourteen hundred years. To make that astounding observtion is an act against uncritical acceptance of cultural diversity and a hate crime.

Then how is it you seem to recite some of the pillars of leftism so effortlessly and with little serious examination of them?

I live in a society where some of these pillars as you call them have been implemented without stiffling free enterprise and therefore I know it is not an either, or, situation so I see a certain expectation of fairness in a society.

Communism which is socialism under a single party government is not successful, neither is nazism which is capitalism under a single party government, at the moment we are fighting a religious nazism in the form of Daesh and Al Qaeda.

I see that regulation is necessary because individuals cannot be trusted to modify and reign in their greed. I see that diversity can be allowed to go too far and give rise to social problems. I see that power corrupts and even nations are corrupted by it.

In my nation my views would be considered right wing or at least right leaning, I am not a supporter of left wing politics because of the excesses they often bring but nor am I a supporter of rabid laissee faire economics