Events that demand our attention are happening throughout the world.
France is confronting another rise of Islamism that is due in part to their loose immigration policy… that should encourage us to give a hard look to our immigration and sanctuary rules. Such a discussion has been put on abeyance for four years because of draconian and idiotic restrictions, but some level of restrictions and screening are necessary, and we need an actual discussion of them. Immigration is a complex issue not because there is any validity to the “they’re changing everything!” nationalism but because we need to maximize the ability of people who want freedom to get here and contribute while minimizing the ability of those who want to kill us or commit crippling espionage to do so.
Japan and South Korea have seen cyberattacks on their vaccine research facilities, with a prominent software analytics company pointing to China as the culprit. This follows efforts by Russia to hack US and EU research companies during the summer. These efforts should remind us who our adversaries are, and bring to mind questions of information sharing as well as the need for increased security lest key data be modified and delay the production of a vaccine.
Other examples exist. But for the moment, we’re stuck at the end of an election regarding a man who has demanded all of the national attention and no significant policy discussion for four years.
There are two weeks left. A focus needs to be on removing him, but that can’t be the only focus.
After Trump is voted out, we will be seeing almost three months where he wraps up his Presidency, and there will not be policy addressed in an adult fashion. After he is removed there will be policy addressed rationally… but it will be policy which has two primary inputs: center-left and hard left. The Trumpist alt-right will have little voice in the new government, and the traditional right will have almost no representation (I do expect a token administrative position to be offered to a prominent Republican who refused to bend the knee to Trump… which name that might be, I cannot yet guess.)
I expect the attacks to grow ever more vicious and insane over the next two weeks. I expect that, afterward, there will be wailing and demands that reality somehow contort to the whims of QAnon theory. But I also expect that, starting immediately after the election is lost, we will see some whipsaw reactions as people try to move past Trump.
There will be a lot of hard feelings – well earned – that exist because of the last four years. They will be particularly raw because of the next two weeks. It will be even more offensive because of the irrational complaints of widespread cheating and the occasional violence which will be breaking out.
That’s all well and good. That’s expected. But the only way we move forward is to be the adults in the room. That means avoiding rubbing the failure and delusions of people in their faces when they pivot, and not refusing to accept their efforts at reform. It doesn’t mean trusting their judgement, nobody should go that far, but it does mean accepting people into a coalition… whether that be a third party or a purged Republican party is up to the individual (I favor a third party, while helping those who want to purge the Republicans to do that as a backup, but it’s a tactical decision with a variety of reasonable alternatives.)
It also doesn’t mean allowing anyone who promoted Trump – whether through active praise or voting to retain him – to remain in a position of leadership. They all need to go.
But we have had a vacuum of conservative and liberal thought alike in government for two years, and liberal thought has only had a reduced role for two of them. We’ve had four years of modern know-nothings pretending to conservatism, and the lack of leadership and thought have wreaked havoc upon America and the world. America is served best with a balance of the two classical freedom-oriented philosophies vying for dominance in representation of the populace. We need to get back to that, and we need to prepare for it. We need to be able to react to events happening around the world in reasoned fashion and to craft policy which serves our populace, our national interest and our foundational concepts.
Thankfully, we only have two weeks left before the work begins in earnest.
