October 30, 2020 

 

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

 

What Really is at Stake in this Election

 

 Friends, 

This past Thursday I did something that I’ve never done before in the fifty years that I have had the franchise: I voted early. In person. At a fairly convenient polling place. 

I went mid-morning, hoping to avoid a line. And, thankfully, when I arrived I was able to go right in and vote. As I always do, I demanded of the election officials that I show them my voter ID card and driver’s license (which has my photograph imprinted on it). Each time they say that no photo identification is necessary, but each time I force them to acknowledge who I am…and that I am not some impostor.  

I recall vividly the contested election of 2000, and Bush v. Gore in the courts.  I remember the 1968 presidential vote, the last presidential election when a third party candidate (Governor George Wallace) was able to carry states.  And 1992, when Ross Perot received nearly 20% of the popular vote (but no states). That year I served as Pat Buchanan’s state chairman in North Carolina. I am proud of that activity.  

But, far more than those remarkable elections, this year’s vote is uniquely pivotal in our history. Despite the refrain we hear every four years—that “everything, the future of the country, depends on what happens”—this time it really does. There could not be a greater contrast between the presidential candidates and, in particular, the policies and philosophies they represent.  

Ironically, the two men running for the nation’s chief executive position probably don’t realize the full import, the full meaning of this election, the various forces arrayed behind them or unleashed by them, what they in fact represent.  

The most frequent criticisms I read or hear about President Trump concern his character. Longtime North Carolina Democrat loyalist Tom Campbell, host of the popular NC SPIN television news program, sums up these complaints succinctly. Supposedly a “moderate” (in the North Carolina sense of “moderation”), Campbell over the years has evolved just as the old Democratic Party has evolved, and his views on topics from same sex marriage to Black Lives Matter now reflect the “wokeness” of his party.  

Recently, this familiar TV personality altered his accustomed on-screen neutrality and came out foursquare against the president and for Joe Biden.  Here is what he wrote (October 29): 

I do not think our country can stand another four years of Trump’s tearing us apart, his incivility, racism, narcissism, misogyny, bullying and self-centered behavior. Joe Biden may not be the best presidential candidate ever fielded, but he is decent and will restore some sense of who we are and what this country has stood for. He has to be better than what we’ve got.

This is a common refrain not just of many rank-and-file Democrats, but also of some "conservatives" and the Never Trumpers who dislike the president intensely. But it misses almost entirely what is happening in our nation and the deeper and more profound policy issues at stake this year. It is completely disingenuous.  

Of course, Donald Trump’s character sticks out; certainly he can come across to some as very rough around the edges, a veritable bull-in-the-china shop, at times loud, boisterous, crude and impolite. But is this enough to cast him aside when we consider what really is at stake? Is not the far greater evil here to support Biden/Harris (or is it Harris/Biden) and what they will bring with them, the virtual triumph of total revolution and socialist autocracy, and the final end of the old American republic?  

Gone are the days of the well-spoken and measured political leader—we may remember Sam Ervin or Everett Dirksen fondly, but those days have long since passed. America—what is left of it—has become a three-tiered plantation: (1) at the bottom are those who are totally dependent on the State, then (2) the broad middle class who make the nation work, and finally (3) the new hegemonic oligarchy--the moguls of Silicon Valley, the hedge fund millionaires, the apparatchiks of Hollywood and the sports industry, the media elite, and the permanent Deep State managerial class, burrowed into the marrow of our government. This latter group has increasingly controlled our politics and culture...and our destiny, certainly since FDR, and more pronouncedly since the 1960s. And through both political parties.

What Trump has done, despite his rough character and his boisterous personality, is to profoundly rattle that Establishment, force it out into the open actually for the first time (although much of it remains largely secreted away like cancer in the bowels of government, the media, and in places like Silicon Valley).  

That is what this election is essentially about: the attempt of the establishment elites or managerial class to stanch the bleeding and regain control of this nation's destiny, out of reach of the “deplorables” and “chumps” (Biden’s terminology) who intuitively comprehend the we are living through a massive upheaval and revolution, even if they don’t fathom its parameters. The elites will do anything, say anything, fabricate anything, use any tactic to repair that breach, regain full power, and expel the hated Donald from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And they are using a partially-senile Joe Biden as their stalking horse on which they plan to ride back into full power.  

Race and gender, COVID-19, Obamacare, the “Green New Deal,” are just pegs in the overall picture, this effort, stepping stones for the Deep State to convince unwary Middle Class voters that they must return to the plantation because Trump is  brash, uncivil, "unpresidential," a racist, and undeserving of a second term. But the real reason is what he represents, that is, a serious challenge to their hegemony and the potential dislodging of their advancing revolutionary globalism...and control.  

If the managerial/establishment class wins, that may well mean curtains for any real opposition. For the minions of the Deep State have to a large extent learned their lesson.  

And those so-called "Never Trumpers"? They belong in a real sense to the "the right wing of the Deep State elites." They are nothing more than a pseudo-"conservatism," whose purpose all along was to lead us (via such men as John McCain and Mitt Romney) into the arms of those elites. They may say differently, even believe that they are doing good, but not so. They are as a Fifth Column: all the protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.  

So, despite my strong preference for scholarly, restrained and well-spoken political leaders, there really aren't any left...What is required today is that bull-in-the-china-shop, to break the china and the chains. Trump, for all his faults, has been that.  

This past week I voted for him.  

And I pray that God will have mercy on our poor, deluded country, and that there are enough Lots left in Sodom to spare what is left of a once great nation.