On Gab, I listed some of my biggest issues that I think about when judging a presidential campaign. But I forgot the one that seems most urgent now:

1. The deficits, debt, and financial system, including
2. The Federal Reserve and the monetization of debt and all that horrid jazz.
3. The wars. Warfare state is obscene, and American wars are not in America’s interests. Our allies are often evil and duplicitous and deeply weird (Saudi Arabia) and way too powerful in OUR government (Israel) or not at all reliable (Germany, France) or too reliable (Britain, but not for long, if at all any more), and the whole mess, much of what we know is b.s. because our leaders feed us b.s.
4. The Deep State — spies on us, tells us untruths, lies to us, perverted our media, and harbors strange secrets, propping up an academy geared to pretending it has solved everything and everything out of the mainstream is “anti-science” and “conspiracy theory.”
5. Taxes. Too big a burden. Inherently unjust (of course) and especially, egregiously unjust now that not everybody pays them: corrupting.
6. Subsidies. Subsidies corrupt people like Biden and Trump, but they corrupt your welfare queen next door, too. And her five on-again, off-again layabout lovers.
7. Regulation. I prefer a rule of law.
8. Federalism: America’s original decentralized order would be a much better deal than our current bloated nationalist quasi-empire.

Gab.com: @wirkman

On most of these, Biden looks worse. But when I was making this list for Gab, I really did forget the issue of our annus terribilis, the lockdowns.

Now, I think Trump botched the coronavirus scare big time, and it is hard to forgive him for that. This much is obvious. But Democrats misunderstand Trump’s failure. They invert expectations, blaming Trump for the COVID deaths rather than for the pandemic panic. There were going to be deaths. What Trump did wrong was not counsel courage, instead giving in to Fauci’s fear agenda. Biden, in prescribing more lockdowns, and in “listening to the science,” is so much worse than Trump in this regard. Like usual, Trump listened to the wrong experts. True. But Biden makes listening to the wrong experts the core of his agenda.

Since I am anti-lockdowns, and see the growth of Therapeutic State tyranny the biggest current threat to freedom, the Black-Masked Duo, Biden-Harris, are for me pure poison in double dose.

But back to my initial list: Trump’s attitude to spending and debt has always ranged from goofy to duplicitous — but, alas, Biden and the Democrats are worse.

Take health care, the issue upon which so much spending rests (what with Medicare, Medicaid, and recent reforms). Trump’s talk on Obamacare and “health care reform” has been incoherent and even fabulist, and on this basis alone he deserves only scorn. Trump knows nothing about this subject. Even after years in office, he still says incredibly stupid things. Really, really stupid. But then, SO DOES NEARLY EVERY AMERICAN. This subject makes fools out of almost everyone. People cannot think their way out of a flimsy white prescription drug bag. It is astounding to witness. Trump has probably harmed the cause of good reform in this policy area.

Were not Biden and Harris relentless pushers of increased government involvement into this market, Trump’s crucial support for impossible things would provide all the reason we would need to never forgive him. But the Democrats are so much worse! The Trumpian inability to counter Democratic fabulist socialism with facts or logic makes him a vexing ally at best, and he arguably does more harm than good, for what it looks like is that Trump simply believes that he can deliver the impossible while the Democrats are simply incompetent at delivering the goodies for all. Trump does not think Democrats are wrong, exactly. He thinks they are impractical. A good businessman’s sense should sort this out!

Well, no. The impossible cannot be delivered. Free goods for all means the servitude of all.

Come to think of it, Trump’s witlessness in handling the coronavirus may be linked deeply to his useless buffoonery regarding Obamacare. This is almost certainly the case. So when (one scenario runs) Democratic/DeepState insiders unleashed the Wuhan virus they had paid for, they were sucking Trump into the maw of his own incompetence.

On health care, Trump’s instincts are just plain wrong. But his instincts about ending the lockdowns are of course right. But because he is wrong about the former he is ineffectual — useless, almost — about the latter.

And with Trump, it is instinct and hunch and prejudice that we must focus on. For he knows almost nothing. Thankfully, Trump’s basic instinct against war is refreshing. Whew!

And it is almost certainly the main reason the Deep State and the elitist classes loathe him so much; this is why they fought so hard (and so crazily) to oust him.

That being said, what pertains to other governmental matters pertains here: Trump doesn’t know anything really about foreign policy. Indeed, he’s a sucker for a general in uniform, for every crackpot Pentagon warmonger who wanders into his ambit. And because the Republican intelligentsia has been infested with neocon goons and rah-rah-men since the days of Reagan, Trump has witlessly surrounded himself with war hawks who have led him to a generally incoherent foreign policy.

Regardless, he can still boast of more foreign policy successes than Barack Obama can, and though his stance against China is riddled with problems, Trump at least recognizes China for the minatory power it is. All in all, he may be the best foreign policy president of my lifetime, yet this half century has been so bad that he can nevertheless be quite terrible. Biden and Harris, stooges to the Deep State, would tow the Deep State line. Of course. And Biden may even be a paid agent of Beijing (the fact that Democrats dismiss such talk only speaks to their lack of integrity on this issue: the evidence is mounting.) So they are beyond the pale. But as a hero in the fight against empire, Trump is mostly a stumble-bum, no feats of glory, only feet of clay.

I know, I know: Trump has his genius, I grant you, but it is a mercurial one. He has no real principles to speak of, and we are left with his instincts and his strange place in history.

Probably the worst thing about him is his incurious nature. He has prejudices. Some of them align against the thrust towards the Total State, and for that he tempts me to give him a break. But I cannot see him as an exemplary figure. Had he someone wiser than Steve Bannon to advise him in the fight against tyranny, he could have long ago seized popularity and assured a second term. There are dozens of things he could have done to win over, say, half of the Resistors. But his vices outweigh his virtues.

He has his supporters, still. And in a land of witless sheep, they are often refreshing. But Trump appears to be losing an important set: old women. He needs the crone vote, no? Or can he make up for losing their support by the rise of a promising new cohort: working men of all colors appear to lean towards Trump. Non-working people appear to lean against.

As for me, I don’t know if or how I will vote on Tuesday.

But if I do end up voting, it will not be for Biden. The Democrats have become unhinged, and their leaders are corrupt and dangerous — more, even, than the Republicans.

twv