Thursday, July 21, 2016

All choices have consequences.

Ace of Spades tells #NeverTrumpers that they are responsible if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency.
Sorry, I was on Twitter. I felt it was necessary to dispel the widely-held myth, adored by #NeverTrumpers, that somehow attacking Trump relentlessly does not aid Hillary Clinton, and that they are not choosing Hillary Clinton by choosing to be NeverTrump.

All choices have consequences. By supporting Trump, I am responsible for the consequences of a Trump victory -- and those consequences could indeed be dire.

But a childish morally-unserious fantasy has infected the #NeverTrump not-so-intellgentsia, that they can agitate for Hillary Clinton -- by relentlessly disparaging Trump -- and somehow, they are not responsible for the consequences of the Hillary presidency they are bucking for.

...I tried to explain to them that there is no such thing as a consequence-free choice -- all choices have consequences, both on the upside and the downside -- and both the upside and downswide consequences must be considered by any adult, intellectually-serious person in making his choice.

Yet the #NeverTrumpers claim that the obvious, inescapable outcome of their position -- that Hillary Clinton will be the president -- is not their responsibility, just because they didn't intend that as a pirmary matter.

No, but they were completely aware it was the natural and inevitable consequence of their position.

So why would a Trump supporter be responsible for a foreign policy catastrophe he didn't even know for a fact would happen, when a #NeverTrumper claims to be innocent of the Hillary Presidency they know beyond a shadow of any doubt is the direct and inescapable consequence of the NeverTrump posiition?

They're responsible for it. They don't want to be, but they are.

I don't particularly want to be on the hook for a Trump presidency, but, being a morally serious person who has not yet delegated my thinking to the Twitter Hivemind, I recognize that by taking the action of lending him my support, I am responsible for the conseqyences of that act.

...I understand the #NeverTrump impulse. I've expressed it myself. After Trump's boorish, vulgar, half-insane attack on Cruz's wife, I announced "I'm done" with Trump and vowed to never vote for him.

I understand #NeverTrump, emotionally. I think there's merit in the position.

However, we have difficult choices to make. And difficult choices should be treated as what they are -- difficult, hard choices requiring moral seriousness and rigorous cost-benefit analysis.
Read more here.

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