An interesting essay on the way forward by Sarah A. Hoyt at According to Hoyt:

Three things to point out before I start the post:

First, the left is acting as though it could lose this coming election. Maybe it’s just their fear and their guilty conscience and they really have it sewn up anyway. This is possible.

Second, if DeSantis were nominated I would of course vote for him over Biden. Yes, I have very profound doubts about him, mostly proceeding from the reason people desperately want him. No, not the reason they say. The reason they REALLY want him, with desperate longing to get him in the presidency. Because he can’t do what they need him to. It’s not in the power of any human. And if he tries, he’s not even going to be a caretaker president. He’s going to be a cork rammed down over the national problems which will keep growing behind it. And the blow up will be epic. (For the record, I’ll vote for anyone against Biden, except Pence and Christie, because we already have Biden. I mean having someone with an R after his name do everything the left wants doesn’t benefit anyone.)

Third: I don’t think anyone but Trump has a chance in h*ll. It’s the name recognition. That was the main reason Trump won in 16. And now he has more.

It’s all very well for us political wonks to whine and b*tch that this one does this, that one does that, but 90% of the time, the reason the incumbent wins is that the people who only think of the election ten days before the vote go with the name they know. That’s it. Yes, it’s a deranged way to vote. Were you under the impression most humans were sensible?

I also want you to rid yourself of the “but Trump is unelectable.” I don’t normally quote Razor Fist, but you really need to watch this, because what you’re saying is literally insane. It is equally insane and laugh out loud stupid the idea the left is going after Trump with everything they have because they want him to be nominated because “he’ll lose.”

He might very well lose. Again, it’s quite possible, not to say probable the fraud is unbeatable, since no one would run the campaign they did in 2020 if they didn’t KNOW that on the basis of fraud alone, they had more votes than Trump got in 2016. I want you to contemplate that. It has to be true, because there’s no way they’d leave that to chance.

Now, that’s a “margin of fraud” no one could beat. And yet Trump did. He got more votes the second time around. Which meant they had to fraud at the last minute, in front of everyone.

Which brings us to: Yeah, could happen again. But if it does, it was going to happen to anyone else. (I want you to write that inside your eyelids so you see it every night when you close them. Because it’s the truth.)

“But he has changed.” “He wasn’t an ideal president” “He– He– He–” You can’t tell me more people have doubts about him than they did in 16 when some of us decided to vote for him hours before, and some never did, because we had no idea what or who he was as a president. He’s much more of a known quantity and less scary.

“But he let them lock us down” “He endorsed the vaccines” “He made horrible choices in people to serve in his administration.” Ah. Yes. Now spin it for anyone else in that position.

The thing about our administration is that it runs on credentials and “experts”. That’s the legacy of FDR. Anyone remember the screaming when Bush fired some people? Yeah. Do you think Trump could have FIRED THEM ALL? Well, he might this time. But not back then. Even he didn’t know the full extent of what he was up against. And if he did, he would not be able to hire new, functional ones. Why not? Because they have to have the right credentials and be approved of or they’ll be “got” on procedure (Steve Bannon has entered the chat.)

As for letting them lock us and the vaccines…. yeah. I know people on the right with Phds who fell for both and the masks too. Heck, I know people who are MDs. And don’t you go pretending a lot of you didn’t come to the comments to scream at me, crazed with COVID fear.

And even then, Trump didn’t lock us down, and he didn’t make the vaccine mandatory. Instead he forbore to tell the governors what to do, which, yes, allowed some of them to go full Hugo Boss uniform and shiny boots (Jared Polis really is too fat for the look. But he would do it, what can one do except advise him?) But that was perhaps more than anything a witness to Trump’s respect for the constitution. He is not, after all, as we all feared he would be, a democrat.

Anyway, so, no, I don’t think Trump rendered himself unelectable for doing what any other president would have done.

Now is he what I would want? Is he the perfect choice?

Are you kidding me? I mean, what are the chances he’ll cut 9/10ths of the federal government and have the worst offenders whipped through the streets till the blood runs freely? What are the chances he’ll disband the FBI and salt the Earth where the Hoover building is?

Not high. No, he’s not the perfect, ideal candidate. Much less is he — as the left amusingly seems to think — some kind of Svengali that holds us spellbound.

In the boundary of possible, I’d prefer Rand Paul, frankly.

But that’s not in the realm of choice. Of the choices offered? Trump will do. I hope he will do. I hope he’s learned something of the treachery of the deep state and the rest of the so called GOP. I hope he goes in prepared to do everything he can to lift our tyranny of bureaucrats.

But that’s all we can do. Hope. If anyone has a chance, it’s him. The rest doesn’t matter much, because we’re not making a presidential candidate to order. As always, we will hope G-d have mercy on the United States of America, because we’re going to need it. But we would under any administration.

Trump has the best chance of winning, and there is the barest of possibilities he has seen the elephant and is ready to shoot it if it goes mad again.

Which brings us back to why a good number of people, even good, reasonable people desperately want someone else, anyone else. Preferably someone with “a different style.”

I find it somewhere between understandable and pitiable.

It always boils down to “Someone else will be more presidential” Or “Someone else will not get the democrats so riled up.” Or the equivalent.

As the people who came here to yell at me that I wasn’t taking Covid seriously enough (Pfui) because we were all going to die, these people think that if only they can elect someone else, the someone else will make the democrats go back to “acting nice” and to behaving as the person speaking perceived them to be before Trump.

The pitiable part about this is twofold: First they have completely forgotten, apparently, that Pierre Delecto, practically a democrat, was called Hitler, and the most appalling things said about him. And that George W. Bush, a “Christian socialist” by his own admission, was attacked and slandered and brought the Democrats to the verge of an apoplexy at least as much as Trump. Oh, sure, the Democrats hadn’t started the lawfare two step. They learned that trick to attack, cause to resign and destroy the life of Sarah Palin, herself, lest we forget it, no party woman, but one who crossed the isle and shook hands which is why she was selected by McCain.

Trump is not the cause for the Democrats going unhinged. They’ve been going more and more unhinged and desperate since the Soviet Union fell.

The truth is most of them were for a kinder, gentler communism. They really thought that “communism with an American face” would be the perfect system, and everyone would love it. No? Read the old science fiction. That’s what all the writers — most leftists — were depicting.

But the fall of the Soviet Union removed the star they were tacking towards. Also a lot of their pocket cash. And Clinton’s fast patch on it, to make it more like China’s frankly fascist regime is breaking apart. And the kids they carefully indoctrinate eventually find out communism hasn’t worked anywhere. Also, a lot of them probably know exactly or close to how much fraud they’ve been committing. The “luminaries” they attract are either insane or dumb as rocks. The control they exert over things like social media keeps having to be stronger and crazier. And everything they try to do slips through their hands.

They thought they had it all sewn up for Al Gore, and then W won. And it wasn’t supposed to happen. They were supposed to rule forever. (Which also tells you how amazing the fraud was back then.) They got back in the saddle with Obama, though I still wonder how legitimate his wins were. To be fair, at least he looked plausible.

Then Hillary…. They’d been waiting so long for Hillary. I mean, I remember a cottery of writers and editors back in 2000 at the Nebulas talking about how long they’d need to wait for Hillary. And Trump — brash, not even a politician Trump — took it from her, when they were so sure that they’d already arranged for the transition with her. (That too speaks to the vast amount of fraud.)

So, now? Maybe they have it sewn up, but they’re scared, jumping at shadows, convinced that Trump — frankly shoved to the head of an existing movement — is some kind of Svengali, and if they only destroy him, they will rule forever.

Frankly, the shakiness of China is making them even crazier. There’s a lot of money they might not get, not to mention other kinds of help. What kinds of help? I don’t know. I know that when the Soviet Union fell, the left got mighty shaky until China replaced it (but not as well.)

And here we are. The left — the true left, which cannot be more than 25% of the population, judging by how much they need to fraud, and how sure they are of wins — is unhinged. And a lot of them still have a lot of power.

They will stop at nothing to enact revenge on everything and every area they control. Look at what they’re doing to cities in their power. They will stop at nothing. Only they know how little they are wanted and the extent of fraud. And judging by their ravening hatred and destruction, it must be fraud all the way down.

They’re going to get worse. They’re going to hurt us very badly before things can be set right. And note I’m not counting on Trump making much difference one way or another, whether he’s elected or not. He might. There is a tiny chance he might. But it’s highly unlikely.

Mostly, the die is cast. The machinery is in motion. The left, having lost its messianic certainty is desperate. Desperate cults will kill their adherents and their perceived enemies in batch lots.

We can all feel it coming, except those who are very clueless or very stupid. Even the optimists feel it, they just refuse to believe it.

Meanwhile, there is a loud group of otherwise sane people who just “want it to go back to normal.”

It’s not going to happen. Or rather, it’s not going to happen till the other side of this.

No president elected will get us to the other side dry-shod. We haven’t been given a Moses who can part these waters of fire.

Not a single one of them will make the Democrats sane as they appeared to be before.

Part of this is that they were never sane. They were simply in control of the media and could make themselves appear as the reasonable, sane ones. Don’t believe me? Read Amity Shlaes The Forgotten Man. FDR would be perfectly at home in today’s Democratic party. He just could hide it, because the mass media was by and large democrat. Not a conspiracy but a prospiracy.

Now Trump has finished removing their masks. Love him or hate him, it would have happened anyway, the next time they were thwarted.

And no one can save us from what’s to come, no matter how “presidential” and “calm” he is. Nothing will make the democrats sane again. Not until they are deprogrammed from their cult, and the scales fall from their eyes. Or they die, which given the age of their leadership is not so far distant.

Until then, we’re stuck in here with them. Then again, they’re stuck in here with us.

Lying to ourselves about their intent and beliefs, their tactics and ideas will do nothing but well…. lie to ourselves and leave us unprepared for the sheer storm of crazy they’re about to unleash.

We don’t need to add to it with delusion and wishful thinking.

The only way out is through.. Let us get through this clear eyed. It’s going to suck like a mother. But there might be hope on the other side, for those who see it.