193. THE WRONG CHOICE - Why Voting for Trump is More Than Just A Choice I Disagree With

A student and I were talking about the upcoming US election. I am an American citizen and have already cast my vote (for Harris). He was asking what philosophical questions the election might raise and as I thought about it I wondered if this might be the first election in my lifetime where there might be an argument to be made that there was an actual right or wrong choice, not simply a preferred choice but no objectively right answer.

In 2016 when people first voted for Trump, he was an unknown quantity as a President. When one’s individual brand includes being a self-aggrandising liar, it was hard to imagine what a Trump presidency might actually look like in real life even with the many troubling campaign promises Trump made. And in 2020 we had yet to have the January 6th insurrection, or Trump’s four years of defending it and abject refusal to admit he fairly lost the 2020 election. In 2016 I voted for Clinton, in 2020 I voted for Biden, but in each case, although I didn’t personally like what a Trump presidency stood for, I could understand why some voters did. Their vote, though not to my taste, wasn’t objectively wrong. It just pointed towards a different approach to some of the questions I cared deeply about in our democracy. Though my ongoing ‘tone of our oppression’ thesis presents like a moral argument, I will be the first to admit that it is a moral argument which only holds sway if you agree with the picture of morality it relies upon. That is contestable, and therefore so are my conclusions. Trump was an awful option in 2016 and 2020, but neither Clinton or Biden, on paper and historic record, were great alternatives. It was voting for a different tone of the same oppression, and some of the voters in 2016 felt that only Trump was speaking up against their oppression after decades of politics as usual. In 2020 they had a potentially valid argument to make that the pandemic had derailed what Trump might have been able to achieve. While I disagree strongly with those ideas, in a democracy navigating such disagreement is precisely the point of the ballot.

But in 2024 Trump has made several things clear which no longer make him just one equally plausible choice amongst many. By spending four years denouncing the result of the 2020 election and defending the actions of the January 6th insurrectionists, Trump has cemented the legacy that seemed to be the case after four years of his erratic and self-serving presidency: he has no interesting in preserving democratic norms or the political system of the United States. Not to replace a broken system with something better for its citizens, but to replace what is already there - imperfect though it may be - to profit himself, his friends, and those who support him. Whether it is supporting the mobs trying to kill his vice President and the speaker of the House, his eagerness to pal around with dictators, his ease with talking about using the army or jail to tackle his political opponents, or the way he has already stacked the supreme court in such a way that women’s rights have been set back by decades as a result, a second Trump presidency is not just about different approaches to shared political problems, it is a confirmed commitment to active hostility against protective norms all in order to promote his own ideological agenda (or the agenda of those using him as a charismatic frontman for their own ideological goals). Without even mentioning that he is now a convicted felon, we know for sure in 2024 that Trump is not just hot air and rhetoric. We know he is a racist, a sexist, and an authoritarian who has no problem seeking the support of violent and dangerous far-right groups and has no respect for rule of law or social convention. We know he likes to attack the most vulnerable members of American society - be they immigrants, people living with disabilities, or any other group who has been the target of his bile-filled and rambling rally speeches.

So voting for Trump in 2024 is more than just a choice that is different from those who vote for Harris. It is a choice to vote against democracy itself. A choice to vote to throw away the epistemological and procedural norms that attempt to at least offer an olive branch to the idea of authentic democracy within the limited democracy America actually has and bring the country one step closer to fascism. It is voting for Hitler but with full knowledge of the likely consequences voting for Hitler brings. Those in Germany in the 1930s who made their choice didn’t actually know the full extent of the horrors of the holocaust and World War II. We do. We can see the historic echoes. We can draw comparisons not available to those German voters who put Hitler in power. To vote for Trump in spite of all we know is something more than having a difference of opinion about how best to tackle our collective problems. It is a vote to knowingly throw any collective progress we have made into the trash. To accept the erosion of democracy. To say yes to bullying and oligarchy. To endorse sexual abuse and criminal behaviour. To intentionally not protect your fellow citizens from a clear and present threat.

Whatever you might think of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz and the policies a Harris/Walz Presidency represent, there is simply no comparison between the very worst of what they offer and the worst that a Trump presidency would bring. If the thought of a black woman as President is enough to make you vote for the monster she opposes instead, then perhaps you are already lost. But the rest of us who are not racists or sexists, but may just disagree with Harris on policy, or her history as a prosecutor, surely can’t make an argument that any policy she has proposed or overseen is as dangerous to the very concept of America as what we know a second Trump term will bring? And those who (like me) are disappointed with her stance on Palestine - are you forgetting Trump’s position on Israel? How he put the US embassy in Jerusalem to intentionally make a statement? How he has been attacking Muslims and Islam since the 2016 campaign? Do you really think a safer Palestine will come by withholding your vote from Harris and letting Trump enter the White House?

So when it comes to philosophy and the US election on November 5th, it seems to me that we have in America the first democratic election where every citizen has a democratic duty to vote in one particular way. Where there is only one choice, and anyone exercising their democratic vote to vote the other way has fundamentally misunderstood the assignment. That, ironically, the only way to guarantee democracy in the future might be to ignore your democratic right to vote however you want and fall in line this year for the only candidate on offer who hasn’t got the potential to take that right to vote away for good.

Sometimes, when given a completely free choice, to choose any other way but one can be so self-sabotaging that there really is no choice at all. The 2024 US election is one such case. Whoever wins, we lose, but if Trump wins, what we lose is so significant we may never be able to win again.

Author: DaN McKee (he/him)

My book, ANARCHIST ATHEIST PUNK ROCK TEACHER, is out everywhere now on paperback and eBook. You can order it direct from the publisher or from places like Amazon.

My academic paper - ‘An error of punishment defences in the context of schooling’ is out in the Journal of Philosophy of Education here.

My other book - AUTHENTIC DEMOCRACY: An Ethical Justification of Anarchism - is available HERE , from the publisher, and from all good booksellers, either in paperback or as an e-Book. 

I also have a chapter in THIS BOOK on punk and anarchism.

Listen to me on The Independent Teacher podcast here. Read my Anarchist Studies journal paper on Anarchism and Character Education here. Listen to me on the Philosophy Gets Schooled podcast here. Listen to me talk anarchism and wrestling here or anarchism and education here. For everything else DaN McKee related: www.everythingdanmckee.com   

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