I held back a bit on Glenn Logan’s Comment of the Day, because it depressed me, and also because I assume some will argue that it is less about ethics than politics. But the condition Glenn is diagnosing is the direct outgrowth of what Ethics Alarms tagged long ago as the 2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck, and it’s all about ethics, or rather the lack of them.

Here is Glenn Logan’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Ethics Quote Of The Day: Roger Kimball”:

Roger Simon said:

And just about now, a great chasm is opening up. The choice, they see, is not so much between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. It is between the America they love—that Donald Trump celebrates—and the out-of-control forces of anti-American hatred that, though he does not understand them, Joe Biden manages to blink and nod and gibber around.

I find this far too simplistic to be truly useful, even though it is powerfully argued. This piece reminds me of a quote by Hannibal Lechter in Silence Of The Lambs:

First principles, Clarice. Read Marcus Aurelius. Of each particular thing ask: what is it in itself? What is its nature?

So what is the nature of the “particular thing” the Left seeks? Donald Trump’s defeat is the simple answer, facile and, in some ways, honest. But that’s just a manifestation of what the Left wants, and the conclusion it hopes we’ll all reach.

The Left has always been of the opinion that every election that does not produce the result they demand is illegitimate. Even if Trump carries every state but the deepest blue, they will still have that opinion, which indicates that they really don’t care who the GOP puts forth in nomination — unless a Democrat wins, the election will be considered illegitimate and the president a fraud.

Fundamentally, the Left doesn’t even accept the liberals in the country, because most liberals are not calling for massive structural change. That’s why you see so many nominally “on the Left” get “canceled” on social media — because they aren’t “woke” enough. Biden himself would be a victim if he were still in a primary with Sanders or, especially, with Corey Booker or Camella Harris. As it is, he’s just a useful idiot whom the Left hopes to use to capture power, then remove and replace with a more useful idiot. Biden is going to be spending all his time proving he doesn’t deserve replacement.

The nature of this “particular thing” is not about Trump — Trump is its public face, its boogeyman. The “particular thing” into which Simon purports to inquire is far larger than one man. Instead, it is doubtless the entire U.S. system of government and elections. The Left would like to cancel large swaths of government, such is ICE, the FBI, the CIA, and even the military and replace it with organs of social change, indoctrination, and retribution against those who oppose it. Continue reading →