I’m pleased to see libertarian-conservative Thomas Massie plans to run again in 2028, possibly for an office higher than Member of the House of Representatives, the position out of which he was voted last week by Kentucky voters egged on by Trump. Were he and Sen. Rand Paul not from the same state, they’d make a great presidential/vice presidential ticket, in fact, whether for the Republican or Libertarian Party.
I fully understand that things like Massie’s sarcastic remarks about not wanting to toe the pro-Israel line in Congress are a dealbreaker for many conservatives, but then, every politician and political group behaves as if its goal is to produce a poison pill—one surefire dealbreaker that ruins everything, if you were foolish enough to get your hopes up. Once you get over youthful naivete and optimism, you realize your reaction to even the best politician will always be something like: “Hey, cool, I agree with her on drugs, guns, regulation, climate—oh, but, uh, she wants to outlaw drawing unlicensed celebrity caricatures, which is very odd, perhaps even insane, but given the alternatives, I guess, uh, um...”
For the moment—given Massie’s ouster by Republicans and the contrasting survival so far of Democrat Maureen Galindo in a Texas primary for House despite (or perhaps because of) her stated desire to put Zionists, child molesters, and I.C.E. agents in internment camps—there are plenty of relatively normal Republicans patting themselves on the back for being the saner and more pro-Israel party. However, I’d bet we’re seeing electoral outcomes that are more the result of clashing forms of insanity than any glimmers of reasonableness.
TV host Laura Ingraham calling Massie a Democrat or RINO during the final days of his losing campaign because it suited Leader Trump’s purposes to smear him that way was every bit as nuts and inaccurate as anything Massie or for that matter Galindo has ever said. The sociopathic and nuance-free Ingraham having a big staff and professional lighting doesn’t mean she and her fellow on-air Republicans are on a road to objectivity and liberty any more than the Democrats are.
You’re allowed (for now) to refrain from supporting any of these figures, from any faction. That’s probably what you should do, but if instead we’re nitpicking on a case by case basis, I’m not going to start by complaining the most loudly about the most consistently libertarian former Member of Congress—certainly not at the behest of a president who, it’s by now clear, is only right about a quarter of the time, not much better than the rate of all the other establishment politicians he constantly excoriates.
Indeed, if the remaining Trump supporters (about a third of the population, if polls are accurate) want to predict when Trump will next disappoint them, they should by now have noticed it’ll probably be when he has an opportunity to do something that’s both self-serving and fascistic. I’m not saying that’s the path he always picks, but don’t act surprised when he does. He flails moronically and heavy-handedly at whatever he currently perceives to be getting in his way, be it evil or good: last week Democrats, yesterday Iran, today pro-freedom American politicians and activists, maybe next week anti-Mafia prosecutors, foreign-owned boats, or anyone who believes in balanced budgets.
It’s tolerant of you to think, as you may be doing this very moment, that even a crazy man may sometimes flail in the right direction, at the right target, and so be worth having around. Well, all right, but then, it may also be worth having, say, ex-Trumper Marjorie Taylor Greene around to point out that only a handful of Republicans in Congress voted to disclose the files on criminal financier/pervert Jeffrey Epstein, and Trump has systematically campaigned against each of those Republicans ever since, having realized that his own ties to Epstein might be attracting more attention than various Democrats’ ties to Epstein.
As a narcissist, Trump may very well have been blind before this to the fact that his numerous anti-Epstein followers could one day turn their attentions and ire upon Trump himself. That’s how narcissists think: never imagining that the standards by which they judge others can be applied to themselves, like a neighbor who righteously calls the cops on any toddler who steps on his lawn but happily parks his own truck five feet onto your property, or a Democrat who wants to put an end to religious conservatives’ censorious tendencies by outlawing conservative websites. Or as Homer Simpson succinctly put it: “But when I do it, it’s cute!”
Notice how Trump’s self-serving reversals tend to annihilate precisely those aspects of his agenda that might have made pro-market and anti-government people tolerate his other antics, in much the same way that anything resembling a pro-market “abundance”-enhancing plank in the Democrats’ agenda is always the first thing ditched once they’re in power (they’ve been pulling that scam for over 90 years now, ever since FDR reneged on his talk of cutting government by about a quarter, so you have absolutely no excuse for falling for it next time around).
Trump’s whimsical tendencies have produced some ideological eclecticism, if we can flatter the governing tone of his second term with words that long. But alas, whimsical flourishes are usually the first thing to go once a crisis arises, whether in a moderately fascistic government or a corporate boardroom.
Peacenik military veteran Tulsi Gabbard being Director of National Intelligence in Trump’s second-term administration was the sort of thing, much like RFK Jr. being in his Cabinet, that allowed a loose coalition of the open minded and optimistic to root for Trump in a tentative and experimental way in 2024, their hopes soon to be dashed. Gabbard was reported mere weeks ago to have objected to the CIA entering her office and seizing documents about Trump’s possible ties to Russia, plus documents about older governmental scandals such as the spy agency’s possible involvement in killing JFK or performing mind-control experiments on U.S. and Canadian citizens alike under the notorious program called MKUltra.
Suddenly, she’s resigning, effective next month, ostensibly to support her husband during his cancer treatment. Conveniently, she won’t be asking any scandal-causing questions during the Iran war. Those who inconvenience Trump or the establishment of which he is very much a part tend to get shoved offstage, be they sane or insane, heroic or villainous. That’s not the same thing as discerning the good and bad arguments, nor the good and bad people.
—Todd Seavey is the author of Libertarianism for Beginners and is on X at @ToddSeavey.