A while back, some anonymous troll on X attempted to “roast” me for writing on January 7, 2021 that “Donald Trump has every right to be bitter and resentful.” He lifted a screenshot with those words from this piece and argued that, therefore, “your opinion has no value.” It’s a peculiar person indeed who distills this single sentence from a 1,200-word article absolutely scathing Trump for his actions the day before. Bad actors will never cease cherry-picking their way through our writings.

Nevertheless, the topic warrants some discussion. Why do good Americans still support a flawed candidate who in the eyes of his opponents attempted nothing less than to overthrow the government?

Well, it’s a bit more nuanced than that. Yes, I wrote on January 7 that “Trump has derailed” and wondered “who would think it would be a splendid idea to bring thousands of people to the grounds outside the Capitol building only to rile them up even further with more heated rhetoric?”

I stick to this viewpoint today, notwithstanding the copious mitigating evidence in Trump’s favor which has seen the light of day since. Trump did serious damage to the country and the Republican Party on J6, and it reverberates to this day. It would have been in the best interest of the nation had he walked away upon exhausting his legal avenues.

The polls today are evidence of this fact too, for Kamala Harris may still be our next president in a political and economic environment which should be heavily lopsided towards the Republicans. Trump has a hard ceiling, with too many voters, fairly or not, positively repulsed by his actions during and after his presidency.

But the self-flagellation stops there. Trump had two strong mitigating circumstances in 2021: 1) the constant barrage of left-wing violence during much of 2020 and an unwillingness on the part of mostly Democratic local leaders to stop it, thereby breaking down a powerful deterrent against such violence; and 2) four years of coordinated political and legal warfare by Democrats, the media, and the highest echelons of the FBI and CIA in an attempt to bring Trump’s presidency to a premature end.

It remains absolutely abhorrent what the left did to Trump during his presidency and what they’ve done since. In fact, it makes Watergate look like child’s play.

Moreover, the left seems to have unlearned Eliot’s important lesson that the way the world ends is “Not with a bang but a whimper.” Even setting aside the policy differences separating both sides of the political spectrum, progressives have for decades now undermined the Constitution in word and deed. They have repeatedly attacked the Electoral College as a relic of the past. They delegitimized the Supreme Court after the Senate appointed to it three Trump nominees. And Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin were the only persons (nominally) on their side standing in the way of nuking the filibuster in 2022. Had this firewall burst, we might have seen statehood for Puerto Rico and D.C., Supreme Court packing, and legalization for millions of illegal aliens.

Such attacks on our political system have intellectual roots originating from an academy marinated in radical thought. Western universities have since at least the 1960s espoused the idea that small-r republican government, democracy, capitalism and protected rights are a smokescreen erected by the powerful in order to retain their dominance over the rest of us. Few ideas could be more insidious a threat to our form of government and, frankly, to our survival as a civilization.

Echoing Eliot, this erosion of our constitutional guardrails has been a slow, creeping process, decidedly not a “bang”. But it seems like a tipping point has been reached under Joe Biden’s presidency. If sowing chaos at every level was the goal, the left has resoundingly succeeded.

Our currency has been devalued by some 25%, arguably even more, since Biden and Harris took office. It’s hardly an original thought that inflation is a regressive tax hurting the bottom end of society most, but it bears repeating. And the same goes for the failure to prosecute crimes and letting criminals run amok in American cities. The people advocating for such policies are not subject to the consequences thereof.

Moreover, as in 2020, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin will not finalize their ballot count until possibly weeks after Election Day, another breach of fiduciary duty towards all citizens of the United States, not merely the residents of these two states. If there’s one way to sow distrust in the process it’s surely making your denizens wait for nine days for the outcome of a democratic election like subjects of a banana republic.

If Trump complains about this, he’ll be once more branded a threat to democracy. But if he manages to win on Tuesday, riots will break out in various cities, small businesses will be looted or burned down or both, and Kamala will spend the next four years explaining to us in her grating voice that Trump is an illegitimate president. Just like Hillary after 2016. Are you starting to see the bigger picture yet?

Perhaps the most troublesome aspect of the Biden administration’s policies in the long run has been the non-existent border. If Harris wins this Tuesday, is there any question the Democrats will make a hard push to legalize the many millions they’ve let in since 2020 and put them on their coveted “path to citizenship”? That would incentivize millions more to make the journey north, needless to say, and it would forever shift the political balance of the American electorate. America would be on a direct path to becoming California.

Repeat after me: Chaos Is The Goal.

None other than Richard Hanania has labeled yours truly a “MAGAtard”. Well, I’ll take that insult in stride, coming from this pompous book worm. But I am no such thing. What I am is a common-sense observer of what’s happening to our country and in dismay by what I’m seeing.

Strip away the hyperbole and invective, and Trump’s was a Reaganesque presidency during which the free market and sensible border policies reigned supreme. If he gets re-elected and does only five things — sealing our border, slashing regulations, cutting government spending, bringing down the debt, and pumping oil and gas like never before — this country will prosper like it hasn’t since the 1990s. The national debt as a percentage of GDP will melt like snow before the sun. Being a free marketeer I’m less sold on the tariffs, but their impact will be peanuts in comparison either way if Trump succeeds with the above.

The foundational ideas upholding the United States — the rule of law, limited, constitutional government, and free markets — shouldn’t be up for debate. Yet, thanks to the doings of a radical left hell-bent on bringing “democratic socialism” to these shores this is exactly what’s happened. And Harris is currently the figurehead of this movement.

For this reason alone, Trump needs to be re-elected on Tuesday. This country will survive another four years under The Donald. But it may spiral out of control if the Democrats are allowed to continue pushing us towards their malodorous destination of choice. If the past four years weren’t clear enough a signal of this, we would find out in 2028. But it may be too late then.