No worries

Some months ago, pretty much immediately after Joe Biden’s disastrous debate with Trump, one of my wife’s friends called her in a panic. The lady has been in a long-term lesbian relationship, and — since she knew of Susan’s conservative background, though they’ve remained on very good terms — she wanted to know if Trump’s people would come after her and her partner if he was elected.

I think back on that now that I hear all the dire predictions of the fascist tyranny about to descend on the United States now that a popular and electoral majority have decided that Trump was preferable to the available alternative. And I keep thinking of what I wanted to tell the poor woman, if she had asked me instead of my wife.

It runs something like this.

Before we get into anything else, you need to understand: Trump is not a conservative.

I’m serious. I look at the man and still see a comfortable urban liberal who, because he was in businesses that required that he achieve measurable, practical results, had his reflexive cultural liberalism modified and kept in contact with reality. This, by the way, is quite a bit more approving toward him than was my original impression. When I knew he had the Republican nomination for the 2016 election, that it would be between him and Hillary, I groused, “So basically we get to decide which liberal New York Democrat we want in the White House?” Even now, he’s enormously more easy-going on the issue of abortion (for instance) than I believe an attentively moral man ought to be, and that’s not the only area where he doesn’t measure up to ‘my standards’.

I was, in fact, surprised by how more-toward-conservative his presidential record turned out to be. Frankly, I suspect he would have taken a more moderate approach (in this context, ‘moderate’ is not something I see as a good thing) if the liberal/progressive establishment hadn’t gone after him with everything they had, nudging him in the opposite direction purely in reaction. I may be doing him an injustice there, it may be that the same unflinching stubbornness kept him doggedly on the course he had originally chosen, refusing to deviate by so much as an inch. Either way, I still see him as a liberally-inclined guy who wound up behaving in a manner more gratifyingly conservative than I had expected of him.

Now, whether or not you agree with any of the above, the point of all that is this:

My own political beliefs are SO conservative that I view the current global avatar of reactionary right-wing extremism as not-really-conservative. In other words, if I had the power of the Presidency, I would push a LOT farther than Trump has done or appears ready to do.

And, even that being so, I wouldn’t be going after that poor woman and her life partner.

Why would I? Why would I want to? I don’t want porn taught in K‑12 schools, I don’t want men in women’s locker rooms (or fraudulently stealing sports trophies from women and girls) because they lie about being women, I don’t want pedophilia to be legitimized and legalized, but none of that has anything to do with individual people making their own private choices. I am MUCH MORE EXTREME in my beliefs and positions than Trump is ever likely to be, and she’s still safe from me … because I have no desire to force other people to do what I want, I just want to stop them from forcing ME to do what they want.

And if I wouldn’t be inclined to kick off the next wave of right-wing tyranny, how much less likely is the guy who’s substantially more moderate than I am?