A Conservative Reflection on the 2016 Presidential Election
My own Supergirl–worth more all the politicians in the world.
A brief version of this appeared at https://home.isi.org/nothing-has-changed-least-fundamentally. A huge thank you to ISI for soliciting it. Below is the director’s cut.
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As another presidential election cycle comes to a conclusion and a new one already begun, it’s well worth thinking about the state of conservatism, its present and its future, as well as of the state of western civilization. While this vicious, brutal, and malicious election cycle resembles many of the past elections in American history—especially those bitterly contested in and of 1824, 1876, and 2000—there are things about the 2016 cycle that make it interesting from a long-term perspective. For one, the role of populism has made its striking mark across the political spectrum, perhaps in ways, at this moment, incalculable. Perhaps more than anything else, personality mattered in the 2016 election. Not character, but personality. Not virtue, but smackdowns.
Stormfields 