Fornicator vs. Perpetrator

The Senate convenes. Dominus Trumpus has the floor. “The barbarians are at the very gates of Rome,” he thunders. “We must send the legions forthwith.”

“You lecherous scoundrel,” comes the orchestrated response. “You didst do some noble ladies badly by your salty talk and, so they claim, by putting your paws on their p-part; only but two or three decades ago. [Here this Recorder has omitted spelling out an offensive word. Those flummoxed might refer to the praenomen of Miss Galore brought to fame by the noble scribe Flemingus in his famous work Aurum Digitum.]

Trumpus protests his innocence in vain. Never were the legions sent and Rome didst fall. And the headline of this sorry tale: “Risqué behaviour trumps national saviour.”

The opinion polls are moving decidedly against Mr Trump. It looks as though Mrs Clinton will prevail. Exactly what the US and the world will get is matter of conjecture. But a few things seem easy enough to guess.

Taxes will rise on those earning more than $250,000 a year in order to pay for government programs. This will be bad for the economy. Taxing the rich is an alluring prospect but it takes away private savings which, on the whole, are used for productive purposes. The poor will suffer most.

Environmental regulations will be ramped up. This will increase the cost of energy and impede economic development and growth. The miners and the poor will suffer most.

Borders will be far more open, including to Muslim refugees. This will depress wages, increase social welfare spending, create more terrorism and crime, further splinter social cohesion and sow the seeds of European-style Islamism in America. The poor and Jews will suffer most.

The Supreme Court will be stacked with activists. Christian institutions and churches, the non-politically-correct outspoken, gun owners, unborn babies and flag-displaying patriots will suffer most.

Military spending will go on falling to bear the brunt of forlorn attempts stem the tide of growing deficits and debt and to partly make up for give-aways like free tertiary education. The backdrop: mayhem in the Middle East and in North Africa, and a belligerent Russia, China and Iran. No-one knows what will happen but this is not the time for a militarily weakened and weakening America.

When you go down this list, it seems inconceivable that Trump with policies the polar opposite of those above will not be elected. It is not as if his opponent is a pillar of virtue. A clue is in the reaction of so many conservatives to revelations of Trump’s indiscretions as against the reaction on the other side to Hillary’s far worse litany of ethical lapses. Conservatives have standards; those on the left have an agenda and no moral questioning will sway them from its prosecution

Having standards is a disadvantage. In Saving Private Ryan there is a scene in which the small troop of US soldiers sent on a mission to save Ryan (whose brothers had already fallen), overcome a German machine gun position leaving just one German soldier alive. They simply can’t take him with them so their choice is to kill him or let him go. They let him go. Later on, rejoined with his comrades, he kills one of them. What do you say?

You probably still say that it was the right thing to do to let him go. Perhaps, maybe, the cost had to be borne?

On the other hand, would it be the right thing to let him go if you believed that he had acquired information which would allow him to locate and kill a large number of American soldiers, including Private Ryan? There is a question to ponder.

Is it right to put a person with a lecherous past into the White House? Let’s be realistic. Sexual indiscretions are part of the human condition and few saints have occupied the White House. And, also, the question should be asked another way. Is it right to put such a person in the White House when the only alternative is both odiously flawed and carries the baggage of policies which may well irreparably damage the fabric of the United States? That seems to me to be an easier question to answer than the Private Ryan one.

Why some Republicans and conservatives struggle with it, and often so preciously, is less a testimony to their ethical standards than it is to their inability to grasp the import of the dire situation facing America. They don’t have to kill anyone. They simply have to put aside their personal offence at some of Trump’s less savoury moments. The alternative is to be useful idiots for Hillary.

By the way, if anyone takes seriously the series of uncorroborated, unreported at the time, alleged unwanted groping on the part of Trump they will believe any old rope confected by the Clinton campaign in cahoots with the NYT.  This Salem-like witch trial is already falling apart. Be clear. There is no rat-hole that the left and Hillary will not scamper down to gain power and the prizes it brings. They don’t have pesky standards to hold them back. And they don’t care what happens to all those ‘deplorables’; or to inner-city blacks or Latinos for that matter. They care about votes. Finis!