The author adopts the pen name Publius Decius Mus, after a Roman nobleman who sacrificed his life for the Republic by charging into the thick of battle. But the author isn’t even willing to risk harm to his own name to launch his often baseless attacks. Rather, from the bespoke comforts of the private sector, he accuses conservative opponents of Trump of selling out, without any evidence beyond a mist-producing frenzy of logic chopping.
.. 2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die. You may die anyway. You — or the leader of your party — may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane. There are no guarantees.
Except one: if you don’t try, death is certain. To compound the metaphor: a Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto. With Trump, at least you can spin the cylinder and take your chances.
.. Again, he is not literally saying we will all die if Hillary Clinton wins. But he is saying that it will be the end of America. This is grotesquely irresponsible, particularly as the anniversary of 9/11 is upon us. This is the logic that inspires Latin-quoting mad men.
It’s also not true. Truth would exonerate him. But it isn’t true — and even if it were, he can’t possibly know that it is. I am the first to concede that if Hillary Clinton wins it will likely be terrible for the country. But America is larger than one election for one office in one branch in one of our many layers of government. Indeed, if it’s true that America is one election away from death, then America is already dead. Because the whole idea of this country is that most of life exists outside of the scope of government.