Freedom of choice – is what you got
Freedom from choice – is what you want
- DEVO
The word “cuckold” traditionally refers to somebody whose wife is being unfaithful, whether he knows it or not. Wikipedia: “In biology, a cuckold is a male who unwittingly invests parental effort in juveniles who are not genetically his offspring.” In more recent usage it refers to someone who knows full well his wife is cheating on him, often to the extent of making a sexual fetish of it. But in political terms, “cuck” or “cuckservative” has been used as a pejorative within the conservative movement and Republican Party, referring to any normies who are seen as too moderate or accommodating to Democrats. Of course since 2015, that insult is really just a contest of “more Trumpnik than thou.”
Meanwhile in the wake of the 2020 elections, the right-of-center Libertarian Party, having become a home for the kind of people who identified with Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan before the Republican Party decided they were pinko, itself had a faction that felt there were too many moderates in the organization, and wished to purify it of the kind of people who wrote “We condemn bigotry as irrational and repugnant.” The ringleaders of the scheme called themselves the Von Mises Caucus, apparently because they have no idea what Ludwig von Mises actually thought or wrote. In 2022, they elected Andrea McArdle Party chair and took over the outfit, possibly because the National Convention was even more slapdash than usual. And as part of their not-even-trying-to-hide-it effort to turn the LP into the Junior Varsity Club of the Republican Party, at this weekend’s National Convention, McArdle invited Donald Trump to be featured speaker. So, if the common and political definition of “cuck” is someone who watches a man have his way with his lady, what better definition is there for the Von Mises Caucus, which gave free media and exposure to a celebrity presidential candidate who already had them, at the expense of their own candidates, who do not?*
I decided to watch the CSPAN coverage of Trump’s speech just to see how bad it was going to get, enduring Trump’s whiny Mafioso voice for the duration. And you could tell, just from the noise after Trump’s introduction, and the look on his face, that it was not going to be a good night.
But what did these Von Mises cucks expect, when Trump’s attitude is “do what I tell you” and the libertarian’s attitude is “nobody tells me what to do”?
It’s hard to say which attitude is more immature, but in this case, the Libertarians have the right of it.
It is testimony to how objectively terrible Trump is as a salesman – and how lacking in taste the rest of America is for indulging him this long – that his two main pitches to the Libertarian Party were the same two things that every Libertarian always hears from every non-Libertarian: “You’ll never get above 3 percent” and “If you vote your conscience, you’re throwing away your vote because you’ll end up electing the statist you say you hate more. So vote for MY party, and elect the statist you say you hate less.”
Now, there was some cheering for Trump, but it was a bit hard to make out how much of the yelling was for or against him. However it was very clear that his open demand to be nominated as Libertarian candidate for President (despite being the presumptive nominee for a much larger party) was not accepted at all. But contrary to some opinions, Trump did not seem fazed by the hostility. I would say that he thrived on it. But while there are some occasions where it helps you to stir up heat like a wrestling heel, a political convention speech is not one of them. Just ask Ted Cruz.
I was quite surprised that Trump didn’t actually call out, “Can we get Andrea McArdle out? Andrea, get down here and suck my dick. That’s basically what you did when ya invited me, right?”
When Trump wasn’t baiting the audience, he was shamelessly, and cluelessly, pandering to them. Sometimes this worked, like when he promised to pardon Ross Ulbricht, who was sentenced to life in prison for creating the website Silk Road, that sold what the prosecution called illegal “hardcore” drugs. (There were lots of ‘FREE ROSS’ placards waving at Trump’s speech.) But most people jeered when Trump stretched out his arms along the Cross and wailed about how badly he was treated by a government that dared to prosecute him for committing crimes, saying “If I wasn’t a libertarian before, I am now.”
(Sort of like how Trump got arraigned in Georgia for being caught on tape trying to fix the state election results, and saying ‘I just got arrested, so now I know what it’s like to be black.’)
Throughout this convention certain Trumpniks like Vivek Ramaswamy referred to themselves as libertarian or alluded to people like Senator Mike Lee (BR.-Utah) as libertarian, despite never having been in the LP. It is pretty easy to tell the difference, even these days. As Reason Magazine put it regarding Ulbricht, “one possibly instructive fact is that Trump had the opportunity for four years to sign such a clemency grant and opted not to.” There are still such things as principle. The Libertarian Party always was anti-government and Trump is only anti-government as long as he’s not in charge of the Justice Department. The Libertarian Party always was anti-war and anti-interventionist and Trump is only anti-interventionist because Putin is having a war and Trump is his little bitch.
What is the libertarian position on drug scheduling? On border policy? I doubt these “libertarian” Republicans know, given that another one of Trump’s boos towards the end of the spectacle was his promise to “end the humanitarian disaster on our southern border”, proclaiming “You cannot have capitalism and open borders because you will soon be turned into a socialist nation.” But then one of the problems with the Trumpnik movement is that they haven’t decided whether capitalism is a good thing.
The irony is that much of the hostility towards Trump was from the new breed of Libertarians, on the grounds that Trump had done too much to “restrict freedom” in 2020 with coronavirus policy, perhaps forgetting that it was Democratic and (some) Republican governors who enacted restrictions on public assembly and activities prior to this country creating a vaccine. Much of the spread of Trump Virus (TM) was precisely because Trump did little on a nationwide level to address the outbreak, only declaring a national emergency a little less than two months after the first confirmed case (despite getting intelligence about the outbreak from China) because he didn’t want to tank the economy, which tanked anyway cause everyone was getting sick. Including him. And the even bigger punchline is that the only reason Trump created his “Warp Speed” vaccine program is because he almost died from the virus, and the only reason he survived is that he had the best doctors that government could provide. In other words, socialized medicine.
Ostensibly in the interest of fairness, McArdle invited all three national candidates, Trump, incumbent President Joe Biden and independent Robert Kennedy Jr. Biden, of course, refused to come, since unlike Trump he was smart enough to know that he would be heckled, and probably worse than him. But Kennedy was invited, and did speak to the Convention on Friday, which didn’t attract nearly as much media attention as the Trump speech, perhaps because Kennedy wasn’t a fucking asshole to his own audience. Cause Kennedy is an anti-vaxxer from way before the COVID era, and he may be crazier than, well, anybody who’s still a registered Libertarian, but by the same token, he actually had points in common with his audience besides “we hate Joe Biden.”
I mean, Jesus, Trump, half of the Democrats hate Joe Biden. You need better material.
The main thing that this catastrofuck proved is that even if the Von Mises Caucus has turned the LP into that much more of an anti-liberal, anti-tax, anti-vax party, there is a still a difference between a “conservative” (Republican) and a (L)ibertarian, because Trump could care less about liberals, taxes and coronavirus. We know this from his own flip-flops on the latter issue. Trump came to the Libertarian convention believing (or being given the impression) that he would get another adoring flock of obedient worshipers, and however much genuine support he did get, he didn’t get that. He wasn’t there because he agreed with Libertarian positions, he was there to say “Finish Andrea McArdle’s job of turning your Party into an auxiliary of the Republicans, so that you can vote for me and keep me out of prison. I mean, I don’t want to go to prison. Oh Lordy Jesus, I don’wanna go to prison… I’m too pretty for prison… Hey Andrea? Where’s Andrea… please come back, Andrea… I’ll suck your dick…”
Well, however embarrassing the event was for everyone involved, the good news is that even if Trump still becomes our invincible Lord and God (and Vladimir Putin’s sissy gimp) it won’t be because of the Libertarian Party. Despite all the efforts of its current owners.
* -These would be Michael Rechtenwald, Lars Mapstead, Mike ter Maat and several others. On Sunday May 26, the Libertarian Party nominated former Georgia US Senate candidate Chase Oliver on a vote of 60 percent against “none of the above.” This is a footnote, because frankly, nobody cares.