Random thoughts and links

Most of this will be about the election, but first I want to note the passing of one of my favorite song writers, Leonard Cohen. He wrote a lot of good songs, but since everyone else is linking to them, I decided to link to an affectionate parody.

To all the people having the vapors over Trump’s win: his victory was not really about racism. It’s less that Trump won and more that Clinton lost. He got fewer votes than Romney, but she got a lot fewer votes than Obama. Hillary was a lot better at motivating her opponents than her supporters.

Speaking of his supporters, I expect that many of them will sound like Wash’s Stegosaurus before a year or two have gone by. I hope that’s true of the so-called “alt-right” that was so vocal in his support.

And speaking of the “alt-right”, it’s important to see that that movement is just standard left-wing identity politics, but pro-white instead of anti-white. Maybe the people who have been pushing identity politics will be able to see how ugly it is now that it’s pointed at them.

I wasn’t expecting that

So Donald Trump won after all. I agree with Larry Correia:

I’m not happy Trump won, but I’m ecstatic that Hillary lost.

He says our choice was between Brain Cancer and Colon Cancer, and Colon Cancer came out on top. I was thinking about this analogy, and, well, I already survived colon cancer once. Hopefully our nation will survive this.

Moral voting

While I firmly believe that the time will come that we will each appear before God’s judgement seat to give an accounting of our deeds, I won’t be surprised if he never asks who we voted for in any election. Much of the polarization in our politics comes from people believing that their political opinions make them morally superior to those who vote differently.

Of course we should take our responsibility to vote seriously, and prayerfully select those we feel would best fill the positions. This doesn’t mean, though, that other people won’t equally prayerfully come to different conclusions. We should have the humility to acknowledge that we might be wrong, or at least that those who disagree with us are sincere and not evil.

I chose to vote for Evan McMullin (I did the early voting thing on Thursday) but I understand the arguments for the other candidates, and I don’t think my choice makes me morally superior to anyone. More than who you vote for, the moral choice is to respect the choices of others.