What If the Plane Isn’t Crashing, and You Charge the Cockpit Anyway?

Earlier today I read the most eye-catching sentence of the 2020 election so far. Writing in The Nation, Katha Pollitt declared, “I would vote for Joe Biden if he boiled babies and ate them.” Why is she so desperate? Because “taking back the White House is that important. Four more years of Trump will replace what remains of our democracy with unchecked rule by kleptocrats, fascists, religious fanatics, gun nuts, and know-nothings.”

As I read those words, I was transported back to April, and my debate over Evangelical support for Donald Trump with Christian author and radio host Eric Metaxas. He declared his own absolute commitment to voting for Trump and against Biden. At the end of our exchange he described his view of the stakes of the election (my response follows): 

ERIC METAXAS: I simply don’t see how anything that has been said here or has been said would get me to allow someone like Joe Biden or a Hilary Clinton to genuinely destroy America forever[.]

DAVID FRENCH: “Wait wait a minute, you say [support for Trump] is not fear based, and yet you just said that Joe Biden will destroy America forever.”