“Never Trump!” That slogan has a ring to it, doesn’t it? And rightly so, because those two words incorporate perhaps the most succinct and self-satisfying bit of virtue signaling in all of human history. Or to put it another way, they represent the ultimate triumph of maudlin cant over reason.

To be honest, there are some candidates for public office for whom I could never vote. Their social and political philosophies, their transparent lust for power, and their past histories of depraved conduct render them wholly unredeemable. David Jacobson is just such a man. I am sure you have heard of him, but have you ever taken the trouble to actually catalog his vicious acts of cruelty and destruction? The man was deplorable! So deplorable in fact that I can honestly say, “never David.”

First, there was his perfidious infidelity, which commenced almost the moment he took office. He was already a bigamist six times over (if you count shacking up) when he seduced his eighth wife and then had her husband murdered so that he could marry her. On top of that, it is widely suspected that he had numerous other affairs. But worse still was the treachery and intrigue he instigated and then condoned among his many children.

For example, when it came to his attention that his eldest and favorite son had raped one of his daughters born to another mother, David did nothing. He could not bear to impose the appropriate discipline on the lad. And so that son went unpunished until one of David’s other sons, a full brother to the daughter who had been raped, killed the rapist in retaliation and then fled into exile to escape the wrath of his father. This naturally provoked resentment among David’s other children, so that as they came of age they turned against their father as well.

The exiled son’s resentment lingered for many years, until finally he recruited an armed band and embarked upon a violent feud against his father. The assailants were apprehended, and David had his rebel son killed. Meanwhile, that favorite wife I mentioned earlier was intriguing to have her own son usurp the wealth and office to which his older brother, the second-born son of David, had fallen heir. Wife number eight’s plot was ultimately successful, whereupon her son murdered his half-brother and assumed the reins of power.

Solomon was another leader I could never vote for. In imitation of his father, he took 1000 wives, including many women from hostile foreign lands. The unsurprising result was a wave of treacherous “collusions” with his enemies and political disintegration within the family that ultimately destroyed the unity of the country. Israel after that was never again reunited.

The astute reader will of course recognize our David Jacobson (David, son of Jacob, aka Israel) as that famous King David of whom the Bible says that he was a man “after God’s own heart.” But how can that be? Was there ever a ruler so destructive of his family and of his country? The answer of course is that David repented, acknowledged the evil he had done, accepted without resentment the sentence his creator imposed upon him, and amended his life. He grew into the responsibility that had been given him and became a great king. But how could we ever have anticipated that magnificent redemption? We were not there to witness David’s moral transformation. And so we have only his initial bad conduct as a basis upon which to judge him, at least in human terms.

Fortunately, in the case of Donald Trump we have much more than that. Three years ago a case could reasonably have been made that Trump’s dubious past, his flamboyant womanizing, and his seemingly superficial and self-aggrandizing commercial pursuits were an ominous portent of the sort of president he might become. But assuming the worst case, there was still no reason to imagine he could ever rival the destructive treachery and maladministration of King David. (Or of Hillary Clinton!)

As has often been said, God sometimes performs his works through human vessels. In the weeks leading up to the 2016 election I was engaged in a group discussion of the prospective presidential candidates, and within that group there were some “Never Trumpers.” I took the position that while Trump was a “lout,” (a term I now very much regret using) he was “our lout.” In other words, without actually defending the man we then called “The Donald” I asked that those opposed to him consider the alternative. One woman without hesitation assured us that while she favored the conservative Ted Cruz she would vote for Hillary Clinton if Trump were to become the Republican nominee.

In order to clarify her obviously strong anti-Trump convictions, I posed a very narrow hypothetical question. “What if Hitler came back to life,” I asked, “and became the Democrat candidate opposing Trump?” “And what if you knew for an absolute certainty that yours would be the deciding vote?” The woman informed the group that even to avoid electing Hitler she could not vote for Trump because, as she put it, “we cannot commit one evil to avoid another.” After haggling with her momentarily over the doctrine of the lesser of two evils, I returned to the original question. “So what would you do,” I asked? The woman smugly assured us that she would write-in another candidate rather than vote for Trump, and that if Hitler came to power as a result that would not be her fault.

Many of the Never Trumpers strike me as trying to be more righteous than God. Or at least they are more judgmental. To doubt Donald Trump’s decency, his sincerity, his patriotism or his convictions prior to the 2016 election may have made some sense, though given the alternative I would still maintain it made very little sense. But today, after having witnessed Trump in office, after seeing the judges he has brought to our courts, the restoration he has brought to our liberty, the reforms he has initiated in the bureaucracy, the prosperity he has generated, the stand he has taken against abortion, and the calumny he has endured for America, how could anyone who loves this country oppose him!

Just yesterday Trump warned the blue state governors that if they persisted in their not-so- subtle persecution of religion he would intervene. “The governors need to do the right thing and allow these very important essential places of faith to open right now, this weekend,” Trump said during a press briefing. “If they don't do it I will override the governors. America, we need more prayer, not less," he said. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/499184-trump-demands-governors-allow-churches-to-open Can you name another president in our lifetime who would have taken that stand?

Looking past all the fatuous allegations against Trump that have predictably evaporated into mist, what remain are only some invidious criticisms of his style (“he tweets too much”) and a generic compulsion to hold him guilty in spite of the evidence, if not of Russia Collusion or obstruction of justice or of abuse of power in Ukraine, then somehow to hold him guilty of all those things by stubbornly resisting the facts. Because of all the dark cozenage Democrats have learned from the street during their dogged “resistance”, the most striking and dishonest has been their steadfast determination never to “give up the con.” It used to be that when you lost a debate in America, or when the facts turned against you, you did the decent thing and acknowledged as much. But not today! Now they will lie until the cows come home. Even as one slander against Trump writhes in its death struggle, the Democrats and their truckling press are trying to breathe life into another.

After Trump had closed entry from China due to the Wuhan Flu, Joe Biden called him “xenophobic” and insisted our borders should remain open to China. Meanwhile, Democrats across the land were urging us to carry on as normal, while their blue state governors were forcing infected patients back into nursing care homes where upwards of 40% of all coronavirus deaths have occurred. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/13/half-of-coronavirus-deaths-happen-in-care-homes-data-from-eu-suggests And yet now the Democrats and their press insist that this pandemic is somehow “Trump’s flu?” If Trump discovered a cure for this disease the Democrats would condemn him for it. And that is the new meaning of “Never Trump.”

It is time for a sincere re-evaluation of all that is taking place in this kabuki theatre that has replaced our once honest and rational national debate. Partisanship is never so flawed as when it becomes fossilized in emotion and prejudice. The anxious “Never Trump” meme of 2016 that was based upon an understandable concern about the man’s intentions and his capabilities has been replaced by an equally rigid opposition to Trump based on an irrational and immoral rage. Just yesterday a reporter expressed her own “Never Trump” angst in terms the most mulish neocon could relate to. “The Nation columnist Katha Pollitt…wrote that she would ‘vote for Joe Biden if he boiled babies and ate them’ given the importance of ending President Trump's White House tenure. ‘I would vote for Joe Biden if he boiled babies and ate them. He wasn't my candidate, but taking back the White House is that important,’ Pollitt wrote.” https://thehill.com/homenews/media/499057-nation-columnist-criticized-for-writing-shed-vote-for-biden-if-he-boiledhttps://thehill.com/homenews/media/499057-nation-columnist-criticized-for-writing-shed-vote-for-biden-if-he-boiled

Before you vote this time, take an honest look at both sides of the many accusations that have been hurled against this president. Did he really engage in treason with Vladimir Putin? After three years, what actual evidence of that have you seen? Joe Biden has admitted on videotape that in exchange for a billion dollars of taxpayer money he coerced the Ukrainian government into firing a prosecutor who was about to investigate his son. https://www.wsj.com/video/opinion-joe-biden-forced-ukraine-to-fire-prosecutor-for-aid-money/C1C51BB8-3988-4070-869F-CAD3CA0E81D8.html What actual evidence, aside from misleading and hyperbolic headlines soon forgotten but never retracted, have you seen that Trump ever did anything like that?

Trump has changed, and entirely for the better since the day he announced his candidacy. He is not the same man he was when he blundered into that Access Hollywood studio with an anatomically absurd brag about his prowess with women. (Of course even that ugly swagger did not employ a cigar, the tool of choice for that darling of leftism Bill Clinton, who grotesquely violated the intimacy of a young intern with his “La Monica” and then selfishly concluded his exploit in the sink. After which the women of the left were madly bidding on ebay for presidential knee pads.)

Is Trump boastful and inarticulate? Absolutely! But then the left adored the braggadocios pigeon of Muhammad Ali. (“I represent the truth!” “The world champion should be pretty like me!” “I am the greatest!”) The hate filled malice against Donald Trump we see today from the propaganda organs of the left is entirely insincere. It is not this president’s failings or his vices they oppose. They loved him on “The Apprentice,” when he was firing deplorables left and right (so to speak). It is his virtues, and his love for this country, that they cannot abide. And those are the very reasons you should vote for him.