Middle-finger voting is driving the entire country mad – By Matthew Walther (The Week) / Oct 27 2020
Opinion
An essay appeared recently on the website of National Review under the headline “The Only Middle Finger Available.” Here, only a few years removed from an entire issue dedicated to the myriad ways in which Donald Trump is morally and intellectually unfit for the office of the presidency, and thus undeserving of readers’ votes even for the best of reasons, was Richard Lowry, the magazine’s editor, tacitly urging support of Trump’s re-election for no reason at all.
Trump, Lowry tells us, is “the only middle finger available — to brandish against the people who’ve assumed they have the whip hand in American culture.” (Are we to understand from this that in contrast to those who merely “assume” the “whip hand” in our society there are others who hold it in earnest? Against whom is it to be wielded? The mind reels.)
The essay tries too late to qualify itself with the assertion that a rude gesture “may not be a very good reason to vote for a president,” but it is still well worth reading. This is not because its argument is striking or novel, but precisely because I have heard something like it over and over again in bars and coffee shops and in casual conversations with friends and relations in the rural Midwest. It is a good thing for the self-appointed foes of reactionary populism to make arguments that reflect the actual feelings and aspirations of the voters for whom they presume to speak.
Continue to article: https://theweek.com/articles/946050/middlefinger-voting-driving-entire-country-mad
