It’s going to be a long, hot summer in the United States. Heated rhetoric from the two major presidential candidates, their surrogates and partisans make this among the most fervent campaigns in American history.
The back-burner simmering since the last presidential election in 2020 is becoming a front-burner boil as the respective major parties distil their positions and tu n up the heat on their opponents.
This is not to imply that past elections have not been similarly overwrought, or that public rancour between American partisans is something new. Indeed, some 19th-century presidential races, especially those prior to and immediately following the Civil War, set a very low precedent for the dignity of national elections in the US. Personal attacks and partisan vitriol are part and parcel of American presidential campaigns.
While we should be cautious not to take it too far, comparison of the 2024 election to the Civil War era is not inappropriate. The political acrimony surrounding the pre-war issue of slavery and the post-war matter of reconstruction is not dissimilar to the deep-seated hostility of the political rivals in the current campaign season.
The animosity is manifest in two distinct realms: the qualification, character and competence of the candidates on the one hand, and the high-stakes public-policy issues on the other. Both candidates are a public embarrassment, and both advocate policy positions that cannot be reconciled with Catholic moral witness.
The candidate for the Democrat party, Joe Biden, is on a continuum of mental decline that might properly be called dementia. He is routinely confused at public events. He loses his place on teleprompters and veers off into incoherent words and phrases.
He must be accompanied by sycophants and lackeys, whose chief role seems to be to try to hide his decline. He is not permitted to take spontaneousquestions, but rather only those his handlers have either preapproved or written themselves. Rare public appearances and utterances are followed by “clarifications” by his staff, which are really obfuscations. His anecdotes have become more bizarre as his mental acuity has declined.
<strong>RELATED: <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/biden-will-only-pull-out-of-presidential-race-if-lord-almighty-intervenes/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">Joe Biden will only pull out of presidential race if ‘Lord Almighty’ intervenes</mark></a></strong>
And, of course, the second Catholic president in US history has the most aggressive anti-Catholic administration ever known. This administration is not content to endorse and implement policies that are contrary to Catholic morality. Rather, its policies are overtly, irreconcilably hostile to practising Catholics.
His administrative agencies expressly, deliberately and carefully force policies upon both public and private entities that cause Catholics to participate in practices that are morally repugnant. Especially with regard to the cult of gender ideology, this administration is causing irreparable harm to a generation of children and youths. And it is forcing Catholic institutions to acquiesce.
Meanwhile, the character flaws of the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, are legion. His narcissism and psychological instability render him unfit to be trusted with great national security matters. Moreover, his bizarre rants toward his opponents increasingly resemble the ravings of Captain Queeg, the unstable skipper of the destroyer-minesweeper U.S.S. Caine in <em><a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Caine-Mutiny"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">The Caine Mutiny</mark></a></em>. The only thing missing is the steel ball bearings as he lurches from one nutcase scheme to the next unhinged theory. And he foments the same nuttiness in his hardcore supporters, creating a toxic political environment.
Those Catholics who have rationalised a vote for the Republican nominee based upon his policy positions related to abortion no longer have this justification. He has expressly said he’s not interested in the issue any longer, having discharged his felt obligation in his prior term as president. Trump’s positions on immigration, in-vitro fertilisation, surrogacy and capital punishment, to name but a few, are as contrary to Catholic moral teaching as Biden’s.
<strong>RELATED: <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/donald-trump-says-his-goal-is-cross-party-abortion-compromise-that-includes-exceptions/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">Donald Trump says his goal is cross-party abortion compromise that includes ‘exceptions’</mark></a></strong>
I have suggested in prior columns that <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/super-tuesday-puts-catholics-in-even-tighter-spot-can-you-vote-in-good-conscience-for-either-presidential-candidate/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">American Catholics have a difficult choice in this presidential election</mark></a>. I’m becoming more and more convinced that, as between the two major party candidates, we have no choice at all.
I cannot conclude that a vote for the candidate of either major party is anything other than a vote for evil. Even if, hypothetically, a “lesser of two evils” analysis were legitimate, it is not clear that voting for one is a lesser evil than voting for the other. While others might come to good-faith conclusions to the contrary (and I do not gainsay that), it seems to me that the proportion of evil to good by casting a vote for either candidate compels a vote for neither.
That does not imply that we abdicate our public responsibility as Catholic citizens. But we cannot fall to the fallacy that refusal to vote for either of two morally, psychologically and politically unfit candidates is such an abdication.
In his novel <em>A Soldier of the Great War</em>, Mark Helprin’s main protagonist says: “When people write violent absurdities on the walls of a city, the city becomes violent and absurd.” Both major candidates (and their surrogates) write such violent absurdities. American Catholics must not be their co-authors. <br><br><strong>RELATED: <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/cafeteria-catholicism-and-this-years-american-election-campaigns/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">‘Cafeteria Catholicism’ and navigating the moral dilemmas of US election campaigns in 2024</mark></a></strong><br><br><em>Photo: US President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign event in Madison, Wisconsin, 5 July 2024. (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images.)</em>
<strong><strong>This article appears in the Summer Special July/August 2024 issue of the <em>Catholic Herald</em>. To subscribe to our award-winning, thought-provoking magazine and have independent and high-calibre counter-cultural Catholic journalism delivered to your door anywhere in the world click <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/subscribe/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">HERE</mark></a></strong></strong>.
