FLIGHT 1854:

Four years ago, the closest thing to the thinking man's case for Donald Trump came from Michael Anton, who famously characterised the 2016 race as "The Flight 93 Election" in a website-crashing essay for the Claremont Review of Books: "Charge the cockpit or you die. You might die anyway. You -- or the leader of your party -- may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane. There are no guarantees."

Hillary Clinton and the liberal establishment she represented had hijacked the country. Conservatives needed to do whatever it took -- including voting for Trump -- to wrestle back the controls.

Notwithstanding the poor taste in Anton's choice of metaphor (today, both Joe Biden and Donald Trump will commemorate the anniversary of 9/11 with a visit to the site where United Flight 93 crashed in the Pennsylvania countryside), it never struck me as especially apt. Where is the self-sacrifice in Anton's crass framing? What is the Flight 93 comparison other than a lurid repackaging of your willingness to ignore your preferred candidate's shortcomings as something more heroic?

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