The Reichstag is always burning: a commentary on The Flight 93 Election

By: A Yeoman Farmer

The Flight 93 Election

By: Publius Decius Mus[i]

September 5, 2016

On 5 September 2016, a writer under the pseudonym of Publius Decius Mus, wrote a defence of Trump which was also an extended meditation on the American conservative movement. Although not aware of it, the author was engaging in the age old American practice of the jeremiad,[ii] the difference, though, was that it was a European jeremiad, not an American one in that it addresses the problem but offers no solution.[iii] Or, in this case the author offers a solution that is worse than the problem.

The following is an extended commentary on the essay, which hopes to honour the author’s wish to be flayed in the public domain.

1. 2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die. You may 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.

Like my title, the author’s was hyperbolic and like his, my title serves a purpose. It is to warn the reader that we cannot always believe the Reichstag is burning, that each election is a democratic Gotterdammerung for the conservative movement if not America, in part because one can find this language in nearly all elections going back to the founding. A cursory reading of J.G.A. Pocock’s The Machiavellian Moment, would…