Frankly, as the ladies say, I am “exhausted” after a week of assassination attempts, Secret Service blame dodging, and Donald Trump infuriating the noblesse by ad-libbing his acceptance speech.

But it all comes down to this. If we elect Donald Trump president in November we are likely voting for three things.

First, we are voting to stop illegal immigration.

Second, we are voting to stop the Green New Scam.

Third, we are voting to grow the economy.

Okay, I can think of some more.

Fourth, we are going to push back against woke.

Fifth, we are going to abolish the Department of Education.

Sixth, we are going to attack the regulatory state.

And that’s about it. No, wait!

Seventh, we will find out what Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are really up to. Did Peter Thiel promote JD Vance to be his patsy, as Sundance thinks, or to crush his wokey enemies, and see them driven before him…

Are we going to reform entitlements? Not really, not until Social Security and Medicare run out of other peoples’ money.

Are we going to ban abortion? Please. Overturning Roe v. Wade has just returned the issue of abortion to the states. Donald Trump has indicated that he’s in the middle on abortion.

Now, if I had my druthers, I’d privatize Social Security and Medicare so that Americans planned for their own retirement. I’d end government education and tell the neighborhood mothers to get to work. I’d end government welfare and tell billionaires to pay for it and devoted activists to manage it.

And the reason is simple. I believe that government only knows how to punish its enemies and gift its friends. That’s what communism was all about, only there was one small problem. A top-down government-directed economy is so stupid that there is only enough loot to distribute among party leaders. The rest of society goes without.

A top-down globalist-directed economy provides for a chicken in every pot and a car in every suburban garage. At least it did.

Back in the day, I used to be a straight-up libertarian, getting my ideas from Austrian economics and Mises and Hayek. But I realize today that in the real world you can’t reduce everything to the market and to mutual-aid organizations.

The reason is staring us in the face. Back in the day, in the agricultural age, most people were serfs on the lord’s estate. If you were starving, you could opt to become a slave. It was called “head for food.” Let’s say that, if you weren’t a serf or a slave, you were a freeman, whether you were a noble or a merely a guild member in the city.

As we know, the glorious achievement of our modern world is that we have heroically abolished the hierarchical injustices of the olden time.

Not.

Today we have a new kind of slavery that we call “welfare.” In return for your check, you vote Democrat.

In the modern world we have a new form of serfdom that we call wage labor. You give up your economic freedom in return for a fixed wage. Your employer takes the risks, and you get to blame him when the economy turns south, as in the Long Depression in the 19th century and the Great Depression in the 1930s. Doesn’t matter that the depressions were caused by governments: the employers were to blame.

In the modern world we also have freemen. These are trillionaires, billionaires, multi-millionaires, and people that own their own businesses, that negotiate their income and just accept the market price for their skills.

Am I being a bit naughty with this analysis? Yes, but not much. The fact is that nothing has changed since the olden time because humans haven’t changed. Most people, I would argue, are willing to give up a lot of their freedom in return for security. Some people just give up and surrender themselves to the local welfare lord in return for their vote. Then there are illegal aliens enslaved by the cartels and the coyotes.

If you want a lot of security you vote Democrat. If you want a little security you vote Republican.

Okay, all change. Biden has dropped out and endorsed Kamala. No doubt. But what do Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama and the Clintons think about that?

For the last ten years we have watched as Democrat big-shots have manipulated the system to hobble Trump and marginalize populists as racists and extremists. And retired Speaker Pelosi and retired Presidents Clinton and Obama have been in the middle of it.

Remember the good old days? When President Washington stepped down and retired to Mount Vernon? When President Reagan retired and moved back to Bel Air in 1989? But today our retired kings want to be kingmakers.

And so the regime is going down the tubes.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.

Image: White House/Peter Souza