1 December 2024
Because my brother, Charles, sent this video to my wife, which we assume was meant for both of us, I dutifully watched it as did she. From my brother’s expressions of worry before the election of 2024 I understand that he no doubt perceives the video as a reflection of his own frustrations with the outcome.
I don’t do TikTok so I don’t know who the man is in the video. His identity there appears to be @cloud.bastidas or @sweeper698 and here is the link to his video as I viewed it. Here’s his picture too, in case someone can better identify him.
And below is a transcript of his discursion, at the end of which he asserts that someone who holds the same values that he holds and at the same time is perfectly pleased with the outcome of the 2024 election owes him and millions like him an explanation.
Here then is the transcript followed by my explanation.
Cloud Bastidas: Well, it’s two days after the election, and yesterday I had a really hard time trying to pinpoint why I don’t think I’ve ever felt more heartbroken and hopeless as I do now. There have been a lot of times in my life when I’ve been disappointed, when I’ve been depressed, when I’ve been angry, but I have never felt these things to the depth that I felt yesterday. But I gave it some thought and I think I’ve figured it out. The reason I’m so heartbroken, destroyed, and absolutely disgusted with the results of this election is that it invalidates everything I have ever been taught about how I should live my life and everything I’ve tried to teach my kids. So, it’s an absolute betrayal to realize at 57 years of age that when it really comes down to it over half of this country doesn’t value the notions of being kind, being generous, loving your neighbor, being accepting, having empathy, showing understanding, being truthful, being ethical in business, being sensible and level-headed, not being a bully, not being selfish, and not being a total asshole, and because I’ve been taught these things my entire life it’s easy to see that Donald Trump is a vile and despicable human being. He exhibits everything I have been taught to set my sights against in order to be a good, functioning member of society. But now over half our country supports this person and believes that he’s the one who’s going to make America great. Well, hey, here a secret: Someone who has spent so much time sewing discord is never going to do anything to unite us. That’s his big lie because he doesn’t benefit from Americans coming together. He and all the Tucker Carlsons and Alex Jones out there, they profit from the rage that they’re able to manufacture. So don’t tell me it’s OK if we disagree, as if this is akin to our individual preferences for wine or toilet paper. This is not a simple disagreement. This is you telling me that the values I’ve held dear my entire life have no meaning or place in the real world. This is you telling me that I should be shrewd, deceptive, cruel, and intolerant. This is you telling me that the type of person you really admire and look up to is a rich, entitled, narcissistic, criminally-convicted pussy-grabber. And if you’re one of those guys out there that likes Trump because, well, he says what’s on his mind, he tells it like he sees it, he doesn’t have a filter — yeah, sometimes you need a filter. There was a time not that long ago when being an asshole wasn’t cool. If you were a shitty person you just kept a lot of that to yourself and society was all the better for it. But now it’s all, “Let’s make America great again,” and what I’d like to know is what specific time in American history are you talking about? What year exactly? Because for a lot of folks this right now, this current time in American history, is the greatest. And you know that, and for some reason you don’t like it. It’s like this crazy idea that giving certain rights to someone else somehow takes some of yours away. Or are you just pissed that you’re not special any more? And, so you can feel special again, you’ll be more than happy to drag us all back 70 years when our black brothers and sisters had to drink from separate water fountains or back when you were non-straight you had to stay in the closet. Personally I’d like to go back to a time when assholes had to stay in the closet. And don’t tell me, “Oh, don’t be stupid; you’re getting it all wrong. It’s really about none of that. It’s really about the economy.” As if that excuses the behavior. You’re willing to overlook all the other fascist rhetoric because all that’s doing is showing your wives and your daughters and minorities and LGBTQ and other marginalized groups that you’re completely willing to throw them under the bus as long as you can save five cents a gallon on gasoline. Did your stock portfolio get a bump yesterday? Well good for you. Maybe you can sit offshore on your new boat and watch this country burn to the ground. The reality is, as a country we have the opportunity to take the high road, to stand for something higher than our basest instincts. To stand for equality and fairness, to stand for the overall good of everyone, but over half of y’all kept us from taking it. And the whole world was watching. And you know who else was watching? Your non-white friends, your non-straight friends, your wives, your kids, your daughters. So to anyone who actually does claim to value those higher ideals — you know, the ones I mentioned earlier — the ones we were taught as kids in Sunday school — yeah, Christians, remember Sunday school? — if you claim to hold any of those same values but are at the very same time enamored with Trump and perfectly pleased for the outcome of the election, me and millions like me deserve a fucking explanation.
Dear Cloud Bastidas – Sweeper698,
Let me explain how I chose to vote for Donald Trump.
I am neither a registered Democrat nor a registered Republican. In 2016 I was horrified that the two dominant parties — (remember that they are private clubs, not agencies of government) — foisted upon us the two worst possible candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The parties outdid themselves four years later with Joe Biden and Donald Trump in 2020.
…a few years ago I tried to initiate #dexit and #rexit on social media — get yourselves out of both parties because neither one deserves our respect or support…
On the day of Joe Biden’s inauguration in January, 2021, I wrote an article predicting to the day (July 3, 2024) when he would be kicked aside (The Big Guy’s 1260 Days at AlbertJayNock.org). When I wrote that I assumed a rigged attempt on his life three and a half years into his reign, but his enemies within the party achieved a more genteel albeit more insulting sabotage.
Until the rug was yanked from under him it appeared that the two parties were bound to proffer once again Biden and Trump, the two worst candidates I could imagine. But the Democrats avoided their own internal democratic process and gave us an even more troubling candidate.
Indeed, a few years ago I tried to initiate #dexit and #rexit on social media — get yourselves out of both parties because neither one deserves our respect or support — but I didn’t have the audience to have any effect with the #_exits.
Therefore, like you, I’ve been forced to choose between light and dark, good and evil. As Christians, whom you address toward the end of your video, we are to be the salt and light of this world. Light exposes lies, salt works against natural decay.
There’s this demonic gaslighting that says Christians shouldn’t be political. The entire story of the Bible, though, is the story of God against governments — Egypt, Persia, Babylon, Rome. When you remove God from a society, that which replaces him is typically that which is largest and most powerful, and that is government. God calls governments to submit to his rule of law. It is the church’s job to function as the conscience of a society, and when the church goes silent a society loses its conscience and government loses its mind and everyone suffers.
Pastor Josh McPherson, whose sermons can be found on line, addresses these matters. I paraphrase him through some of what follows.
Should Christians vote? How should I think about politics? And how should I vote as a Christian? When the salt stays in the box the meat rots. Don’t you think the church should have been more political in 1933, when Hitler squeaked through an election and 12 years later 11 million people were dead? When I hear Democrats, particularly — because they’re the ones most indignant when their sacred beliefs are challenged — accuse Republicans of something — Trumps is Hitler, for instance, I look behind the curtain and see them behaving exactly like what they’re accusing the other of. Like the kid who stole the cookie and is holding it behind his back while pointing at and accusing the other kid. In the case of Hitler, the church abdicated its voice and then went into cahoots with him and then aligned with evil out of fear and deception, not to mention infiltration by Nazi proxies.
So, should Christians vote, and how? God made three spheres of human sovereignty, the family, the church, and the state. If America goes off the rails we haven’t seen anything like it historically. If Christians won’t lead their homes Satan will. If pastors won’t lead their churches they become synagogues of Satan. When it comes to our constitutional republic (which is a step higher than a democracy because it protects every individual from the whims of the masses), a Christian saying “I don’t want to be partisan” is forgetting that Jesus draws lines.
I’m a Bible guy, I’m a Jesus guy, that’s my lane. If a political party happens to step into my lane I’m cheering them all the way. So I watch what the parties support and promote. If they step out of my lane, I’m not going to follow them. I’m writing them letters and calling them back into line, but of course that’s no more effective than Isaiah calling the wandering people of Israel to obedience, which he did but was ignored.
But I’m intensely rational when it comes to government. One political party is explicitly advocating openly for demonic, horrific, perverse depravity and the other is not. Nor is the other walking in my lane (the Republicans) but for decades has been chasing their opponents down a darker and darker lane just in order to maintain a relationship ominously labeled “bi-partisan.” So I don’t conclude that one party is the voice of evil and the other is the voice of God, not at all. It boils down to this: No matter who’s running for office, unless it’s Jesus, you have to hold your nose and vote.
Do I approve of Donald Trump’s apparent personal history, sometimes despicable public behavior, and insulting rhetoric? Does all that represent me? Am I to assume that you approve of Kamala Harris’s weasel-like refusal to state a position, her mishandling of assigned duties, her obvious ignorance of the Constitution? Trump is candid to a fault. Harris is offensively evasive. She seemed to think she could be elected just because she pretends to be cordial. Trump won’t be manipulated by puppeteers although he sometimes won’t listen to reason. Harris, like her boss, Joe Biden, is plainly a marionette, and we are not allowed to know who is running her party.
I don’t vote according to which candidate most resembles Mister Rogers. Neither one does. I vote according to how a candidate will govern.
I don’t vote according to contrived issues. The border? I am happy to welcome anyone of any race from anywhere who is not intent upon destroying us. Let those who want to cross the border follow the law. If the law is cumbersome and the process takes too long, let Congress revise the law that it made rather than pretend that it doesn’t exist.
Freedom of “choice?” Abortion as birth control does not fall under “women’s health care.” Choose not to get pregnant. Going too far on a date is a choice, not rape. Does rape happen though? Sure. And there are treatments for that far more sane than infanticide.
BGLQT+ rights? (I arrange it in alphabetical order so it’s easier to remember.) Is it really a matter of rights or a matter of provoking the government to promote one set of beliefs over another? Gender is a biological distinction applied to almost all species in the world. (Yes, some chordates are hermaphroditic, some species are able to function either way according to their environment, and some, such as mushrooms, do not differentiate at all.)
Most of us who voted for Trump don’t give a damn what other people do in private and don’t want to know. Pretend to be the other gender if you want to. But don’t expect everyone of the other gender to pretend along with you. Don’t pressure the government to redefine what is a functional distinction fundamental to science.
Furthermore, most of us don’t want to see parades of heterosexual depravity any more than parades of homosexual depravity. Most of us are acquainted with people whom we already know have alternate sexual preferences — very often within our own families, and we love them without reservation. We may not understand, just as some of us don’t understand other people’s preferences for strange foods, for polar plunges, for sky-diving, for piercings, or their attraction to cats or lizards or tarantulas.
The whole crisis over public toilets can be resolved by a modest, unobtrusive adjustment in our culture, and that is to redesign and renovate all such public facilities for single use. This is happening already at a rapid rate.
The whole crisis over men competing as women in sports can be resolved by acknowledging why there is a separate category for women in the first place.
These are my positions on a few “issues.” And if I were to vote just on the issues, one party is at least running parallel to my lane. But I’m more interested in that party because it still has at least a vestigial recollection of the purpose of government. Back in 1964, when I was 14, a Republican candidate handed me a pocket card enumerating some principles of the party (at that time). I remember only this, printed on that card: “You cannot help a man by doing for him what he could and should do for himself. -A. Lincoln.” The Republicans have largely abandoned that truth in their pursuit of bipartisanism.
Therein lies another distinction between the two private clubs that want us to believe they are “official” in some way. The Democrats — the politicians, that is — believe that we all have needs that can be readily classified according to our age or skin color or innate inability to handle money. And they believe that everyone who shares any such characteristic has the same set of problems and needs the government to provide one-size-fits-all solutions. They also believe that their solutions should come free of charge for as many people as they calculate will repay the favor with votes. Most of us see through that but many who see through it take the handout anyway and are often cornered into doing so.
It is my observation that most people who vote Democrat — not the party professionals but my neighbors and friends — believe in “being kind, being generous, loving your neighbor, being accepting, having empathy, showing understanding, being truthful, being ethical in business, being sensible and level-headed, not being a bully, not being selfish, and not being a total asshole” (your words) and they do wish to see the troubles in the country and around the world go away. What astonishes me is their belief that more government — more spending and more regulation and more control over our individual lives is the solution.
Think of politics in terms of three tiers: Tier three is in the category of opinions. In this category we discuss and we decide. This is where the Bible is silent. Should the state of Maine change its flag? Should Walmart stay open later than nine o’clock? These things don’t interest me nor do the answers matter to God.
Tier two is in the category of wisdom. We should debate and discern. The Bible speaks to it but perhaps only to guide our decisions. Sometimes one way may be right, at other times another way may be better. So we agree on the goal but we debate the means. Should we care for the poor? Yes! How? Let’s have a good debate, do something, analyze our results openly and honestly, and adjust our methods if we aren’t succeeding.
Should we muddy our methods by insisting, as Congress does in order to get legislation passed, that certain unrelated desires be funded just to satisfy someone’s personal goals or ego? This is what Congress does when they stick a rider on an unrelated bill just to shove it down the other party’s throat. Tier two wisdom tells us Stay on task, speak honestly, and listen to what others have to say. With a tier two question we can robustly disagree and debate and then go out and have a beer afterward. That’s where we have been in the past but probably not since Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill.
Tier one is in the realm of obedience. This is where we declare and divide. These are “Thus saith the Lord” kinds of things, where the Bible has spoken clearly. We don’t discuss and debate and diminish our response just because someone at the table is offended. This is not where we listen to the guy at the corner of the table whining that we’re being mean to him. We call him out as the voice of Satan and we say, We’re not compromising with you. If you perceive that as being mean, you don’t deserve our sympathy. These are issues like the sanctity of life, the sanctity of marriage, national sovereignty (which does not justify nationalist pride or exclusion of immigrants). These are things like the rule of God, freedom of religion, things we get behind not because it’s our opinion but because, as Christians, we recognize that “Thus saith the Lord.”
When it comes to tier one, a Christian is obliged to engage. Here’s the problem. In politics of the past, most often the ticket in an election represented tier three and tier two. And so it was less imperative that Christians come forward and say “Thus saith the Lord.” Don’t stick your nose where God hasn’t stuck his.
What’s different about the election of 2024 is that almost every issue represented on the ticket is a tier one issue. And if Christians and obedient Jews hadn’t stepped up and spoken boldly into this moment, the vacuum created would certainly be filled with the godless and the demonic, and those who should have spoken up would be responsible. If we relinquish this responsibility when it is before us we will have failed the very people that depend on us, not just in this country but across the world.
Think about the moral dilemma Christians faced in this election about whom to vote for. It’s nothing compared with the moral dilemma if we permit an openly rogue, demonic, evil government that is using the force of law and military force to make you disobey God’s will. You have much bigger moral chasms to crawl out of then. Better to deal with these littler ones, these early ones, hold your nose and vote rather than wonder whether I need to do something besides pray, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer had to wrestle with in the 1940s.
So, Mr. Bastidas, I’m not voting to appease a candidate or a party, or because I am enamored with a candidate, I’m voting in response to God’s command to speak up for what is right and good and against what trumpets its virtue, pretending to be benevolent, but is plainly evil. Oddly, one candidate does little to conceal his sinful side while the other wants us to believe that she is all sweetness and purity.
Do I think the Republican party is the voice of God and all-around goodness? No, or else I would be a party member. I think the Republicans are wishy-washy. They sense the rot in the other party’s basement but their determination to keep the church out of the state leaves them puzzled about the source of the stench. They have been dragged into compromise after compromise with the whining charlatan at the corner of the table and have been meeting him halfway for so long that they have forgotten their values. So no, the Republican party doesn’t represent me but they’re not as deep into the pit-of-no-return as the other party has gone. They’re still in sight of the precipice they have gone over but maybe can catch a lifeline if we toss it to them.
What about a third-party choice? Do I cast my vote for a third-party candidate who has no better chance than if I write “Jesus” in the blank space on the ballot?
You may think you’re small in the face of this massive, tyrannical regime, Solzhenitsyn said of his country’s government, but you’re only as small as the silence you embrace. Silence in the face of lies is itself a lie. Silence in the face of lies is to perpetuate and participate in those lies. Unless we speak up, the higher the cost will be for all of us including the ones who are mesmerized by or otherwise are victims of the lies.
We all have the same rights, Mister Bastidas.
I want to address some specific complaints in your video but not in sequence.
1. “This is you telling me that I should be shrewd, deceptive, cruel, and intolerant. This is you telling me that the type of person you really admire and look up to is a vile and despicable human being. He exhibits everything I have been taught to set my sights against in order to be a good, functioning member of society.” He “is a rich, entitled, narcissistic, criminally-convicted pussy-grabber. And… he says what’s on his mind, he tells it like he sees it, he doesn’t have a filter…”
Granted. Every word of that description. But I am not telling you that you should be that way too. I am not enamored with Donald Trump nor do I respect him personally. There are many qualified, decent, eloquent people in his party whom they could have nominated. (I look forward to what Vice President J. D. Vance has to bring to our future.) But I don’t vote based on how nice a person appears to be. You and I have each voted for people we know to be slimy but who, as we each perceived it, could get the job done. There are plenty of nice, energetic, willing, wise, and educated people in the ranks of both parties who, in spite of their goodness, should not be President. My best friend, Bob, is a terrific human being in this way but he has neither the fortitude nor the understanding of government to be in that position. Since a candidate who has the fortitude and capability and who is also a nice guy or gal was not on the ballot, then whether the two on the ballot are assholes is immaterial. I think they both are.
2. “…all that’s doing is showing your wives and your daughters and minorities and LGBTQ and other marginalized groups that you’re completely willing to throw them under the bus as long as you can save five cents a gallon on gasoline.”
My wife and daughters don’t see themselves as marginalized. And I think the Democrats are exploiting people of alternate sexual predilections just as they have exploited Blacks by herding them into ghettos for 150 years. I don’t answer pollsters when they call, because they always want my stand on someone’s pet issues. My vote isn’t about issues, it’s about how we’re governed. Government doesn’t solve any of these issues. The Democrats want to be master manipulators of groups. They have no concern for individuals but want to place each of us into a group — into a silo, as some describe it — according to our physical characteristics and according to demographic categories that they’ve defined — identity politics. They then want to define every group’s unique set of problems and throw solutions at us. First, I decline to be a member of anyone else’s perceived group, and second, I don’t have any problems that the government can solve better than I can solve them myself with the cooperation of my friends and family and, when needed, my local government.
Government has a role in our lives, and the more local the government the better. The federal government is limited by the Constitution. And its role goes little beyond providing for the national defense, regulating interstate commerce, and coining money. To the extent that it has stepped in to assure suffrage for all citizens, to oppose racial oppression by organizations of bigots, to promote and subsidize a highway system, assure safety in food supplies, and some other things like that, Congress is granted those further developments in the Constitution.
But I don’t vote in order to “solve” contrived issues. For instance, I don’t care what anyone’s sexual preference is. I don’t make anyone else pay attention to mine and I have no interest in anyone else’s. I’ll leave you alone as long as you don’t drag your predilections before me. I don’t want to see you in a scanty costume and you certainly don’t want to see me that way.
I grew up on the edge of a Black neighborhood. As a child I had a job within that community for seven years and I loved and was loved by the people who knew me there. Even though the federal government did well to free the slaves in the South, however, since that time it has done more to oppress people of African ancestry than it has done to help them. Identity politics: make someone a victim, do things for him that he could and should do for himself, and you can control him. I’m not insensitive to injustice but I’m not influenced by calls for “social justice.” Justice is justice, and the individual is sovereign.
This country wasn’t designed to keep the church out of government, it was designed to keep the government out of the church, and yet the churches persist in registering marriages for the government when it is none of the government’s business what relationship I might have with another person. And it’s none of my business what relationship you might have with another person.
3. “[T]his election… invalidates everything I have ever been taught about how I should live my life and everything I’ve tried to teach my kids.”
The results of this election actually stand to give you more freedom to express what you have been taught and more freedom to teach your kids. We’d have elected an asshole either way, but the winner is one who proposes to reduce the regulations that restrict your influence over your kids.
4. “But now it’s all, ‘Let’s make America great again,’ and… what specific time in American history are you talking about?”
I’m not cheering for MAGA. “Great” encourages nationalistic pride, like your pride in a local sports team, which is meant to be aggressive and competitive. I wish Trump had chosen a different word, “secure” for instance. I don’t want to stimulate a sense of national superiority. But we are a sovereign nation and that sovereignty is threatened by several weaknesses our federal government has embraced.
What are they? We have made it virtually illegal to manufacture something in this country. Over-regulation in the name of “fair labor” and “the environment” and “equality” — regulations which have failed to achieve their objectives but have merely exposed their hypocritical pretensions, have driven manufacturing out of the USA and into those countries that care nothing for their citizens’ individual rights or their environment. But we feel virtuous because we have these restrictions. Our air is clean but so long as China and India are willing to make all our stuff for us we can pretend we don’t know that their air is putrid.
What else? Our nation wouldn’t need to assert its sovereignty if other nations weren’t pledged to destroy us. But other nations are so pledged, our borders are absurdly weak, and anyone who crosses illegally has been able to disappear anywhere within our borders. It looks as though that will stop, but bringing those who have disappeared out into the open will be a big task. Those in hiding are the ones who will make the choice whether it can be done humanely.
It’s now four weeks since the election and I am cheering for the severe shake-up of the federal government. Trump-haters in the news media are bemoaning his choices to lead federal agencies — they aren’t “qualified” and this one or that one doesn’t believe in the mission of the appointed agency. If by “qualified” they mean that they should have been chosen from within the bloated agency, then I’m delighted. Some call it the “deep state,” and I believe that is an accurate description.
5. “It’s like this crazy idea that giving certain rights to someone else somehow takes some of yours away. Or are you just pissed that you’re not special any more?”
We all have the same rights, Mister Bastidas.
6. “…fascist rhetoric…”
You need to listen to real fascist rhetoric before I can address this nonsense statement. I don’t call Democrats “communists,” for instance, because I have studied it and have seen it firsthand. Democrat politicians do deserve to be called collectivists, though, (Ayn Rand’s description, look it up).
7. “…five cents a gallon on gasoline…” and my stock portfolio and my offshore boat…
Are you talking about your elitist Democrats or the rednecks who voted for Trump?
I could answer more of your charges against me, Mister Bastidas, but I think that’s enough.
I don’t like Donald Trump. But one of his faults as an amateur politician is that he is candid. He runs his mouth. He exaggerates. He’s an arrogant asshole. But this also tells me that for the duration of his administration there will be transparency in government, a buzzword that Barry Soetoro a.k.a. Barrack Obama used often but never delivered on.
There are some issues — but remember, I don’t vote based on issues, I vote based on how we’re governed — on which Trump deeply disappoints me. I fear for Ukraine, and it appears that he will not back down to Russia but will sacrifice Ukraine in other ways. I have traveled solo in both those countries and in the 1990s I finished writing a book on Ukraine. I am also concerned that Trump appears to believe in that form of fake money represented by Bitcoin and other such ephemeral examples of it. There are other issues on which he is flat-out wrong and will waste time and energy mismanaging. Unfortunately he didn’t consult me, (and nor did I contribute money to his campaign).
I don’t care, though, that he’s an asshole. And I don’t perceive him as a representative of God. If he does anything that aligns with God’s will it will probably be unintentional. But his party has not yet sold out to evil while to my observation the other party has.
We were given a choice of two vain, pompous pricks, and Kamala Harris made certain, up until the election, that we would know nothing about how she would govern. Nothing. That was her choice, or perhaps more accurately, how she was instructed by her puppeteers. I have seen how Trump will govern, though. He was thwarted and excoriated in everything he attempted to do when he was President before. This time maybe the sludge in Washington will be forced to respond to some well-deserved Drano.
That’s why I voted for him.
Albert Jay Nock 