I recently had the opportunity to visit the Flight 93 memorial outside of Somerset, PA. The experience was eerie, humbling, unsettling -- all as it should be, so I suppose the designers did a pretty good job
The experience caused me to look back at Michael Anton's
"Flight 93 Election" essay in the Claremont Review of Books. Back in 2016, I was aware of the essay and its role in justifying voting for Trump (or rather against Hillary). I thought the metaphor was stupid and gross, but I also understood its political utility.
After visiting the memorial, however, I am now struck by how horrifyingly ghoulish the metaphor is. I'm sure that you realized this in the moment, but it didn't click for me until I went there: this was a moment of tragedy, of desperation, and organizing to rush the cockpit was an act of heroism and love. The people on that flight were young and old, citizens and foreign nationals, just a random group of non-terrorists who, when placed in an extraordinary circumstance, found the sense of purpose to do an extraordinary thing. Staring doom in the face did not paralyze them. For Anton (then hiding behind his pseudonym 'Publius') to appropriate their story for his own tawdry ends, and to do it so crassly ("a Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto"), is nauseating.
It might be worth revisiting that essay as an early demonstration of what has now become so clear: on the Trump-aligned Right, people are objects. Immigrants are pawns to be demonized or shipped around the country to score political points. Children of immigrants are leverage to be exploited, and if you lose track of a few so be it. Trans people and LGBTQ families are convenient scapegoats and whatever pain they or those who love them are going through is just collateral damage (except when it's the point). Service members who die under arms are suckers and losers.
The people on Flight 93 were ordinary people. Some were probably moral and upright; others probably weren't. But all of them are worth commemorating for that day, and Michael Anton--just one among the many who have swept along in Trump's wake, excusing and amplifying and building upon the poisonous and dehumanizing politics of Trumpism--deserves condemnation. Re-electing Trump would mean putting the powers of the US government back in the hands of Anton and his fellow ghouls.
Given Anton's recent speech at the American Conservative’s annual foreign policy summit, that might be a connection worth making