Part of why I wasn\u2019t as freaked out as other Friends is that I had a lower opinion of the Obama-Biden-Harris set of actions. I was horrified about the re-imposition of money pushing abortion internationally. I knew several thousand babies would be killed because of that funding, along with a long list of other things those administrations did or would do to promote abortion.<\/p>\n
But when many of my fellow Quakers understood Harris to be the \u201clesser evil\u201d between the two, I think many were succumbing to our system\u2019s fixation on discerning which of two candidates is less bad. That lends itself to minimizing what\u2019s wrong with the one you decided on. In the case of Biden, I un-minimize a bit:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Modernization of nuclear weapons continued, when instead eventual elimination should be the focus.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- \n
- Obama used weaponized drones in Afghanistan, bombing wedding parties, terrifying children, and giving the civilian population a constant sense of danger. See Pro-Life Means Anti-Drone<\/a> in The American Conservative<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
There was also ample corruption in the Afghan government that further eroded the population\u2019s trust in it. By the time of the U.S. withdrawal, the situation had essentially been set up to be a disaster. Afghan soldiers abandoned their weapons and the Taliban re-took the country.<\/p>\n
While the drones were striking, we pointed out that the strategy was not only astonishingly cruel but markedly stupid. The fairly predictable end result shows that. The Taliban and the corrupt officials are mainly to blame, but those were a given, and they weren\u2019t dealt with well.<\/p>\n
- \n
- We can blame Russia for the war in Ukraine;<\/strong> there would be no war if they stopped. But the Obama administration had a tepid response when Russia invaded Crimea back in 2014, at a time when non-military options for a stronger response were known to the administration. Biden\u2019s belligerency at some times mixed with insufficient opposition at other times was a major bungling. Harris made clear she wouldn\u2019t have changed how she approached it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- \n
- We can blame Hamas for its horrific October 7 attack. We can blame the current Israeli government for its long-standing policies that hurt Palestinians and its response that killed thousands of children and others. But the U.S. sending weapons to Israel and otherwise tolerating the war has been dealing badly with a bad situation. Peace activists have spent the last year asserting our outrage at this.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/consistent-life.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/1-blog-Rachel-at-Gaza.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nIn February 2020, Rachel adds a stone to the growing peace mosaic on the Gaza Strip wall,\u00a0 <\/em>which can be seen at one spot by the people stuck inside, showing them support for their plight.<\/em><\/p>\n
Most peace activists will agree with my bullet-point assessment above. But they tend to forget about all that when election time rolls around. We can\u2019t contemplate evil so much when we\u2019re trying to make the case that one candidate is lesser about it.<\/p>\n
Trump<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Trump is deliberately \u201cflooding the zone\u201d with highly objectionable policies in rapid-fire succession. As a consistent-lifer, with the criterion of which ones might get people killed, I\u2019d currently give these ones the highest priority:<\/p>\n
- \n
- The cut-off of humanitarian aid in U.S.A.I.D. will result in many dozen deaths at least even if the aid gets restored soon. For example, already paid-for medicines treating HIV \u2013 they can prevent pregnant women from giving the disease to their preborn children. But without it, a large portion of the children die<\/a> before turning two. This is covered in The New York Times<\/em> opinion piece: As Fellow Pro-Lifers, We Are Begging Marco Rubio to Save Foreign Aid<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- \n
- Immigration policy was especially cruel in the first Trump administration<\/a> and bids fair to be again. Some of the cruelty will stick, and some will be inflicted and then walked back<\/a>, perhaps to be inflicted again.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- \n
- Medicaid<\/a> and SNAP (food assistance<\/a>) are both essential services. Proposed massive cuts \u2013 especially when the purpose of the cuts is to fund more military, greater cruelty to immigrants, and tax cuts for the rich \u2013 can foreseeably be predicted to increase abortions. It will also lead to the deaths of unborn children and other people through inadequate medicine and food. See our post Social Programs to Help the Poor are Pro-life<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- \n
- There\u2019s already been a lot of bungling on foreign policy which could be pernicious if wars result or are exacerbated. The February 28 Oval Office public shouting match between Trump, Vance, and Zelenskyy springs to mind, and that was just part of Trump using the talking points of an aggressor and war criminal. I also think of talk about clearing out Gaza for a real-estate deal, and of starting up fresh new belligerency with Panama and Greenland and Canada that weren\u2019t even on our radar before. All these situations are volatile, so by giving specifics this paragraph will be the most quickly outdated one of this post. We can count on Trump to come up with new ones and don\u2019t know how long he\u2019ll stick with these.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The one area where Trump is the lesser evil is on abortion, and as I\u2019ve explained before<\/a>, I fear there will be all kinds of damage there, too. His heart isn\u2019t really in it. He works on it for transactional reasons, and when the transactions change, so will he. This can be seen by abortion opposition being badly watered down in the Republican platform <\/a>last year.<\/p>\n
Consistent lifers who work with our fellow peace activists all the time know full well that he makes being persuasive harder.<\/p>\n
![\"Both](\"http:\/\/consistent-life.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/graphic-poli-kills.jpg\")
<\/a>graphic from our member group Rehumanize International<\/p><\/div>\n
Conclusion<\/strong><\/h3>\n
My feelings are that the Trump administration, while having some good points, is mainly stomach-churning. But also that the Harris administration would have been stomach-churning. We can\u2019t get out of stomach-churning by looking at who gets elected in an only-two-options system<\/a>.<\/p>\n
But who knows what will happen? As I said before, Nixon resigning wasn\u2019t on the table early on. Also, he did get some good things done \u2013 the Environmental Protection Agency, opening to China, etc.<\/p>\n
Trump has said he\u2019d like to cut the military budget in half<\/a>. I don\u2019t believe that\u2019s a serious proposal, but I\u2019ve never in all my life heard a U.S. President say that before. And he\u2019d like to be the grand person who gets denuclearization talks going<\/a> with Russia and China. Again, that may be part of a narcissistic delusion. But I\u2019m not about to rain on his parade if he tries.<\/p>\n
As I learned back in my teens, trying to predict the future by looking at current trajectories turns out to not be all that realistic.<\/p>\n
Predicting that this president will do some admirably good things and some stunningly terrible things is a safe prediction, so long as we don\u2019t specify which good and bad things. It\u2019s been true of pretty much every president the U.S. has ever had.<\/p>\n
===================================<\/p>\n
For more of our posts on voting and politics, see:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n
Trump Sabotaging the Pro-Life Movement<\/a><\/p>\n
Political Homelessness is Better than a Wrong Political Home<\/a><\/p>\n
Pro-Life Voting Strategy: A Problem without an Answer<\/a><\/p>\n
How Consistent-life Advocacy Would Benefit from Ranked-Choice Voting<\/a><\/p>\n
The Deserving and Undeserving Poor vs. the Worthy and Unworthy of Life<\/a>: How Both Major Political Parties Pick and Choose Who They Help and Whom They Kill<\/p>\n
- There\u2019s already been a lot of bungling on foreign policy which could be pernicious if wars result or are exacerbated. The February 28 Oval Office public shouting match between Trump, Vance, and Zelenskyy springs to mind, and that was just part of Trump using the talking points of an aggressor and war criminal. I also think of talk about clearing out Gaza for a real-estate deal, and of starting up fresh new belligerency with Panama and Greenland and Canada that weren\u2019t even on our radar before. All these situations are volatile, so by giving specifics this paragraph will be the most quickly outdated one of this post. We can count on Trump to come up with new ones and don\u2019t know how long he\u2019ll stick with these.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- Medicaid<\/a> and SNAP (food assistance<\/a>) are both essential services. Proposed massive cuts \u2013 especially when the purpose of the cuts is to fund more military, greater cruelty to immigrants, and tax cuts for the rich \u2013 can foreseeably be predicted to increase abortions. It will also lead to the deaths of unborn children and other people through inadequate medicine and food. See our post Social Programs to Help the Poor are Pro-life<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- Immigration policy was especially cruel in the first Trump administration<\/a> and bids fair to be again. Some of the cruelty will stick, and some will be inflicted and then walked back<\/a>, perhaps to be inflicted again.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- The cut-off of humanitarian aid in U.S.A.I.D. will result in many dozen deaths at least even if the aid gets restored soon. For example, already paid-for medicines treating HIV \u2013 they can prevent pregnant women from giving the disease to their preborn children. But without it, a large portion of the children die<\/a> before turning two. This is covered in The New York Times<\/em> opinion piece: As Fellow Pro-Lifers, We Are Begging Marco Rubio to Save Foreign Aid<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- We can blame Hamas for its horrific October 7 attack. We can blame the current Israeli government for its long-standing policies that hurt Palestinians and its response that killed thousands of children and others. But the U.S. sending weapons to Israel and otherwise tolerating the war has been dealing badly with a bad situation. Peace activists have spent the last year asserting our outrage at this.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- We can blame Russia for the war in Ukraine;<\/strong> there would be no war if they stopped. But the Obama administration had a tepid response when Russia invaded Crimea back in 2014, at a time when non-military options for a stronger response were known to the administration. Biden\u2019s belligerency at some times mixed with insufficient opposition at other times was a major bungling. Harris made clear she wouldn\u2019t have changed how she approached it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- Obama used weaponized drones in Afghanistan, bombing wedding parties, terrifying children, and giving the civilian population a constant sense of danger. See Pro-Life Means Anti-Drone<\/a> in The American Conservative<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n