How to Disfigure Your Soul
Chris Sununu and the price of staying on your team.
1. Infinite Absurdity
One of the arguments conservatives (and Republicans1) had with each other back in 2016 was:
But what if your vote decided the election? Wouldn’t you have to vote for Donald Trump then?
There was an absurd, bullying quality to this line of questioning, which sought to create an alibi for people who knew that what they were doing was bad. It tried to conjure a hypothetical scenario that could not even theoretically apply to the large majority of Americans—unless you lived in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, or Georgia there was zero chance that your vote could decide the presidential election. And even if you did live in one of those states, the chances of the election being decided by a single vote—or even a handful of votes—is very, very small.
The entire exercise was about self-justification in the face of corruption. Imagine someone saying,