After the 5th
'Make America Healthy Again' can revive the vital American Center, but it needs legs
Teddy Roosevelt is having a moment – at least on my part of Twitter.
There has been a flurry of threads and historical tidbits about the legendary founder of the Bull Moose Party, including this well-crafted thread by @VanDiemen_ on Roosevelt’s original 50-mile marching order:
When I saw the spotlight on the march getting over a million views, I felt a mix of excitement and mild envy.
Excitement that this forgotten tradition – one that's given me so much meaning and so many callouses – is being rediscovered.
Envy, because I remain on the sidelines as my own writing on the subjects – including an incomplete manuscript – gathers dust (keeping company with my other would-be masterworks like How to Cook a 1/4 Cow – coming soon, I swear!).
And yet it’s hard to blackpill when the vibe is shifting so dramatically in the right direction.
RFK Jr. is tweeting about seed oil truth and talking up tallow fries on national television.
"Make America Healthy Again" is trending.
The signs are everywhere that We Are So Back.
It's tempting to extrapolate from this that a Trump/Vance victory could spark a sudden national revival – a collective remembering of who we used to be, and how to get back to that era of American optimism that ended... when?
With Carter's “national malaise”?
Nixon's resignation?
The final season of America’s Got Talent?
No. I would argue it ended on that dark, terrible afternoon in Dallas in November of 1963 with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. That's central to the thesis of my forthcoming manuscript on the 50-miler. But I intentionally subordinated the political message to the practical format of a training manual – how I stay in shape for my annual 50-mile march.
Why?
Because politics alone can't get us out of the rut we've dug in the past 70 years since the darkness spread out from Dealey Plaza across the land.
Politics is downstream from Vigor.
Kennedy knew this. Roosevelt knew this.
Although politics may have contributed the modern health crisis, it’s not going to save us (though it might help).
With the election less than a week away, I'm keeping my sights set on the weekend after the election – Sunday, November 10 – when my tribe will gather to celebrate Veteran’s Day with the 5th (!) annual 50-mile march.
Long-distance marching has taught me to keep my eyes on the horizon – not on my shuffling feet or even the ground a few steps ahead. A forward tilt, head straight, eyes looking over the cheekbones is more important for maintaining morale than proper gait. But I'm still struggling with the temptation to look down at my phone every waking hour for the latest Polymarket election odds (which currently predict a Trump victory) or some late-breaking October surprise.
In past marches, I've chosen loose themes. After the COVID lockdowns and endless masking, the theme was about moving “beyond resentment.” Last year, it was Saint Junipero Serra's motto – "Siempre Adelante!" – always forward.
The meta-theme stays the same: Stay moving.
Don't stagnate or let current events or things out of your control bog you down. You’re stronger and more powerful than you think.
But this year the stakes feel higher.
While I’ve been reluctant to express overt candidate preferences, I feel like I have to say something.
It’s Okay to Vote for Donald Trump
That’s all. I’m not saying you should or you must, but this statement shouldn’t provoke rage or retaliation, the way a TRUMP yard sign in the Bay Area would.
Since I recently moved out to a remote, rural area with no place for a high-visibility banner, consider this post my digital yard sign.
My friend Jacob has a solid post breaking down the key policy differences between candidates. His reasoning is rock-solid and might sway a certain type of voter. I can't argue with any part of his analysis. The basic argument is that Trump is far better on three important issues: 1) economy 2) peace 3) safe borders. He is winning right now because, crass jokes and ego aside, people care more about the price of food than ideology.
My reasoning is even simpler.
Kamala is talking about how much she loves Doritos on the podcast circuit while JD Vance and RFK Jr. are spreading awareness about the poisons in our food supply. It’s the sludge, stupid.
You could call me a single-issue voter, but my vote for Trump goes deeper than seed oils and its derivative artificial foodstuffs.
Kamala Harris is the ultimate plastic candidate – a mere stand-in for the gerontocratic administrative state, not to mention the many-headed hydra that is the (woke) military-industrial complex.
How did we end up in a world where a Democratic presidential candidate welcomes the endorsement of the Bush/Cheney families? Where Raytheon sponsors Pride floats and Wall Street titans lecture us about equity?
The party that once stood for the working class now sneers at truckers and dismisses normal, concerned parents as domestic terrorists.
The electoral map tells the story: union households are crossing the aisle, Hispanic and African American voters are shifting right, and young men are abandoning the Democratic Party in droves. Not because they've suddenly embraced country club Republicanism, but because they’re waking up to who's actually fighting against the military-industrial complex, big pharma's captured agencies, and the junk food empire.
Perhaps it’s naive to think that RFK can single-handedly overcome the inertia of 50 years of the Deep State. Maybe I overestimate Tucker Carlson’s and Tulsi Gabbard’s peace-making influence on foreign policy.
But I’ll take my chances with the clear lesser of two evils. And I'm guardedly optimistic about the prospects of a re-energized American middle class, propelled by tax and spending cuts, sensible deregulation, and a systematic gutting of the administrative state.
We need a leaner federal government that does a few things well: protecting clean air, food, and water – not scapegoating cows for climate change, or causing widespread environmental destruction in the name of preservation.
The solution isn't more federal intervention – no national bans on seed oils or federal mandates for "patriotic education." It's about removing the regulatory structures that created these problems in the first place and devolving power back to the states where it belongs. Let states experiment with different approaches, let communities decide their own priorities, let markets actually function as markets.
I also have personal reasons for my vote.
In the next 4 years, I hope to start a business.
I want to buy a house.
I want to homeschool my kids and have a choice in where their education funding goes.
I want my brothers-in-law in the military to remain in a defensive stance, not sent to conflicts that have little to do with national security.
And I want to see ‘Make America Healthy Again’ turned from a political slogan into a legislative agenda – with a marching order to back it up (optional for civilians, but mandatory for officers and heads of the alphabet soup agencies).
The gerontocracy is dying, but it can’t fade out fast enough.
For all these reasons (plus the Doritos) I’ll say it again: it’s okay to vote for Donald Trump.
Beyond Blind Support
Like my friend Jacob, I feel the urge to hedge my support for the Trump-Vance ticket with the obligatory "now, I'm no Trump sycophant..."
Here, I’ll get off my soap box to say that it is worth asking about the potential for a kind of American Fascism scenario, where even moderate critics of a populist movement are marginalized, and the regressive right is empowered to seek vengeance against its political enemies.
Is it a real risk?
That’s not what I see happening. Instead, Trump is surrounding himself with a number of genuine progressives – in the Teddy Roosevelt/JFK sense of that word.
I call it "the far center." When Trump surrounds himself with anti-war Democrats like Tulsi Gabbard and health freedom advocates like RFK Jr., it’s not a moderate position. Instead, it's radical in its return to basics: peace, health, markets, and human flourishing.
As Jacob mentions, the backing of figures like Elon Musk suggests this coalition could solve the personnel problems that plagued Trump's first term. Could a Department of Governmental Efficiency, staffed by people who've actually built things in the real world, succeed where 40 years of Republican budget-cutting rhetoric has failed?
Here, I’m not holding my breath. We have to be clear-eyed. It's tempting to invest our hopes in this vision of a federal government finally empowered to do a few important things well – to slice through red tape, reorganize the administrative state, and put the country back on track. But this same temptation is a strong reason to heed the wisdom of the Psalms:
Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.
This brings us to the most difficult test of maintaining clear eyes: January 6th.
The narrative has been spun endlessly by both sides, and I consider it a national tragedy. But a few facts need to be part of any honest discussion.
First, there was the experience of watching the 2020 election results. It felt to me and to many like a banana republic steal. Mail-in ballots have known problems – which is why Jimmy Carter famously opposed them. With the sudden unapproved changes to election law (justified by COVID-19), I don’t think it’s beyond the pale to question election rules that paved the way for the infamous spike in mail-in ballots for Biden at 2 AM. Hillary Clinton cast doubt on a much more secure election in 2016.
I won’t defend the actions of any of the rioters. But the chances that there were agent provocateurs in the crowd to create chaos are high. We’ve seen the FBI infiltrate a number of dubious ‘patriot movements’ and have no reason to think they wouldn’t have been active on January 6 and operating with some degree of immunity.
Some are pre-emptively suggesting that another apparent steal would require a kinetic response. Instead, I say that such an outcome would call for a different kind of politics – a continuation of the peaceful resistance we saw during the lockdown era, when millions of Americans simply voted with their feet and their U-Hauls. The states would have to become the centers of change, and DC written off as a lost cause.
The Man in the Arena
John Marini writes of a certain "unmanly contempt for politics" that causes many to renounce their civic duty in the name of false principles. But perhaps we've misunderstood what civic duty really means. When Kennedy said "ask not what your country can do for you," he was calling for a shift in how we think about citizenship. True civic engagement isn't just about casting a ballot every four years or following the latest political drama. It's about finding your arena – whether that's organizing fifty-mile marches, fighting for better food in school cafeterias, or building businesses that serve real human needs – and pursuing change with the kind of vigor that makes government reform seem secondary by comparison.
The day Trump stood up at the Butler rally following the assassination attempt was the turning point when many people, including Elon Musk, came forward to support him. Here again we must guard against excessive mythologizing of a man who is as flawed as any. But there’s never been a political figure in my life who embodied what Teddy Roosevelt once called the "Man in the Arena":
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
This might sound overly lofty for a man who regularly eats McDonald’s aboard Air Force One and recently joked about how he tried weightlifting for a week before realizing it wasn’t for him.
Trump is not the paragon of vigor that Roosevelt was. But that's not really the point. By entering the arena at all, Trump has made himself into something else entirely – what philosopher René Girard would call a scapegoat, a figure who bears the burden of society's collective sins.
The degree to which he is reviled and branded a fascist confirms this role—he's become a figure upon whom society projects its anxieties, allowing the collective to feel righteous in its condemnation and experience catharsis upon his expulsion.
This follows an ancient pattern: leaders are held in sacred limbo until the moment their sacrifice becomes politically expedient. The king must be divine enough to rule but corrupted enough to deserve his eventual expulsion.
If someone is universally loathed by establishment powers—cast simultaneously as a joke, a threat, and an existential evil—it often signals that he might be more dangerous to the powerful than to the powerless.
To the extent that Americans accept him uncritically or venerate him, I am distrustful. Hero worship is dangerous, no matter who the hero is. Girard was careful to note that not all scapegoats are innocent. But for the most part, I see something different with Trump—less uncritical acceptance and more of a knowing, transactional support. Trump supporters might meme, chant, and rally, but they don't kneel. We recognize his flaws (as well as Elon's and RFK Jr.'s). Even JFK had a few skeletons in his closet.
And if Trump's movement ever shifts toward uncritical acceptance and scapegoating of the powerless, I'll be the first to jump ship.
In 2020, I cast my vote for Trump in silence, and watched with resignation when the "midnight pause" hit the swing states before eroding what seemed like a certain victory. This time, I feel compelled to step into the arena, make my vote public, and contribute to what I hope will be a decisive victory on November 5 (because if it’s not decisive, it won't be a victory).
Either way, my work on November 10 will remain the same. In the end, it will get done – including the JFK 50-Miler book.
The path to a healthier America won't be paved by princes, but by a legion of active citizens demanding more of themselves than their government.
¡Siempre Adelante!
NOTE: If you made it this far, thanks for reading! I am still interested in beta readers for my 50-mile march manuscript. Email me at chdeist@gmail.com if you’re interested.