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No matter how good the training, no matter how just the cause, no matter how tight the bonds of fellowship with comrades, when the shooting starts, some soldiers just don’t have the nerve for it. They turn and run.

Desertion and cowardice before the enemy have been some of the most serious military crimes since the dawn of time, and for good reason. Turning your back on your brothers-in-arms and your nation puts them both at mortal risk.

Popular anti-woke intellectual Eric Weinstein decided to do just such a thing mere days before an election of colossal importance. On Tuesday, he posted a declaration to his nearly a million followers on X that, morally, he just can’t bring himself to take a side in the ongoing race between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.

With as much self-righteousness as he could muster, Weinstein said, “I am failing this election. I tried. But, I simply failed. I cannot work within these concepts. My world, my country, my America is not on the ballot.”

He then offered his services to either side “should you win,” presuming that the winner would even want his help.

“I am not giving you my recommendation. The risks are profound and very very very different on both sides. I have a guess where the bigger risks lie … but that is only a guess. I am rolling up my sleeves. If any of you want my help, I am here for either team should you win.”

“If loyalty to campaigns matters to you, I am sorry. I am loyal to the country as I understand it, and the campaigns weren’t in my idiom at all. They felt almost totally wrong to me. No hard feelings,” he added.

Intelligence agencies, Washington bureaucrats, and military officers also used the “loyalty to the country” schtick as a justification for trying to undermine a duly elected President Trump for four full years.

Adopting an almost flippant passivity, Weinstein concludes, “Let’s get things fixed. Or not. Up to you. I’d opt for the former.”

The entire statement represents a masterpiece of delusional ego-stroking, and Weinstein’s position was duly eviscerated online.

His “woe is me, it’s so hard on me being tormented by this impossible decision between two deficient candidates” attitude borders on theater-kid histrionics. It’s the disposition of a petulant child unaccustomed to not being catered to at every waking moment, of someone unable to accept and grapple with politics as it really is and instead fixating on some Platonic ideal of how it should be.

To expect a candidate or a party to perfectly align with your specific preferences as if the entire political sphere revolves around you is the height of vanity. Politics, and life in general, requires making the best decision you can under the present, often difficult, circumstances. Sometimes, not all of the options available will be good. Sometimes none of them will be. But it’s certainly better to make a choice rather than wallow in smug sanctimony.

Regardless, the notion that this election presents a real moral conundrum because both candidates are terrible is a delusion. One presidential hopeful wants to make the country weaker in every conceivable aspect. The other does not. The choice should be simple. If you look at what each candidate objectively wants to do and still conclude that they’re so equally bad that you can’t choose one, then you’re not nearly as wise as you think you are.

Weinstein’s abstention from voting sends a clear message: He’s fine with the status quo. He’s de facto voting for all the disasters that have unfolded over the last four years of President Joe Biden’s tenure to continue.

But in truth, Weinstein and his ilk want to maintain the status quo because it works for them.

The cadre of irresolute fence-sitters and “above it all” posturers really want to remain “respectable.” Respectable to whom? To a regime that mercilessly persecutes its political opponents? A techno-cultural complex that brainwashes kids into cutting off perfectly healthy body parts? The people “across the aisle,” as if the rift in this country is just a civil disagreement about policy and not a divide between those who wish to annihilate the United States and those who wish to preserve it?

They really do want to sit on the fence, but not out of any real inner moral conflict. They want to play both sides to maintain their social connections in leftist circles while raking in wealth and influence in the conservative influencer circuit.

Ultimately, Weinstein’s vacillation serves as a reminder that liberals who partnered with the conservative movement amid the anti-woke crusade, who claimed that “the left left me” and achieved astounding influence in the conservative movement as a result, can’t be entirely trusted. Normally, an enemy of an enemy serves as a convenient ally, but fair-weather friends like Weinstein can and do fail when the struggle becomes tough or inconvenient. They just don’t have the stomach for the political hardball necessary to claw power away from the left and reclaim this country.

Weinstein wants to play the agonized idealist who’d rather see the country burn than compromise on his own ideological purity. Weinstein is engaging in a tired old con that breeds nothing but condescension and a fatalistic impotence. He seems content to let a moment of potentially world-historical importance simply pass him by just so he can sit on the fence and watch. It’s not a noble gesture demonstrating his dedication to dearly held principles; it’s a sign that he needs to grow up.

Hayden Daniel is a staff editor at The Federalist. He previously worked as an editor at The Daily Wire and as deputy editor/opinion editor at The Daily Caller. He received his B.A. in European History from Washington and Lee University with minors in Philosophy and Classics. Follow him on Twitter at @HaydenWDaniel