It also marks the tenth anniversary of Michael Anton’s pseudonymous essay, “The Flight 93 Election.”
That essay, arguing for the existential necessity of Hillary Clinton’s defeat, was widely criticized on both left and right. Yet the arguments it made and the images it galvanized were also widely credited with helping propel Donald Trump into the White House. Ten years later, those arguments are still worth looking at.
The central argument of Anton’s essay was evident from the title. Like those passengers on Flight 93 who realized what was going on with their plane on September 11, 2001, and decided to storm the cockpit to stop their plane from being used as a weapon against the nation, Americans had a duty to stop Clinton from winning the 2016 presidential election.
