# The Flight 93 Election *Published September 5, 2016 in the Claremont Review of Books (digital). ~4,000 words. Author: "Publius Decius Mus" (later revealed as [[Michael Anton]], Claremont Institute fellow and former George W. Bush speechwriter). Anton was subsequently hired to Trump's National Security Council.* The single most consequential political essay of the Trump era — a 4,000-word argument, published under a Roman pseudonym, that the 2016 election was a binary choice between civilizational death (Clinton) and uncertain survival (Trump), and that conservatives who refused to support Trump were choosing certain destruction over the possibility of rescue. The essay's central metaphor: America is Flight 93 on September 11, 2001. The cockpit (the government) has been seized by enemies (progressives). You can charge the cockpit (vote Trump) and maybe die, or you can sit in your seat (vote Clinton or abstain) and certainly die. There is no third option. The essay did three things simultaneously: it gave intellectual-class conservatives permission to vote for Trump despite his obvious unfitness; it established the [[Claremont Institute]] as [[the New Right]]'s preeminent intellectual institution; and it created a template for crisis-politics rhetoric that the right has deployed continuously since 2016. ## The Argument The essay's structure: ### The Diagnosis American conservatism has failed. The conservative intellectual establishment (National Review, AEI, Heritage in its old form) has produced nothing but defeat for decades. Every year, the country moves further left. Immigration, cultural change, and progressive institutional capture have made the traditional conservative agenda permanently unachievable through normal politics. The conservative establishment's response — to keep running the same playbook while losing gracefully — is not principled but suicidal. ### The Metaphor The Flight 93 metaphor: if you're on a hijacked plane heading for a building, charging the cockpit is rational even if you'll probably die, because inaction is *certain* death. Similarly: Trump may be a bad candidate, an unknown quantity, a man unfit for the presidency by conventional standards. But Clinton represents the permanent consolidation of progressive power — amnesty, Supreme Court appointments, institutional capture — from which there is no recovery. Therefore the rational calculation is: uncertain survival (Trump) over certain destruction (Clinton). ### The Attack on Conservative Intellectuals The essay's most vicious passages target not progressives but *conservative intellectuals* who refuse to support Trump — the Never-Trump movement. Anton accuses them of: - Preferring to lose gracefully rather than fight to win - Being comfortable in their sinecures (think tank fellowships, op-ed columns) regardless of whether conservatism actually wins - Lacking the courage to take a risk when the stakes are existential - Being more afraid of Trump's vulgarity than of permanent progressive dominance This internal attack — on the conservative establishment rather than on the left — established the New Right's defining orientation: the enemy is not merely progressivism but the *conservative establishment* that has failed to stop it. ## The Pseudonym "Publius Decius Mus" — a Roman consul who sacrificed himself in battle by charging the enemy alone (the *devotio*), thereby inspiring his troops to victory. The pseudonym telegraphs the essay's argument: this is a suicide mission that might save the republic. The pseudonymity was strategic: Anton was a Claremont fellow and former Bush speechwriter whose career would be jeopardized by explicit Trump support in September 2016. The revelation of his identity after the election — followed by his appointment to Trump's NSC — demonstrated that the essay had functioned as an audition as much as an argument. ## Impact ### Immediate The essay went viral within conservative intellectual circles in September 2016, generating extensive response and debate. It was discussed in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and across the opinion-journal ecosystem. It gave conservative intellectuals who were privately considering Trump but feared social consequences a framework — and a permission structure — for their choice. ### Structural The essay established three things that persisted beyond the 2016 election: 1. **The Claremont Institute as the New Right's intellectual home**: Before "The Flight 93 Election," Claremont was a respected but relatively obscure West Coast think tank associated with Harry Jaffa's Lincoln scholarship. After it, Claremont became the intellectual vanguard of Trumpism — producing essays, fellows, and arguments that gave the movement philosophical depth. 2. **Crisis-politics as permanent frame**: The essay's logic — that every election is existential, that compromise is surrender, that normal politics is inadequate — became the permanent emotional register of right-wing media and politics. If 2016 was Flight 93, then 2020 was also Flight 93, and 2024 was also Flight 93. The metaphor, once deployed, cannot be withdrawn without admitting the crisis was overstated. 3. **The permission structure for elite support of populism**: The essay demonstrated that intellectuals could support Trump without becoming Trump — that you could acknowledge his vulgarity while arguing that the alternative was worse. This "hold your nose and charge" framework allowed an entire class of conservative intellectuals to align with MAGA while maintaining their self-image as serious thinkers. ## The Follow-Up Anton published "After the Flight 93 Election" in February 2017, arguing that Trump's victory had bought time but not resolved the underlying crisis. He served on the NSC from 2017 to 2018, then returned to the Claremont Institute. His 2019 review of *[[Bronze Age Mindset]]* in the Claremont Review of Books — taking seriously a pseudonymous bodybuilding-Nietzschean far-right manifesto — demonstrated Anton's role as the New Right's intellectual gatekeeper: the figure who decides which tendencies in the broader right deserve engagement from the establishment. ## Analytical Framework "The Flight 93 Election" matters in this KB for several reasons: 1. **It is the New Right's founding essay** — the text that separated "the old right" (National Review conservatism, free-market orthodoxy, foreign policy hawkishness) from "the new right" (populist nationalism, crisis politics, anti-establishment combativeness) 2. **It established crisis as permanent**: The logic of the Flight 93 metaphor — every election is existential, inaction is death — produces a politics incapable of de-escalation. If you convince people they're on a hijacked plane, everything becomes justified. 3. **It is the Straussian New Right's calling card**: The pseudonym, the classical allusion, the esoteric-writing style (arguments hidden behind rhetorical performance) — all signal the [[Leo Strauss]] intellectual tradition that the Claremont Institute inherits and that distinguishes the intellectual New Right from its populist base. 4. **The permission-structure function**: The essay's most lasting contribution is not its specific arguments but its *form* — it showed that an intellectual could support Trump without becoming a populist himself, maintaining philosophical sophistication while endorsing a movement that is anything but. This is the template for every subsequent New Right intellectual intervention. ## See Also - [[Michael Anton]] — The author - [[Claremont Institute]] — The institution that published it and that it elevated - [[Donald Trump]] — The candidate it argued for - [[Why Liberalism Failed]] — Deneen's companion diagnosis from the Catholic/post-liberal wing - [[Dark Enlightenment]] — The broader anti-democratic intellectual tradition the essay participates in - [[Christofascism]] — Uses the Flight 93 crisis framing as evidence of apocalyptic urgency justifying extraordinary measures (Sölle criterion #4) [[Manifestos and Founding Documents Hub]]