Cheer up, conservatives: This is not a "Flight 93 election"

Look, I know conservatives have been through a lot. In certain quarters, the universe appears to be going mad, and not in a fun “early Chris Farley” kind of way. Barack Obama cheerily golfs as the world burns. Lena Dunham is still, for some baffling reason, regularly appearing on our TVs. Our major presidential candidates are joke candidates, and not the “funny ha ha” type of joke, but more like the classic “200-volt electric hand buzzer” gag or the old “force you to drink six bottles of tequila and then abandon you in the wilderness with just your socks on” type of fraternity prank.

But is conservatism really that fragile? Will it be crushed into submission with one fateful presidential election? It’s certainly a dramatic vision, but it doesn’t seem to line up with history. Ideas have power. The arc of time is long. Successful movements have seen setbacks before. Sometimes these turbulent setbacks — buckle your seatbelts, cynical passengers — even help said movements learn, adjust, adapt, focus, and grow.

On a more practical, nuts-and-bolts level: Is Hillary Clinton really that competent? Is she a charismatic superstar, an elderly yet mystical Pied Piper, a political Beyoncé in a pantsuit ready to woo the masses with her compelling vision of the future? If you’re chuckling here, I don’t blame you, because one fact is clear in this goofy, madcap world: Almost no one enthusiastically likes Hillary Clinton, and if she pushes hard enough, she might even manage to spark a conservative cultural backlash.

The more dramatic conservative doomsayers also fail to game out a few likely post–November 8 possibilities. A GOP congress, for instance, could check a President Clinton. Meanwhile, the next president, no matter who it is, will inherit a daunting laundry list of brewing disasters courtesy of Barack Obama. If Clinton does manage to get elected, with her luck, Wall Street will collapse a few days later, hostile aliens will invade, or “Hamilton” will suddenly get pulled off Broadway, and she’ll be the nation’s fall guy — ahem, fall woman — for the next four years.