I have voted for a Democrat in ever election in my lifetime, and while I express my political view from time to time, it’s important to acknowledge that plenty of Republicans have served their country honorably in government. John McCain and Mitt Romney, for example, would both have been perfectly serviceable presidents. The country will always have a conservative party, and yet progress is still made because, each generation, what used to be an unthinkable progressive idea is now mainstream enough to be simply unchallenged by the GOP.
That context is necessary for the following statement: voting for Donald Trump is an unconscionable act.
I don’t need to list all of the ways he has beclowned our nation. Everyday, one just needs to read the news to see one more example of his cruelty, his ignorance, his incompetence, and his narcissism. Today’s violation is his ALL CAPS approval of his thugs running his opponent’s bus off the highway. Encouraging political violence is an unspeakably careless act for any politician, let alone the president. By itself, it would be enough of a reason to vote out any elected official, and I would vote against a Democrat who did the same. Consider that a president could do something this base, worse than anything Nixon ever did – who was a cartoon villain when I was young – and yet today will be forgotten in the unending waves of Trump’s crimes, failures, and corruptions.
Therefore, as the US is a two-party system, not voting for Joe Biden is also an unconscionable act. A second Trump term would mean that everything he has done was not just permitted or ignored but actually rewarded. I still have faith that America would recover, but every year undoing his damage is a year not feeding the hungry, not healing the sick, and not educating the ignorant.
Moreoever, all we have to do is vote. Our country has sometimes asked far too much from its citizens just for the right to vote, usually because of color or gender. Voter suppression may be the last refuge of minority rule, but Trump can still be easily beaten if every American just does his or her duty. All we have to do is vote.
The hard part is learning how to control Trump’s breed of American fascism because, no matter how many bad things one can say about Trump, the one thing that cannot be said about him is that he is not American. That fight, however, begins the day after Tuesday.