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.
Moreover, 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.
” I still have faith that America would recover”, recover to what? Recover to Project for a new American Century Republicans and Democrats? Recover to getting back to “regime change” in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and maybe another one in Iraq? Recover to a politics of polite platitudes while the system of privatized prisons, militarized police at home and military industrial complex and imperialism abroad continues to work unchallenged? Recover to enjoying “diverse” presidents who drone bombs weddings, invades countries left and right, who brings back open slave markets to the continent of Africa while at the same time enjoying his nobel peace prize?
The only honorable option left for the US citizens is to work, or rather, fight for the creation of an independent workers party. Part of that struggle will require the dismantling of the existing parties, in particular the Democratic party. It is therefore an unconscionable act to vote for a Biden/Harris duo, who represent the crime bill and cops at a time when so many Americans say BLM and reform/defund the police. It is an unconscionable act to vote for a duo that represent hawkish imperialism at a time when the majority of the public is waking up to the realities of the US foreign policy. Anything else is only as honorable as voting for Hitler because an even worse candidate is on the ballot and imagining you being a responsible citizen by doing so.