Tag: voting

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In the News Politics

Swamp Report: It’s Time to Change the Conversation

I reel in disbelief every time I hear a news commentator, nightly panelist, newspaper writer, or social media pundit pose the question “Is Donald Trump unfit to serve as President?” Trump answers that question every long, scandal-filled day. YES, he’s unfit. Next question?

Trump proved his unfitness when he publicly mocked a disabled reporter. He proved it when he encouraged physical assault at his campaign rallies. He proved it in the Access Hollywood tape. He proves it every morning with his pre-adolescent tweets. He proves it every time he speaks, with his third-grade vocabulary and schoolyard bully tone of voice. He proves it every time he attacks another government official or private citizen. He proves his unfitness each time he is declined representation by a reputable law firm. He proves it again and again in his rambling rants and his inability to focus on governance. He proves it most stunningly in his gross and utter ignorance of governance and of our constitution. He proves it by his obsession with Fox News and his preference for receiving his information from Sean Hannity et al. instead of from classified intelligence briefings. He proves it by his multiple violations of the Emoluments Clause. He’s a pathological liar, a crooked businessman who’s not nearly as successful as he has always portrayed himself to be, and a person with no conscience. When someone shows you who he is, the intelligent thing to do is believe him.

And there’s the problem. Millions of American voters see and hear the same things, yet a large contingent of that body continue to defend Trump’s fitness for the highest office in our government. And the question that haunts the rest of us is “Why?”

I loathe Donald Trump and everything he represents. My soul longs for the days of intelligent leadership. I broke down in tears while watching David Letterman’s recent interview with Barack Obama. Hell, I even find myself getting nostalgic over photos of George W. Bush. But Donald Trump is not the problem. I didn’t always loathe him. Before the infamous escalator ride, he was the same con man he is today, but I vacillated between feeling disgusted with him and being mildly amused by his tabloid antics. Mostly, when his life had no effect on mine, I paid no attention to what he did or said or how many women he slept with.  Donald Trump was simply irrelevant.

Trump declared his intention to run for  president because he believes he is uniquely qualified for the position, but that doesn’t offend me. He’s a narcissist; of course he thinks he’s qualified. Delusional people throughout history have claimed to be Jesus; dictators have believed they were heaven-ordained to wield life-and-death power over millions. And narcissist or not, we’re all entitled to dream. Dreaming alone doesn’t win elections. What decides elections is supporters and voters who buy into someone else’s dream. To borrow a line from Cassius in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,/But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” Bear with me here, but I’d like to say, “The fault, dear Americans, is not in Donald Trump but in ourselves, that we are in a state of chaos and in danger of destroying our democracy.”

So the real question is not “Is Donald Trump fit for the presidency?” (he’s not) but “Are we fit to choose a president?” Right now, the answer to the second question is pretty disturbing.

The obscenity of a Donald Trump presidency lies not in the person who occupies the Oval Office but in the electorate who put him there. The dark underbelly of American history and culture is on full display, and it’s ugly. There’s much to discuss about what’s wrong with Donald Trump, but protracting that discussion is futile and will do nothing to heal what’s really wrong with our country. The conversation that needs to happen now is what’s wrong with us and what we can do to heal ourselves. If we can answer those questions, we won’t have to worry about another Trumpian dictator being elected president.

The swamp that needs draining is not the White House; it’s not even Washington, DC. It’s every nook and cranny of this country where a snake oil salesman can win the electoral college vote. Where opposition to political correctness carries more weight in choosing a president than respect for knowledge and experience. Where guns are glorified and protected over children’s lives. Where being “pro-life” means opposing abortion but not giving a damn about people who are already born. Where the people who claim the inside track to God (Evangelicals) elevate to the level of spiritual prophet a thrice-married adulterer who brags about his exploiting of numerous women and who pays those women to stay quiet, does business with thugs, doesn’t pay his bills, lies as easily as he breathes, and displays no respect or compassion for other humans. It just doesn’t get any swampier than that.

And let’s go ahead throw in Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and all of the other corrupt leaders currently running our congress and serving in it. They’re reprehensible, but they are there because people keep electing them. If they were back home being private-citizen wackos, I might feel a tiny twinge of sympathy for them; but as long as they are leaders in our government, I can find only disgust for them and animosity for the people who elect them.

Donald Trump, and others in “the swamp,” have shown us who they are. Believe them. Then stop the endless conversation of analyzing and agonizing over why Trump does each little thing you hear about on the news. He does what he does because he is who he is. But who are we? That’s a conversation worth having.

Let’s take a moment to recap. So far, we have that Washington, D.C. is a swamp because the rest of the country–where the voters live–is a swamp. It’s us, not them. We need to talk about that. Spoiler alert: I have no magic formula to offer that will drain the Everytown USA Swamp. I do, however, have some ideas for conversation starters. First, a forgotten word in our culture is “compromise”; we should look into that. Second, the ground rules for our conversation should include forbidding the use of any of these words: “Democrat,” “Republican,” “liberal,” “conservative,” “left,” “right,” and any others that denote entrenched attitudes and opinions that are off the table. The conversation has to center on common ground, what we all want, not what one group wants; and nothing can be off the table.

Restoring a spirit of compromise requires letting go of the idea that we all have to hold the same opinions or live by the same rules. We need to find a lot more Barbara Bushes, who disagreed with her party’s stance on abortion but continued to support the overall party platform and its candidates–until they completely lost their minds and nominated the snake-oil salesman for president. Mrs. Bush’s pro-choice stance placed her at odds with both her husband and her son’s public positions; yet she passionately loved and supported them both. The singer and activist Bono once told George W. Bush that Bush’s mother helped diminish the stigma of AIDS and other diseases. Many who share Mrs. Bush’s stated religious beliefs are the ones who created that stigma, yet this noble woman was able to maintain her personal faith and ties to those who shared her faith while  also extending grace, compassion, and respect to suffering people. Mutual respect is the missing element in most of today’s conversations about divisive issues.

I’m a registered Democrat, and I don’t fully agree with my party’s position on abortion; but I support the Democratic Party and respect my fellow Democrats’ opinions because I believe we’re correct on more issues than not. I don’t need to agree with my tribe on every point; I can respect other liberals and hope they respect me and acknowledge my right to see certain things a little differently. It’s unrealistic to think everyone, even within a party, will see every issue exactly the same way.

I believe the government should butt out of people’s love lives. However, butting out means butting out, not just taking the opposite side. If a pastor feels deeply that he/she cannot in good conscience officiate a same-sex marriage, leave him/her alone! Plenty of pastors, justices of the peace, and friends willing to obtain an online officiant license will be delighted to perform the wedding. If I were part of the LGBTQ community and wanted to get married, I certainly would not want to have the joy of my wedding day dampened by an officiant who was there only because he/she was forbidden by law to decline. And in the case of a pastor, a pastor who declines performing the wedding is unlikely to welcome the happy couple into membership, so what’s the point? Many churches are inclusive; go find one. If a baker or florist doesn’t wish to be involved, find one that does. A wedding day should be a joyful occasion; everyone involved should share the joy and affirmation of the union. After enough bad publicity, those bakers and florists will see the results in their declining client base. So be it.

I hasten to add that pastors, bakers, and florists are private citizens, who I believe should be allowed to exercise and do business according to their private beliefs–however distorted those beliefs may seem to others. However, government officials, such as Kim Davis, the Kentucky woman who refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses, must be required to act in accordance with the laws, not their personal beliefs. I believe Kim Davis private citizen could refuse to officiate the wedding, bake the cake, or arrange the flowers; but Kim Davis public official had no right to use her government position to impose her personal beliefs on others.

Donald Trump ascended to the presidency by eschewing political correctness and inciting his rabid mobs to echo that line. For the most part, I believe the political correctness backlash was hogwash. What that group calls political correctness I call kindness, respect, and courtesy. Every now and then, however, I hear something that I think crosses the line between respect and absurdity; and on those occasions, I have a smidgen of appreciation for the Trump supporters’ scornful rejection of political correctness. Political correctness is disrespect for any opinion except the “correct” one. But who gets to decide whose opinion is the correct one, and what do we gain by fighting over it? Political correctness is in some cases a form of forced agreement, and why must we all agree? Can’t we find ways to respect each other without agreeing on every point?

If I were to hold the private opinion that all houses should be built of wood and painted yellow, lots of people would disagree with me and probably find me a bit wacky; but my opinion should be acknowledged and not denigrated, and I should not be made to feel like a defective person for my belief. If, however, I spray paint nasty messages on my neighbors’ brick or stucco houses, I’ve crossed the line between holding a weird opinion and abusing and assaulting my neighbors. The same is true if I take it upon myself to repaint other wood houses to my “correct” color. I shouldn’t be required to change my opinion in order to be respected, but I should be required to allow others the same right I claim for myself.

One of my favorite photos is the one in which Michelle Obama is hugging George W. Bush, and both are smiling with what appears to be genuine affection. It might be difficult to find two people with more divergent opinions on a wide range of social and political topics, but this photo captures the spirit of human beings celebrating what unites them, not focusing on what divides them. We need more such photos.

We need more friendships like the friendship between Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill, described by Mr. O’Neill’s son Thomas in a 2012 New York Times article titled “Frenemies: A Love Story.” The younger O’Neill writes about others who have observed the irony that “the relationship between Reagan and my father, a Democrat who was speaker of the House for most of Reagan’s presidency, should serve as a model for how political leaders can differ deeply on issues, and yet work together for the good of the country.” Let that sink in: “differ deeply on issues” and “work together for the good of the country.” Thomas O’Neill also writes, “While neither man embraced the other’s worldview, each respected the other’s right to hold it. Each respected the other as a man.” And those last two sentences articulate precisely what is missing today, not only in our nation’s capital but more importantly in Everytown USA.

The article makes clear that although Reagan and O’Neill couldn’t be considered close friends, they more than once sat down together at the White House for drinks after each had spent the day fighting adamantly for his cause. Their devotion to the common good didn’t prevent either of them from expressing an honest opinion about the other. O’Neill is quoted as calling Reagan “a cheerleader for selfishness” and Reagan as comparing O’Neill to the Pac-Man character, “a round thing that gobbles up money.”

But here’s the part we so desperately need today:

“Such unyielding standoffs [this follows a long list of examples] were, in fact, rare. What both men deplored more than the other’s political philosophy was stalemate, and a country that was so polarized by ideology and party politics that it could not move forward. There were tough words and important disagreements over everything from taxation to Medicare and military spending. But there was yet a stronger commitment to getting things done. That commitment to put country ahead of personal belief and party loyalty is what . . . millions of Americans miss so much right now.”

Indeed we do miss leaders who are willing and able to compromise for the sake of “getting things done,” who are capable of “commitment to put country ahead of personal belief and party loyalty.”

Now here’s the catch: We’ll never get leaders who respect each other and work toward the common good until the voters who elect those leaders can make the “commitment to put country ahead of personal belief and party loyalty.” When citizens of Everytown USA cease to be “polarized by ideology and party politics,” we’ll start electing that kind of leaders. As it is, we elect leaders bent on carrying out our polarized beliefs; hence, Donald Trump. As I’ve often said, and many others have also said, Trump is the effect, not the cause. It’s high time we start examining the causes and turning the conversation toward fixing ourselves.

The DC Swamp is out of control, and there’s only one way you and I can change that situation. We have to start by draining our own little swamps, changing the conversation in our own corner of the world. Different world views have existed as long as the world has turned on its axis, and humans will disagree for as long as at least two people remain on the planet. The only thing anyone has control over is how those disagreements are handled. It’s time to change the conversation. It’s time to listen more and talk less. It’s time to allow others to hold opinions at opposite poles from our own yet extend to them the same respect we demand from them. It’s time, as Thomas O’Neill says, even when we can’t embrace another’s worldview, to respect the other’s right to hold it, to respect the other as an equal person.

If you’re saying to yourself right now, “Yeah, that’s what those other people need to do,” you’re part of the problem. Think about it.

 

 

Categories
Politics

Sometimes a Conscience Needs a Reboot

I grew up with such advice as “Always listen to your conscience,” “Follow your conscience,” and “Let your conscience be your guide.” Henry David Thoreau—in one of my favorite essays, “Civil Disobedience”—says the conscience is the highest authority, superseding the laws of one’s state or country. As members of the electorate, we’re often advised, “Vote your conscience.” Although all of those statements sound right and wise, they’re actually misleading. It may sound as if the conscience is the voice of the universe, which speaks the same language into the soul of every person. As we go through life, however, we learn a very different reality.

The conscience is not a single voice that speaks the same things to all, and conflicting loyalties and cross currents in life can make the conscience a confusing set of voices which don’t provide much of a guide at all. Adding to the confusion is the fact that what we believe is the conscience speaking is often our prejudices. And then there are some people whose consciences can’t be trusted at all, and we’d be scared of the results if they were to follow the advice “Let your conscience be your guide.”

Since at least the time of Socrates, philosophers have examined the concept of conscience, and so much has been written on the subject that it would take a long time to read and absorb it all. So I’m just going to select a few brief passages to illustrate the complexity of understanding the human conscience.

Larry May, in his article “On Conscience,” in the January 1983 edition of The American Philosophical Quarterly, compares conscience to virtue:

Conscience, like virtue, is a capacity which leads to socially beneficial consequences in those who develop it. . . .  Conscience places barriers in one’s path which contribute to the avoidance of wrong-doing. Yet conscience, unlike the virtues, seems to be grounded in a concern for the self, for the self’s inner harmony . . . Conscience does seem to be different from virtue in that it proceeds from and remains closely allied with self-love. [Conscience is] an egoistic concern which nonetheless leads to restraints on selfishness.

According to Mr. May, the chief end of the conscience is to act as inner peace keeper, not to make the world at large a better place.

Simpler definitions are found in a variety of online dictionaries:

An inner feeling or voice viewed as acting as a guide to the rightness or wrongness of one’s behavior.

 

The feeling that you know and should do what is right and should avoid doing what is wrong, and that makes you feel guilty when you have done something you know is wrong.

Anyone who’s ever wrestled with a guilty conscience—and that’s all of us—knows it’s not a pleasant experience. So what Larry May says about the conscience’s primary purpose being to act as inner peace keeper sounds reasonable.

These simple definitions, however, raise more questions than they answer. If everyone follows their conscience and votes their conscience, why do we not all do the same things and vote for the same candidate? And if the conscience is the inner peace keeper, how the heck can some people do some really awful things yet never seem to feel guilty about them? Do you think Hitler had a hard time sleeping at night, tossing and turning as he thought of all the Jews and other people his minions were torturing and murdering? Most of us would feel more guilt for accidentally running over a squirrel with our cars than Hitler visibly showed for torturing and murdering millions of human beings.

Most discussions of conscience include the concepts that the conscience is those internalized social norms which help individuals make distinctions between what is right and what is wrong and which cause individuals inner guilt and pain after knowingly violating those norms. But that leads us right back to the question of why we don’t all have the same sense of what is right and what is wrong. Obviously, we’ve internalized different norms, determined by the teachings of our parents, our schools, and our religious affiliations or lack thereof, to name a few.

I know people who don’t believe in killing insects, even the scourge of Florida living: the cockroach. Their consciences would make them feel very guilty if they were to violate that social/ethical norm. I, on the other hand, can viciously murder a cockroach without the slightest twitch of guilt if it dares to invade my home. I leave them alone outside, but the occasional one that has the audacity to cross my threshold will be murdered, and I will celebrate its death. Don’t judge.

I was raised in a fundamentalist religious household; the church which my family belonged to taught us a long list of “sins”: drinking, smoking, dancing, watching Hollywood movies, and a whole lot more that you wouldn’t even believe. My first task as an adult was to begin retraining my conscience to stop feeling guilty every time I entered a movie theater or drank a glass of wine. I’ve looked over my shoulder many times in the wine aisle of the supermarket, knowing intellectually that I had nothing to feel guilty about; but that stupid conscience just wouldn’t shut up.

So for some of us, the social norms we internalized were a bit extreme, causing our consciences to be overactive and need retraining to function more normally. The vast majority of the people I know have never experienced the slightest twinge of guilt when entering a movie theater, since that taboo was never included in their social norms.

People raised in the Jim Crow South didn’t feel guilty about what we today see as blatant, extreme racism, because their social norms included the idea that the black race was inferior and that the white majority was therefore justified in not treating them as equals. That sounds outrageous—and it IS outrageous—but to many people in my youth and way before I was born, that made perfect sense.

We all know those racist attitudes didn’t simply evaporate when the Civil Rights laws acknowledged equal rights for every citizen, regardless of race or skin color. Since expressing such attitudes publicly was no longer acceptable, however, those who held onto their prejudices no longer felt free to voice them. So for them, their silence on the subject had nothing to do with their consciences; they simply didn’t want to be socially ostracized.

Other people negotiate deals with their consciences to keep them quiet: I’m justified in doing x because someone did y or z to me. As a very young woman, I worked briefly with a middle-aged woman who had engaged in a long-term extramarital affair; and even though extramarital affairs violate nearly every ethical code and set of social norms, her conscience was fine with her actions because she’d struck a deal with it. Her first husband had cheated on her, and she’d divorced him because of it; her second husband was a model of love and faithfulness, but she cheated on him. Her justification was “I never did it until it was done to me.” Never mind that the person she was doing it to was not the same person who did it to her.

This, of course, is called rationalizing, and most of us have learned that it can be quite an effective way to quiet a troublesome conscience. We justify everything from disregarding our parents’ instructions as children to shirking our professional responsibilities to treating other people with disrespect because of things they’ve done to us or because we’ve decided for the purpose of building our case that they’re not good people and not worthy of proper treatment from us.

It’s safe to conclude, then, that the conscience is an unreliable, inconsistent guide to our actions. In fact, in some cases, it’s hard to distinguish conscience from prejudice or rationalization. Hitler rationalized that certain groups of people—Jews and others—were inferior and therefore needed to be eradicated; so instead of feeling guilty, he believed he was doing the world a service by being the one to perform the extermination.

The loud, rowdy, vile chanters at some presidential campaign rallies are among those who’ve simply felt the social pressure to keep quiet about their prejudices until someone came along who created a new social environment in which bigotry and violence are the accepted norms. For them, voting their consciences would in reality be voting their prejudices, because their consciences have accepted norms that deviate from every standard of what is good and moral.

The New Testament writer Paul, in his first letter to Timothy, speaks of a seared conscience: one which has accepted so much wrongdoing that it no longer has the ability to feel guilt, as skin that has been seared, or badly burned, no longer feels the sensation of pain. Most people can relate to that idea on a limited level. You broke a house rule as a teenager, and your conscience went into full inner turmoil; but because it was so much fun or your peers encouraged you to continue participating, the guilt lessened with each repetition. I think lots of voters, particularly those at the rowdy rallies, have such numbed consciences that their conscience votes can’t be trusted at all.

Many voters’ consciences pivot on a single issue, such as their disapproval of abortion. Their consciences simply won’t allow them to vote for a candidate who openly supports legal abortion, even though that candidate—if elected—would have little to no power to affect the abortion laws one way or the other. That means that their consciences then have to accept faults in the other candidate—faults which will strongly affect that candidate’s performance if elected—and that just doesn’t make much sense to me. As I’ve said before, I support having a more rational conversation about abortion, since it is an issue that has so deeply divided us as a country for so long. But single-issue voting can’t possibly be consistent. If your conscience’s rejection of the pro-choice candidate means it has to accept the pro-bigotry, pro-violence, pro-lying, pro-cheating, pro-unethical and possibly pro-illegal business dealings candidate, your conscience is really screwed up and it really needs a reboot.

Clay Shirky, in his Huffington Post article “There’s No Such Thing as a Protest Vote,” gives all of our consciences some things to chew on:

We’re in the season of protest vote advocacy, with writers of all political stripes making arguments for third-party candidates (Jill Stein, Gary Johnson), write-in votes (Bernie Sanders, Rod Silva), or refusing to vote altogether (#NeverTrump,#BernieOrBust.) For all the eloquence and passion and rage in these arguments, however, they suffer from a common flaw: there is no such thing as a protest vote.

The authors of these pieces rarely line up their preferred Presidential voting strategies — third-party, write-in, refusal — with the electoral system as it actually exists. In 2016, that system will offer 130 million or so voters just three options:

  1. I prefer Donald Trump be president, rather than Hillary Clinton.
  2. I prefer Hillary Clinton be president, rather than Donald Trump.
  3. Whatever everybody else decides is OK with me.

That’s it. Those are the choices. All strategies other than a preference for Trump over Clinton or vice-versa reduce to Option C.

Voting is not all about how virtuous and moral it makes us feel; it’s about intellectually deciding what is best for the prosperity and security of our country. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn about your conscience if our national security and our world standing are jeopardized because your conscience won’t allow you to vote for someone who supports Planned Parenthood. Get a grip!

I guess the only way to conclude here is to say that if you’re going to vote your conscience, you’d better first examine your conscience and, if necessary, talk some sense into it. We’re all in this together, so we owe it to each other to get it right.

 

 

Categories
Politics

DO NOT Vote Your Conscience!

Now that I have your attention, let’s talk.

I don’t know any delicate way to say this, but with early voting starting this week, it must be said: A vote for Donald J. Trump is a vote against America. If the unthinkable should happen and this utterly unqualified person becomes our president, the blood of our country will be on the hands of everyone who voted for him. Yes, that’s harsh, but the reality of what would happen to our country under a Trump presidency is even harsher.

Voting is a cherished right, one which many have died to preserve. Each of us owns our vote, and we are bound by conscience and duty to country to use that vote responsibly. Each of us has to search his or her conscience before exercising this most solemn of duties, so here are a few facts for your conscience to chew on before you cast your ballot in the next 7 weeks.

The most important fact that must drive our thinking and our voting in this election is that this is not a normal election. I’m not talking about the drama, the infighting within the Republican Party, and the daily reality-tv-esque antics. I’m talking about the fact that this is not a contest between two equally qualified and prepared candidates, a contest in which we could have robust debates about the two opponents’ policy proposals and positions on important issues. It’s not a contest in which we strongly prefer one candidate, but life will go on and our country will survive with the other one.

This election is a contest between the most highly prepared and experienced candidate in history and a builder of buildings, maker of reality-tv shows who knows nothing whatsoever about government and refuses to be taught. It’s a contest between someone who has made mistakes in a long career of doing good for the world because she has had a long career of doing good for the world, and it would be impossible to have such a career without having made a few bad judgments, and someone whose entire career has consisted of amassing a large personal fortune at the expense of taxpayers and contractors who have been the victims of his greed.

How’s your conscience feeling now?

The most deceptive part of this campaign has been the normalizing of a candidate who is anything but normal and the legitimizing of a claim on the presidency by someone who should never have been allowed to win the nomination. In other words, Donald Trump is a fraud. Oh, I know we can vote for him if we’re foolish enough; but his candidacy is a scam, and the fact that he has been allowed to become the nominee of one of our major political parties is nothing short of a crime against the voters of the United States of America. The media and others who have treated this “candidacy” as normal and legitimate have created a false equivalency which has led to the dangerous dilemma in which we now find ourselves.

A friend of a friend said it this way on Facebook:

But while Trump was hosting a game show, Hillary was in the situation room, watching as Bin Laden was shot. Her record has stains, as does every Republican, Democrat and general who came before her. But she *has* a record, and she has admitted to her failures and shortcomings. She’s still learning and has the humility to admit that. She’s willing to listen, both to her advisers and constituency. Trump won’t even admit that President Obama was born in the United States. (Adam Tendler) [The last statement has changed, sort of, since this was written.]

President Obama said in a recent speech, “We can’t afford to act as if there’s some equivalence here.”

Eric Alterman, in an article titled “’Normalizing’ Trump,” says this:

Every effort by the media to treat Donald Trump as a “normal” presidential candidate brings us closer to the potential destruction of our democracy. And yet we can see it taking place at virtually every level of our media.

The media deserve a good deal of blame here, not only because of the billions of dollars’ worth of free airtime television networks have given to Trump but also because of their insistence — against all evidence — that he is someone other than the person he clearly presents himself to be. (The Nation, 15 Sep 2016)

Nicholas Kristof, in his New York Times op-ed “When a Crackpot Runs for President,” says:

This does raise the thorny issue of false equivalence, which has been hotly debated among journalists this campaign. Here’s the question: Is it journalistic malpractice to quote each side and leave it to readers to reach their own conclusions, even if one side seems to fabricate facts or make ludicrous comments?

There are crackpots who believe that the earth is flat, and they don’t deserve to be quoted without explaining that this is an, er, outlying view, and the same goes for a crackpot who has argued that climate change is a Chinese-made hoax, who has called for barring Muslims and who has said that he will build a border wall and that Mexico will pay for it.

We owe it to our readers to signal when we’re writing about a crackpot. Even if he’s a presidential candidate. No, especially when he’s a presidential candidate. (15 Sep 2016)

Veteran journalist Dan Rather, in a scathing Facebook rant, says this about Trump and the media:

This is not about partisan politics, about who is right on immigration or gun control. This is about the very machinery that has allowed our American experiment to persist and thrive, a machinery which is far more fragile than we would like to believe.

Trump’s relationship with the press is at the heart of so much that is troubling about his candidacy . . .

And yet when presented with this challenge, too much of the press has been cowed into inaction. This is a man who can be fact-checked into obscurity by any second grader with an Internet connection. And yet when he issues a mealy-mouth non-apology about President Obama’s obvious pedigree as an American, here we are with too many in the press not acknowledging his years of lies (check your Twitter feeds about how the New York Times initially covered this event). All of this of course sets the stage for Trump to lie again about somehow birtherism being Clinton’s fault. (“Stop Giving Trump a Free Pass and Do Your Damn Job,” 17 Sep 2016)

Donald Trump is not presidential material, and the press’s and voters’ treatment of him as a normal candidate has placed our country in grave danger.

Adam Tendler, in his Facebook comment, also says:

The danger is that when people view voting as fundamentally a form of self-expression, in a tight race where every vote counts, the reality is that this rugged individualism actually tends to undermine the actual tangible possibility for change in this country, including the change that voter actually believes in. You may *feel* fantastic and totally aligned with your values voting third party, and that’s wonderful for you, but the follow-through is essentially, in this case, one less vote for Clinton and a strengthened chance for a Trump majority.

And here’s the point: There’s a lot more to “voting your conscience” than just casting a ballot for the person you believe would do the best job. Your conscience should also tell you where your vote might do the most harm. You might argue that a vote is never wasted, but the reality is that a vote can be wasted and can lead to unintended results.

In this election, a vote for Donald Trump is a vote for evil and for the destruction of our democracy. A vote for Jill Stein is a vote for Donald Trump, because in our system as it exists now, a third-party candidate has no real chance of winning; and the only thing voting for them does is pull votes from someone who does have a chance of winning. A vote for Gary Johnson is also a vote for Donald Trump, for the same reasons, regardless of how pure the motive for which the vote is cast. Abstaining from voting is a vote for Donald Trump because Trump deplorables are the ones most eager to cast their ballots; none of them will be abstaining. The ONLY way to prevent the apocalypse of a Trump presidency is to vote for Hillary Clinton. To do anything else is naïve, idealistic, and misguided.

Will your conscience allow you to contribute to the election of an uninformed con man who has risen to prominence by peddling conspiracy theories, insulting just about every group of people in existence, and—according to fact checkers—lying in 71% of the statements that were checked?

Will your conscience allow you to contribute to the election of a 70-year-old man who speaks and reasons like a 5-year-old? A man who says nice things about a foreign leader hostile to American interests because that leader has said nice things about Trump? Are we in second grade?

But his immaturity, his lack of ethics, his lifestyle that does not mirror the beliefs of the far-right “Christians” who support him have all been hashed over; and his supporters are unmoved. What should be front and center, according to Melissa Bartick, is Trump’s criminal history. Ms. Bartick lists ten criminal charges against the man the Republican Party thinks should be our president:

-Trump and his father were sued by the federal government for housing discrimination in the 1970’s for refusing to rent to blacks.

-He is being charged with fraud in connection with Trump University.

– Trump Tower was built using undocumented Polish laborers to demolish the building that previously stood on the site.

-Trump is alleged to have violated immigration laws in hiring foreign models for Trump Model Management. These models worked illegally, and he failed to pay them fairly.

– Trump’s charitable foundation appears to have repeatedly broken IRS rules, according to the Washington Post.

-His charitable foundation violated tax laws by giving a $25,000 political contribution to a campaign group connected to Florida’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, in 2013.

-Trump is accused of bribing the Attorney General of Florida, Pam Bondi to drop her investigation of Trump University. She successfully solicited a donation from him before the fraud case, and afterward, he held a fundraiser for her at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.

-In 2007 and in 2012, Trump and his wife bought two gifts for themselves at charity events for his foundation, totaling $32,000, breaking IRS rules. One gift was a $20,000 painting of himself.

-A deposition describes him raping his first wife Ivana, pulling out fistfuls of her hair in a fit of rage, stripping off her clothes, then penetrating her forcefully without her consent, after which she hid in a locked room and cried all night.

-He is currently being charged with child rape in a case for which there is an eyewitness and credible information to support the claim. The woman filing suit in April 2016 claims that as a 13-year-old in 1994, she was enticed to attend parties with the promise of money and modeling jobs at the home of Jeffrey Epstein, a Level 3 registered sex offender (the most dangerous kind), after Epstein was convicted of misconduct with another underage girl.

The woman alleges Trump initiated sexual contact with her on four separate occasions, with the fourth being a “savage sexual attack” in which he tied her to a bed and forcibly raped her while she pleaded with him to stop. He threatened that she and her family would be “physically harmed if not killed” if she ever revealed what was done. (“Trump’s Criminal History Should Be Front and Center,” 14 Sep 2016)

Several of these cases are currently pending, so our president would be the defendant in a series of criminal trials. How does your conscience feel about that?

And if your conscience can swallow ALL of this to avoid voting for someone who was careless with her emails and waited 48 hours to reveal that she was suffering from pneumonia, something is seriously wrong with your conscience. If you can vote for an uninformed conspiracy theorist, alt-right/KKK sympathizer, 71% liar, and rapist to avoid voting for a woman who has lived her entire life by the mantra “Do all the good you can, for all the people you can, in all the ways you can, as long as ever you can,” something is seriously wrong with your conscience. If you can vote for a man who refuses to release the proof of his fraud and dangerous foreign alliances (aka, his tax returns) to avoid voting for a brilliant and gifted woman who is flawed and imperfect but who has lived a life of public service and to whom millions of people in the world are beholden for her goodness and charity, something is seriously wrong with your conscience.

Bernie Sanders says this is not the time for a protest vote:

Sanders continued making the pitch he’s been honing since he returned to the campaign trail: This isn’t a year to vote third party. Mentioning Clinton’s name sparingly, Sanders told several hundred voters — many still wearing gear from the Democratic primary — that their votes could stop the election of a Republican “who thinks climate change is a hoax.”

And finally, here’s the commonsense wisdom of American sage Garrison Keillor, in a September 13, 2016, Facebook post:

Hillary didn’t have a prolonged adolescence and fiction was not her ambition. She doesn’t do dreaminess. What some people see as a relentless quest for power strikes me as the good habits of a serious Methodist. Be steady. Don’t give up. It’s not about you. Work for the night is coming.

The woman who does not conceal her own intelligence is a fine American tradition, going back to Anne Bradstreet and Harriet Beecher Stowe and my ancestor Prudence Crandall, but none has been subjected to the steady hectoring that Mrs. Clinton has. She is the first major-party nominee to be pictured in prison stripes by the opposition. She is the first cabinet officer ever to be held personally responsible for her own email server, something ordinarily delegated to anonymous nerds in I.T. The fact that terrorists attacked an American compound in Libya under cover of darkness when Secretary Clinton presumably got some sleep has been held against her, as if she personally was in command of the defense of the compound, a walkie-talkie in her hand, calling in air strikes.

Wake up, voters! Our only choice is to vote for Hillary Clinton. If your conscience tells you anything else, trade it in and get one that works.