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We have reached a stage where it has become impossible to simultaneously be an informed voter, a supporter of Donald Trump, and a good person. You can be two of these things but not all three.
For example, a vote for the former president is only defensible for a decent human being if they have no access to a TV, a phone, or the internet, and cast their ballot based solely on the orangeness of the candidates.
Conversely, you can also be a well-informed, upstanding citizen with an intact moral compass and think to yourself: “Obviously I’m not going to vote for Trump. He is despicable.”
And, of course, you can be a bad person and support the former president. For example, if you can aptly be described with adjectives ending in “-phobe,” then you probably fit the mold.
However, what is not possible is to be a thoughtful, caring individual who is following the news closely and then believes that Trump would be a good president.
Now, you might be thinking: “Hold on; I’ll vote for Trump, but I am a good person and well-informed.”
No, you are not because those three things are irreconcilable.
In the most favorable scenario, you get all your news from Fox and the rest of the right-wing propaganda machine, which means that you are probably less aware of some of the outrageous things he says and does.
But, at this point, you still must know that Trump is an awful, selfish man.
By the way, this isn’t about convincing anybody to vote for Joe Biden. If he doesn’t earn your vote, then don’t give it to him.
It’s also not about convincing anybody not to vote for Trump. If that’s what you want to do, go ahead. Just know that you are not a good person. But at least you won’t be alone, because neither are the tens of millions of other voters who will cast their ballot for him.
And it isn’t even about Trump now being a convicted felon, or the affair he had with a porn star while his wife was pregnant. There were plenty of other presidents who did similar things (or would have, if there had been porn stars back then).
There have been other commanders in chief who were crooks and/or did morally reprehensible things. Needless to say, Richard Nixon was also a criminal, and if Bill Clinton had still been eligible to run again after his affair with an intern was revealed, he would have deserved to lose in a landslide.
Because presidents are not just supposed to capably run the country, they should also be role models Americans can look up to.
The only people who should admire Trump are aspiring sociopaths, charlatans, and grifters.
It’s actually quite stunning that somebody like him could ever dominate a political party in the way he has. And that’s not even a testament to Trump but rather an indictment of the modern GOP.
Because while voters who still support the former president can’t, by definition, be good people, all those Republicans who are going out of their way to do his bidding are much worse because most of them know better.
And their continued support for Trump means they are anywhere from power-hungry (looking at you, Ted Cruz) and dumb (hi there, James Comer), to evil (Jim Jordan, you know who we are talking about) and downright nuts (what’s up, Marjorie Taylor Greene?).
Many of them fit more than one of these descriptions… and all of them lie for him to deceive the country in pursuit of power.
Hillary Clinton was onto something when, in 2016, she said that half of Trump voters are “a basket of deplorables.”
As it turns out, she was being generous. Now, anybody who votes for Trump is deplorable.
Even back then, it was obvious to anybody who paid even a modicum of attention that Donald Trump is a terrible human being.
He lies pretty much every time he speaks, openly admitted to sexually assaulting women, has a well-documented history of racism, fantasizes about his daughter, and is, quite apparently, mentally ill.
And that’s in addition to being a crook and con man who acts like a middle school bully.
The fact that somebody like him could become president in 2016 is irrefutable evidence that the US still has many unresolved problems — from overt and institutional racism to an enormous class divide, from mass ignorance to the outsized power that religious groups still exert over the country.
However, the fact that he is once again a competitive candidate in 2024 says much more about the voters themselves than about the US and the former president himself.
Just to name one of the less terrible things about Trump, how can anybody support a man who comes up with nicknames for his adversaries as though he is eight years old?
But, of course, it’s much, much more than that.
Trump may just be the most visibly self-involved person in human history. Everything is about him (even though he has conned his supporters into believing that he is there for them). So, instead of being there for his voters, he will use them… either as a piggybank or to storm the US Capitol for him.
For him, it is never about anybody but Trump.
Here is a man who was/is willing to destroy American democracy because he couldn’t handle losing. And he would rather dismantle the entire US justice system than pay for his crimes.
Still, just about every Republican “leader” and millions of voters are willingly aiding and abetting him in this pursuit.
They would rather burn down the country than let Trump face accountability.
The former president corrupts everything he touches and brings out the worst in people. He is a champion for some of the worst causes, which is why it’s understandable that racists, xenophobes, and religious zealots flock to him.
Let’s just take a brief look at some of the things he has said and done this week… apart from that felony conviction thing.
Any of them would doom a normal candidate, but the awful people who support Trump will let him get away with anything.
For example, he claimed that the non-violent January 6 insurrectionists, i.e., the people who only stormed the Capitol in furtherance of his coup but did not beat up cops, were the most unfairly treated group of people in US history.
And then, on Memorial Day, which is supposed to unite Americans who grieve for loved ones who lost their lives for their country, Trump put out an abhorrent message that began with the words: “Happy Memorial Day to All, including the Human Scum that is working so hard to destroy our Once Great Country.”
Hillary Clinton was skewered for her “deplorables” comment, but nobody is batting an eye when Trump says much worse.
Finally, think about this: We all know that, if their names are revealed, the jurors who voted to convict the former president will be harassed, receive threats, and be publicly maligned by Fox News et al. (if not worse).
Now imagine if they had made a different decision.
What if they had voted to acquit him?
Does anybody really believe that Biden would have gone on TV and thrown a tantrum as though he were a toddler? Would one Democrat after another have dragged down the entire justice system because of that verdict? Would the jurors be vilified in the same way on MSNBC? And would they receive the same number of threats?
Everybody knows the answer to these questions. Of course not.
That’s because the entire GOP has become a band of thugs… and their voters are making it possible.
Shame on you!
