There's not ever been a time that I can remember, since I cast my first ballot in a Presidential election in 1976, for Jimmy Carter, that so many other people and issues were on the ballot with the candidates of one of the political parties. Nor has it ever seemed that so many people were either so clueless, or so separated from reality in a world of conspiracy theories, fear and paranoia. So when voters go into the booth, or step up to the screen and cast a ballot, there will be many things lying underneath the candidate's names on the Republican side.
Everything Donald Trump
From the false claim of election denial to the dishonesty in every aspect of the way the man does business, to his misogyny, his Fascist world view and his white supremacist perspective, Donald Trump is on the ballot. That means casting a vote for a Republican is casting a vote in support of an insurrection aimed at overthrowing the government and nullifying the Constitution. It means denying every founding principle of American democracy in favor of someone who has advocated for dictatorship, determined that his best friends among world leaders are the dictators, not the Democrats, and who attempted to subvert the Constitution to stay in office after being rejected by the voters in a clean, fair, legitimate election.
Voting Republican means voting for a pathological liar and basing your vote on lies. It means voting against law and order, and against every man and woman in this country who wears a law enforcement officer's uniform. It's not possible for Trump to support "law and order" when everything in his entire life and in his business dealings has involved cheating the law, getting around the law or just breaking the law for his own profit. This is the guy who said he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and get away with it. That's not a "law and order" kind of guy, that's a dictator.
It means casting a vote against any interests associated with people who are not Caucasians of European descent. And he says this, frequently, in plain language. Latinos, African-Americans, Asians, it doesn't matter, in Trump world these people are not real Americans and they are here to serve, not to participate as equals. There are several compilations of his anti-Latino, anti-black, anti-Asian, anti-Jewish rants at his rallies and in speeches he's made since he first started running for President. There are also plenty of statements from his lips about the second class status for women in which he also believes.
He is also anti-Christian. Marching across Lafayette Park, holding a Bible upside down in front of a church doesn't make him a Christian any more than walking into a garage makes one a car. Trump's public statements about his religious beliefs categorize him as, at best, an agnostic, and at worst, an anti-Christ by biblical definition of the term. No one, not even God, comes before Donald Trump in his own eyes, and he does not tolerate loyalty to anyone, including God, except himself.
Election denying, which is one of the issues associated with him, is a serious charge. In making this reckless claim, because his ego can't take defeat, he is baselessly accusing a large number of patriotic Americans of both political parties, who work hard to ensure the absolute integrity of every election from the local level to the national level, of cheating him out of a victory he clearly did not achieve. That is a serious accusation against the integrity of this country, and against the patriotism and loyalty of millions of Americans. It is also one of the most blatantly ignorant statements ever to come from a former President of the United States. It is a hard and realistic demonstration of the fact that this man is not a patriotic, loyal American, but a selfish psychopath with a fragile ego and demented intelligence.
That was enough to convince a record 80 million people to vote against him in 2020. Nothing has changed since then. So there's no reason for those same 80 million people to vote in November and cast the same ballot.
Who Else is Running on the Republican Side of the Ballot?
Well, there's Alex Jones, who just got his rear end handed to him by a judge who intends to hand out almost a billion of his ill-gotten gain to the parents whose children were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School. This disgusting pig decided to ridicule and laugh at those parents as the jury verdict was read to them in the court room. Vowing that they would not see a penny of the settlement, he apparently did not learn anything at all from this slam dunk victory for the parents, with even more to come.
What kind of human values does that kind of behavior represent? It's reprehensible to have to share space on this planet with an evil person like that. Alex Jones, and everything he represents, is on the ballot in the form of every Republican running for elected office in 2022.
Then there's Steve Bannon. Another disgusting, human-hating being, Bannon is dangerously divisive and hateful. He holds no value for the sanctity of human life beyond the limited capacity of his narrow-minded worldview and he is also a staunch opponent of law and order. Any Republican who insists that crime is a problem in this country is completely missing the point by supporting someone who picks and chooses laws to obey or disobey based on his own opinion or on his own experience. Bannon is cut from the same cloth as the Fascist dictators of Europe prior to World War 2. Yeah, I know it's bad form to compare these inhumane monsters by name, but that's really exactly what we are looking at here.
Herschel Walker is also on the ballot. Yes, he really is on the Georgia ballot, an embarrassment to any Georgia Republican who supports him based on party loyalty. He played football, not exactly the kind of achievement that is a qualification for serving in the United States Senate. In all other matters, he is a zero. He flunked out of college, his lifestyle contradicts almost every word he speaks about it. He's condemned absentee fathers among African-American men, but he himself is an absentee father, and the actual number of his biological children is not known. That makes him a hypocrite and as far as I am concern, is a disqualifying factor for a run for any public office. He claims to be pro-life, but has paid for one abortion, and offer to pay for at least one other one. There may be multiple others, since it doesn't seem that he knows much about how children are conceived, or how to use birth control.
It's hard to tell what he really stands for, since he seems unable to string enough words together to make a coherent sentence and he has an extremely limited vocabulary. His name might not be on the ballot in your state, but the support he continues to receive, especially from Senators who willfully support all of this, knowing exactly what they're doing, like Cotton and Scott, mean that this kind of ridiculous assault on the integrity of the senate, which is what his candidacy represents, is something of which Republicans approve.
The Verdict Delivered by the Ballot Box
We have a responsibility to our country to defend it against all enemies, foreign or domestic. Every Republican running for office represents a domestic enemy, whether they think they do or not, if they support Donald J. Trump. The evidence of Trump's crimes against the people of the United States is piling up as high as a mountain and involves everything from an attempt to overturn an election and undermine the Constitution and government, to stealing classified documents with the intention of delivering some of them in exchange for money to foreign countries, some of whom are designated as enemies of the United States.
The will of the people to render a verdict on this is shaping up. Democrats are battling inflation and high energy and gasoline prices, and a supply chain issue that has a political price tag, too. But, in a midterm year when the election, by indications of past history, should not be close, it appears that Democrats will retain control of the Senate, and are competitive enough to lead the generic ballot and actually have a shot at holding the house, too. All of this stuff on the Republican side of the ballot is responsible for that, mainly the result of Trump's involvement and continued interference. There are Republicans who have dreaded this for a long time, but if they won't stand up and say what they think, then they deserve to go down with the rest of the ship.
So while we patiently wait for our Justice Department to assemble its facts, indict the criminal and bring him to justice, we, the people, have an opportunity to render a verdict on November 8th. I will be voting for "guilty" as I cast a straight ticket ballot for all of the Democratic candidates. To the 80 million Americans who turned out to send Trump home in 2020, I strongly urge and encourage you to do the same, wherever you are. You cannot stay home and expect that the right thing will be done without your help. Your vote for Democrats across the board will save our democratic government.
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