The Cognitive Dissident

So it is down to a choice between The Donald and Hillary.

As I wrote back in the fall, Trump is not fit to be a small town mayor, let alone president of the United States. His actions since then have only reinforced the fact that he is driven by vindictive, narcissistic, capriciousness; but he seems to have not the slightest regard for the damage his words have.  Just as bad, he doesn’t seem to have a clue about the complexities of the issues.  He has taken the Obama template of “Hope and Change” from eight years ago and simply changed the words to “Make America Great Again.”   Neither campaign actually said anything about real policy. Sadly Americans seem to like vague catch phrases over real plans.  Time and time again I’ve listened to him speak at length only to ask myself “Do any of his supporters actually listen to what he is saying?”  I recall his daughter in an interview point out that her father says what he thinks his audience wants to hear. This is what a good salesman does, and Donald Trump is simply a big dollar salesman.  With this in mind, no one should be surprised that he never seems to feel bound by what he says.  Be sure those Republicans who are now supporting their party’s candidate have no idea what Trump will actually do if he is elected.

Now the line I’m hearing from die hard Republicans is that he is better than Hillary.  I ask if you took away your tribal loyalty would you come to that conclusion.   Yes, Hillary is corrupt in the classical sense. Yes she gave favors to people who gave her foundation money.  Yes, even before she took the Secretary of State’s office she began the process of creating a private network to evade the Freedom of Information laws. In her approach and personality she seems to be Richard Nixon come back to life.  Significantly the laws she worked to evade were mostly created by Democrats in response to Nixon.  She is very far from the kind of person I think should be president. I still think John Kasich was the best candidate, in either party, in the race.

To me the choice is clear: the center-left Hillary Clinton would be far less likely to do the country catastrophic damage than Donald Trump who doesn’t seem to have any guiding principles. Yes, she will have ethics problems. Perhaps she will, like Nixon, self-destruct. Yet, compared with Donald Trump’s utter lack of suitability to be Commander-In-Chief or the spokesman for the nation, I can do nothing else.

If we look at the history of our country morality is not necessarily the hallmark of an effective president.  Both Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush are good moral people, but neither was a particularly effective president.   Certainly this year we no longer have a choice of voting for a good moral person in the fall.  What we have to choose between are two different brands of self-serving amoral people.  And choose we (as a nation) must.  Wishing for the perfect candidate and not voting at all is the cowards way out. Following tribal party loyalty is the sheep’s path.  I for one will not be a coward or a sheep.  Though I have never voted for a Democrat in a presidential election before, with eyes wide open to her faults and failings, I will vote for Hillary in the fall.