(February 24, 2019 at 10:57 pm)Rev. Rye Wrote: I would like to remind anyone who would consider any major-party candidate unelectable of this:
This was how Trump started his campaign. When I first saw it, I thought "Wow. The sumbitch announced his candidacy and torpedoed his chance before he even left the podium." And yet, he just got more and more powerful, and more and more jackasstic. He won the nomination, and by November, he'd broken every rule in the book, up to and including "don't brag about committing sexual assault." And he won the fucking election. He won it by the lowest popular margin since Rutherford Hayes.
There are no rules in politics anymore. If Trump winning ANY primaries at all didn't convince me of that, it was when he actually won the nomination. And then, his actually winning the election simply reinforced that. The closest thing there is is The Other Guy Must Not Win. You might not like any of the candidates, but there is no way whoever ends up isn't going to be the lesser of two evils. Why, yes, that does suck, but that's the way of the world.
I don't agree with the lesser of two evils reasoning. Sometimes it makes sense. Sometimes it doesn't. It never makes sense when it is the lesser of two evils that is telling you that they are entitled to your support specifically because they are the lesser evil. That's extortion, and the correct thing to do with that is to drive a dagger through the lesser evil's heart. People aren't trying to be good anymore; they're just trying to not be as bad as the worst. That is exactly what completely broke our system.
We got Trump because we deserved him. When no one supports anything, and they are only voting against the other guy, then everyone is just creating a system where the goal is to make the other guy worse than you. And then you idiotically wonder why the system broke, and there are no rules anymore. You spent your entire life drinking koolaid about voting against the other guy, and reduced presidential elections to a gladiatorial sport.
I am not going to pick the lesser of two evils in 2020. I will either have a candidate that I actually support, or I will vote third party, or I will stay home. I will not vote for a candidate that I don't support. If the greater evil wins, it's because people deserve it.
We do not inherit the world from our parents. We borrow it from our children.
