Many many moons ago, back when I had a job that had approximately three hours of work but required eight hours of physical presence, I wrote a small political column called “The Daily Sausage”, an overview of the going’s on in the political blogosphere. While I may not have the free time I once did, some things are too important to go un-mocked, and thus, for one(-ish) more time, The Daily Sausage rides again.
As we enter the summer of 2016, we find ourselves once again in Presidential Election Season, where Donald “Der Druempfrer” Trump (R-Berlin, circa-1929) will be taking on Hillary “Insert Derogatory Epithet For A Strong Female Leader Here” Clinton (D-Wall Street) for the privilege of being the next President of these United States.
My god, what have we done?
When we began this crazy journey many months ago, the assumption was that Donald Trump was more looking for a bump in his contract as the host of TV’s “The Apprentice” and some free publicity, rather than actually being elected as the President of the United States. After all, one of those things requires actual work. The common belief was that after getting stomped in a few early contests, Trump would drop out and a sensible candidate like Bush, Rubio, or Cruz would emerge as the front-runner.
Well, that didn’t quite happen. Instead, the Trump Campaign unmoored itself from the docks of reality, set sail on the high seas of our post-truth political environment, and laid waste to the armada of self-described Haters and Losers who, for all their financial firepower, refused to level their rhetorical guns at a candidate who no one believed to be serious, and in the process whipped enough members of the primary and caucus-going populace (5%, if you’re curious) into such a froth that they actually voted for Trump enough to make him the Republican Nominee for President of the United States.
Whoops.
Meanwhile, on the Good Ship Democrat, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton engaged in a mostly substantive debate on police brutality, race relations, foreign policy, the economy, and all the other boring shit we expect people who are given the power to end the lives of hundreds of thousands if not millions of people be asked to consider. While Bernie and his Bros have not yet dropped out of the race, the reality is that Hilary Clinton will be the Democratic Nominee for President of the United States.
As I sit here, reading blogs and watching the news, I weep for our nation that this is really the best we can do. I can’t even pretend to respect Donald Trump. He’s fundamentally dishonest, staggeringly inexperienced, a horrific businessman, and lacks even the barest suggestion of the temperament necessary to be handed the keys to America’s military. While I am no fan of Hillary Clinton, I do respect her accomplishments as First Lady, a United States Senator, and Secretary of State, and most importantly believe that she will not plunge the world into a nuclear apocalypse because some tin-pot dictator in Bumfuckistan said she had tiny hands.
So, what is this particular monkey to do? Well, given the choice between possible Armageddon and another politician on the teat of Wall Street, I think I can live with four to eight years of President Hillary Clinton. I mean, I love reading about and playing games set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, but I sure as shit don’t want to live in one. Moreover, I am genuinely deeply concerned that President Trump would result in a military coup, with America’s armed forces saying “We can reduce the world to a burnt cinder, and it is for that reason that we refuse to take orders from this orange-painted toupee wearing huckster who is basically a YouTube comment section sprung to life.”
To put it simply, every attack made against Donald Trump – that he’s thin-skinned, a racist, a xenophobe, a fraud, a misogynist, a thief, a liar, and lacks even the barest sense of decorum – is accurate to some degree and nothing that he’s done in the course of his campaign has done anything to dispel any of those notions. He is fundamentally unfit to be President of the United States, and the fact that he is the nominee of a major political party should serve as a wake up call to these United States that we are staring into the political abyss, and the abyss is staring back, beady eyes glaring, baby hands wildly gesticulating, terrible hairpiece looming ominously.
We must also turn our ire toward the media, who at last count have provided Trump with billions in functionally free advertising. I get it; he drives ratings, people watch, and it makes them money. But hasn’t anyone in a newsroom somewhere stood up and gone “This guy is an assclown, and if we continue covering him like a serious candidate eventually he’ll be one?” Didn’t anyone at CNN listen to Trump say that he wants to scrap our existing libel and slander laws so that journalists can be sued for reporting the news and go “Guys, this is super fucked up.”? Is there anyone anywhere in the Fourth Estate with the balls to interview Trump and hold him accountable for anything?
I genuinely feel like this is a turning point in American history. We have the choice to give in to our darkest impulses, or to step back and ask how we got to this place. To search our collective souls and ask how we let a reality TV show host most famous for being a high profile real estate fuck up that was born on third base sliding in to home became a hair’s breadth away from the White House. This is where we as a nation decide if we are truly better than what Donald Trump stands for, or if the United States is really what our detractors have stated for so long.
Sir Winston Churchill once famously said that “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.” Donald Trump is our everything else.
In closing, when you go out to vote this November, I ask that you think not only of yourselves, but your friends and neighbors. Think of the staggering number of lives Donald Trump will make immeasurably worse should he be elected. Even if you hate Hillary Clinton with the fiery passion of a thousand exploding suns, ask yourself if you believe that her election will make life so much worse for you and yours that you are willing to pull the lever to vote for a man who is so grossly unqualified he borders on the obscene. I am no fan of Hillary Clinton, but given the choice between plunging America into the abyss and maintaining the status quo, I’ll take the status quo.
