With just four weeks to go before America chooses its next President/first tin-pot dictator, let’s take a moment to review the current state of the Presidential race.
Let’s begin by talking a little bit about the Access Hollywood tapes of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump essentially admitting to sexual assault. Having played sports up through high school, having gone to the gym as an adult, and having been in the locker room of a professional sports team, I can say pretty conclusively that I have never heard anyone speak about women in any environment the same way that Trump spoke to Billy Bush. Locker room talk generally consists of a lot of awkward silence as everyone tries to avoid looking at anyone else’s junk, and/or whatever the local sports teams are doing.
Truthfully, there is basically no one Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has not insulted by this point. It’s only a matter of time before he calls out his base for the mouth-breathing barely functional wastes of human genetic material they are.
You’re probably asking yourself “But MonkeyBiz, don’t we need to be inclusive of those that don’t agree with us?” Why yes, imaginary strawperson, we do. However, at a certain point you have to acknowledge the elephant named Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in the room. There is somewhere in the neighborhood of 35-40% of the population that will vote for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump next month. These are people who have completely abandoned anything resembling a fact-based reality and decided that America is better off with a dictatorship rather than democracy, because democracy isn’t going so great for them. It’s like saying “Well, my eyesight isn’t so great, so I’m gonna stab myself in the face versus getting glasses.” These people cannot be reasoned with. Any attempt to pierce the bubble of misinformation they have created for themselves just makes the bubble more impenetrable. They have forsworn any attempt at reasonableness and decided of their own free will to reject reality as it is and substitute their own. This is the intractable rump of the American populace, the proverbial ball and chain that prevents us from moving forward as a society. This is the 40% of people that are stupider than the average person.
Now, you may be wondering why I keep saying “Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump”. Well, in the aftermath of the Access Hollywood leaks, there has been a concerted effort of members of the GOP to jump ship, un-endorse Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, and save their own asses. I believe that I have a civic duty to make sure that every single member of the Republican party is tied to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, because every single one of them bears culpability for allowing him to exist.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is the end result of what began under Nixon, grew under Reagan, crystallized under Bush, and has now become the orthodoxy of the GOP. Well, too friggin’ bad. Paul Ryan, I’m looking directly at your smarmy ass. You enabled this madness. You could have said “No fucking way am I going to let Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump become Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.” You could have campaigned for any of the other retreads, grifters, and cranks and maybe ended up with someone that would have shown a bare minimum of decorum on the campaign trail, but instead you unleashed the GOP’s screaming id onto the world and now you’re stuck with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, somewhere in Ohio, John Boehner is sitting in a rocking chair drinking out of a magnum of of Chateauneuf-du-Pape and chain-smoking a carton of Parliaments, giggling like a schoolgirl.
At this point it doesn’t really matter what Hillary Clinton’s positions are. It doesn’t matter what her thoughts on free trade, the use of military force overseas, climate change, police brutality, or any one of a thousand other issues are. At the end of the day, Hillary Clinton is not Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, and for 60-65% of the population that should be enough.
When I was a young Jewish boy, growing up the heartland of America, I remember having special sessions at Sunday School where older people would come and talk to us. These people had numbers tattooed on their arms, and they told stories about what it felt like to be rounded up with their parents, their siblings, their neighbors, be stuffed onto train cars, sent to faraway camps, separated, and forced to endure unimaginable cruelties. They would tell us these things because someday there would not be any of them left, and someday someone would come along and try to finish the job. They instilled in us a sacred charge, to safeguard the world against the horrors they experienced so that it might never happen again. To be vigilant in the face of opposition, to have courage in calling out evil wherever it rears its ugly head.
This covenant between generations is embodied in a simple phrase – “Never again”.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is every bit as capable of genocide as Hitler was. The Republican Party today is no better than the Nazi party in 1938. History will judge the men and women responsible for this atrocity accordingly, but they must not be allowed to wash away their sins with a press release.
There can be no forgiveness for the lines that have been crossed. There can be no whitewashing of the ugliness this election cycle has exposed. We as Americans travel the world and preach the virtues of democracy, but democracy can also give rise to truly ugly creatures like Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Today we make a new covenant, not between survivors and descendants, but between those of us that stand on the right side of history. We have seen the face of evil, and it is our responsibility to pull it from the ground, roots and all. It is long past time for us to acknowledge and confront the ugliness in ourselves and purify it with sunlight. Shine the brightest light imaginable on it, and watch it burn and slink back into the shadows.
Only once we have acknowledged our own failings can we hope to move forward as a society, to become the beacon our leaders so often claim us to be. Where lesser nations would fall victim to the temptations of autocracy, Americans stand tall in the face of our worst selves. Let those that calculate their choices with craven politics be forced to reckon with their decisions. Let those that lie with evil be indelibly tainted themselves.
