U.S. Presidential Elections: Still Undecided?

If you intend to cast a vote for the next President of the United States and are still “undecided” about which candidates you’ll vote for on November 8, I recommend John Oliver’s funny and thoughtful “Last Week Tonight” analysis of “Third Party” candidates (video) from Sunday, October 16.

For those of you who are still desperately clinging to the “lesser of two evils” excuse for casting a vote for Donald Trump, please consider the following.

If you are:

A woman

You KNOW why you don’t want that man in YOUR house, much less the White House. You know him, and those like him, from a lifetime of all too unpleasant, demeaning and sometimes dangerous experiences.

A man

You wouldn’t tolerate either Trump’s language or behavior in your presence, much less the presence of someone you know, love or respect.

A Republican

You wouldn’t legitimize the man now condemned by every living Republican of stature (including all your living past Presidents and candidates for President) and one who threatens to destroy not only your party but everything good it ever stood for.

A Libertarian

One word: Paul Ryan. See also “Republican” above.

Pro Choice

Trump and his minions think shaming and punishing women would solve part of the “problem” and that banning abortions entirely would do the rest. Medically and ethically, he would send us all, women and the men who love them, back to the era of back-alleys and coat hangers.

Pro Life

See Pro Choice. And all pro-lifers KNOW Donald Trump is really pro choice.

NOT congenitally fearful of “foreigners”

You don’t want to legitimize his ranting about Mexicans — and by extension everyone who speaks Spanish — being criminals, rapists and disease bearers, here to take the jobs your children really wanted.

You don’t want to see him rounding up millions for deportation, especially since you know, respect and work with many people every day just like those Trump condemns.

Suffering from Parkinson’s, or support someone who is

You don’t want to elect a President who mocks those terribly afflicted by the disease, or one who attracts followers who think he’s funny when he does so.

A believer in the competence of the troops

You don’t want a “Commander in Chief” who calls them “losers,” thinks they’re incapable, and threatens to (illegally) purge their officer corps.

You don’t want your sons and daughters saluting a man who thinks POW’s, like John McCain, are unworthy of respect.

You don’t want someone presenting medals who has no idea what the Purple Heart stands for, and “always wanted one”. . . “the easy way.”

Nor do you want a President who brags that he would not only torture people but “go beyond” current forms, in open violation of our own Uniform Code of Military Justice, the Geneva Conventions and other treaties to which we are parties and which are the law of the land

Not in favor of Dictatorship

You don’t want a President who brags that, as President, he IS the law, and that his generals and others would and should “do what they were ordered to do” if he were in office. Germany tried that once. Google Führerprinzip.

In favor of good health care for all Americans

You don’t want a President who wants to repeal what little protection Americans currently offer our sick and elderly: Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and other programs.

You don’t want the founder of the Trump “University” scam proposing alternatives. And you certainly don’t want a man who can drive a casino into bankruptcy giving advice on controlling medical costs.

In favor of fewer nukes, not more

Trump’s made himself clear. The more nukes the merrier. Bombs away.

A believer in quality education

You don’t want the founder and namesake of scandal-ridden Trump “University” and its sibling, Trump “Institute” in the White House.

NOT a racist

You don’t want a President who systematically excluded people of color from renting from him, even if they could afford the rent, much less someone who led the fight to “prove” the twice-elected President was a Kenyan-born, Muslim, Communist who hates America. You probably don’t care for the kind of folks he attracts either.

A believer in American democracy

You don’t want to put a man in the White who threatens, if elected, to jail his opponent and preaches that the election itself is rigged, even before he loses it.

The German philosopher Georg Hegel believed history was cyclical and that “all great world-historic facts and personages appear twice.”

True, a young Karl Marx noted. It happens. “The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”

My fear is that, with Trump and Trumpism, we may well be moving from the global Hegelian tragedy that was World War II to farce to an unpredictable farce-driven tragedy, on a scale heretofore unimagined.

Americans vote on November 8. November 9 marks the anniversary of both the Beer Hall Putsch and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Let’s hope we add celebration of the election of the first woman President of the United States to the positive side of the ledger.