My Last Post About The 2016 Presidential Election

My Facebook feed has become a hopeless mess of political tosh, spewed by myself and well-meaning, well-intentioned and generally (I like to think) intelligent and patriotic friends who want the best for America. Like most third-party candidate supporters, I have found myself in the sometimes hilarious and often maddening position this past election cycle of being accused by Hillary supporters of supporting Trump, and accused by Trump supporters of supporting Hillary. I supported neither candidate, and I neither celebrate nor mourn the inevitable result of two horrible candidates running: one of them won.

I was also accused by Hillary supporters of posting “more” anti-Hillary posts than anti-Trump posts. This may in fact be true, and if it is, it was because nothing that came after the excrementally-runny cluster-fornication that was the Republican Primary was in fact “noteworthy.” There was nothing we learned about candidate Donald J. Trump that was not covered in the pages of Spy magazine in the 1980s – and I did post many of those old articles during the primary, with my all-time favorite quote from Donald, speaking in the late 1980s of his desire to handle nuclear non-proliferation negotiations for the United States, “It would take an hour and a half to learn everything there is to learn about missiles. . . . I think I know most of it anyway.”

Yes, Spy handled Trump well, referring to him throughout the 1980s as (in one anthology compiled by Pando writer Mark Ames) a “short-fingered vulgarian”; “Queens-born casino operator”; “ugly-cuff-link buff”; “well-fed condo hustler”; “joyless punk millionaire”; “employer-of-white-people”; “tiresome punk infidel”; and “the wife-dumping Atlantic City strongman.”

If I posted more about Hillary, it was because she was an endless source of similarly horrible traits in a Democrat, and unlike most people saying I was being fooled by “old” stories and conspiracies (thank you, friends, it’s true, I am quite naïve, indeed – if only I could be as propaganda free as you), I have a special connection to detesting Hillary Rodham Clinton: this dates to my beloved late father. Dad was a Brooklyn-Jewish life-long Democrat, who routinely sent in FOIA requests to uncover special interests, who worked tirelessly for campaign finance overhaul, and who cast his first-ever ballot for a Republican for Rick Lazio against Hillary Clinton for New York Senator. I’m simply carrying on a tradition.

Also, unlike those who have never dealt with security, I actually understand what Hillary did with her email server and will never forgive, never forget. There are men and women languishing in federal prisons right now for substantially more trivial breaches of the public trust. Take it from someone who actually works on this stuff for a living to feed his family: if you’re not angry, you quite simply don’t understand what happened, or don’t care about national security or justice.

For the record, I think that President-Elect Donald J. Trump will be the worst president of the United States in the history of the republic. However, I also think that Secretary Hillary Clinton would have been the worst president of the United States in the history of the republic.

I think Tim O’Reilly (who supported Hillary for a lot of very genuine and pragmatic reasons) said it best: Donald Trump ran a campaign based on fear and anger, and despite claims that “when they go low, we go high,” the Clinton campaign responded with appeals to fear and anger. 

What I continue to ask is for Democrats and Republicans to put forth candidates who are not so beholden to the extreme flanks of their respective bases that they are unable to maintain sufficient decorum to debate the issues. I ask for candidates who can speak extemporaneously about the issues, not merely recite poll-tested talking points.

And I demand candidates who are qualified for the job of leading the United States into a prosperous and peaceful state in which the civil rights and freedoms of all Americans, regardless of belief, race, gender, or preference.

I find it, coming from a family of Democrats, bedazzling that Democrats could be resorting to violence, shouting about the popular vote (our nation has a system of Electoral College. It is not, and has not been, a question of popular vote for, you know, some time now. And even if it is ultimately shown that there were 2 million more votes for Hillary over Donald would be a victory of 1.6%. That’s not, like, a mandate, people. That’s a close election that divided the country essentially evenly.

It is not lost on me that, forgetting the Presidential election (“She won a majority!”) Democrats lost the House, the Senate, and more state governorships. If this is not a signal to you that Democratic Party values and its platform have been fundamentally rejected, maybe you should go and clean your ears with some of that thermal-auricular therapy: the people are speaking loudly and clearly that they want arguments, not accusations; they don’t want to be called “racist” and “misogynist” every time they have a square disagreement with someone; they are tired of being lectured to about “trigger words” and “safe spaces.”

Can you imagine John F. Kennedy or Lyndon B. Johnson or Jimmy Carter saying some of the things that Hillary Clinton said about Bernie Sanders to win the primaries? That Sanders’ positions are less supportive of black people than Hillary’s? That Sanders himself was “in the pocket” of gun manufacturers? What would a Democratic Giant say about those kinds of pandering, slash-and-burn tactics?

Would Jed Bartlett ever stoop so low? Would Andrew Shepherd?

Most of the anti-Trump demonstrations have been peaceful, but many have not been. Those that have not been peaceful have been violent. But again: to my roots: Democrats wouldn’t tolerate violent Republican protests comprising burning stuff and attacking police officers against Obama’s election, and people saying Never Obama. In fact, the unbelievable irony is that these people are violently protesting the violence of Trump supporters, who have been generally non-violent.

This is that cognitive dissonance that Scott Adams was discussing: that Democrats believe truly that they have moral righteousness and certitude of intelligence. You don’t.

I’ll leave you with this thought: these protests are in fact diminishing your voice. Because when you protest so vehemently the man’s election, when you shout the end of the world at the top of your lungs, there’s nowhere to go when President Trump does something truly hateful; truly racist; truly horrible.

As they say in the police academy: it’s easy to draw your gun. It’s a lot harder to re-holster it once you’ve gone that route. Using your intellect, your powers of persuasion, and your reason simply must be the route. Me? I’d wait until the fucker actually did something bad, and then use the volume control – maybe not going to 11 right out of the gate.

With President Elect Donald J. Trump, the chance is rather high indeed that the next thing he does is going to be worse than the thing he just did.