It occurred to me today that, maybe we’ve been doing this whole voting thing the wrong way.
I guess you could call me a Never Trumper; in current terms, it comes closest to describing my political position. I’ve been a conservative all of my life, and until 2016, I would have described myself as a Republican. I have never supported the decisions of the conservatives in this country who voted for him, which has made me a persona non grata with some. That’s okay.
I remember back to 2016, when friends and loved ones in my circles back then, time and time again, said things to me like, “I’m voting for him because I can’t bring myself to vote for her.” or “I’m picking the lesser of two evils.” or “I’d vote for a third-party candidate, but that’s just going to help her win.” or “Why do you throw your vote away on those third-party candidates?”
I voted for Darrell Castle in 2016, and I don’t lose any sleep at night about it.
I thought it was wrong at the time, this “lesser of two evils” approach to voting. I still think it’s wrong. When my friends looked at Hillary Clinton back then and decided that Donald Trump was the better choice, not because of any great character traits of his (does he have any of those?), but because they thought she was worse, were they feeling the way that I’m feeling now as I look at Biden and think of my disgust for Donald Trump?
Yes, it was no doubt this way for them back then. The height of hypocrisy, for me, would be to condemn those people who voted for Trump in 2016 while I consider voting for Biden, to get rid of Trump, in 2020.
The “principaled” version of me in 2016 was pretty sure that it wasn’t going to make much of a difference one way or the other, whether I voted third-party or not. The same me, who wants to stick to the same principals, is MUCH more concerned about our country getting out from under its current president.
It’s not that hard, it would seem, to stick to your convictions when there’s nothing on the line. It is, however, much more difficult when there’s something to lose.
Here we sit, in the midst of a global pandemic. A pandemic that, for one reason or another, seems to be hitting the United States particularly hard. I don’t blame anyone for these circumstances, but I can’t help but wonder about other countries who have faired better than ours. And, maybe I’ve been listening to certain media outlets (not all of them leftist, even) a little bit too much lately, but I’m starting to wonder whether we’d have done better with better leadership.
And, those friends of mine, who voted for Trump in 2016, they’re wondering, too –> I know they are because I’ve noticed from those people (if they’re still a part of my life, four years later) that they’ve morphed into two different groups of people.
One of those groups, I’ll call the Remorseful.
The other of those groups, I’ll call the Rabid.
And, here I sit, a Never Trumper, thinking to myself…
“This is unreal.”
I don’t blame the Remorseful because of what they did back in 2016. But, the Rabid are starting to look more and more scary to me. I can’t have any civil discourse with them and I can’t follow them on social media anymore and I most certainly can’t try to change their minds.
But, I also can’t help but think to myself that voting for the lesser of two evils didn’t work out too well this last time. I thought it was a bad idea back in 2016, and I told some of my closest friends as much, back then, and they called me an idealist, and they called me naive.
Now, granted, a certain percentage of the time, voting for the lesser of two evils is going to work because, a certain pecentage of the time, you don’t end up with one candidate being that much different than another. THE BIG SECRET IS THIS: as much as it might pain people to hear it, having one president in the office, assuming that they have the “right stuff”, is often not that different than having a different president in office. Their choices might be different and their opinions might be different, but they’ll tend to behave similarly.
That didn’t happen this time.
This time people voted for, what they thought of at the time, as the lesser of two evils. Instead, we got an ego-maniacal whackjob.
Can I just take an opportunity right here to wonder whether or not Hillary would have been so bad?!?!
And, in defense of those friends of mine, who have maybe used the “choose the lesser of two evils approach”, who knows how many times in their lives, I can’t say I blame them for rolling the dice one more time. But this time, the “choose the lesser of two evils approach” was a bust. And it came home to roost. And I think that many of my conservative friends are starting to see that.
The thing to do with remorse is to make sure that it eventually leads to change.
As for me, and my silly principles, I’m not sure what I’ll do. Will I place my egg in some third-party basket yet again and hope for the best? Will I do in 2020 what I swore I wouldn’t do in 2016?
It Occurred To Me Today 