HOW THE HELL CAN YOU VOTE FOR TRUMP??

How THE HELL can you vote for Trump?

Ah, yes. Good ol’ election time. It’s truly a wonderful season and something I look forward to, kind of like how a dog looks forward to going to the vet to be neutered.

As much as I hate to admit it, there are strings attached to the freedoms associated with American citizenship. In return for living in a relatively stable country where John and Thomas and Benjamin and George and all those other Founding Fathers gave us the opportunity to pursue happiness, we lucky Americans are asked to vote every so often for presidents and representation in Congress and such. Frankly, I don’t think it’s too much to ask.

So, as the husband of someone who worked with international refugees for 21 years, I’ve had a chance to see America from a different perspective. (Mind you, I’m talking about refugees here, not illegal immigrants. Huge difference.) Trust me, if you are an American, you are lucky and blessed — whether you believe that or not — even in 2020. Our problems these days seem pretty bad, I’ll grant you, but they aren’t as bad as watching your loved ones hacked to pieces with machetes or forced to swim across crocodile-infested rivers due entirely to their religious beliefs or ethnicity. This is the kind of stuff folks deal with in other countries, and I’m not exaggerating. I personally know an Iraqi man whose brother was literally eaten alive by Saddam Hussein’s guard dogs because the man was suspected of not supporting Hussein’s government. I don’t mean he was trying to overthrow it; he just didn’t support it. That, my friends, is actual tyranny.

I try to keep this in mind when Presidential election time rolls around. This is usually the worst of times for many of us, and 2020 has ramped that up even more, what with the wildfires, hurricanes, pandemic, violent rioting, virulent partisan politics, incessant MyPillow.com advertisements, and your other basic End-of-Times scenarios.

Not the least of these worries has to do with our American media. For example, I’m old enough to recall a time when we could kind of believe what mainstream journalism told us. Remember that? You could pretty much take Walter Cronkite on his word. He just told us what happened, and we appreciated it. He even assured us that “That’s the way it is” at the end of every news program. Then we made our own decisions on things, and this all worked out quite well.

In 2020, though, the word “journalism” has essentially been replaced by the word “propaganda.” Now I’m a big believer in freedom of speech, but this is different. When I took journalism classes at East Carolina University back in the 1980s, the first thing I learned was that objectivity was the key to good journalism. To be more specific, it is wasn’t objective, then it wasn’t journalism at all. Use correct grammar, construct your sentences properly, and tell THE truth, not YOUR truth. But this isn’t the case in 2020. The word “truth” has become as ambiguous as the word “journalist,” and I can’t understand how the truth can change depending upon the person saying it.

“OK, but what does this have to do with voting for Trump?” you’re saying, slightly annoyed.

Fair question. The problem is, we can no longer have faith in our “truth-tellers,” the mainstream media, because they are clearly no longer objective. Instead, we are forced to base our decisions on, essentially, the flip of a coin. Who do we believe, the Left or the Right? Which candidate is the Lesser Evil? Unless we have a personal relationship with that person — and almost 100% of the American population does not — none of us can really know the candidate we’re voting for. We only know what we’re told.

That brings me back to the original question: “How THE HELL can you vote for Trump?”

Look, I’m under no illusions about the guy. Trump has the stupidest hair in the history of hair. (And that’s coming from a bald guy.) Trump’s skin tone is one rarely found in nature, unless you’re a tangerine or a basketball. He has an odd voice and makes funny faces when he talks. He says and tweets things that are blunt, improper, silly, and unlike any President we’ve ever had. He brags about himself constantly and his wife is way hotter than any First Lady should ever be.

I get all that. I really do.

“So how the hell can you vote for him?!” you’re now screaming at me.

Here’s how, and I’ll ask you to lower your voice, please: because I’m not voting for Friend or Pastor or Role Model. I’m voting for President.

“Yeah, but…”

Hang on. Let me finish. See, as much as it pains me to say this, we have moved past the days when “presidential” meant something, and we have the Internet to thank for that, in my opinion. Prior to the mid-‘90s, our view of a President was presented to us via a fairly believable and unified mainstream media working in tandem with the White House public relations team. Back then, our government pretty much did its work and went on, and the public was none the wiser. Sure, there were scandals and leaks and “gotcha” stories and all that stuff, but that was all small potatoes compared to the modern world of social media, where everybody has an opinion and facts are largely ignored.

The problem is this: Presidents, unfortunately, are people. People are fallible. People have dark sides. They do stupid things and make mistakes. People — even the ones we love most — sometimes fail us, disappoint us, embarrass us, and make us not want to vote for them for dogcatcher, let alone President.

So, I’ve said this before and I’m going to repeat it now. The only way for us Americans to vote responsibly is to vote not for a person, but for a platform. Even though journalism has become subjective, voting shouldn’t be. It should, however, be an objective process of listing your deal-breaker values and comparing those to the platforms you are being asked to choose from, much like deciding on the floorplan of your dream home. What does that ticket want? What does that platform stand for when it comes to the economy, the military, international relations, abortion, civil rights, taxation, individual liberty, COVID-19, Constitutional law, and all the other elements at play? It’s unlikely that your preferences will match perfectly, but which one gets the closest and which issue is most critical to you? Whether or not the name at the top of the ticket refers to a weird, blowhard, orange man with an epic comb-over or a tottering confused lifelong politician hiding in his basement is inconsequential. Both are fallible humans who are destined to lie to us, embarrass us, and disappoint us.

So that’s how I can vote for Trump. Of the two unfortunate choices I’ve been given, his platform more closely aligns with the values I’ve developed over my 54 years on this Earth. If I was voting for who I’d most like to hang out with, I’d probably choose Biden.

I’m not trying to get you to vote my way. I just encourage you to examine your values and vote accordingly. Be a doofus around your wife or your husband or your kids, but not in the voting booth. It’s just not fair to the folks who risked their lives to set up this country or to that Sudanese or Kurdish or Somalian refugee who would give anything to be in your shoes.