Often choices in life and politics are presented as being binary; you either select one or the other. This presidential election rests as one of those being presented as a binary choice and it may well come down to either Trump or Hillary. However, in reality our Constitution allows for each American adult to make his/her own choice, so while we are conditioned to believe and thus fall into the belief that only a candidate from one of the two dominant political parties can win, it is not impossible for another candidate to win.
In the age of mass media, it is not inconceivable that a write-in campaign could be orchestrated and succeed, although admittedly such a thing happening is highly unlikely. Before last year, would anyone have predicted a loudmouth, New York liberal celebrity real estate developer would launch an “insurgency campaign” and hijack the Republican Party? With these two unpopular 2016 presidential choices, the odds aren’t in the realm of the impossible.
When politicians and their mouthpieces present you with binary choices, they’re trying to push you into believing you have no choice other than the two presented. It’s a political form of strong-arming people and I automatically rebel against being pushed. So, up front, Americans have other choices and while it hasn’t happened in the past that anyone got elected without being on the ballot and part of one of a major political party apparatus – it isn’t impossible.
After this post, I am going to forego a litany of criticisms of Trump or spewing about the Republican Convention. I’ve written plenty of posts on what I believe is the wholesale political corruption attacking the very lifeblood of American liberty, so I am not going to do a “let me count the ways”, of why I believe both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump rest as unfit to lead our great nation, again. I want to write more about the American character and about things that matter a lot more to me than politics.
With that said, the dangerous events swirling outside our borders leave me feeling a deep, unsettling fear for our future. There are a lot of grave foreign situations brewing that should have all of us worried, in fact, the collapse of American foreign policy, coupled with the domestic political rabid partisanship, under President Obama finds America at a pivotal point. I believe neither Hillary nor Trump possess the character necessary to lead our great nation.
At this point I don’t know who I will vote for in November. I will not ever vote for Hillary or Trump. My #NeverTrump is not because I am a “sore loser”, as smarmy Mike Huckabee stated and his equally smarmy, full-of-it daughter, who has landed a job as an adviser on the Trump campaign, assert. Yes, I found her brand of propping up thuggish Corey Lewandowski really offensive. And for people who claim to be “upright Christians” who pretend Donald Trump is morally upright, when his business record, his personal life, his PUBLIC statements all show him to be otherwise offends me a great deal.
The low-points came early and often with Trump and his pathetic gratuitous insults., so while Mike Huckabee sits poised, hoping to land a cushy position in a Trump administration, as does his smarmy daughter (nepotism much), I remain just an ordinary homemaker, with no connections to people in power and actually probably a great deal at risk from a Hillary administration.
I refuse to pretend one evil is better than another, when both of them lead to the same end.
Although I can’t prove it, I still believe Trump used the Clinton mass media saturation/scorched earth strategy and I remain convinced he didn’t figure out how to run that sophisticated information warfare strategy on his own. So, when I believe someone cheated to win- I refuse to ever support that person. And I believe somewhere in the orchestration of the Trump “GOP Insurgency” are the hands of probably America’s best political strategist, one William Jefferson Clinton. So, while people will claim, “you’ve got to respect the will of the voters”, if wholesale public corruption led to the biggest con job ever pulled on the American people – my response is, “NO I DON’T!”
I will never support someone, whom I believe cheated to win.
That’s just how I am. In my life, I stand up and speak out when I believe something is wrong and I walk away from any group where I believe the leadership is corrupt. I’ve often stood up and taken an unpopular stance on an issue. I quit the rifle squad I was on in my high school band, even though, being a person with no coordination, I had worked extremely hard to make that squad. I had stood outside in the backyard, day after day, until it got dark practicing and feared I could never learn to do the flips and twirls.
That is the only time my father ever suggested I quit, because I think my parents were pained watching me try so hard and make no improvement. My father came and told me that I am good at so many things and maybe I should try out for something else in the band. I am tone deaf and the school band director had told me I was wasting my time trying to learn to play an instrument in grade school. Two of my sisters and my best friend were in the marching band and they talked about all the fun they had, so I wanted be a part of the band too. I certainly had no hopes of twirling a baton or the flag twirling team, so the rifle squad was my only hope.
I told my father, that I was going to practice every spare minute until try-outs and one afternoon, I had a breakthrough moment and got the hang of it and I made the team. The captain, a girl whom I had no animosity toward, was allowed to march at Friday football games, despite not showing up for band practices during the week. The rule was, if you don’t show up for practices,you don’t march. She marched and changed the routine during the half-time performance, so the rest of the team looked like we were lost. I went to the band director and he made excuses for why the rules didn’t apply to her and I quit the squad.
I have been like this throughout my life. I quit a volunteer position at the Red Cross as the casework chair, handling Red Cross messages, when the station manager started lying repeatedly to the military command about the status of Red Cross messages, which he kept misplacing. He also engaged in behavior that gave the appearance of gross impropriety. That man lost just about every piece of paper he touched – he would pick up case files and set them down all over the several Red Cross offices, leaving us hunting high and low, trying to track down case files. It got so bad that I would not let him walk off with any of the case files I was working on. I quit, even though I loved that volunteer job.
Last year, I quit my job at a store, where I had worked for almost 15 years, due to a store manager, whom I believed was severely, ethically challenged. I miss my paycheck, but I have no regrets.
So, no, I won’t ever be getting on board the Trump train, despite the strong-arm tactics by Manafort, Priebus, Giuliani, Gingrich, Huckabee and other Trump mouthpieces. Calling those who have serious, legitimate, deep concerns about Trump’s fitness for office “sore losers”, while making excuses for Trump’s lies, appalling behavior, bizarre antics as “that’s just Donald Trump being Donald Trump”. However, it’s not just Trump being Trump; it’s MORAL RELATIVISM AND POISON TO THE AMERICAN CHARACTER! They have sacrificed their integrity, because every single one of them knows what a morally-bankrupt, fraud Donald Trump is and just because he isn’t quite to the level of immoral and corrupt as the Clintons, is no selling point, in my opinion.
People are free to make their own choices in America and live with their own conscience. I’m comfortable with my choices
I remain yours truly,
#NeverTrump&NeverHillary #NoMoreScorchedEarth #SayNoToPublicCorruption
libertybelle diaries 
Thank you for this post. I am rejecting the two party candidates as not worthy of my vote as well. I get bothered by those who attempted to guilt and manipulate me to support a man who is one of the two worst individuals to receive a major party nomination in US history (the other being his opponent).
No, a refusal to vote for Trump is not a vote for Hillary. I really hate that lie.
Our votes represent us as individuals, about what we stand for, what kind of people we are going to be, how are we going to live. One single vote matters very little except to the voter. And I would rather die saying I kept my integrity than live with the knowledge I compromised my values.
Candidates are not entitled to a single vote. They need to earn votes. My first test is always “Does this person have integrity?” And only then do I look at platforms and principles. Character comes first for me.
I despise fearmongering by the two parties. They realized decades ago that they can no longer get votes by empty promises by hollow men and women, so they try to scare voters with wedge issues. They want a divided and fearful electorate because then they can get allegiance without providing anything to the masses, while giving everything possible to their cronies.
I refuse to play that game. And I hope everyone rejects it.
The Constitution does not have parties or factions. The Founders wanted to stop such from forming, though I believe they faced an impossible task to stop parties from forming.
I do believe the election process was manipulated this year. I know the Democratic side was manipulated by Hillary cronies and I would be very surprised if Trump’s dirty trickster crew didn’t do the same on the Republican side, given that some have been shown to have manipulated elections elsewhere.
I just take this all as a sign that our country is nearing is end as a democratic republic….
Thank you for your thoughtful comments.
Mr. Gracchus above notes, “One single vote matters very little except to the voter. And I would rather die saying I kept my integrity than live with the knowledge I compromised my values” – which point out here in Arkansas’ hinterlands I’d normally agree with except …
Not all votes are equal in a Republic. Sure my vote, Mr. Gracchus’ and your vote LB all have about equal heft but, what if the vote is cast by a sitting Congressman?
“Madame Speaker, this bill offends my principles but, in order to preserve my principles I’m going to vote for this bill.”
We should have seen 2016 coming. All of us.
Mostly because our Parties have merged, I think I could argue, beginning most apparently after the defeat of George Herbert Walker Bush into one single Party monolith.
(Yes LB you’re familiar with this essay but, rather than the quote you’re accustomed to seeing me pull, here’s another gem from Mr. Kurth that should highlight Congressman Ryan’s alleged “principles.”)
“The policy response of the George W. Bush administration to the financial crisis of 2008 was completely in keeping with the economic priorities of the reinvented, pseudo, conservatism which had brought about the crisis in the first place, i.e., massive government bailouts of large financial institutions (“Wall Street”). These bailouts were so massive that they provoked opposition from long-dormant elements within the Republican Party which represented small banks and small businesses (“Main Street”), but when directed at a Republican administration, this opposition was only brief and ineffective (e.g., Congress’s initial rejection of the administration’s TARP plan).”
http://www.fpri.org/article/2012/12/the-crisis-of-american-conservatism-inherent-contradictions-and-the-end-of-the-road/
Followed “closely” on the heels by, to offer but two examples of the DC elites being of a single mind, first the loss of Cantor’s seat and then the “hotly contested primary battle” which saved *Conservative Republican* Thad Cochran’s bacon down in Mississippi – the latter especially notable if only because Mississippi’s State Democratic Committee openly donated to Cochran’s campaign as well as urged its registered Democrat voters to crossover and avoid the conservative tilt.
Now while I am [fully] aware of the power of the Clinton machine (going so far as to inject the thought that if, there’s really any vestige of a two-party system its the Clinton’s against The Rest of Us) but I find it more than a little difficult to imagine Hillary bothering with either Virginia’s or Mississippi’s November 2016 candidates list.
While I am, personally, enthusiastic in my willingness to entertain the notion that the Clinton’s “stage-managed” the ascent of Trump (especially in the early months) I find myself ultimately unconvinced that, as politically astute as “we all seem to agree” Bill Clinton is, and if, the object was getting the wife into the Oval Office [easily] then, “arranging Trump” especially in light of the immediately preceding eight year’s record of achievement[s] then, Bill might possibly have engineered the most colossal indeed epic, screwup for the History books.
It seems to have surprised “both” parties at any rate.
While I’m not going to bother adhering any bumper stickers on my pickup to drive around with, and while I’m really really happy I had the good sense the last [2014] go-round to pronounce “no involvement whatsoever with anysoever/however campaign” as I’ve never since becoming eligible to vote, not voted. And since I never have voted for a Clinton and never will …
This will be the only “posted to blogdom [public]” statement of intention ol’ JK places anywhere. Nothing I have typed shall be taken as endorsement.
http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/219439/Shall-We-Dance-Movie-Clip-Let-s-Call-the-Whole-Thing-Off-.html
Assuredly, there’s a whole cast of nefarious and dubious characters in this wholesale public corruption beyond the titular characters, The Donald and Queen Hillary.
The Donald court inside the Potemkin Trump Tower campaign headquarters swirled with intrigue between Lewandowski and ousted Republican sleaze operative, Roger Stone. Stone, what a guy, penned two sleaze works, “The Clintons’ War on Women” in Oct, 2015 and “Jeb and the Bush Crime Family” in Feb, 2016.
https://www.amazon.com/Clintons-War-Women-Roger-Stone/dp/151070678X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469123650&sr=8-1&keywords=roger+stone
https://www.amazon.com/Jeb-Bush-Crime-Family-American/dp/1510706798/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1469123754&sr=8-2&keywords=roger+stone
Then there were those fascist memes (a set-up by Team Clinton, I believe), culminating in that Lewandwoski/Fields reality TV drama and ground zero at that Chicago rally showdown in early March, which left Trump badly damaged.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-trump-protest-scene-20160311-story.html
While Trump was embroiled in that fascist meme mess, Queen Hillary had already cleared the Benghazi hurdle and had spent almost a year trying to invent a personality, assuredly her most difficult battle of all. She kept popping up on soft soap late night venues, laughing and yucking it up, oh my, her chalk-board cackles rippled across the airwaves. Yes, here was the “new” Hillary, the kick-ass grandma and preaching “love and kindness”. While Trump was being cast as Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini rolled into one.
So, within the Republican party, a Trump faction, with the aid of sleaze Roger Stone, got Trump to hire on Stone business partner, alleged Russian mob fixer and friend of the Kremlin, Paul Manafort.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/08/politics/trump-manafort-convention-manager/index.html
Assuredly, the hand of other nefarious big money and big political players’ hands, on both sides, have tried to impact this script too. Soros has connections to Hillary, Trump and funding the Kasich campaign, but as they say, “politics makes strange bedfellows.”
The choices are big “C” corruption with the Clintons and little “c” corruption with Trump, waiting for his shot to move into the big time political deal-making. He has Manafort, so I am sure his campaign will be up to par with his foreign, strong-man campaign magic and competitive with the thoroughly CORRUPT Clinton machine.
You say ‘tomato’ and I say ‘tomoto’….
So, no change as politics in the USA goes then.
And LB your ” … spent almost a year trying to invent a personality, popping up on late night venues, laughing and yucking it up, Yes, here was the “new” Hillary …”
So. No change there either then. Been a tough decade.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/nyregion/17hillary.html
Yep, and after tonight I guess I should shroud my little “Home of the Republican Party” figurine in black mourning, to pay my last respects to the Grand Old Party………. as it officially becomes the “Party of Trump”, where the thuggish, strong -arm tactics will become the de rigueur mode of political discourse…….”Just get in line and shut up, you sore losers!”……… as they pretend Trump is all things great and magnificent. His mouthpieces are disgusting and may they reap what they sow by getting in bed with the “great” Donald J. Trump.
Bill Clinton and Donald Trump have the same repugnant morals – corrupt as hell, womanizers, pathological liars, but, I must say, at least Bill Clinton had enough sense to conduct himself with a degree of public decorum. It might be that Arkansas has a combination of that Mid-West reserve and Southern manners, while Trump is all loudmouth NY flash. And still no Trump tax returns, lol.
And then there’s Above the Law Hillary, who like Trump, shows every inclination to being a despot. The media hyped Trump’s fascist memes, but what the hell kind of Secretary of State, ON CAMERA, gleefully quips, “We came, we saw, he died!” I believe she’s truly a dangerous psychopath, but then again, my viewpoint is very personal…..
America will be on the rails with either Trump or Hillary.
Oh, I was wondering what happens if Trump wins and the Republicans lose control of the Senate, or perhaps the House and Senate, so Trump can go back to being a NY liberal in the White House…. The GOP handed their party over to a fraud, so they deserve what they get. Trump has no core principles, so he would go move in whatever way benefited himself and after all, he’s a long-time friend of ALL of the big Dems in Washington.
As to your last paragraph LB, just wanted you to know my memory was engaged … Anyway I recall some post up on Crystal Ball (but don’t think Sabato authored which is/was my problem) “wondering much the same.”
I haven’t given it too much thought though – I’m more or less resigned to the “we are thoroughly and finally screwed anyway” camp.