Last week I wrote a piece entitled 7 Reasons Why You’d Better Vote. (Side note: If you haven’t read that piece yet, please do, I’m very proud of it and I need the validation your readership will give me.) For the most part, I decided it would be better to keep the reasons out of the current election cycle and focus on more general reasons why voting is important. Then I watched the first presidential debate…
Long about four or five minutes into the debate it hit me: Donald Trump is actually on stage; he’s actually saying these things to people who actually believe him; he’s actually running for president. Of course, I’ve been aware of this sad fact for a long time now, but sitting there watching the debate made me realize just how completely fucking doomed we would be if he actually got elected.
I know that most of the people who will read this will simply think “well yeah duh, of course we would be screwed.” But l don’t think that we completely understand the magnitude of how disastrous allowing this man into the oval office would be. This lack of comprehension for the magnitude of that outcome is why people still say that Trump and Clinton are both equally bad options, it’s why people can feel comfortable staying home from the polls, and it’s why so many people are still undecided.
So please let me set the record straight: However bad you think Trump becoming president will be, I assure you that it will be worse.
For just a second, let’s ignore the fact that Trump is a completely deplorable individual. Let’s ignore his racism, his bigotry, his stiffing employees and contractors for decades, his calling women he doesn't like "fat pigs", "slobs" etc., his support of violence, let’s even ignore his hair for just five seconds. Imagine for a second that Trump is actually a relatively nice guy; that he’s relatively levelheaded and pleasant to be around. We all know that he’s not either of those things but bear with me.
Even if you ignore all of what makes Trump so…well…Trump, he is still the most manifestly unqualified man ever to run for president of the United States. He has absolutely no experience in anything resembling the magnitude of the job. There is really no other way to say it. Even if you ignore all of the insidious ideology that he represents, he just isn’t qualified to do the job.
To illustrate just what I mean, let’s take a look at one of the least politicized exchanges during the debate Monday night. First, watch this video from 3:34 to 5:15. Makes some sense right? You more or less think you have an idea of what Trump was saying. Now, I want you to read the same thing out loud just as you would read out something in class. I’m deadly serious about this part. You need to read this out loud.(Full transcript here)
“As far as the cyber, I agree to parts of what Secretary Clinton said. We should be better than anybody else, and perhaps we're not. I don't think anybody knows it was Russia that broke into the DNC. She's saying Russia, Russia, Russia, but I don't -- maybe it was. I mean, it could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, OK?
“You don't know who broke in to DNC.
“But what did we learn with DNC? We learned that Bernie Sanders was taken advantage of by your people, by Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Look what happened to her. But Bernie Sanders was taken advantage of. That's what we learned.
“Now, whether that was Russia, whether that was China, whether it was another country, we don't know, because the truth is, under President Obama we've lost control of things that we used to have control over.
“We came in with the Internet, we came up with the Internet, and I think Secretary Clinton and myself would agree very much, when you look at what ISIS is doing with the Internet, they're beating us at our own game. ISIS.
“So we have to get very, very tough on cyber and cyber warfare. It is -- it is a huge problem. I have a son. He's 10 years old. He has computers. He is so good with these computers, it's unbelievable. The security aspect of cyber is very, very tough. And maybe it's hardly doable.
“But I will say, we are not doing the job we should be doing. But that's true throughout our whole governmental society. We have so many things that we have to do better, Lester, and certainly cyber is one of them.”
Doing this makes it clear that Trump has no idea what he is talking about. It took him nearly two minutes to say, essentially “Yes, we need to do something about cyber warfare.”
Imagine for a second that Donald Trump agrees with you on every issue. Even then, this man is still 100% not qualified to run this country. Even if I agreed with Trump on every single issue of policy, I would still consider him ineligible to receive my vote or hold the office because regardless of my affinity for an ideology I have to be assured that the person at the helm will actually be able to steer the ship; and while I'm not jumping out of my chair to vote for Clinton, I did take the time to register to vote from France in order to vote for the only candidate left in the race who actually has the experience necessary to run the country.
So please, don’t sit at home this November, don’t take for granted the conclusion that Clinton will win. Because if she doesn’t, we are all completely doomed.
Registration Info:
If you need helping figuring out how to register to vote I highly, highly recommend Hank Green’s “How to Vote in Every State"
