As gleeful sexual abuse braggart Donald Trump begins his (all too late) spiral towards defeat in the general election, it’s worth celebrating that so many Americans have cast off their veneer of reasonableness and shown themselves to be the foaming-at-the-mouth immoral ignoramuses we long suspected they were. Why is this good? Because evils like racism, misogyny, nationalism, and anti-intellectualism have been insidious forces, lingering below the surface, and doing most of their damage in aggregate. The bombastic figure of Donald Trump has given The Deplorables a safe place to express the ignorance and hatred that poisons their minds.
God bless Donald Trump for bringing out the true character of America’s hateful, ignorant underbelly.
We see you clearly now. We know what you stand for. We see the decrepit character that has been guiding your political choices.
Now, I admit that I find Hillary Clinton to be an uninspiring candidate. I disagree with many of her positions, and she does little to spark enthusiasm in me. But you know what? She can do the job. Of the four main candidates for President, she is the only one who is qualified for the job, and I know will keep a sane, steady hand on this nation. And she isn’t going around grabbing people’s genitals, hitting on 10-year-olds, degrading people of color, or making wildly impractical promises (“we will build that wall, and Mexico will pay for it” — sure, sure). There is only one reasonable candidate this election, and it is, by a wide margin, Hillary Clinton.
But she’s a Democrat. She supports a right to abortion. She’s a woman. And for those reasons, she is hated. For those reasons, people who claim the moral high ground with their religiosity have decided that things like being openly racist, bragging about sexual assault, and having the temperment of a toddler don’t matter, because Trump isn’t Clinton (boo, hiss, we hate her), and he is the GOP nominee, and he’s saying the right things about taxes and abortion.
I try to see things from other perspectives. Many Americans feel disempowered and angry, and Trump speaks to that anger. But this election, there are two choices: Hillary Clinton (with as many asterisks and sighs as you want to append), or “I’m an idiot and/or a bigot, and I want America to be run by a hateful imbecile.” That 35% or more of Americans will likely choose the latter is horrifying, but at least the light is shining clearly on the problem.