The devil you know is still a devil, and worse yet: you don't really know him at all.

  A different sort of man has arise and grabbed the raw public molar
with his rhetorical wrench. To participate in the usual calculations is
to debase yourself. You may regard this as necessary for the triumph of
certain ideas you hope Trump will deign to let live or allow to
flourish, but you know that the vessel into which your pour these hopes
is cracked and leaches lead, and that by supporting him for one thing
you tacitly enable all the others. You hope this bargain shores up the
timbers that keep the Republic standing.



I understand this, and I don't condemn it. I will not shout
BEGONE, SINNER at friends who will go into the voting booth and chew
their tongue and pull the lever. From the start of the Trump surge,
though, I've heard people say "I can't stand him, but if he's the
nominee I'll vote for him, because Hillary's worse," and the sentiment
always felt like the hooked-half of a Velcro strip laid on a fine film
of oil; it found no purchase in my heart or head. I couldn't see myself
ticking that box. That was months ago. Blustery utterances now come
daily, brash, crass, astonishing in their shameless ignorance, blared
out to crowds that howl delight because another face has been added to
list of mugs to be shoved in the mud.





The illiberalism of the Trump alt-right to bloody the nose of
the media is the exact mirrored image of the left's desire to ban "hate
speech." Like all the other things that make America unique, we took a
shared belief in these values for granted until the clever people
realized there was a way to reposition rights as burdens, as
impediments.



The person who figures out a good way to sell you that usually has the solution, and it feels liberating.


To vote for Trump is to validate; to vote for Trump is to
participate. He is a crass, gutter-tongued, vulgar man whose self-regard
blinds his ability to understand his own ignorance. A man who casually
encourages the worst, enables the mediocre, and wafts aloft cartoon
concepts of American greatness with gusts of flatulent banalities. It
takes a certain kind of historical illiterate not to realize his facial
postures are literally aping a second-rate Italian fascist.




Sorry for taking the long way; could have just linked and
agreed. But the author's points deserve interrogation. Short version:
no. Long version: hell no. On the off chance history makes marks in a
ledger: I will not support Trump if he is the nominee. I will not vote
for him. The devil you know is still a devil, and worse yet: you don't
really know him at all.

SCREED 2016