This is going to look like preaching to the choir, since many of you have already voted and I'm fully aware of who you probably voted for, but...
Tomorrow is election day. And the importance of this particular election can't be understated. It may be one of the most important election for President other than 1860, 1932 or 1968, and that's not hyperbole - not in the least.
Because Donald Trump has to go. It's just that obvious.
I could spend hours compiling all of the reasons why he needs to be driven out of office by January 20th, 2021 (there are articles in RationalWiki and the Encyclopedia of American Loons that have compiled a huge chunk of them, so look for those instead), but there's a simple set of facts that make it glaringly obvious:
There's the narcissism. The deranged Tweets that will end up in the historical record whether he likes it or not. The self-dealing. The filling of his cabinet with fellow would-be oligarchs, incompetents and fellow self-dealers. His need to browbeat the few competent ones into resigning when they're no longer sycophantic enough for his liking. His abject refusal to release his tax returns when every other Presidential candidate has been doing it for decades. The repeated accusations by women he's encountered of sexual harassment and outright sexual assault. The fact his family are mouthpieces for his knuckle-dragging brand of politics and simultaneously in on his grift. The fact that that grift is only further enhanced by his refusal to let go of his business holdings. The fact that he's used his position as President to enhance the monetary gain of those business holdings. His inability to handle criticism, hard questions from the press or any status other than someone never to be questioned, ever. His butchering of environmental regulations, national parks and wild spaces in the name of profit. His abject slavishness to Vladimir Putin. His cozying up to the likes of Kim Jong-un. His use of the race card and the xenophobe card every time he needs or wants to. His cult of personality among people who'll ultimately be humiliated when they finally realize what they've been worshipping. And on and on and on.
Donald J. Trump, in short, is not worthy to be President. He never has been and he never will be. And he doesn't deserve your vote, my vote or anyone else's.
People will still be foolish enough to give it, but that's because he's used his nascent personality cult to whip people into a state of fear of anyone or anything different from them. Never mind the fact that he's done everything he can to prove that he's a sociopath, a narcissist or both: there's always been plenty of room in Anerican politics for candidates who appeal to racists and bigots stretching all the way back to the Anti-Masonic and Know-Nothing parties, and there will be in the future. But no one has combined that with a hostility to - or an outright ignorance of - the workings of democracy and the Constitution more than Trump has, and that's one of the reasons that he's so dangerous. He wants to stay in power in order to avoid the consequences of his corruption, and he's practically willing to do anything to accomplish it. Which is precisely why he needs to be defeated.
So if you haven't voted yet, do yourself a favor and vote him out of office.
Because I don't want to end up in a refugee camp for exiled Americans somewhere outside of Auckland or Winnipeg four years from now saying "I told you so!" because they didn't vote.
And that's not hyperbole, either.
