After a long hiatus from this blog, I have perhaps been shamed to return by the words of our Dear Leader from the distant shores of Laos delivering the predictable applause line of calling Americans lazy. Lazy, because we fail to embrace creatively his definition of environmental concern. Lazy, because we apparently are not as informed about other nations as they are about us. For my part, I have had a particularly busy summer with work, family responsibilities, and other pressing concerns; and found insufficient time for a while to write about such things. In my defense, I played no golf. Just the same, I guess my bout with laziness is over for now. Challenge accepted Dear Leader… I’m back.

“You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, you might find,
You get what you need.” 
The Rolling Stones

As Donald Trump finished his address to the Values Voters Summit, I was surprised to hear the music playing him off the stage, the London Bach Choir opening to this song by The Rolling Stones. How appropriate, I thought, for this ode to the demise of idealism in the face of reality, with the saving grace of optimistic pragmatism, to be added to the soundtrack of this election season.

Followers of this blog will recall that of the deep cast of Presidential candidates on the right, Mr. Trump was in fact my last choice. Since then, having seen priorities and motives exposed, there might be a few candidates who have fallen below Trump in my estimation, though the majority I would still have preferred. Until and unless time machines are invented, thinking about what could have been is about as productive as fantasizing about the girl you could have married instead of the one you did… pointless. We are where we are, not where we wish we were, and the route to where we want to be begins right here; throwing away the map (okay GPS… I’m old!) is a ridiculous response, and not a solution at all.

Like it or not, we are as has repeatedly been said, faced with a binary choice as far as the future leader of the free world is concerned. Believe me, as one who experienced George Pataki being the “best” choice for governor of my state, I know how hard it can be to consistently be relegated to voting for the lesser of two evils. Beyond this, I do recognize that sometimes the two evils are great enough that even the lesser of the two cannot be sanctioned and voters may choose to “send a message” by withholding their vote, or “wasting” it on a third party. Of course, that only makes any sense at all if the message actually gets sent.

With the revelation that Jill Stein is apparently a 9/11 Truther, and Gary Johnson’s “This is your brain on drugs” moment (“And what is Aleppo?”), the alternate party candidates have insured that a vote for them falls silently into the abyss, one among a scattering few. Stein was going nowhere anyway, and Johnson had an outside shot at getting into the debates, but was never a serious candidate; this faux pas cements his fate. As an aside, I sympathize with Johnson. The older we get the more cluttered the drawers in our brain become. I may seem perfectly cogent when afforded the time to choose my words on a keyboard, but ask me the definition of the word “cogent” on national TV, and I’m likely to pull a Johnson and think you’re talking about trigonometric functions (cogents and tansines, right?). It’s not fair, it’s politics.

If we are ever to escape the bondage to our two party system, the third party candidate will need to be more than an afterthought for offended partisans, and should start running today for 2020. Until then, our President will be a Republican or a Democrat, in this election Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, and voting any other way will only send the message “Don’t nominate whoever loses this election again”. If Trump loses, the establishment will regain control of the party and we will be sure to have more Doles, McCain’s and Romneys in the years to come. If Hillary loses, her corruption and scandals will be blamed, and we may see Michelle or someone else from the regime in 2020. If Hillary wins, then party politics will have been proven invincible. If Trump wins, particularly if he wins big, everything changes. Trump is the finger in the eye of the Republican Party. It is not the finger I would have chosen, but less refined voters than I have chosen Trump as the finger to use to demonstrate how dissatisfied they are with the party status quo. Democrats are close, but seeing how quickly Sanders and his supporters went over to the Dark Side of Darth Clinton, they’re not there yet, though a loss might just shake things up there as well.
IMHO: A President is our country’s most influential citizen, but he or she is not a monarch, and certainly not God. Elections are consequential, but even wrong choices don’t have to relegate us to the dust bin of history. So you cross your fingers and make a choice from the choices you have, and yes, you live with the consequences, but it is still a government by the people even after the election. Those high minded critics who love to find fault everywhere, and hope nowhere, exalt themselves and the brilliance of their neutrality by condemning both parties without offering a viable alternative. In their minds we are doomed; it is a wonder we have survived this long. In reality, we have survived this long by making tough choices from flawed candidates, and then adjusting, refining, and rebelling if those choices proved less than acceptable. We are not fools or pollyannas, the choices we have are on the surface certainly not the cream of the crop… but one of them will be the choice, and the idea that they are identically awful is ludicrous. If you feel we have been on the road to perdition with the current administration, then how could you not vote for the only viable choice that isn’t in lockstep with that administration? If you feel that Trump will bring about the apocalypse then how could you not help Hillary defeat him, despite her glaring problems? The election would have been more reasonable if the VP’s were at the top of the ticket, but that’s not what we have.
And so I look at all the pros and cons, you’ve heard it all, supreme court justices, life, taxes, school choice, vaccination choice, defense, economy etc. etc., and I find that when I look at the candidates’ positions I would have to assume Hillary is lying to vote for her. And while it may be more likely on any given day that Hillary is lying than that Trump is telling the truth, these positions give a pretty clear indication of the direction of their aim if not how accurately they will hit their target. There is a great chasm of difference there and only the shrill and intentionally blind will fail to see that. Use your vote as you will, but at the risk of being relegated with 20 million of my fellow citizens to Hillary Clinton’s imaginary “basket of deplorables”, my reasoned choice is Trump, I guess; you can’t always get what you want.