Donald Trump gives me hope

Election night is a weird sort of strangled Super Bowl. Only instead of a trophy the winner gets to influence the country for four years, but as spectators we just watch to see if Our Team wins.

Terrible, terrible mindset.

This team mentality, “My party right or wrong” is a fundamental part of how our political process got so off track. By any objective assessment, Trump is at best uninformed, but far more likely a narcissistic danger to the wellbeing of this country, economy, and safety throughout the world. Voting for him because he’s your team is just irresponsible.

He wants to give nuclear weapons to more countries, including multiple involved in the volatile South China Sea conflict, and Saudi Arabia, apparently unaware that if it’s okay to give nukes to one’s allies, then everyone will have them, because everyone is allies with someone. That’s just ignorant, dangerous, and in the fundamental lack of awareness of what a nuclear weapon really means, it’s sociopathic.

I find GIFs annoying, but this is how
I feel when Trump talks about NATO

Trump invited the most dangerous country on Earth to engage in cyber espionage against the sitting US Secretary of State because she’s his political opponent. That’s both immoral and treasonous. And again, shows a complete lack of understanding of the things he’s playing with plus a sociopathic willingness to cause immense harm for his own short-term gain.

Using misdirected fear and hatred to blame entirely the wrong people because racism is easy. Not my America.

Opposing our fundamental right to free speech, both in the courts and at demonstrations, even inciting violence to stop it, that’s just un-American. No, that’s fundamentally uncivilized. Punch someone if they disagree with you? I thought we left that attitude in the caves.

Did he actually just say Obama
founded ISIS? Repeatedly?

Suggesting/joking about assassinating his political rival. Again, fundamentally against our shared values. It’s not that I just disagree with his policies, I disagree with Trump’s very notion of humanity. And what’s so scary is that I could continue this list all day. It’s like John Oliver said, any one of these incidents would be like stepping on a nail, but he has so many repetitions of insanity, immorality, and downright idiocy that we just sort of cruise across the top of a bed of nails without any managing to really penetrate.

But that’s all pretty dreary. So where’s the hopeful part?

Trump is spectacularly unqualified and inadequate to the job of president. And in the bizarre world of PR campaigns and willfully misinformed voters, that alone might not be enough to stop him. But he’s also fundamentally un-American. That might matter.

Hating Hillary is a like a religion for many, while she just leaves others uninspired. I get why people don’t love her. But here’s the thing: After decades of rampant gerrymandering and $billions of Koch brothers money, the Republicans have congress pretty well locked up. Republicans in congress aren’t going to let Hillary get anything done.

Or just the primaries

Unfortunately, a vote for Hillary is a vote for the status quo. Our congressional system of gridlock means she won’t be able to build any new structures. But while it takes a lot of people working together to build a house, it only takes one cheeto-colored madman to burn it down.

A vote for Trump is a vote for incomprehension, intolerance, volatility (we don’t want to see how that one reflects in the markets), and immoral narcissism.

Personally, I have more faith in America than that. And that’s where the hope gets in.

Because imagine election night...and we all watch...as the entire map...turns blue.

The entire country, rejecting Trump’s brand of hatred and ignorance, uniting to vote for sanity, even if you don’t like the policies.

What would that do for America? After years of demonizing each other, Karl Rove’s divisive politics, partisan vitriol and childish grandstanding, to be united, as a country, for sanity.

That idea. That idea gives me hope. So thank you, Mr Trump, for being so spectacularly unqualified and unstable that you might just push us into realizing how much our shared humanity matters.