Some Thoughts on the Election

With a very important election for our nation's highest office coming up in less than one week, there is a lot on my mind about it as I meditate on everything I see on social media, the news outlets, etc.  What occurs to me personally is that this is an important election which has been reduced to a two-ring circus, and what could be at stake is the future of over 200 million people who call the United States home, of which I am one.  That is why I wanted to take a bit of time to address some of this personally.

Facebook and a number of other social outlets have been abuzz with election-related blogs, comments, cartoons, memes, and not a few dogfights among "Web Warriors" at their keyboards.  What really concerns me most though is how fellow Christians have reacted to this election, and that is something I want to address now.

It is a general consensus among thinking and conservative-minded people that the Democratic front-runner, Hillary Clinton, is a reprehensible and crooked old hag that most of us would not want running the maitre d' counter of a hotel bathroom.  Hillary is not the real issue - we all know what she is, and she even looks like a nasty, unpleasant person.  The person I wish to focus on here is her Republican challenger, billionaire entrepreneur Donald Trump.

Trump already has it all - he has a wealth that the majority of us could not even fathom, he is fairly well-known in the media, and you don't have to waste time on a lot of biographical background to know a lot about him.  However, the other side of Trump is what is of concern - despite his status, he has the manners of a horny badger, and his personality is not really much better than Hillary's.  Considering his sudden interest in the Presidential race, I am wondering also if he is not just doing this because he is a bored rich boy who needs a new hobby, and if he would even take the office seriously if elected.  In years past before he wanted to chase his bucket-list fantasy of running for office, Trump was also a huge supporter of things such as Planned Parenthood and research in transhumanism and eugenics, yet to hear him talk you'd think he was a pro-life saint now.  Being we Americans have short-term memory to a fault, we also forget that Trump was at one times close friends with the Clintons and other liberal Democrats, and no doubt Trump's monumental fortune has funded a lot of Democratic campaigns over the years.  Yet, as mentioned, we have short-term memories which make the rest of the world look at us (rightly) as a bunch of idiots.   And, of all people, conservative Christians have gotten into this and have supported someone that doesn't share their own convictions, and that is troubling.  Let us talk about that a moment, shall we?

I am a committed Christian myself, and have many like-minded friends.  Many of them have bought first-class tickets on the "Trump Train" and think now he is the greatest thing since sliced Wonder Bread.  Yet, here is their issue - many professing Christians cruising away on the "Trump Train" have resorted to the most un-Christian of attacks in regard to people who don't agree with them, including other conservative Christians like myself who support more qualified third-party candidates.  I have heard Christians so flippantly "revoke" the salvation of others for disagreeing with them (this is a common tactic among some Evangelicals, including a couple of my own family members I am sorry to say) and even are saying that to oppose Trump is somehow "demonic."   It is really of interest to me, because I have yet to read in the Bible or in official Church teaching that any of this is valid.  This is going to lead to a couple of other points I want to address.

One common contention that the "Trump Train" travelers have to those of us who are independent and vote third-party is this - by voting third-party, you somehow are "empowering the enemy."  To be honest, I have heard that ridiculous argument for years ad nauseum, and it is symptomatic of a greater ignorance within American culture which is far too evident but rarely addressed - many labor under the delusion that only candidates of the two major parties - Republican and Democrat - matter, and that third-party candidates don't even deserve to be heard.  This is so wrong on so many levels.  First, by telling people that, a person is in essence trying to bully people into voting like them, and that is ethically suspect.  Every person is given a right to vote their conscience, and in my case I have done that for almost every election save two - in 1996 I didn't vote at all, because the Republicans put up one of the most spineless, ineffectual candidates in Bob Dole, which pretty much handed Clinton the White House unopposed for a second term.  Then, in the last election (2012), I actually voted for the first and only time in my adult life for a person I really didn't support - Mitt Romney.   That was a wasted vote - he was the Republican front-runner, and I should have done more research then into third-party candidates I liked better but did not.  However, I was starting to actually believe the groupthink that only a major-party candidate was worth voting for, and we saw where that got us - four more years of Obama's White House.  I want to now say to you that if you are perhaps a member of a third party and want to vote your conscience, you should do so - it is your Constitutional right to do so, and no one has any grounds to influence or bully you to vote for someone you don't want to vote for.   I have gotten to the point that I have told some of my friends who bought into the Trump-mania to bug off and leave me alone, and if they want to vote for Trump, more power to them.  I am not trying to influence their votes, so they need to get out of my business.  I will exercise my Constitutional right my way, and you do it your way.

Another issue I have is with people who think Trump is "on the level," and those people are sadly ignorant of how politics work.  Trump is tapping into a legitimate dissatisfaction with many over the past eight years of that despot Obama, and what he is doing is telling people what they want to hear to get their votes, and apparently he is being effective at that deception.  What boggles my mind about all this however is how an inexperienced hack like Trump got the Republican ticket when they had many more qualified candidates running - Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Michelle Bachmann, etc.  I would have voted for any one of those people had they gotten the nomination, and it makes me think America is in deeper trouble than I originally thought because it is as if the Republicans want to hand the White House to Hillary by running a person like Trump as their candidate - have they completely lost their minds???  This is why a serious election - much is at stake in this one - has degenerated into a sideshow of a circus.  Of course, Trump is par for the course for the "Establishment" Republicans in recent years - just look back at the 2014 elections for Congress as an example.  Any of you remember that Senator from Iowa, Joni Ernst, saying she was "going to make them squeal" in the White House?  Yeah, that sure happened didn't it?   All I hear from Joni Ernst these days is the sound of crickets chirping - she tickled the ears of the voters, got her seat in Congress, and then sat on her butt and did nothing while Obama went plumb-crazy the past couple of years.  She and so many others - I choose her because she is a huge disappointment for me.

I just wanted to share these thoughts of my own frustrations, and as St. Thomas Aquinas in his teachings affirms to us, as articulated by Germain Grisez in his online book Christian Moral Principles, in voluntarily acting for human good(s) and avoiding what is opposed to them, one ought to choose and otherwise will those and only those possibilities whose willing is compatible with a will toward integral human fulfillment.  What that means is that we have a moral obligation, under God-created natural law, to seek a "greater good," and when it comes to this election, we should ask ourselves, "who is the greater good?" rather than settling for the "lesser evil."  The problem with so many is just that - instead of looking for greater good, they settle for "lesser evil."  The end result of that will never actually be good either - choosing the "lesser evil" leads to deeper evil.  So, for those who want to settle for Trump as the "lesser evil," let me tell you something - there are greater goods out there if you know how to look for them and take them seriously, and maybe it is you who sells yourself short by failing to realize it.   You talk much about how a vote for a third party candidate is "a vote for Hillary," but if you are supporting Trump, nine chances out of ten it may be you who is empowering the enemy.   Trump was set up by powers-that-be to empower Hillary, and no matter his popular support, there is a potential for danger there.  We as Christians need to have more God-given sense than that especially, and it is time we wake up.  Thank you.