Donald Trump seems to be a shady dealer, a blusterer, a prevaricator, an abuser of women — not my choice for president. Yet a case can be made for Trump as the slightly lesser of two evils.
Hillary Clinton could be called an abuser of women, children, and men – through war.
As first lady, she encouraged husband Bill to bomb Yugoslavia, without congressional authorization. As senator, she voted to let George W. Bush commit aggression against Iraq. As secretary of state she pushed presidential intervention in Libya and Syria. In the military actions to thwart the leaders of those four lands, a myriad of civilians have perished or suffered.
Lately she has advocated a no-fly zone in Syria, challenging its government and risking a clash with Russian war planes. President Obama and his senior military advisers oppose that.
Trump opposes it too. He talks of a new relationship with Putin. Russia and the U.S. have missiles on hair-trigger alert, armed with a total of nearly 15,000 nuclear warheads and ready to fire on each other. All life on earth is in peril. What is more urgent than preventing nuclear war?
In the third debate, Hillary appeared to accept the use of nuclear bombs. She said that when the president gives the order, it must be obeyed. NO – an illegal order must be DISobeyed.
The International Court of Justice found that use of a nuclear weapon would violate international law, because it would hit civilians and military targets alike (a 1996 opinion). For a president to initiate any warfare without the prior OK of Congress (as Truman did in Korea and subsequent presidents have done) violates the Constitution. Starting a nuclear war would be the highest of crimes.
Hillary made at least three other incorrect statements in that last debate:
1. That Bill "defended our country." Wrong. He committed acts of war against seven nations that had never threatened us. (Afghanistan, Bosnia, Colombia, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Yugoslavia.)
2. That President Obama "kept the peace." Wrong. He has waged continuous war for two terms. (His overt battlegrounds: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen.)
3. That Osama bin Laden was "brought to justice." Wrong. He got no trial but was assassinated by presidential order. (Even the mass murderer Adolf Eichmann was treated better, given a trial by the Israelis.)
Can we survive four more years of those types of justice and defense under such a war-hungry hawk as Hillary?
Paul W. Lovinger [send him mail] is a San Francisco writer and editor.
While Hillary is explicitly scary in her pronouncements, I could never vote for Trump, a man who criticizes the Fourth Amendment. The thought of either of them being my country’s President is quite frightening. And we have gotten into this essentially single party dictatorship from 100 years of voting for the lesser of two evils. I live in the state of Montana. The only way that my state’s electoral votes would not go for Trump is if Hillary wins in a landslide, therefore I really have no means of affecting the outcome of this election. I could, however, cast my vote for Gary Johnson, and make a statement. While not perfect in respect to his regard for liberty, he at least explicitly morally equates the US bombing of civilians with the same activity done by a foreign power. I would be far more comfortable with him in the Oval Office.that either of the two major party jokes.
Supreme, you can effect the 2020 election and the future of the world by voting for Gary Johnson. If Johnson gets over 5% of the votes nationally the Libertarian party will qualify for $20 million in matching funds for the 2020 election. That seed money could give us a chance to have a 3 way race in 2020 that could challenge the two party duopoly that has ruled this country since the compromise of 1876. And aside from the matching funds, a large vote for the Libertarians and Greens in 2016 coupled with the disillusioned Bernie Sanders supporters, will build momentum for a 3 or 4 party race in 2020.
If the nation and the world should last so long.
The question should be “which one is evil?” Quite obvious to me! Has Trump pushed and/or orchestrated over mass murder yet? If people can’t see the pure evil of Hillary’s side and dismiss the obvious smear campaign against Trump by the corporate owned and controlled media,l they could be made to believe that Santa is evil! Let’s face it- millions of Americans are just plain clueless, but I think there’s definitely a critical mass now AGAINST the War Party agenda which Hillary epitomizes and represents. Also, Trump has shown a measure of real concern about the consequences of unbridled immigration on the American working and tax paying public while Hillary continues to act like Mother Savior in inviting immigration as if America is in a position to take care of all these people. That to me is someone unrealistically pushing HER policies forward while the negative results are actually in play! To me that IS pure evil. You politically correct know-it-alls had better start listening to the American people. We are awakening from a long sleep and many of us now see how people like the Clintons, the Bushes, Obama- basically the CIA selected and trained Liar-In-Chiefs now have this world on the brink of a totally manufactured nuclear confrontation!
Trump’s main crime so far? Standing up to this insanity and being politically incorrect to challenge the powers-that-be. That’s certainly not evil to me you boneheads!
Sorry, Tom, Trump is clearly anti-liberty and anti peace. If he were to be elected, the federal government budget would not be reduced by one penny (assuming we avoid nuclear war). Also, Hillary’s embrace of open borders (although done for cynical, self serving reasons) is the one explicit issue she has that I agree with her on. I am a an absolute, property rights, free market libertarian, and support for the free market implies support for open borders. Building a new Berlin Wall would be just as immoral as building the original one.
Go ahead and vote for Trump, but you are voting for more war, more spending, less protection of civil liberties, and likely the end of human civilization.
I would not vote for Stalin over Mao. And I will not vote for Trump over Hillary. I do not relish the though of either of them winning the White House. Since it is likely that one will be elected, we can only pray that somehow we get through the next four years alive.
Clinton is an evil, lying warmongering Neocon. Trump is an evil, lying, warmongering psychopath. Clinton is controlled by the Neocon establishment that has decided to risk world war by confronting Russia with military threats and ultimatums. Trump is an infantile, delusional, belligerent, impetuous ignoramus who can’t be controlled because he surrounds himself with bootlickers and sycophants. The threat of nuclear war is slightly greater under Trump than Clinton because Clinton’s Neocon advisers understand that there is no profit in nuclear war. Trump
.
And it still comes back to the established will of the representatives of a now very reluctant people, and who that established representation will allow into the Outer Circle. Funded by taxes.
My thought is that some very angry person is going to fire a shot truly heard around the world that will unleash… well. Everything.
There’s a Pete Seeger song, “if a revolution comes to my country” that expresses it better than I can. In the Revelation the first horseman is War. And a quick or even long study of history shows that from war comes famine and pestilence. The infrastructure that allows us commerce and sanitation and clean water and adequate medical care depends on a close approximation of internal peace.
I think we aren’t going to have that any more.
I’ve put my leftist credentials on the line more than once to argue that Killary is more dangerous than Trump but that doesn’t make voting for Trump morally exceptable, especially when their are at least two other candidates on the ballot in most states that are far less repulsive, Jill Stein and to a lesser extent Gary Johnson. The lesser of two evils is still an evil and it is precisely this screwed up philosophy that has rewarded this nation with the two most repulsive major party candidates in human history.
The definition of insanity is doing the same damn thing over and over again and expecting different results. Call this an intervention America. Your sick. You need help. Jill Stein is a doctor. Maybe she can hook you up with a prescription. Think about it. But don’t waste your vote on another partisan scumbag. Believe it or not, you can do better.
While I am not on the left, I absolutely agree with you that a person of good will could not vote for either major party candidate. What people don’t seem to realize is that the current level of unacceptability of the major party candidates is the direct result of 100 years of voting for the lesser of two evils.
I liked your editorial better than Paul’s.
“Trump’s nationalism is more conducive to liberty.”
Nationalism is a disease, and is, at its core, anti-liberty. The one government which oppresses the American people the most is the federal government of the United States. That is the government which is the main enemy of American liberties. Your “pledge of allegiance” to the American nation-state precludes you from supporting liberty.
“As Friedrich List highlighted, free trade essentially requires a global state to ensure no one cheats, so I don’t pretend that’s possible. ”
What is “cheating” and why does it have to be eliminated world-wide for trade to be free and for traders to gain from their freedom? If by “cheating” you’re referring to our trading partners’ border-adjusted VAT’s, then wouldn’t a simple remedy be tax-subsidizing American exports to offset what our partners’ are doing? That doesn’t seem to require a global state.
Would free travel essentially require a global state to ensure that no one assaults travelers? I don’t think so at all. It would seem to me that as long as there are no legal constraints to my travelling to a place then I’m free to travel there, and globally free travel thus only requires that travelers be allowed to freely risk going into less-safe areas, and accept being assaulted should it occur. I don’t think we don’t need a global security state to make sure there are no less-safe areas.
In the same way, if, say, Chinese manufacturers are known to “cheat” in some way, then individual traders who don’t like it would be free to demand a premium to compensate for what they consider “cheating” or refuse to continue trading with those manufacturers altogether. In this way we would have free trade, and individual traders could decide which people from which locations to trade with to their advantage entirely on their own. Why is a global state necessary?
The ridiculousness is that for the past several months the country has argued over which is worse. What a waste of time.