Curmie Is Voting for Not Trump

Yeah, Curmie could support these guys if necessary

People lie.  Politicians lie more than the average person.  Kamala Harris is a politician, and not a particularly honest one, even in comparison to other pols.  Curmie will still vote for her, however.  No, he doesn’t think she’s very accomplished, smart, or consistent.  He thinks she would be a pretty bad POTUS, in fact.  But she’s running against Donald Trump (and J.D. Vance), and Curmie is on the record that he’d vote for the Sauron/Voldemort ticket before he’d vote for them. 

Those fictional villains may be evil, but at least they’re sane, and that makes them at least moderately predictable.  They could construct complete sentences, even paragraphs.  Neither of them ever taped a maxipad to their ear to cover a quite possibly non-existent wound.  They probably even pay their bills, and they certainly wouldn’t publicly contemplate the prodigiousness of a deceased golfer’s penis.

Those on the right will no doubt call Curmie Trump-deranged.  Fine.  He’s been called worse.  Is it likely that a second Trump presidency would destroy the democratic (lower-case “d”) principles on which the nation was founded?  “Likely,” no; “plausible,” yes.  And that’s sufficiently terrifying, thank you.  Should we “vote like it’s Germany in 1932”?  Well, actually, yes.

In Peter Nichols’s brilliant play [A Day in the Death of] Joe Egg, busy-bodies Freddie and Pam refer frequently to people who are PLU: People Like Us.  The MAGA playbook is all about blaming literally everything that ever goes wrong on folks who are Not-PLU: immigrants (even legal ones), Muslims, BIPOCs, LGBTQs, the poor, educators… women.  The legitimacy of these people’s ideas is never considered; it is enough that they are Other.  Indeed, Trump’s positions on issues (has he actually said anything of substance on anything in the last year?) are irrelevant.  He’s the cult leader—a more dangerous one than Sun yung Moon, Jim Jones, or David Koresh—and that’s enough for his flock.

But this essay isn’t about the manifold ways in which Donald Trump is unfit for office.  It’s about one in particular.  Yes, all politicians lie.  But most, even the slimiest ones like Mitch McConnell, do so only to advance their particular perspective: they exaggerate their own accomplishments, actively and consciously misinterpret their opponents’ votes or rhetoric, and otherwise prevaricate their way to what they hope will be a political victory for their side. 

Trump is different.  He’s reckless and ultimately cruel in his dishonesty.  He railed against the Central Park Five long after DNA evidence proved their innocence.  He blathered on about how Barack Obama was supposedly born in Kenya.  Even these escapades, however, pale in comparison to his recent antics in the aftermath of the two hurricanes that battered the southeast.  Despite the testimony of the governors of the affected states, most of whom are Republicans, that the Biden administration and FEMA have been doing an extraordinary job under the circumstances, Cult45 is out there claiming the response was delayed (it wasn’t), and inadequate (given the enormity of the devastation, it could not be otherwise, but that, of course, wasn’t what he meant).

As a private citizen, he inserted himself into the spotlight, getting in the way of people (FEMA, relief organizations, actual volunteers) who were trying to do something to help.  He even riled up the yahoos to believe that FEMA was actually the enemy, to the extent that some operations had to be curtailed when workers feared for their safety!  The problem isn’t that Trump said outrageous, false things: as Jerome Kern wrote (sort of), fish gotta swim, liars gotta lie.  It’s not that he’s mendacious, hubristic, sociopathic, or narcissistic, even by politicians’ standards.  It’s not (just) that he’s a convicted felon.  It’s not that he was rather stupid already before devolving into a babbling ignoramus we see on the campaign trail. 

We’ve all witnessed that cognitive decline, too.  Even major Republicans are calling him “unhinged” and “dangerous.”  That’s just the ones who have joined in the chorus recently, not the host of military leaders, cabinet members, staffers, and (oh, yeah) his Vice President who endorsed Harris or at the very least made their lack of endorsement of Trump public weeks or months ago.

We knew he was amoral, too.  But he seems to have morphed from someone who didn’t care about anyone but himself into someone who consciously and intentionally hurts others: a progression from amorality to hard-core immorality, if you will.  Were he to win the upcoming election, he will only get worse.  And the best-case scenario would be that he would be replaced by J.D. Vance, who is nearly as arrogant, just as hypocritical, and probably even more Fascistic. 

It is possible—unlikely, but possible—that Vance actually believes in the crap that comes out of his mouth.  The difference is that Trump cares only about himself, whereas Vance might actually believe in a cause: a cause which ought to terrify us all.  Indeed, he may be even scarier for that reason.  The good news is that for whatever reason, Trump has groupies and Vance does not. 

Kamala Harris is a terrible candidate.  Her detractors say that her entire campaign is based on not being Trump.  That’s unfair—although far from impressive, she’s been far more detailed and coherent than her opponent about virtually anything you can mention—but even if it were true, being Not Trump is good enough for Curmie.